“Stop,” Shane said, sliding off me.
“I’m really getting tired of that fucking word,” I answered back, my eyes growing heavy.
He flipped me to my stomach like a sack of potatoes, and my breathing sped up as he climbed back on top of me and pulled my hips away from the bed.
“Fucking sweatpants,” he grumbled, squeezing my ass with both hands as I pulled myself onto my elbows.
“They’re yoga pants.”
“Thank God for yoga pants.”
“I’m pretty sure God didn’t design these.”
“I’m pretty sure he did,” he retorted, making his point by pulling them down to my thighs with one swift jerk. His hands went straight between my legs from behind, and I arched my back as his fingers slid over my skin.
“So bare and slick,” Shane whispered darkly, bending over my body until his chest rested against my back. “And what is this?”
His fingers found my hood piercing, and I froze as I waited to see what he’d do. I felt one finger playing softly with the piercing as my breath grew ragged, and I was so focused on that sensation that I didn’t feel him positioning behind me until he was thrusting inside.
I think I may have screamed as he came to a stop halfway inside, but my ears were ringing so loudly that I wasn’t sure. Not that I would have cared either way.
“Hold on,” Shane ordered roughly, nudging my hand with the wrist he’d braced by my head. “Use your nails.”
I gripped his wrist the way he’d asked and turned my head to pull the skin of his arm between my teeth, making him yell out above me and increase his thrusts. He was rolling his hips, his hand moving frantically over my thighs and clit and ass, pressing and pinching and pushing deeper and deeper with every stroke. It was the most intense sex I’d ever had, and by the time he’d bottomed out inside me, we were covered in sweat and I was coming in large rolling waves.
I don’t remember anything after that.
Chapter 2
Shane
Wake up.
The voice in my head was more familiar to me than my own, and I smiled slightly as I drifted in that hazy place between sleeping and wakefulness. Something was beeping or ringing quietly across the room, but I ignored it as I slid my bare legs against the sheets and curled deeper into the soft back that was tucked against my chest.
I slid my hand from the bed and up the smooth skin of her belly, finally reaching the bottom curve of her breast. When I reached it, it was fuller than I’d anticipated, and I groaned as I dug my fingers into her skin. She’s pregnant, I remembered vaguely, my head pounding. Her breasts are always larger when she’s pregnant.
When my fingertips finally reached her nipple, I felt something hard and cool there, and as she sighed and rolled her hips against my morning wood, my world crashed down around me. The woman I was holding was not my wife.
My stomach churned violently as I scrambled across the bed, and I could barely get to my feet before I tumbled off the other side. I knew that room. I’d been there a hundred times, but it took me a moment before flashes of the night before started to filter into my head.
“Oh my God,” Kate whispered, curling into herself where she’d been sleeping peacefully just moments before. “Oh my God.”
I stared at the curve of her back like an idiot, trying to figure out what the fuck I should do, when her head turned slowly over her shoulder and her wide eyes met mine.
“No,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes tightly closed. “Oh fuck.”
I was still silent. I stood there, completely nude, and stared blankly at the woman on the bed.
Kate pulled the sheet around her and sat up. Her shoulders were curved so far forward that I could see her collarbone poking sharply against the skin of her chest. Her eyes searched frantically around the room, and without warning, she lurched off the bed, falling to her knees. I stepped toward her without thought, but the sharp noise she made stopped me in my tracks.
I might have still been drunk from the night before, because I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t figure out why we were there. I remembered sliding inside her, the way her body tightened around me like a vise, and the way she’d tasted salty as I’d sucked at her skin, but I couldn’t remember why we were in that hotel room to begin with.
“What are you doing here, Katie?” I asked, my voice rough. It felt like I’d swallowed gravel with the half-gallon bottle of Jack.
“I came to check on you,” she answered, her voice rising as she spoke.
It came flooding back then, a barrage of scenes that I had a feeling would be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. My skin heated and prickled as I remembered her showing up at the door, and fury settled around me like a cape.
“You came here to check on me?” I asked harshly, finding my boxers on the floor and pulling them quickly up my legs. “And then what? Decided I should pay you back with some dick?”
“What?” she asked, her voice so quiet I barely heard her.
“Let’s be honest here, Kate,” I said conversationally. “I was drunk off my ass, and you figured, hey, I’ve been drooling over his dick for years and he’s not picky when he’s drunk. Score!”
“That’s not—”
“Right,” I cut in, finding my shorts and sliding my legs into them as she stood like a statue in the middle of the room. “You know—” I slid my T-shirt on over my head. “If I was a chick, you’d go to jail for this shit.”
“I’d go to jail?”
“You knew I wouldn’t fuck you sober, so you waited until I was shit-housed and got what you wanted.” I shook my head as I picked up my keys and wallet off the table. “You feel better now, Katie? Was it everything you’d imagined? I didn’t disappoint, did I?”
She began to shake as I walked toward her, stopping just a few feet away. “I didn’t want you then, I don’t want you now,” I said, watching detachedly as her chest heaved with silent sobs. She was staring at my chest, refusing to meet my eyes, and that pissed me off even more. “You were a lousy fuck, Kate. I won’t be back for seconds.”
I stumbled back a step as she fell to her knees, and I clenched my jaw as she began to vomit, her sobs no longer silent but echoing throughout the room.
She’d done this. She’d come to the hotel room I’d shared with my wife, on the anniversary of her death, and had fucked me blind when I was too drunk to know what the hell I was doing. My guilt, shame, and anger were a potent mix, and at that moment I could have thrown her out the window.
“Clean that shit up,” I told her as I stepped over the mess she’d made. “I’m not paying for them to clean the carpet.”
I caught sight of a pair of dirty mugs lying on her side of the bed as I passed by and vaguely remembered the two of us drinking, but I didn’t stop as I made my way out of the room. Fuck her.
I had to get out of there. I had to get as far away from that hotel and the woman inside it as I could. I’d gone there to remember my wife—to have one night when I could just feel it all, just take it all in. I’d wanted to remember the way she had smelled, and the way she’d looked at me, and the way we’d seemed to move together seamlessly. I’d wanted to have one night when I didn’t have to keep it all together because I had four pairs of little eyes watching my every move. I’d wanted to get drunk, and be miserable, and hate the entire world for making me a widower at twenty-nine years old.
Instead, I’d made a huge fucking mistake, and now the only thing I could think about was the way Kate had moved beneath me, the way her back had arched so dramatically as I’d pressed inside her from behind. I could only feel the soreness of my throat and shoulders where she’d bit and sucked at my skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way I’d left her on the floor of that room, sick and scared, and undoubtedly sore from the things we’d done the night before.
I hated myself, and I hated Kate, and I had no idea how I’d ever look at her again without feeling like I was going to burst out of my own skin.
&nbs
p; She’d fucked me over, but as I pulled into my driveway and flipped the visor down in my truck to see the marks on my skin from her mouth, I knew what I had done was far worse.
* * *
“Are you sure you don’t want us to drive you to the airport?” I asked my foster mom as she hugged the kids good-bye. She was so good with them, but I’d known before Sage was even born that she would be. Someone who took in troubled teenagers for no other reason than to give them some semblance of a chance at life—and never once raised her voice when they were complete assholes—was sure to be the best grandma a kid could ever ask for.
“No reason for you to drag the kids all the way to the airport just to drop me off and drive right back,” she assured me, smiling at Gunner, who was in my arms. “Kate’ll bring me. She’s got an appointment downtown today anyway.”
“On a Sunday?” My stomach clenched as Kate pulled into the driveway and I waited for her to come greet the kids. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left her in that hotel room a week earlier, and I was dreading the moment we had to interact. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know how to apologize when I was still so angry at the part she’d played in that clusterfuck.
“Well, she’s got the kids all week,” Ellie said, pulling my eyes away from Kate’s car. She still hadn’t climbed out. “She has to take meetings sometime, and it would take her hours to get down south if she waited until you got off work at night. Traffic here is terrible.”
“Thanks for coming to stay,” I murmured into Ellie’s hair as she wrapped her arms around me. “We love having you to visit.”
“Next time, I’ll bring Dad with me,” she said, giving me a squeeze before wrapping a thin scarf around her neck. “I’ll buy the tickets when I get home.”
“What’s Auntie Kate doing?” Sage asked in annoyance, waving her arms at Kate’s car.
“I think she’s on her phone,” Ellie lied, glancing up at me before taking ahold of her small suitcase. “I’ll carry this out myself since you’ve got Gunner.”
Her face was sympathetic and a little questioning as she kissed my cheek, but I didn’t reply as she walked out the front door. She’d known the morning I’d gotten home that something had happened between Kate and me. When Kate had never called her back the night before, Ellie had known something was up—but she’d practically swallowed her tongue when she got a glimpse of my neck.
She hadn’t said a word, but she’d known.
“I’m glad Grandma’s leaving,” Keller announced, swinging on the front door as Kate backed out of the driveway.
“Kell, that’s not a nice thing to say.”
“Now we get to see Auntie Kate every day. I like it when we see her every day,” he explained, grabbing the doorknob on each side and pulling his legs up through his arms so he could hang upside down. “I never wanted you to leave, though, Daddy. Even though we didn’t get to see Auntie Kate,” he reassured me quickly with an upside-down frown on his face. “I like it when you’re here.”
I had no clue what he was talking about, but nodded at him anyway. “I like being here, too, bud.”
“Is Auntie Kate coming back tomorrow?” Sage asked, purposefully bumping Gavin into Keller so they’d both tumble to the porch. “I want Auntie Kate to take me to school.”
“Yeah, princess. She’ll be here,” I answered, praying silently that I wasn’t wrong. “Let’s go inside and you guys can get the Play-Doh out. Gunner needs to go down for his nap.”
It was going to be a long day.
* * *
I woke up anxious the next morning a full hour before my alarm was supposed to go off. I’d been sleeping like shit for days, and the night before had been the worst.
After Rachel died, it had taken everything I had just to get through the day. What with work, the house, and the kids, I’d barely had a moment to breathe, much less do anything else—and I’d been thankful for that. I’d wanted to stay busy, and I had.
At first, and unsurprisingly, my sex drive had been nonexistent. Frankly, sex hadn’t been on my radar, and I hadn’t missed it. But after a few months, things had started working properly again, and I began having insanely erotic dreams. The urge came back, but I’d been more than happy to take things in hand. I hadn’t been able to imagine touching someone who wasn’t Rachel, and I couldn’t see that changing anytime soon.
Then I’d fucked up, and for the past week my dreams had contained a far different scenario than the ones before. The nipples I tasted were pierced, and the woman riding me wasn’t blond. She was brunette. Suddenly, I couldn’t just imagine touching someone other than my dead wife—I could remember it in vivid detail.
I hopped out of bed and ripped the clock’s cord out of the wall, too keyed up to take the time to turn the alarm off. I was in the shower moments later and gritting my teeth against the urge to jerk off to the thoughts of the woman I’d see in less than an hour. For the first time that week, it didn’t seem right to fantasize about Kate—and the fact that it had taken me eight days to realize that made me feel like a complete dick.
I didn’t want her. Even if she hadn’t been my wife’s best friend and tied to me with more threads than a fucking spiderweb, I still wouldn’t have wanted her. She wasn’t my type. I liked women who were slender, who took the time to make sure they looked good no matter what they were doing. I wasn’t into women with rounded bodies who wore sweats and yoga pants like it was their uniform.
So why couldn’t I stop thinking about the way she’d felt against me? Why couldn’t I stop seeing those pierced nipples and wild hair as she’d stared up at me with unfocused eyes?
It was fucking frustrating.
After everything I’d said to her, I knew she must hate me, so I wasn’t sure why I was even worrying about it. I needed to get my shit straight before I saw her. I needed to move past the anger that I still felt and the guilt that sat like a weight in my belly. I needed to clear the air.
Because if I didn’t, I’d be fucked when it came to the kids. I didn’t think that Kate would walk away from the kids over this—it’s not like we’d gotten along all that great before—but I couldn’t be sure.
So when she crept silently into the house that morning, I was drinking my coffee and waiting for her on the couch.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I said quietly, mindful of the kids sleeping upstairs.
She jerked in surprise and slowly turned toward me. “Jesus, Shane, you scared the crap out of me.”
I didn’t say anything. I was too busy staring at her. I’d had a thought—a stupid one, apparently—that she’d dress up when I saw her again. As I took in her sweatpants, flip-flops, and zip-up hoodie, I called myself every kind of idiot there was. Like she’d really be angling for another round after the things I’d said.
“You have to work, right?” she asked, staying close to the door.
I wondered if she was trying to stay as far away from me as possible or if she was hoping for a quick escape.
“Yeah, I have to be there at seven,” I replied finally, looking at her face.
She wouldn’t look at me.
“Then it looks like I have the kids.” Her words were nonchalant, but she still hadn’t moved a foot from the door.
My hand clenched around my coffee cup as the tension in the room seemed to pulsate between us. I’d had so much shit I’d wanted to say, but watching her cower in the doorway made every word I’d planned disappear from my memory.
She took a step back when I stood up, and I swallowed nervously when her back hit the front door.
“I still want you to keep the kids—” I started, and her eyes finally flashed up to mine.
“Why wouldn’t you?” she cut me off, her voice panicked.
“No, I do.” I shook my head. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned. “I’m just saying, in case you were worried, you can still hang out with the kids.”
I could hear her hard breaths in the quiet of the room, and for a second I wondered
if she was having some sort of panic attack. Her face drained of all color, and she swayed a little.
“I wasn’t worried,” she whispered, her eyes wide and scared. “I didn’t even think—”
“Look, I know that you didn’t do it maliciously—”
“I didn’t do it?”
“—and I shouldn’t have said that shit to you. You’ve been a huge help with the kids, and I know you probably didn’t plan all that.”
“I didn’t plan it,” she whispered softly to herself.
“So I’m just saying that I’d like to forget about it, ya know? Go back to the way it was before. No drama.” I nodded, finally glad that I’d gotten out what I’d wanted to say.
“You’re saying I’m forgiven?” she asked, staring over my shoulder again.
I paused, something in her voice making me question our entire conversation. I’d gone over all of the points, hadn’t I? I still wanted her to keep the kids, I’d known she wasn’t trying to be a bitch, and I wanted to move past it…Yeah, I’d hit every single one.
“Yeah, Katie, you’re forgiven,” I answered, feeling relieved that I’d gotten the conversation over with. Everything could go back to normal. She’d stay, and I wouldn’t have to worry that my kids would deal with another devastating loss so soon after their mother.
She nodded before turning and walking toward the stairs.
“I’m going to go up and crash on Sage’s floor for an hour before she has to get up,” she said, her back to me. “And Shane?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t call me Katie.”
Chapter 3
Kate
Motherfucking-super-spermed-son-of-a-goat-from-Ohio!” I chanted angrily, shaking the little stick in my hand, like that would change the answer it was giving me. I wasn’t even sure what I was saying, but the words rolled off my tongue easily and it felt good to swear.
I was fucking pregnant, and I didn’t know who I was more pissed at—Shane for having an adequate sperm count or the doctor who must have given me a faulty fucking birth control shot.