Marek (Cold Fury Hockey #11)(32)
I chuckle, my thumbs stroking her soft skin over her pelvic bones. “You just look so beautiful right now. I want to remember it.”
The heat in her eyes cools slightly, replaced with a tenderness that makes my chest squeeze pleasurably. “You make me feel beautiful,” she breathes out slowly.
“I love you, Gracie,” I tell her solemnly. I tell her this a lot, but she never automatically replies with an “I love you too.” She wouldn’t minimize what we have with such a rote response.
Instead, she squeezes my shaft gently and tells me, “You’re my everything.”
Yeah, she loves me too.
Then she pushes down, the head of my cock sucked into velvety heat that makes my eyes roll into the back of my head. I can never get enough of this, but truth be told, knowing I’m her everything is truly enough.
My eyes pop open as I suck in a deep breath, my hand automatically sliding down my stomach to grasp my raging morning hard-on.
This isn’t the first time I’ve dreamed of Gracen since she’s come back into my life, but it’s the first time it’s caused me to wake up hornier than I can ever recall feeling. My head rolls on my pillow and I see it’s almost 8 A.M. I squeeze my cock hard, considering for a moment just heading straight for a cold shower rather than giving into this insanity, but my hand feels good and the dream is still too fresh. I can still smell Gracen in my mind.
My hand moves on my dick, slowly at first as I close my eyes and slip back into the memories of that dream. I jack myself faster and faster, my hips rising off my mattress until I come on my stomach in a matter of moments.
While my breathing steadies, I trail my fingers through the wetness, considering the potency of the creamy white liquid. It created Lilly, and I wonder how exactly Gracen got pregnant. She’d been on the pill, and as far as I knew, had always been diligent in taking it.
It never occurred to me before now to ask, and I doubt I will. What does it matter? It happened and I would never give Lilly back to happenstance.
So I put it out of my mind and roll out of bed to take a shower. I muse about how well yesterday went between Gracen and my parents. They were angry and upset at first when I called them, but I’m not surprised that was gone by the time they came to visit. My mom is a forgiving person by nature. While I have my dad’s classic temper, what I didn’t inherit was his ability to find peace. They both made Gracen feel secure after acknowledging her poor choice, which is something I’ve yet to master.
Even though my parents were warm and open to Gracen, she chose to leave yesterday afternoon to give Lilly and her new grandparents some unimpeded time. It was probably a good idea, but I didn’t like that she went out to look for an apartment for her and Lilly. She seems resolved to the idea to move out, and this doesn’t settle well with me.
Of course, I’ve been nothing but unsettled when it comes to Gracen coming back into my life. It was never more so than last night after Gracen came back after apartment hunting. I was relieved when she told us she hadn’t seen anything suitable and was in good spirits as she and my mom cooked dinner together. My dad, Lilly, and I were watching a movie in the living room, although I admittedly watched Gracen more than the TV.
She seemed at ease with my mom, and they kept up a running conversation as they made cabbage rolls. My ears perked up when my mom started brazenly asking Gracen about the pregnancy and those first few precious years that we all missed out on.
I wanted to be angry and waited for that flash and sizzle of rage over the reminder of what was stolen from me, but I ended up being quite shaken over what I’d heard.
For the first time, I realized I didn’t just miss out on all the fun and wondrous stuff of having a new baby. I missed all the hard shit too, which means that Gracen shouldered it all.
“How was the delivery?” my mom had asked as they stood shoulder to shoulder at the counter while they stuffed spiced meat and rice into cabbage leaves.
“It was fine,” Gracen had told her in a quiet voice, perhaps maybe a little guarded. “I was right in the middle of one of my advanced nursing management classes when I went into labor.”
“You were still in school?” my mom asked in amazement.
“It was about five days before my due date and there hadn’t been anything that prevented me from still going to school,” Gracen had replied. I stopped watching the movie and focused my gaze on them. “The thing that sucked was that I was an hour and a half from the hospital in Wilkie. I had no choice but to go to the hospital near the college. It was all kind of…urgent.”
My mom froze as she stared at Gracen. “You were by yourself.”
Gracen just shrugged and rolled another cabbage leaf. “My parents got there as soon as they could.”
Jesus, that had gutted me hearing that.
Hurt worse to hear how accepting of that Gracen seemed to be, and if I have her pegged right, I bet she felt it was probably her penance to go through part of that by herself.
I’d forced my eyes back to the TV but kept listening with a rolling stomach. I shamelessly eavesdropped and learned how Gracen took a week off from school after Lilly came home from the hospital. How she went right back to school so she could get that degree, functioning only on maybe three hours of sleep each night if she was lucky. She kept a brutal schedule, leaving her parents’ house in Wilkie at 6 A.M. to travel an hour and a half to school. That meant she should have been up by 5 A.M. to get ready, but in reality she was up at 3 A.M., because that’s when Lilly usually got hungry for a feeding. Gracen refused to let her parents feed Lilly at night with pumped breast milk, claiming that it was not just her responsibility but her joy. She would get out of classes usually by 3 P.M. and make it back home in time for dinner. Then she devoted her time to Lilly while she was awake, and studying when she was asleep. She usually got to bed by midnight, only to get up and do it all over again the next day.