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I roll onto my side to face him, and he cuddles up closer to me, draping his arm over my waist and around my back. I’m on the verge of sleep when questions I’ve had spinning in my mind about him for weeks now spring to the surface.
“James?” I whisper in case he’s already fallen asleep.
“Yeah?”
“Am I your first?”
“Yes,” he says with a hint of embarrassment. “I know it’s weird because of how old I am.”
“You’re not old, and I don’t think it’s weird. Surprising, maybe…” I trail off, trying to figure out how to word my other questions without sounding insecure. “Why did you wait so long? I’m sure you’ve had plenty of opportunities to be with other women. So why me?”
James plays with a loose strand of my hair and sighs. “I’ve always been nervous around girls. Women,” he says, and I hear the vulnerability in his voice. “If you think I’m nerdy now, just imagine what I was like when I was sixteen, even scrawnier back then, with a voice that would crack every other word.”
“But you’re not scrawny now.” I slip my hand down between us to drag along the length of his yet again half-erect cock, emphasizing my point. This man is a machine.
“Yeah, well, I never grew out of it. I tried putting myself out there. Went on a few dates once I got up the courage to ask someone out, but no one ever clicked for me. I didn’t want to have sex or any of the other stuff just for the sake of having done it. You, on the other hand…it was instantaneous. Damn near sent me to my knees, that’s how strong it was.”
“That first night when I came over to help you with Grayson?”
There’s a long pause, and he goes still, his fingers frozen in my hair. “No. It was the day I first saw you across the street, right after I moved in.”
“But I was seventeen and pregnant when you moved in.” For some reason, that fact gives me a little thrill, though it most definitely should not.
He groans. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it at the time. I mean, I did know you were probably too young for me, but not that young, and I thought you were just extra curvy.”
I sit with that answer, still pleased, before asking, “Were you nervous around me?”
“The most nervous I’d ever been in my life. But you were—are—so beautiful, so sweet, and I wanted you so much that I’d give myself pep talks before you came over so I wouldn’t be a wreck around you.”
We fall silent as I scoot closer to him and press my lips to his smooth chest over his heart. I admit something that’s been swirling in my mind ever since we first started this strange relationship when I saw how he treated and cared for not just Grayson but Lainey and me as well. “I wish you were my first, too,” I confess tearfully.
He fists the back of my hair gently and tilts my head back. His brows pinch together as he looks me straight in the eye. “Hey, don’t talk like that. If I were your first, then we wouldn’t have our Angelainey.”
A tear falls from the corner of my eye, and I smile at him. “Our?” He nods, and another tear falls. “I never regretted her, you know? The first time I held her, I finally understood what people meant when they say their child is the light of their life. And what I said about wishing you were my first…I didn’t mean waiting until now to be with you. Just that I wish it were you and not Tyler who gave me Lainey. You’re a good man, a good uncle and guardian, and I know you’ll raise Grayson as your own, as his father. That’s what I want for Lainey, too.”
It’s a secret I’ve held onto from the moment he bought her that stuffed kitten she loves so much. I don’t think he knew he was looking at her like she was the most precious little girl in the whole world. He always looks at her that way. He looks at me similarly, like I’m precious to him as the woman I am. It had struck me then how much I wish I had made better choices. Had given her a better father.
James rolls me onto my back, pinning me to the mattress, but is careful to keep his weight off my sore thighs. He says with conviction, “She may not be mine biologically, but she is mine. My Angelainey.” I suck in a hopeful breath, and he presses a kiss to my lips. “I know it’s fast, that it might scare you, but I have to tell you that it broke my heart when I thought you were going to leave me and take her with you. I couldn’t bear the fact you might not want anything to do with me, and she would grow up not remembering me. Because I would always, always remember the two of you and how much you mean to me.”
Overwhelming emotion spills out of me as my tears fall faster and faster. I cup his face and pull him close, staring deep into his blue eyes. “I broke my own heart when I told you we needed to take a step back. It broke every night I spent in my own bed instead of here with you.”
He takes my lips in a sensual kiss, deepening it so that he is the air I breathe. I spread my legs, welcoming his hips to settle between mine, but he shakes his head and rolls us to our sides. “I know you’re sore, and I don’t want to hurt you. We’ve already been less than careful.”
My heart swells with adoration and so much more for this man. “Thank you. Thank you for caring about me and thinking of me even when I lost myself in the moment. Lost myself in you.” I wince inwardly when flashes of earlier flitter across my mind, of wrapping my legs around him and locking my ankles together, silently begging him with my body to cum inside me. I don’t know why I did it, only that my heart had pounded dizzyingly so at the thought of what would happen if he did.
Dangerous. Thrilling, but so, so dangerous.
I kiss him and straighten until the lengths of our bodies are pressed together. His breathing slows, and just before his body heat lulls me to sleep, I ask him, “Grayson is ours too, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is. They’re both ours.”
Chapter 21
James
I raise my brow at Shayla’s long list of groceries as she drops two packages of sweet rolls in the cart. “You know the guys would be fine with just pizza and beer.”
“I know, but I want to make a good first impression with your friends. And who doesn’t like sliders? Wait, none of them are vegetarian or vegan, right? Shoot, I should have thought of that. I can find something else if they are.” Shayla pulls out her phone to start googling alternatives one-handed after she switches Grayson to her shoulder.
