Once Upon A Half-Time: A Secret Baby Romance (20 page)

Because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let them down. If I kept letting them down.

If I failed.

I feasted upon her pussy without any teasing pretense or hesitation. Why was it so easy to prove my feelings when buried between her legs? Every lick, nibble, and kiss enthralled her. She wetted for me, slick and creamy with desire. Elle gripped the comforter, twisting in the blankets as my tongue slipped in her petals and flicked along that sensitive nub.

She liked it quick. Intense. No little light brushes or delicate kisses. And that was fine. I didn’t have a feather touch. I sucked. I devoured. I buried my lips in her slit and suckled against her puffy clit until Elle bucked her hips, sweated, cried out my name. Her body tensed and ached.

So easy to come.

So
willing
.

I had planned to do it nice and easy, but fuck it. I didn’t need flowers and candy to show I loved her. Elle would learn it from sloppy, grunted slurps and the broad stroke of my tongue spreading her wide.

She cried out, coming so hard that the squeeze of her thighs around my head deafened me to everything but my own ragged breath and pounding heartbeat.

“
Lachlan
!” She fell limp, exposing herself, her body, her perfect, quivering slit. “I—”

She couldn’t finish.

I had no idea if it was a declaration of her feelings or just the amazement of having the greatest and sloppiest orgasm of her life.

It didn’t matter.

She loved every messy, wet, grunted second of my attention.

And I didn’t give her a moment to recover.

This was my chance to take her unguarded. No splashing in the river to distract her. No secret pregnancy to keep. No one who might have caught us in the darkness of the garden during the gala.

Just me.

Her.

Our baby.

I unbuckled my jeans and freed my cock,
aching
to bury inside her heat. She kissed me, fiercely, licking my lips and tasting her own desire as she struggled to catch her breath.

I wasn’t done with her yet. I’d make sure she was always this sated.

She stared at me, her eyes heavy and her lips swollen. I guided her legs around my waist. Her heavy sigh heated into a wanton beg.

“
More
…” She gripped my arms. “I have to feel you.”

My cock throbbed, aching. I guided it to her slickness. The heat nearly scalded me, but I wasn’t crazy enough to stop. If she’d sear through me, burn me to nothing more than ash, at least I’d spend those last agonizingly perfect seconds completely sheathed within her.

“From now on, Red…my name is going to be the only word you think,” I said. “The only sound you speak. The only fantasy you’ll ever need.”

She panted beneath me. “It already is.”

“I promise you…” My words roughened. She was too beautiful for a harsh fuck, and too irresistible to take gently. “I’m going to do this right. The marriage. The baby. Us. Do you believe that?”

“Yes.”

Good.

At least one of us was confident.

I could try. Do everything I thought was right. Work as hard as possible until my body broke.

But I worried it wouldn’t be enough.

I’d fuck it up.

I’d ruin it.

“Lachlan…” Elle begged. “Take me. Fuck me. I need to feel you.”

And I needed her. More than she realized.

More than even I knew.

I plunged within her. She arched, groaned, biting her lip, squeezing me so tight I feared I might have hurt her.

Until her body shook.

Until her eyes closed.

Until she whispered my name with such sweetness, such
gratitude
, I nearly asked her to marry me again.

Her legs pulled me close, and I crashed over her, tangling my hands in her hair. She arched for me. Wanting more.

My cock bottomed out in the most perfect pussy I had ever taken in my life. Every inch of her wrapped me in the softness of silk and a tightness that might have wrenched me apart. But what a way to go.

I never wanted to pull from her, to leave her, to feel anything but the way she stretched and opened and welcomed me thrust after thrust.

I started by taking her. Fucking her. Pleasuring her.

But my own selfish desire overwhelmed me. I drowned in a need to be with her, and she knew it. Sensed it. Wanted it too.

She clung to me and offered her body. Every luxurious inch. Every tightening, crushing thrust. She took it all. She gave herself to me.

“Never had anyone like you before…” Her words trembled. I kissed her, tasting her honesty. “It’s so good…no idea…”

“You were made for me,” I whispered. “Fucking fairy tale perfection. Do you believe me now?”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“What do you believe in?”

“Us.” She gripped my hand. “I want us.”

“Even if I fuck it up?”

“You don’t fuck anything bad.”

She arched and cried out, close to her own orgasm. I fucked her harder, pushing her over that edge.

I’d break her with pleasure just to rebuild her in ecstasy.

“I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted,” I said. “I can be the man you’ll love, the father to your child, the prince charming of your fairy tale. If you want me. If you’ll have me. If…”

If I didn’t fail and ruin everyone’s expectations—including my own.

She clenched too hard, groaning my name and a dozen other words and affections and promises that would be lost in the haze of her pleasure and the darkness of her desire.

I couldn’t hold back. I gripped her hips and forced in deeper, battling her own orgasm and tightness and the squeezing, milking, teasing muscles that would steal my sanity and lose my mind within her silken core.

I should have said that I loved her.

Instead, I gave her this moment. A precious, beautiful, spine-rending moment of complete understanding. I offered her jet after jet of heat and my promises and the only confidence I had left.

Today and tonight, she was mine.

Mine to kiss. Mine to fuck. Mine to hold.

Because I had no idea what tomorrow held, and, for the first time, I feared it.

Too many people needed too much from me.

How long did I have before I let them all down?

T
raining camp was a shit show
.

A week of working, sweating, and weight-training meant nothing when the stress ate away at my confidence. I tried too goddamned hard to do everything that was instinctual, and even the coaches told me to back off. Relax. Keep it loose.

Hard to do that when I’d woken up alone for the first time in a week.

Elle wasn’t in the bed this morning, and she didn’t show up at training camp. For whatever reason, she had cleared a day off with Peter, but she didn’t tell me she wouldn’t be in. I ended up as the asshole waiting for her on the sidelines with a chai tea and baggie of grapes. That is, until the guys realized I’d misplaced my own wife.

I didn’t need any more ammunition for their hazing, especially when I was still picking popcorn kernels out of my seats like they were molars.

Elle called me at noon, and I nearly tore my ACL leaping from my cafeteria seat to take the call. The guys laughed, but at least I was used to the humiliation.

I talked to her outside, forsaking my lunch. Wasn’t hungry anyway, and I didn’t need the guys overhearing this particular conversation.

“Hey, Charming.” Elle spoke quick, flirty, and too high pitched. Like she was forcing it. “We need to talk about your toothpaste.”

We had a
lot
more to talk about than my fucking toothpaste. “What?”

“Some people roll the paste from the bottom. I’m guilty of
occasionally
squeezing from the top.”

“Elle, what the hell—”

“But
you
!” I heard her smile. It wasn’t genuine. “Last night, you cut the toothpaste out of the middle of the tube. With a
razor.
”

Yeah, it hadn’t been a great day. “I was in a hurry. Hey, I got a question for you.”

“I mean, the sink was a mess.”

What the fuck was happening? “Red, where the hell are you, and, by proxy, my unborn child?”

She laughed. Fake. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“I had a thing today.”

“A thing.”

“Yeah. I won’t be at practice. I thought I mentioned it?”

“No?”

“Well…” She cleared her throat. “I should be back late, like midnight. I’ll crash at my place so I don’t wake you.”

“
Midnight
?” What was happening? “Elle, if you’ve been like…kidnapped or something—”

“I’m not kidnapped.” She paused. “And I know that’s what someone kidnapped
would
say, but it’s fine. I just had to do a uh…photo shoot.”

“Where are you?”

She sighed. “Atwood.”

“You’re in…you’re across the
country
?”

“Just for today.”

I paced the field. “We’re playing Atwood next week.”

“Yeah. There’s a…photography gig I’m doing. For the team.”

“You’re a horrible liar.”

“I know it sounds strange, but I’ll explain it all later.”

“I got some time. Why don’t you try explaining it now?”

“Lachlan, I promise. It’s nothing. It’s a little photography job I picked up. I’ll do it this afternoon, and then I’ll fly right home…”

I’d stopped listening.

The phone nearly tumbled out of my hand.

The brunette waved at me from the chain-link fence that separated the practice facility from where our fans watched the practices. But training camp was closed to the public until two in the afternoon.

I had no doubt Victoria sweet-talked security into letting her in.

“Elle.” I interrupted her. “I’ll call you back.”

I hung up before she answered.

This was not my day.

Victoria waited for me with a little curl of her fingers. She hadn’t changed.

She was just as soul-suckingly beautiful as she was in high school. I saw past the raven hair and moon-pale skin now. Her spell had broken when she’d called from the hospital to tell me about the baby she nearly miscarried.

Tried to miscarry.

But Victoria tested me again. The plunging neckline of her shirt pushed her tits up, revealing too much pale, creamy skin. She leaned against the fence, popping her bubble gum. Her sunglasses pushed into her thick, black hair.

“Hey there, sexy.” Victoria glanced me over with sinfully dark eyes. Fortunately, Sebastian had inherited my greens. “You look good in black and gold. I could eat you up.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I saw you on TV.” She smiled. “You looked so damn handsome in all the pads and sweat and grass stains. Reminded me of the old days, you know?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“I had to come see you,” she said.

“No. You didn’t.”

“Are you still mad at me?” She pouted. I remembered that look. It had once been cute, until the day she puffed her bottom lip out and tried to steal my attention from my hungry son. “Can’t we just talk? It’s been so long.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Lachlan, we have a history together.”

“It’s over.”

“We have a
son
.”

She was lucky a fence separated us. “No, you don’t.”

I meant for the truth to hurt. She didn’t react.

“You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. I don’t have my baby now…but I’d like to. Can I see him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

She didn’t deserve a reason. “Because five years ago you terminated your rights. You don’t get to see him. Go home. Stop calling my mother. Stop calling me.”

“People change, Lachlan.”

“You abandoned him.”

“Yes, I did.” Victoria shrugged. “But I was young and scared. I lost him, and I lost you.”

“You’re not getting either back.”

She dropped the smiles and pouts and cute little scrunches of her nose. Her eyes narrowed, and every muscle in her face hardened. There was the Victoria I remembered—not Barbie plastic, only barbed wire.

“I
will
be a part of his life.” Her voice burned with contempt. “I think you should respect that.”

“He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know anything about what’s happened.”

“And don’t you think he deserves to know?”

“He’s only five years old!”

“He’s my son.”

Not even close. “Legally, he’s my mother’s son now.”

“Biologically—”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Then I’m getting a lawyer.”

I’d rip the damn fence apart. “That’s bullshit. You don’t want your son. You want custody. Child-support. You’re thinking in dollar signs, not his best interests.”

“I can’t believe you’d think something so low of me.”

“I can’t believe you’d think I’m that stupid.”

Victoria sighed. “You’ve changed, Lachlan.”

“Yeah. I hope I have. We’re done here.”

I didn’t let her speak. I stormed to the practice facility with an adrenaline rush that only twisted my head and ached in my muscles. It burned like acid and exhausted me as I ran my drills in the afternoon.

Not even a bottle of ice-cold water spilled over my head could clear that consuming, piercing,
blinding
rage.

Practice was shit. My play was shit. The coaches called me shit.

This wasn’t happening.

In three fucking months, I had gone from an absolute legend—a fucking gridiron god with every goddamned reporter, coach, and player eating out of my hand to…

I stalked into the locker room after the horrific practice. The TVs turned on, blasting Sports Nation.

My face greeted me.

And so did the headline.

Will The Rivets Cut Lachlan Reed?

Ainsley Ruport spear-headed the charge of course. The fucking asshole had no idea the shit that I was going through, the pressure on me, the expectations. He’d never even picked up a damn ball in his life. Yet he persuaded the entire country to believe that I was an overrated, bullshit hack of a player who deserved to get cut from my team.

I showered, but the water pricked me like rusted nails. I was frantic. Ragged. Emotionally blitzed. First Elle and her secrets, then Victoria and her threats? The only thing that made it worse was the echo of a whistle blowing in my ear, forcing me to redo drill-after-fucked-up-drill. The tension would split me in two.

Especially when I realized that the team had aluminum foiled my locker and probably all the contents inside.

Fantastic.

I sliced through the foil.

Mistake.

An avalanche of tiny packets cascaded from my locker.

Hundreds of condoms poured from the cubby, puddling around my feet.

The team howled.

I didn’t find the news of my unborn child quite so funny. Especially when I’d confided in the few members of the offense because I needed to explain why I was so fucking distracted.

At least Elle wasn’t in the locker room. She and the baby deserved better than this
joke
.

Caleb jumped onto the bench, calling to the team. “Condoms here! Get your condoms! Courtesy of Lachlan Reen who has no need for them anymore! We’ve got your fruit flavored! Your ribbed. Your long-lasting.” Caleb winked and tossed one to Jack. “Your Magnums.”

I backed away as white balloons floated out of my cubby. They’d scrawled a word in thick black sharpie over all six.

Oops!

This was fucked up, even for them. My child wasn’t a mistake.

Either of them.

Jack patted my shoulder. The fucker had ten seconds to remove his hand. I didn’t trust the blinding, white haze to my vision. It took a lot for me to lose my temper. But insulting Elle? Betraying my trust? Fucking around about the
life
we created?

That was enough to make me want
blood
.

“
Always
go with the Trojans,” Jack said. “Can’t trust some of these novelty ones. And this?” He held up a condom stapled to a print out of my headshot. “See, this one won’t work anymore.”

I kept my voice low. “It’s not funny, Jack.”

“It’s a joke, Daddy.”

“You’re a father. It’s not funny.”

“The guys are just
ribbing
ya.” He flicked a condom at my chest. “You move pretty damn quick. Marrying the girl. Having the family. But think of it this way—the public, media, and league
love
a family man.”

“You know that’s not how it went down.” I wouldn’t tell him twice. “Back the fuck off.”

“Okay.” He raised his hands. “Sorry. Kids are great. Don’t worry.”

“I know how to take care of a kid.”

“I’m sure you do.” He batted aside a mound of condoms to find the ball buried in the bottom of my locker. “Just a word of advice. When she hands you the baby…” He tucked the ball close to his ribs. “Hold it tight. Drop this one, and you’ll get more than a coach’s boot up your ass.”

Not sure why I did it.

Not sure what the fuck possessed me.

Not sure why I took it out on him.

I said nothing. Just tensed. Aimed.

And I punched Jack Carson right in the goddamned nose.

He fell backwards, stumbling into the lockers. The team shouted, but Jack didn’t take a second to check to see if he was bleeding.

He was.

He launched at me, firing back with a solid upper-cut that only
just
grazed me. I avoided the hit, but Jack was nothing if not scrappy. I had no idea how many bar fights he’d led, but I was lucky he didn’t have a beer bottle to break.

He threw me to the ground, but I tackled him around the waist and forced him to the floor. He struck me. My eye. The pain blinded me, but I threw a punch.

It missed his head, and I slammed the fucking carpet.

Good thing they had concrete beneath. What kind of asshole broke his fingers on a rug?

The team shouted, laughed, and cheered. Only one person managed to grab me before I punched a sure-fire concussion into our starting quarterback.

Cole hauled me off Jack. He flipped me like a damn towel and cast me off-balance. I didn’t recover in time. He pitched me into the showers and dumped me on the floor. The cold water was a shock.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cole growled, low. “Control yourself, rookie. I’m supposed to be the goddamned animal!”

I breathed heavily, surging to my feet. Cole struck me in the chest, dropping me to the floor. I stayed there, facing the prospect of either my own humiliation or
The Beast
breaking my neck.

Coach Thompson burst into the locker room. He checked on his highest paid player then came to spit on me, soaking wet and broken in the damn shower.

“Goddamn it, rookie.” He hissed. “Don’t give me a fucking reason to cut you. You pull this bullshit again, and you’re outta here.”

“Yeah.” I rocketed to my feet. “I’m sure I’ll be packing my bags soon enough.”

The locker room was silent as I emerged—dripping, bleeding, cold.

Jack ignored me, touching his nose. Probably broken.

“
Fuck
…” He surveyed the damage in the mirror. “I promised Leah I wouldn’t get in any fights this year.”

He wouldn’t have to worry about it.

I wouldn’t fuck with him anymore, the one man on the team who had yet to give up on me. I wouldn’t have a chance once the team cut me.

Regular season started in a week, and when it did?

I doubted I’d be an Ironfield Rivet.