Always (Family Justice Book 1) (66 page)

STEPHANIE CAME DOWN SLOWLY, FLOATING on a cloud of sweet completion. She always liked this moment, when Calder would collapse on top of her—pinning her to the mattress beneath his trembling, sated body. His strength and size overwhelmed her smaller frame but that was what she needed. To feel owned. Overtaken.

She lovingly stroked his back, enjoying the feel of sweat on his skin. These were the times when she could simply turn down the chatter in her head, ignore the noise, and just
be
.

Eventually, he gently flipped them until, still with his amazing cock embedded inside her, he flopped onto his back and held her tight against his body as she sprawled on top of him.

Every single moment they spent together took her deeper and deeper into a place she’d never been and where she didn’t know the rules. There was no denying they were compatible. Once the ridiculous posturing and misunderstandings were taken out of the game, she’d come to see and know a side to the affable, well-mannered man that shook up her entire world.

She pressed her nose into his skin and inhaled deeply. In the aftermath of their lovemaking, he smelled delicious. Sweaty and sexy with a hint of Tom Ford’s Noir cologne. She’d finally just come out and asked him what the scent was, since it haunted her day and night. It suited him perfectly.

But there was a nagging thread running through the fabric of their relationship that didn’t match—that made the design a bit askew.
What the holy hell are they doing?

“I can hear the noise in your head,” he told her softly.

And that was another thing. He had no trouble reading her, seeing past the defenses she’d built around her heart. It was making it impossible to pretend or run away from her worries. A long, drawn-out sigh escaped from her before she could stop it.

His answering sigh told Stephanie he already knew where her thoughts had wandered. They were both trying not to dwell on the future. But they couldn’t escape the reality check speeding toward them like a bullet train.

She didn’t say anything right away and should have been better prepared when he reluctantly separated from her body and sat them both up.
Ah, dammit.
Would talking solve anything? No matter what they said, at the end of the day Calder’s life was in Aspen and hers, Atlanta.

Maybe they’d been foolish to let the attraction they felt explode into a six-alarm rager. A dull throb began behind her eye.

To say she was conflicted was an understatement. One part of her, the part that craved his presence—the part she was least comfortable with—wanted to crawl in his lap, close her eyes, and forget about everything else. The other part, the capable businesswoman, considered getting up, dressed, and walking away like what was going on was just sex and nothing else. Not that he’d let her get away with that.

And that was the other thing. She wasn’t used to answering to anyone or taking someone else’s views, schedule, likes, dislikes, and wishes into consideration. It was like flying without a net. The learning about each other part was exhilarating. The very real possibility that it would fall apart when the real world came back into focus was not.

He let her pull the sheet up to cover her boobs but did so with a mock tragic frown. If they were going to talk, she needed some dignity. And he needed to cover his dick up. Ignoring Calder’s nudity wasn’t going to happen. He was the ultimate in AARP Eye Candy.

The way he snickered as he pulled a pillow onto his lap made the heat creep up Stephanie’s neck and spread across her face.

“Okay, Duchess. Out with it. What’s happening in here?” he asked, using his hand to sweep the bangs off her face before wrapping his big, warm hand around the base of her skull. She shivered slightly. When he touched her like that, she wanted to tell him everything. Every fantasy, secret desire—
everything
.
Would her response be different
, she wondered,
if he was on the other side of the room?

Being a sensible, responsible grown-up is a fucking bitch
, she thought. Maybe the grumpiness in her mind showed on her face because he swiftly leaned in and pressed a kiss on her lips.

“Talk to me,” he murmured.

“I,” she started and then stopped with a shake of her head.
No. A half-truth wasn’t going to work.
“That is, I like spending…no, wait. What I mean is…” She sighed and hung her head, hiding her face with the hair that fell around her shoulders.

“Shit,” she swore. “I like
you
. Not just spending time with you.”

Calder chuckled and pushed her hair behind an ear. “Well, glad to hear it m’lady but you make it sound like a problem.”

“I don’t mean to,” she hurried to assure him. “It’s just that you,
us
, it’s so unexpected and, well…it’s messing with my Chi.”

She wanted to sock him in the chest for the half-choke of laughter and the way he tried to appear so pensive and serious.

“It’s not funny,” she whined eyeing him with a serious expression.

“Well, it kind of is,” he teased. “Go ahead. Admit it. I’m corrupting you, huh? Don’t think you had much of a relationship with Chi before my aging, new age, hippy bullshitter ass dropped on top of you like Dorothy’s house in a windstorm.”

Crap
. He hit that observation out of the park. If she weren’t careful, she’d be wearing his ancient Grateful Dead t-shirts and carrying crystals before too much longer.

“Hey,” he told her with a lighthearted shove of his elbow. When she looked at him, he smiled softly and told her, “I like you, too.”

The practical businesswoman would have just kept on making her point, but Stephanie detoured and did what was for her, the unexpected. She leaned over and kissed him back. Such a simple gesture, but one that contained a thousand and one unspoken words.

Calder held her face in his hands and smiled into her eyes. She liked when he did that. Helped silence the gloomy soundtrack playing in her head.

“Where’s all this going?” she asked in a small voice, just above a whisper. The question terrified her. Kept her awake at night. Dominated her thoughts at the strangest times.

“And if you answer with the words
for now
…”
Ugh
. Just the thought made her ill. She never wanted to be the
for now
girl.

He looked at her a good long time. It was hard, but she returned his gaze and never once, glanced away.

“The problem here,” he told her. “Is that you see a deadline looming. A stopwatch ticking slowly down to one.”

He was right. A sense of crushing sadness invaded her heart.

“I see something different entirely.”

She turned hopeful eyes on him. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” he chided gently. “Duchess, we’ve barely squeezed into the starting gate and I’m not blind. Or ignoring the fact that in a couple of short weeks you plan on returning to Atlanta.”

It actually hurt to hear him say it out loud.

“Look,” he murmured, reaching for one of her hands, which he raised to his mouth and kissed on the knuckle. “The future is always in motion. Changing. Setting up and knocking down. Like pins at a bowling alley.”

“What does that mean, Calder?”

He mulled over his response for a minute with a small frown. “Would it ease your mind if I told you that my nephew was expanding the agency?”

She looked at him, shocked and surprised.

“He’s asked me to sign on as a developer. Know that character in the Bond movies who makes all the gadgets and supplies the agents with all kinds of crazy shit? I’d be doing something like that. Technology on steroids!”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with this.”

He looked at her for a fleeting second like she was daft. “I’ll be here most of the time, and you’ll be around, too.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“Oh, so what? We file this whole thing under
booty call
and when we happen to run into each other…”

“No! Fuck Stephanie. That’s not what I meant at all.”

She wanted to cry.

“Calder. This is the difference between us. I need to know my shit. Need a sense of where I am and what I’m doing. I didn’t survive a dead husband and raising Tori by myself by being all willy nilly about things. I can’t live my life
in the moment
.”

Stephanie hadn’t meant to sound so uptight and stern—or judgmental about the way he conducted his life.

“None of us know what the future holds,” he snapped. “The
moment,
as you put it, is the only thing we can be sure of.”

Fuck.
She’d hurt his feelings.

“I’m sorry,” she tried to reassure him. “That came out wrong. I know better than most about how precious
moments
are. Sometimes, they’re all we’ve got.”

He nodded his head and she reached out to tuck some of the hair hanging around his face behind an ear.

“Let’s not get wrapped up in what’s coming next and that wasn’t a
for now
comment. Christmas is here. We’re together and surrounded by family. Change is all around us, m’lady. Who’s to say that we’re not a part of it, too? Baby steps, Stephanie, okay?”

What could she say? She was so desperate for him that she’d take baby steps, over the alternative of tossing in the towel, any day.

DRAE WAS SO FUCKING TIRED, his teeth were falling asleep. Daniel had been awfully full of his three-week-old self this evening. Who knew tummy time with an infant could be so exhausting? He’d lay belly flopped down on the floor while the baby picked his head up and followed the sound of daddy’s voice for almost an hour. He couldn’t believe how strong Daniel was or what it felt like when his son searched for and found his face. The toothless lopsided grin was connected to his heart by a direct zip line.

He’d sent Victoria off to relax in the bath while he took care of getting their little man ready for bed. Not that he wouldn’t be awake and looking for something to eat in three or four hours. Since he was a little piggy on the breast, they let him suck till he was content at the nighttime feeding and like magic…he conked out. Getting him on a normal schedule wasn’t proving to be all that difficult. Of course, it had only been three and a half weeks so what the fuck did he know anyway?

Dropping his clothes on the floor, Drae started for the bed, then like a dutiful husband, gathered up the pile and tossed it into the hamper. Throwing his body onto the mattress with a thud, he lay there a moment and stared at the ceiling, his legs dangling off the side.

As always, his thoughts turned toward his wife. Today had been a
great
day. After they brought the baby home she’d had a couple of dicey days—the exhaustion caught up with her. But for the last week or so, Victoria was acting like her old self more and more every day.

She still had to take it easy, which wasn’t much of a hardship since he was hell bent on spoiling the shit out of her, but that didn’t mean her energy hadn’t returned. Thank fucking God, too, because, after months of trying to reel his little spitfire in, for her own good, he was done with that shit. If she wanted to boogie all day long—he was right there with her.

A twinkling noise cut through his reverie. What in the hell was that? Turning toward the baby monitor on the bedstand, he closed his eyes and waited for the noise to sound again.

There it was—but it wasn’t coming from the monitor. It was coming from a different direction entirely.

He dragged his tired body upright and glanced around the room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and then the noise multiplied and got louder. If he was a kid, he’d think it was what the bells on Santa’s reindeer sounded like. What in the fucking hell?

The light switched off in the dressing room, and in the next instant, he heard the tinkling more clearly as his sexy little wife with the milk-engorged tits and deliciously rounded tummy and hips stepped into view. Only what in the hell was she wearing?

She let him look his fill then started swaying her hips like a belly dancing pro while the bells on her anklets and hanging from the hip wrap tinkled playfully.

When she got to the bed, she smirked at him, bowed her head like a good little slave girl then drop gracefully to her knees at his feet.

Her chocolate eyes peered up at him through heavy make-up and the look she gave him sent all the blood in his body rushing into his groin.

Holy fucking shit. She was in full harem girl mode right down to the glittering jewel teasing him from her exposed belly button.

“What are Master’s desires this evening? I am here to serve your needs.”

The sexy huskiness in her voice turned his cock to stone. And then he started laughing. Harem girl?
Really?
There to serve his needs? It was way too soon after having a baby to think about making love to his hot and desirable wife, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t indulge in a shit ton of risqué fuckery. It was, after all, what they did best.