His chest heaved as he chuckled. “Are you sure? Because you sounded apologetic as fuck about halfway through it.”

I grinned. “I was more sorry that I wasn’t sorry.”

He lifted his free hand and gave the side of my ass a gentle slap. “Bad girl.”

“I think I’m falling for you,” I blurted.

Maybe it was the hormones, or maybe it was how well he’d just brought my fantasies to life. Or maybe it was how he could make me laugh even in the most stressful situations. The way he’d moved himself right into my life like he’d always belonged there. The way he treated my, no, our cat like a human child. The unselfconscious goofiness of the man. The beauty. The intelligence. The way he looked at me like I was his whole world. And yes, even the obsessive way he tracked my every move. Even the way he watched me, stalked me, and hunted me down.

He grinned. “If all it took was a little light spanking to get you to say that, I would have bent you over my knee the first time we met.”

He called that light spanking? God, I’d gotten off easy.

I made a mental note not to piss him off again. At least not until I felt ready to face more pain than that during sex.

I reached up and stroked my thumb over his lips. “I was too jumpy that night in the parking garage to let you anywhere near my ass.”

His eyes darkened. “I’m not talking about then.”

Oh. He meant the first time we saw each other in his apartment, all those months ago. Had his obsession started then?

As I watched, he parted his lips and sucked my thumb into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it before biting the tip. The grin that split his face as I pulled free was wicked. In a flash, he rolled me onto my back, settling his hips between mine so I could feel the way his cock was hardening again.

He leaned down and kissed me, and after not being able to touch him for so long, it felt like the sweetest reward to be able to wrap my arms and legs around him.

His dark eyes crinkled at the corners as he broke the kiss and pulled away enough to look at me. “I think I’m falling for you, too.”

Warmth spread through my core, the heat of pleasure mixed with pure joy. Even though I was sore, I needed him again. Now.

I tightened my arms around his neck and pulled him onto me, plying him with drugging kisses until he gave me what I wanted, pushing inside carefully this time, his thrusts deep and gentle and just as mind-blowing as before.

It was a long time before we emerged from my bedroom, freshly showered and starving after our marathon calorie-burning session.

We pulled up short after opening the door. Fred sat right on the other side of it, looking rattled. His eyes were large and glassy as he stared past our legs toward the rumpled bed like he knew what had just gone on in there.

Josh leaned close. “I think we’ve officially scarred our son.”

I lifted a hand for a high-five. “Parental achievement unlocked.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 26Josh

How do I look?” I asked Aly.

She paused before ringing the doorbell to give me a once-over. “Hot. Want to get out of here and go have naked fun time?”

I clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shush! What if there are cameras out here?”

Her response was only slightly muffled by my palm. “Then it’ll teach my meddling family not to listen in on conversations that don’t concern them.”

Three weeks had passed since the night we’d broken into Brad’s house. The next day, I’d swept my car for trackers, and Aly was still pissed that I’d found one. We’d gone straight to the hardware store afterward and changed her locks.

I removed my hand from her mouth and straightened my dinner jacket, feeling uncomfortable in such formal clothes. “I need to stay on your uncle’s good side. Remember?”

She blew out a breath. “I do. Sorry. I’ll try to keep it PG for your sake.”

“Good girl,” I said, unable to help myself.

Her mouth popped open, a flush creeping into her cheeks that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with arousal.

I tried not to let it go to either of my heads. We’d been having so much sex that we’d started implementing forced breaks to keep from chafing. I worried she might become desensitized to me, but the fact that I could still turn her on like a light switch with just two words made me feel better about what her red dress was doing to me. It wasn’t even that clingy or revealing, but I’d never seen so much of her on display in public, and I was reacting like a kid at his first school dance.

“You look beautiful,” I told her.

She smiled up at me. “So you’ve said. We should do this, just the two of us. Get all dressed up and go out for a nice dinner.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling overheated even though it was freezing out.

Aly saw my discomfort and rushed on. “I’ll find a place with low lighting and a table in the back where no one but our server will see us. And if they start to look squirrely, or you don’t like it, we can leave.”

“I don’t know,” I said, still hesitant.

She rolled her eyes. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want it to inflate your already dangerously oversized ego, but you do realize that the people who stop to stare at you aren’t doing it because they think they recognize you, right?”

I frowned. “Then why?”

“Because of how hot you are.”

I blinked. Was she serious? Was that a thing? I knew I was more attractive than the average bear but hot enough to stop people in their tracks?

I refocused on my girlfriend, looking for some sign that she was joking or exaggerating, but her expression was stone-cold. Oh, man. If she was right, I was going to have so much fun with this.

Aly caught sight of my widening grin and huffed out a breath. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. You’re going to be insufferable now, aren’t you?”

I turned my face from left to right. “Which do you think is my better side? I’ll need to know when it comes time to send modeling agents my portfolio.”

She slapped my arm and then rang the bell.

The front door opened so fast that Nico must have been standing right on the other side of it. Listening to our conversation?

Awkwaaard.

Nico threw his arms wide and stepped onto the front porch with us. “There’s my girl.”

Aly shot me a panicked look as her uncle hugged her. His overfamiliarity made her as uncomfortable as going out in public made me, and I knew she only endured it for my sake. I’d have to find a way to thank her for it later. Maybe it was time to finally give in and let her use the plug on me for once.

“Alright, fella,” came a lilting feminine voice. I glanced toward the front door as a petite woman with pale skin and light brown hair appeared inside it. “There’s no need to overdo it and scare the girl off.” Her Irish accent was so thick that the word “there’s” sounded more like “tears”. It must have been the infamous Moira.

Nico released Aly and turned toward his wife. “Who can blame me for being excited to welcome our niece back into the fold?”

“Uh,” Aly said. “That’s not what this is.”

Moira gestured us inside. “Either way, get in. It’s cold as a nun’s twat out here.”

Aly and I exchanged glances and followed the pair into the house. From what Aly had told me about her aunt, I knew that Moira’s family had ties to the IRA, and she and Nico met when they were still in their teens, back when the Italian mob was trying to court the Provos. Their dads had done business together, and theirs had been a Romeo and Juliet-style courtship but with a better outcome.

Aly had only interacted with her aunt a few times and said that was all it took for her to grudgingly like the woman. Moira had a whip-sharp sense of humor and didn’t take shit from anyone, her husband included. I’d just met her and could already see what Aly meant.