Page 122 of All for Love

She laughed, leaning back against it. She looped her arms around my neck and tugged me closer. Her soft curves felt so damn good against mine, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was wearing jeans, I’d have pushed up her dress and taken her right here.

As it happened, however, she was wearing jeans, which meant I was shit out of luck. Settling for making out with her like we were twenty-one-year-olds, I pushed her back into the wall and rolled my hips against hers, sliding my thigh between hers again and gritting my teeth when I felt her tense and come apart as she writhed on it.

I nearly came right along with her, but I refused. I could wait until later. It was just a couple of hours. I’d survive. Probably.

Panting in the aftermath of her orgasm, she looked up at me lazily, swiping her tongue across her lips as she planted her hands on my chest. One of her palms rested right on my heart and my throbbing cock nearly exploded at the intimacy of the gesture while she was looking at me like that.

“Hey, you never told me how many kids you wanted.”

My heart stammered as I stared back at her. “What?”

“You heard me. When we were talking about starting a family the other day, you never told me how many kids you wanted.”

I groaned, flexing my thighs and resting my forehead against hers as I tried to find my self-control. It seems to have taken a hike, but it has to be around here somewhere.

“Do you really want to talk about kids right now?”

She nodded, tilting her head as she moved her hands lower down, but before she reached my waistband, I grabbed her wrists and shook my head. “No. Nope. If you so much as touch me right now…”

“That’s my point. You stopped after I, you know, so I figured I’d distract you. Plus, you really haven’t told me.”

Moving my head in beside hers, I spoke huskily into her ear. “I stopped you because I’m not ushering in the new year by coming in your hand like some kid. When I come, it’s going to be deep inside you. The doc said we only had to wait one full day, right? It’s been three.”

On the twenty-eighth, Mercedes had left my place early in the morning, saying she had to run an errand. She’d surprised me with a pamphlet for an IUD when she’d gotten home. Then she’d told me that getting it done had been the errand.

“Look at you being patient,” she teased. “You’re right, though. It has been three and I feel fine, so I think we’re good to go, but we’re not leaving now.”

“No, we’re not.” I eased back a bit, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears and then keeping my hands on the sides of her face. “Okay. So, kids. Isn’t it a little early for us to be talking about this?”

“The alternative is waiting a year or two and then finding out that we’ve been wasting our time because we don’t want the same things. I’d rather know now. That way, we can put it behind us, knowing that we’re not going be in for any nasty surprises one day. So, yes. Kids. How many?”

“Two or three,” I said, surprising myself a little. “I never thought I’d admit that to anyone. I also never thought I’d have more than one, and I was convinced that one would probably be an accident, but I guess not.”

“You never know,” she said playfully. “Only abstinence is one hundred percent safe. I guess it comes down to whether you want to abstain, or if you’re willing to roll the dice.”

“We’re rolling the dice.” No doubt about it. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if it happened. Not for us, anyway. How about you? How many do you want?”

She grinned. “The same. Two or three. That’s another big thing we’ve got in common. Gaps?”

I shrugged. “I don’t mind. As long as everyone gets the same amount of attention. No kid left behind.”

Her expression softened as she cupped my cheek and stroked it gently. “Do you still feel like you got left behind?”

I stared into her eyes for a beat, completely shutting out the rest of the world and the fact that we were in a faintly stinky alley on the wrong side of town. “No, I don’t think I was. I think I perceived it that way, and I think my dad and I have a long way to go, but after all this, I think we might have a shot of clearing it all up.”

She smiled brilliantly as she pushed up on her toes to plant a soft kiss on the underside of my jaw. “I’m glad to hear it. I think you can clear it up too. It might just have been a perception, but it was still your reality. You deserve to work it out with him if that’s what you want.”

“What I want is you,” I murmured. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and you’re also the only reason I’m even thinking about trying to work it out with him.”

“I am?” She frowned. “How?”

“Things got pretty rough with your mom, and you guys managed to work it out. Sure, it was just about this one thing, but it made me realize that my dad and I might just need a sit-down of our own.”

“I’m proud of you.” She looked directly into my eyes, her own sparkly and soft as she smiled. “If that’s what you want, then I support you. One hundred percent.”

Instead of responding, I bent my head down and kissed her again, pressing her back against that wall and wondering if maybe there was a way to figure things out despite the fact that she was wearing jeans. We didn’t even notice the countdown happening while we were out there on that sidewalk, impervious to the cold after all the shots and dancing.

It was only later, once we eventually made our way back inside after not figuring out a way to bypass the jeans, that we realized we’d made out into the new year. I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, if that was any indication of the year we were about to have, then I had a sneaky suspicion it was about to be my best one yet.