Page 177 of Slapshot Bride

The way he’s studying my face, it makes my pussy quiver, tightening around him, and he groans.

“T-tell me if it’s too much. I promise, I’ll stop.”

I nod.

He moves slow after that. Careful, in a way he wasn’t last night, one hand cradling the back of my head and his eyes on mine the whole time.

He’s so gentle that it doesn’t take long to drive me to the edge again. I come, this time, harder than the last, taking him along with me.

His body shudders against mine, and his lips latch onto my neck, sucking hard, prolonging the orgasm, until the last tremors roll through us.

Afterward he doesn’t move for a long minute. Just breathes against me, still holding my head, his weight braced off me on one arm.

“I’m going to be late,” he murmurs, not moving.

“You better get going before the club changes their mind.” I smile.

He chuckles. “Worth it.” He kisses me, then eases out and gets up.

A yawn slips from my lips, and I roll onto my stomach, head on the pillow.

He comes back with a warm cloth and cleans me up himself, gentle between my legs, pressing a kiss to my hip when he’s done, and I’m already sinking back into the pillows, boneless and warm and half asleep.

“Sleep,” he says, pulling the blanket up over me. “I’ll see you tonight.”

I mean to ask what he means by that, but I’m asleep before the words come.

When I wake again, the room is brightly illuminated by the rays of the sun streaming in through the windows, and the bed is empty.

His side is cold. There’s a note on the pillow where his head was, folded once, my name on the front in his handwriting.

Coffee’s on the machine. Made it the way you make it, so it’s probably wrong. Rest today. Don’t lift anything. Don’t cook anything. Already got breakfast for you. — E.

I laugh out loud in the empty room.

I take the note downstairs with me. The coffee’s waiting, and it is wrong—too strong, not enough milk, but I drink all of it anyway, standing at the counter in his shirt, and it’s the best cup I’ve had in weeks.

The house feels different in the morning light. It felt staged, the first night I walked into it, in a wedding dress with one shoe. Nobody lives here, I’d said. Somebody lives here now.

No. Not somebody, but a family. Easton, I, and our baby.

My palm settles on my stomach.

I spend the morning doing nothing after breakfast.

I’m in the living room, book in hand, back to my usual routine of reading Hadley Chase, when the doorbell rings.

I check through the window first, a habit that’s going to take a while to unlearn after the previous episodes of Preston’s unexpected visits.

This time, it’s just a delivery, a young woman with an armful of flowers and a garment bag over her shoulder.

I open the door.

“Riley Brooks?”

“That’s me.”

She hands both over, and she’s gone. I stand in the entryway holding a bouquet bigger than my torso and a garment bag I’m almost afraid to open.