Craving Cecilia (The Aces' Sons 6)

“Of course that was the part you latched onto.”

“Nice pun.”

“I thought so,” I said, grinning a little.

“Well, she seems to have the hang of it now,” he said with a sigh.

“Yeah. It helps that my milk came in, so she’s got immediate satisfaction.”

“I have no idea what that means, but I’ll take your word for it.”

We were quiet for a few minutes and I took the time to actually look around his room. Just like in the guest room, the furniture in his bedroom was no joke. It looked heavy and solid and expensive, and I wondered if he’d picked it out himself. There was a chair in the corner that had a pile of folded towels on it and a jacket tossed over the back. The dresser was clean and mostly bare beyond a photo I recognized of him and his mother when he was little. I quickly looked away from it.

“I don’t spend a lot of time in here,” he said, dragging my attention back to the bed. “We’re not home very often.”

“Do you like your job?” I asked curiously. When we were young, he hadn’t spoken much about what he’d wanted to be when he grew up. He’d always been good with building and fixing anything mechanical, and I guess I’d assumed that he’d work in the club’s garage and take his place in the hierarchy. His life now was so far removed from what I’d envisioned for him—for us.

“Yeah, I do,” he said, shifting a little on the bed. “It’s satisfying and I like never seeing the same thing twice. Shit is always shifting and changing. Keeps me on my toes.”

“Is it dangerous?” I asked quietly.

“Life is dangerous,” he replied seriously. “No matter what you’re doin’ with it.”

“Fair point.”

“I’m good at what I do,” he continued. “And my team is the best I’ve ever worked with.”

“They’re an odd mix,” I replied.

“Probably why they work so well together,” he said. “Everyone brings their own shit—faults and assets—to the table.”

“Are Josiah and Ephraim brothers?” I asked. “Because they almost seem like they could be twins.”

“Cousins, actually,” he said in surprise. “Most people don’t catch that.”

“It’s in their mannerisms,” I explained. “The way they move, the way they smile, even their voices are similar.”

“Get the two of them together and fuck,” he said, drawing the word out with a small chuckle. “They could convince the Pope that Jesus was a figment of his imagination.”

“Persuasive, huh?” I asked as I brought the baby to my shoulder to burp her.

“Charming is the word you’re looking for,” he said ruefully. “Snake oil salesmen, the both of them.”

“Does that come in handy?”

“More times than you would think.”

After the loudest burp I’d ever heard coming from someone so small, I laid her on the bed between my knees, quickly finished dressing her, and wrapped her snugly again. “This is another thing that I had no fucking clue how to do before she came.”

“Sure you did,” he said, leaning over to look at her. “You’ve made a burrito before.”

I raised my eyebrows in realization. “Well, fuck.”

Mark laughed. “Lay back down,” he said, his face going soft in a way that was both familiar and brand new. “Maybe she’ll sleep for a while.”

“The sun’s up,” I argued, glancing at his windows.

“You got somewhere to be?”

I looked back at him and dropped all protest when his eyes met mine. The pull was as strong as it had ever been, and I was too worn out to fight it. Not now. Not yet.

This time, when I settled the baby on the open space between me and the edge of the bed and laid down on my side, Mark didn’t hesitate to curve his body into mine. He reached beyond me and set his hand on the tightly wrapped bundle for a moment before his arm came back around my waist and slid up my shirt.

I didn’t bother hiding the arch of my back or the tilt of my hips and he didn’t try to muffle his groan. His lips pressed against the back of my neck just before his body relaxed. It didn’t take him long to fall back asleep, but I laid there for a while, listening to his breathing.

If someone would have told me a week before that I’d end up in Mark Eastwood’s bed again, I would have laughed in their face. I still remembered the devastation he’d wrought, the days I hadn’t been able to crawl out of bed and when I finally had, the absolute confusion I’d felt about what I was supposed to do with myself. My world had started and ended with him, and then suddenly, he’d been gone and I’d been completely rudderless. It had taken me a long time to dig myself out of the hole he’d left me in.