Better (Stark Ink Book 2) (9 page)

The bedroom was different, but her body was familiar. He remembered every curve and yet spent some time getting to know the new ones. Her breasts were larger and maddeningly tantalizing. Her nipples had darkened and now stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin. Dalton liked it. It made them easier to find in the dark. He took one into his mouth. She writhed beneath him, pressing her hands onto the back of his head, wanting more. Dalton soon forgot which one of them was drowning as she clung to him desperately.

He worked his way down, lips brushing over her belly. The mechanics made sense: sperm + egg = baby, but the reality amazed him. Zoey had a new life inside of her where there was none before and she nurtured it as best she could, like she was doing with him now. He ran his hands over the swell and down to her thighs, parting them. He dipped his fingers into her and found her slick, hot, and needy. If the mechanics of baby making sex made sense to him, he still had to pause over the ins and outs of sex
with
baby. Not wanting to hurt either of them with his massive size, he brought his hand up to Zoey’s hip and guided her to her side instead, settling in behind her.

The curve of her ass fit perfectly into his pelvis. That part wasn’t new. In their time together, Dalton and Zoey had made love in every position it was possible to get into, and quite a few that ultimately
weren’t
but had been fun trying anyway. He slid his hand down and parted her lips with his fingers, holding her open for him. His bare cockhead pressed against her heat, mixing her juice with his own pre-cum, and pushed inside. He stopped instantly, though, with Zoey’s pussy tightened around him, already squeezing him hard.

“Zoey?” he whispered into her ear.

She made a soft noise that sounded like a whimper. It might have been a sob, caught between the swirl of orgasm and disappointment. “I’m sorry,” she replied. “It’s just… I haven’t…” She stumbled over her words and Dalton’s heart ached for her.

“How long has it been?” he finally asked, not really wanting to know but needing to all the same.

“Not since we found out about him. He won’t touch me,” she admitted.

Dalton couldn’t believe it.
Six months?
How could anyone share a bed with Zoey and not have his hands, his mouth, and his
dick
all over her? She was beautiful and adventurous and giving. Once more he was struck by how badly Patrick had fucked up and how badly he himself had fucked up. Both men had let go of the best thing that had ever happened to them. At least Dalton had been trying to give her a better life.

It was decided, then. One orgasm wasn’t enough. Dalton knew from experience that Zoey was capable of one or two more, at least. They’d once spent all night trying to make it to ten. They’d never managed it, but it had been amazing just the same. He lifted her thigh a bit, opening her up for him once more, burying himself deeper. Now fully sheathed in her still-twitching pussy, he slid his hand over her hip and found her soft curls. Zoey gasped and leaned her head back into his shoulder. He worked her gently, knowing she was sensitive now. She pushed back against him, though, urging him on.

There had been problems between them, so many problems when they’d still been a couple, but this had never been one of them. Dalton knew every inch of Zoey’s body, even now despite the fact that it had changed so much. Everything he remembered was the same. Her nipples, despite their newly darkened appearance, still hardened at the slightest touch. She still loved it when he rubbed her clit. Dalton’s hand slipped under her belly and between her legs with practiced ease as he tried to tease her back into action. She turned her head so he could take her mouth. His tongue slid against hers and her taste was warm and familiar.

“Loosen up for me, sweetheart,” he encouraged, thrusting inside her to make his point. She was wet, but tight. “You’re gonna take me all in and keep me there until I get my fill.” His lips brushed against hers. “Or you get
yours
.”

His mouth came down on hers again, teasing her, filling her everywhere he could. He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her in close so that there was not even a scant inch of space between their bodies. He may not be able to keep that proximity forever, but he had it now and he wasn’t giving it up. He’d missed her too much and thought about her too often not to hold her as closely as if she was another part of him. A piece of him had been missing since she’d left, since he’d been drinking and pushed her away to spare her. He was drunk again, though, this time on the feeling of being whole again now that she was back in his arms and in his mouth and squeezing his cock so gently.

She gripped his hip fiercely and he knew she was close again. He pressed his fingers against her clit. “Let go or no?” he asked roughly, letting her decide how she wanted it. Zoey grabbed his hand and pushed it down, riding it — and his cock— hard. She came with a loud cry that Dalton had heard so many times before. The sound alone was usually enough to push him over his own edge. His shaft jerked inside her and he felt the familiar throb as he kept his promise and filled her.

She relaxed into his arms, panting. He kissed her shoulder as the flow of his cum ebbed inside her. Slowly, regretfully, he withdrew even though he wanted nothing more than to stay where he was forever. But she deserved to rest, after all, especially since he’d worn her out. He kept her against him, however, unwilling to give up the closeness.

He put his arm over her, across her belly, and closed his eyes. He could tell by the rhythm of her breathing that she was already drifting off too. He inhaled, breathing in her scent as deeply as he could. Nights had always been the hardest after she’d left. Before rehab, he’d taken to sleeping on the couch to avoid the memories of her in his bed. Her skin was as soft as he remembered and her hair smelled like coconuts. He stifled a laugh as he remembered last year at this time when he’d asked her about it. “I have to hold onto summer somehow!” she’d told him.

Right before drifting off, Dalton felt a slight movement against his forearm. His eyelids fluttered open and he held his breath. After a few seconds, the baby kicked again. “Sorry,” he said automatically and re-positioned it. The baby kicked him again as if in response. Dalton lay still in the dark of the bedroom and considered this for a long moment. Could the baby actually
hear
him? That seemed… weird. But he supposed the baby did have ears. So he could hear them talk and… oh God! What if the baby really could hear? Then he’d heard everything they’d just done!

“Oh.” He quickly pulled his arm away and sat up. Zoey stirred only slightly.

Maybe babies could hear. If that was true, what else could they do? What else didn’t he know? Zoey was already zonked and so asking her wasn’t a good idea, but he had an idea. He tossed back the covers on his side of the bed and climbed out. He turned and replaced them carefully, tucking Zoey in before he quietly crept out of the room and headed down the hall to the guest room where her stuff was stashed. He flipped on the light and scanned the area. On the nightstand by the bed, he swiped the pregnancy book and sat down. He flipped through the pages, past the first month and second month. Strange pictures of creatures with tails assaulted his eyes. Babies had tails? He stopped and read that page.

Indeed, babies
did
have tails. For a while. Usually they lost it before they were born. Adam probably hadn’t lost his, though. Probably they’d had to remove his. He smiled at the thought.

Dalton continued to flip through the pages to discover that yes, the baby could hear them now. In fact the baby had been able to hear for months now. He frowned down at the page. Had the baby heard Patrick yelling at Zoey? Probably. Had the baby heard him hit her? Yes. The baby couldn’t understand it, but maybe babies were like dogs and could hear the tension and anger in a person’s voice. If that was true he was going to have to be more careful around Zoey. Dalton had already raised his voice a few times, although not specifically at Zoey, just at her situation in general. He wouldn’t have the baby scared in his presence. Not if he could help it at all.

He flipped to the “mom” chart and looked it over. By the seventh month expectant mothers were tired, got headaches, backaches, swollen feet and ankles, and sometimes had difficulty sleeping. Dalton wondered if he had enough Tylenol in the house for all that. Could she even take it? He flipped to the index to find out. Apparently there was a lot to know. Before he knew it a half hour had gone by. He had work in the morning so he memorized the last page number and put the book back on the table. He turned off the bedroom light and headed back down the hall.

He slipped into bed as gingerly as he could and snuggled in close to Zoey again. After a moment’s hesitation, he put his hand lightly on her belly. There was no movement.

“I’m Dalton,” he half-whispered, but he said it too softly. He cleared his throat and tried again, being careful not to wake Zoey. “I’m Dalton,” he repeated, just a bit louder. He spread his fingers over her belly and felt a tiny foot, or maybe it was a hand, connect with his palm.

“Hey,” he said, both amazed and also disappointed that he couldn’t think of anything more profound than that to say.

Dalton slipped out of bed in the early morning hours, careful not to disturb Zoey as she slept. He stepped into the shower and yawned under the hot spray. He’d slept well though, better than he had in a long time. It seemed his day off was already starting out better than any that had come before it. When he’d first heard Ava mention Zoey’s name over the phone, nothing like this had entered his mind. He’d only wanted to chance to apologize for his own nightmarish behavior and nothing more. The most he had expected to get out of it was the opportunity to say it.

He supposed AA had done that, helped to change his way of thinking. He’d learned to take things one day at a time so as not to be overwhelmed at the mere thought of an entire lifetime of sobriety. But in training yourself to deal with things incrementally, you also removed your ability, or at least your willingness, to hope as well. If looking too far ahead was unwise, trying to spot the finish line was downright dangerous.

When you expected the worst instead of daring to hope for the best, you developed a numbness toward anything good that happened.

He didn’t want to be that way, though. He didn’t want to close himself off from what was happening to him now, even if it didn’t last— even though it probably
wouldn’t
last. Zoey was here now and it might be the last truly good thing that would ever happen to him, so he decided to ride it out for as long as he possibly could.

His eyes were closed when the glass door slid open. He turned suddenly. “What are you doing?” he asked her, grabbing at her arms. He swept her to him and held her against him. “Zoey, you could fall!” he admonished. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

She laughed. “So, you think I just shouldn’t shower for the whole nine months?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I have a tub.”

She slid her arms around him and smiled up at him. “But you’re not in it.”

He gazed down at her as the water pebbled on her bare skin, reminding him again of better times. They’d never showered together in this apartment, but they had in the old one, plenty of times, but not nearly enough according to his way of thinking. His reminiscing was soon sidelined when she unthreaded her arms from his, turned, and reached for the soap on the shelf.

“I’ll do you,” she told them, “you do me.”

He smirked. “I think we’ve established that.”

She gave him a sharp look that made him laugh. She grasped his arm and tugged. She wasn’t strong enough to turn him on her best day, but he got the message. He turned to face the wall as she started rubbing the bar between her hands. His cock grew in response, indicating it wanted to be next.

He felt her soap-slicked fingers smooth over his shoulder. She paused, pressing lightly against the tattoo that had been drawn there. “This is the day your mom died?” she asked as she traced the date inked into his skin.

He nodded.

She touched the other shoulder. “What’s this one?”

“The day I got sober.”

They’d been the two most important events in his life thus far. Dalton, Adam, and Jonah had each had Mom’s date applied. Dalton had asked Adam to add the day he’d gone to rehab, as well. Ava wanted hers done, but she’d have to wait a little longer. Nobody thought waiting would actually deter her, but the law was the law and Adam was always on the right side of it these days.

Slowly Zoey’s fingertips moved down Dalton’s back. She followed the outline there which was as familiar to him as the scar on his hand. Feathers, claws, beating wings. He couldn’t really see it in the mirror, but he’d keep the original pencil drawing.

“It’s a phoenix,” he told her. “It’s-”

“The bird that rises from the ashes.”

“Yeah. Adam drew it for me when I got out of rehab. Maybe he meant it as an apology for dragging me there in the first place. Or… maybe I let him put it on me as an apology for making him do it. I don’t know. Either way, we needed a way to move on, start over. This seemed like a good idea.”

Zoey was quiet a moment before she spoke. “What was it like there?” she asked.

“Rehab? Pretty awful. For the first couple of days I was sick as hell while I was detoxing. I thought I was going to die. Then I wanted to die. After the hard part was over, it was a lot of group meetings. A bunch of assholes sitting around blaming everyone else for their problems. Took me a while to realize I was just another one of them.”

He sighed. “Then I got out and came home to an apartment without you in it. Of everything that came before, I think that actually might have been the hardest moment. So, I had to move, to get away from it.” He turned back to her and cupped her face with his hand. The water had darkened her hair even more and it swirled around her shoulders. She looked impossibly beautiful, like a dream he’d had too many times that now suddenly seemed real. “I have a lot of regrets, Zoey, and you were always—
always
— at the top of that list.”

She pulled him down until his lips touched hers. He would have settled for gentle, and it really did start out that way, but somewhere along the way their tongues joined in. The heat from her mouth rivaled the steam in the shower. He was surprised a little, but then again not really, because this was Zoey and he’d never been able to keep his hands off her. True to form, his thumbs grazed her nipples and she shivered despite the hot water raining down on them both.

Zoey reached down and grasped the length of him. She stroked him gently. He groaned. “You keep teasing me and we’re going to end up right back here… after I get you all dirty again,” he told her.

Instead of letting go, she squeezed— deliberately— the little minx. He snaked one arm around her and pushed her back gently against the tile. He leaned down and tasted every part of her he could find, her jaw, her ear, her throat. He was about to get on his knees when his phone buzzed on the counter of the sink.

“Oh, no,” Zoey moaned.

“It’ll keep,” he whispered in her ear, but it buzzed again as he ran his hands over her belly. He stopped when it actually rang instead. He glanced over his shoulder and then back to Zoey. “I have to get it.”

“Do you?” she pouted. “Don’t work today.”

He frowned. There was no way his boss would put together a crew on a Sunday. He stepped out, grabbing a towel with one hand and the phone with the other. He shut the bathroom door behind him as he answered the call.

“Dalton? It’s Daddy,” Ava told him. In just those few words, he could hear the strain in his little sister’s voice.

“Where’s Adam?”

“He went out with Calla. I told him we’d be okay. I called him but they’re all the way across town.”

Dalton threw open the closet door and yanked out a fresh shirt. “Keep him in the house if you can. I’m on my way.”

As he dressed quickly, the bedroom door opened. Zoey, wrapped in a towel, stepped into the room.

“Dalton?”

“I have to go. It’s Pop. I… need to go to the house.”

Zoey’s eyes widened? “Is he hurt? Is he sick?”

Dalton shook his head and yanked on a pair of jeans. Zoey didn’t know about Pop and he didn’t really have time to explain it to her. “No, listen. I have to go,” he told her.

“I’m coming with you,” Zoey insisted, throwing her towel on the bed and grabbing a shirt.

Dalton frowned as he considered it. He didn’t much like the idea of leaving her here, but taking her to the house might not be a good idea, either. He didn’t know what he’d be walking into.

“Okay,” he said, deciding she could stay in the truck with the heater on.

They scurried out of the house as the phone rang again. This time it was Adam. Dalton helped Zoey into the truck before he answered.

“I’m on my way,” he said as the line picked up.

“I can be there in about 20 minutes,” Adam told him. “Damn. I should’ve known better. We had plans and I wanted to give you some space ‘cause you’ve got your own shit going on. Wrong choice.”

“It’s fine,” Dalton told him. “You can’t be everywhere all the time. Neither can I. Look, don’t get into an accident trying to get here faster. I’m just a few blocks away. It’s all good.”

He hung up and barely paused at the light before he blew through it.

“Dalton, what’s going on?”

“I don’t have time to explain it all right this second,” he said as he turned onto Pop’s street. He could just tell her, but Zoey knew Pop and the news would hit her hard. Delivering news like that and then running off didn’t seem like the most sensitive plan. He pulled the truck to a stop at the curb and put it in park.

“I’m leaving the engine running. Stay here,” he told her. “Stay warm.”

“But-”

He slammed the door on her and jogged across the frosty lawn, crunching it under his heavy boots. He made it up the stairs and through the door in record time.

Pop was in the living room, still in his pajamas, yelling at Ava. “I don’t care what your name is!” the old man shouted. “My sons know better than to be sneaking girls in!” Ava and Sienna stood next to each other, looking afraid. Sienna was nearly in tears, but Ava was holding it together. Occasionally Pop mistook Ava for Mom, which was difficult but manageable since Pop never yelled at Mom. Today they were in uncharted territory.

“Pop!” Dalton said loudly.

The old man turned to him. “What is this?!” he shouted. “You know the rules! Not in my house, Dalton! Not under my roof!”

“Calm down, Pop,” Dalton said as he closed the front door behind.

“I will not calm down! This is my house! And these hussies-”

Dalton raised his hands. “Easy, now, Pop. They’re not hussies. They’re nice girls. Don’t you recognize them?” He pointed to Sienna, who was also in a t-shirt and sweat pants, apparently having slept over. “She’s our neighbor,” Dalton told him. “Sienna. She lives in the house across the backyard there.” He pointed through the sliding glass door to the back of the one-story ranch across the way.

Pop followed his gaze but frowned. “Petersons live there.”

“Nah, Pop,” Dalton said in a light tone. “They moved out. Remember?”

“When?”

“Oh, a while back. I don’t really remember when.”

Pop glared at the girls. “Well, that’s no excuse.”

“They didn’t spend the night, Pop. They’re just visiting.”

The old man took a moment to think it over. “It’s early.”

Dalton shrugged and grinned. “What can I say? Stark men.”

Pop attempted to maintain his composure, but he smiled a little in spite of himself. “Don’t let your mother see them here.”

Dalton tried hard to maintain a smile. He nodded. “No problem, Pop.”

Suddenly, the door behind him opened. Dalton turned, half expecting to see Calla and Adam, or possibly Jonah. Instead, Zoey came in through the front door. She looked at Ava and Sienna, then at Pop, and finally to Dalton. “Dalton?” she asked quietly.

“Well, now who’s she?!” Pop demanded, recovering his anger.

Zoey’s eyes widened. Confused, she looked at Dalton. “Um… I… I’m Zoey. Mr. Stark, you don’t recognize me?” She reached up and ran a hand nervously through her still-wet hair. As she did, her unbuttoned coat opened in the front.

Pop’s gaze darkened considerably. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus. You got a girl pregnant,” the old man said darkly.

Dalton didn’t answer.

Even over sixty, the man was still intimidating. He glared at Dalton. “Your mother will be beside herself.”

Zoey gasped and Sienna started crying.