“I told her,” he said gruffly. “As much as I liked seeing the kid, keeping me in the picture is only going to get more and more complicated as she gets older. Once she starts remembering things. Remembering people…”
His face was shuttered as he said it. He was clearly trying to block out the pain to himself in an effort to do what was best for Hannah.
Knowing he needed a distraction, Taylor walked her fingers over his chest and sighed. “You know how annoying it is, right? That you’re insistent on being a good person when I’ve been so determined for so long to hate you?”
“You never hated me,” he said with a short smile. “You were just pissed I figured out you have a heart.”
“Possibly.” She dropped a kiss to the center of his chest. It was a playful, casual gesture, but she felt his response.
She glanced up, raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” he said irritably. “What the hell are you wearing? It looks like pink Kleenex.”
“I always sleep in this,” she said, brushing her lips again over his chest.
He groaned. “I did not need to know that.”
“Rethinking your one-month-no-sex rule?” she asked, her mouth drifting lower, over his ribs.
“Every damn day,” Nick said on a growl, fingers tangling in her hair.
“Less than two weeks to go.” Her fingers found the blankets bunched around his waist, started to ease them downward. “You going to make it?”
“Are you?” he asked huskily.
She snickered, because they both knew who was in control of the moment.
Then her hand halted its descent. She met his gaze and asked the question that had been lingering in the back of her mind. “Kelsey…was she the one you were seeing when I asked you to dinner?”
He gave a regretful smile as he ran a palm over her hair. “Yeah.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder. “I didn’t know. I sure as heck didn’t know that you had a baby.” Or thought you did.
His chest rose and fell as he inhaled deeply. “Strangely enough, it was just a couple of days after that day in the Oxford kitchen that I found out about Hannah not being mine. A few weeks after that, I realized there was maybe a silver lining to the whole thing. It freed me up to pursue the most interesting woman I’d ever met, but…”
“I was with Bradley,” she finished for him.
“Never said I was talking about you,” he teased.
Taylor tweaked his chest hair, and then gave him a naughty grin as her hand continued tugging down the sheets.
They could both use a distraction.
Taylor had been hoping he slept in the nude, but the fact that he was wearing only boxers wasn’t a bad compromise. Her fingers accidentally-on-purpose brushed over the front of him as she eased the covers down further.
He hissed out a breath. “Taylor.”
She slipped a hand beneath the waistband, wrapped fingers around the long, hard length of him. “Feel free to stop me at any time.”
He didn’t stop her. Not when she stroked him from tip to base. Not when her thumb brushed over the velvety head of him, spreading the bit of moisture over him.
He didn’t stop her when she slid further down his body, taking his boxers with her until he was wonderfully naked, and all hers.
Taylor didn’t rush. She let her hair trail over his stomach as she dropped kisses along his hip bones, teasing him, wanting him to beg for it.
She should have known better. Nick Ballantine didn’t beg. Instead he gathered her hair in one hand, the other clenching the sheets beneath him as he waited her out. His straining breath was the only sign he was affected.
Taylor’s lips brushed the top of him, and his hips bucked. She smiled and repeated the motion, lingering this time.
His fingers tightened in her hair. “Fuck.”
It was as close to a plea as she was going to get from him tonight. She’d take what she could get.
Taylor took him in her mouth, easing him in inch by inch as his hips arched up with a needy thrust, urging her to take more, deeper.
She did. She gave him everything, and he gave right back, alternating between pumping into her mouth and staying perfectly still so she could take control.
“Pull your nightgown down,” he said gruffly, looking down at her. “Let me see your perfect tits.”
She did as he asked, pulling away just long enough to slide the straps down her shoulders until the nightgown pooled at her waist. Taylor stayed where she was for a long moment, loving the way his eyes glazed over at the sight of her.
He reached out a hand to touch her, but she batted it away. “My turn.”
Then she returned her mouth to his cock, even more eager this time.
A minute later, his breath quickened, and his fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her up. “Taylor.”
She looked up his body, met his eyes to tell him she understood what he was saying to her. And told him right back what she wanted.
This time when he said her name, it was a plea and a prayer, and with one last thrust, he came in her mouth, finally giving her what she wanted: Nick Ballantine was all hers.
For the moment.
A moment later she slid back up his body, settling against him.
His arm came around her. “Feeling pretty smug, aren’t you?”
She smiled against his chest. “Maybe.”
He sighed and sat up just enough to reach the covers and pull them up around both of them. “There’ll be no living with you after this.”
“I would never gloat over oral sex, Ballantine. It’s unbecoming of a lady.”
His lips brushed her forehead. “Are you lying?”
She laughed. “A little.”
Taylor felt his smile. “Thought so.”
Her eyes felt a little heavy, and she gave in to the urge to close them. When she’d snuck in here, it’d been with the intention of distracting him from painful memories with a world-class blow job and then returning to her own bed.
She certainly hadn’t envisioned staying here with him. Hadn’t let herself imagine how nice it would be to sleep cuddled against his warmth.
It was just as well. Nothing her imagination could have conjured up would have been even close to the reality.
Chapter 21
The scream Taylor let out when the shower curtain was pulled back while she was in mid-shampoo was not the least bit dignified.
“Jesus, Ballantine,” she said, laying a soapy hand over her frantically beating heart. “Psycho much?”
In response he merely grinned and dropped his boxers, stepping into the shower uninvited.
“Really?” she grumbled as he crowded her under the stream of warm water. “You won’t sleep with me, but you’ll shower with me?”
“I slept with you. All night.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. You’re sulking because I won’t yet make a woman out of you.”
She laughed. “Whatever.”
“I can do other things,” he said huskily as he pressed against her.
Her heart beat a little faster in anticipation, but she was most definitely not expecting his hands to lift to her head, the pads of his fingers massaging the shampoo through her hair.
Taylor couldn’t help the moan. “Why does this feel so much better when someone else does it?”