Ink Enduring (Montgomery Ink #5)(64)

When he pulled into Maya’s parking lot and turned off his engine, he took a deep breath, knowing he couldn’t share what he was feeling right then. It wouldn’t be right to do it with Maya without Border there and vice versa. This was something he had to do with both of them. He wanted them both. Wanted a future with both Maya and Border. It would be complicated as all hell, but they’d work it out. They had to.

Maya opened the door before he could knock, and he smiled down at her. “I saw you park.” She studied his face. “You doing okay?” She moved back to let him in, and he stalked toward her, cupping her face in his hands.

All thoughts of Holly and what he’d almost done if he hadn’t found Maya and Border fled his mind at the sight of her.

“I’m doing f*cking amazing,” he growled before slamming his mouth to hers.

She kissed him back just as hard, their tongues clashing as their hands roamed each other’s bodies. “I’m not wearing panties,” she whispered, and he groaned.

“Fuck, yeah,” he said with a feral grin. “I can’t wait to eat you up, Maya Montgomery.”

She fluttered her eyelashes. “You know how I love oral. Though I still don’t know who does it better, you or Border. I’m going to need a lot of data to make sure.”

He chuckled roughly. “I think that can be arranged.” He studied her face. “I’m so f*cking lucky to have you in my life. You and Border. We weren’t ready before, you know. We weren’t ready until he was here. I can’t explain it. Yeah, you and I were tiptoeing around each other for a while, headed down a path that might have been so much different than it is now, but we would have f*cked it up. It took Border for us to change what we thought we wanted, to see what we actually needed.”

He didn’t know why he’d blurted that out just then, but he knew from the look in her eyes that he’d said the right thing.

“We’d have done okay,” she whispered. “We’re hot as f*ck, after all.” They both chuckled. “We’re everything, Jake. We wasted time, but who we are now? That’s who we needed to be in order to be together. The two of us? We could have made it without Border, but it wouldn’t be this. You’re right, we’d have f*cked it up.”

He kissed her temple. “And that wouldn’t have been enough.”

She kissed his chin. “To misquote that horrible movie, Border completes us.”

Jake smiled then, bringing Maya to him. “Yeah, he does. But you complete me, too.” She grinned at him, and he slid his hand beneath the waistband of her leggings, finding her ass bare. When he kept going to cup her between her legs, she gasped. “You’re bare for me, baby. Perfect.”

“Don’t call me baby,” she muttered against his lips.

“I’ll call you mine.” He kissed her then, knowing they were on the same page, their bodies tightly wound, in sync, and their thoughts and emotions on the future.

We can do this, Jake thought. They could make this work.

And for the first time in a long time, he had hope.





Chapter Sixteen


The bile in Maya’s mouth wouldn’t go down, and she’d already thrown up twice. Her head ached, and her limbs were too heavy for her to pick up for longer than a single moment.

This couldn’t be happening. Nope. It was all just a dream. Soon she’d wake up and everything would be just as it was before things had come crashing down around her. Maybe she’d wake up between her two men and be perfectly fine.

There she was again, telling herself she would be fine when she was anything but.

She wasn’t going to throw up again. No, sir.

And even if she did, maybe it was the flu. Yes, it could be the flu. That’s what they all said, after all.

She looked down at the two tiny pink lines and cursed. Then she looked down at her feet since she was currently sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning against the wall, and cursed again. Six other tests of various types littered the floor, staring up at her. Judging.

Yes, the little bastards judged her.

Little f*ckers.

Some had two pink lines. Others had two windows where one was blue, the other a deep violet. One even had freaking words in the window that mocked her.

Pregnant, it said.

Pregnant.

She, Maya Montgomery, was pregnant.

And she didn’t know who the father was. She’d gone bare with both men and had even had a condom break with Border before she’d forgone condoms altogether. They were all clean and tested, after all. She was on f*cking birth control.

She wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. For f*ck’s sake, the other women in her family were pregnant. That was enough Montgomery progeny for now. She wasn’t even sure if her men loved her. They hadn’t said the words, and she’d been too chicken shit to say them. Their future was more uncertain now than it had been when they’d started because they’d all been so freaking careful not to say anything about their future.

Border could leave at any moment.

Jake could decide it was too much.

And Maya would end up alone and pregnant.

In any other relationship, this would be too much, but with three people involved in a society where more than two was beyond taboo—and illegal in some cases—this was even worse. She’d never be able to marry both of them if it came to that. They could marry each other now thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling, and she could marry either of them, but there wouldn’t be a legal union between the three of them.