Page 60 of Secret Baby Daddy

It doesn’t.

If anything, watching Dominic Calder lose control while still refusing to stop taking care of me might be the most unfairly attractive thing he’s ever done.

Then he’s back.

His forehead rests against mine for one suspended second.

“Piper.”

There is a question in my name.

I answer it by pulling him closer.

“Yes.”

When we finally come together, all the anger between us changes shape.

He kisses me through it, one hand tangled with mine against the mattress, the other holding me like he’s still half convinced someone might try to take me away if he loosens his grip.

There is nothing polished about us anymore.

Nothing controlled.

Just heat and breath and the sound of my name in his voice until I stop remembering all the reasons this was supposed to be a terrible idea.

For once, Dominic doesn’t seem interested in being the most disciplined man in the room.

And for once, I don’t want to manage what happens next.

I just let it happen.

Later, considerably later, tangled together in the dark of the bedroom, his heartbeat slowing beneath my palm, neither of us says anything for a long time.

The fire has burned down to embers again.

Outside, the wind has gone quiet.

I have never in my life let my guard down this completely, this fast, with anyone, and some analytical corner of my brain, the same one that reads headlines and calculates fallout, is already cataloging the risk of it, even as the rest of me refuses to regret a single second.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” I say eventually, though I don’t entirely believe it as I say it.

“No,” Calder agrees, his voice low, rough, careful in a way I haven’t heard from him before. “It wasn’t.”

“Are you going to tell me you regret it?”

I feel him go very still at the question.

“No.” He says it too fast, too certain, and something in his tone makes me turn to look at him even in the dark. “I don’t regret it. I regret that I don’t know what to do with it.”

“That makes two of us.”

“There’s something else.” He says it into the dark, careful. “The condom didn’t hold. I felt it go. I should have said so then.”

“I know. I felt it too.”

“Piper—”

“The odds are small. If there’s anything to deal with, we’ll deal with it. Not tonight.”