Marek (Cold Fury Hockey #11)(51)

A surge of shock and adrenaline flows through my veins over his admission, something I never thought I’d hear.

Something I never thought I deserved to hear because my sins were so great that Marek’s didn’t really matter.

“Mar—”

His name on my lips is cut off as his mouth comes to my scar and he kisses it. Brushes over the thin pink line, only to trace it with the tip of his tongue.

My breath gushes out of me so forcefully I struggle to take air back in through my flattened lungs.

Marek’s eyes come back to mine. “Do you want me to stop?”

I shake my head frantically.

“Good, because I don’t think I can.”

“But what does this mean?” I ask him in bewilderment.

His return stare is intense, as if this may be the most important conversation of our lives. “It means I want to be with you.”

“In bed,” I say for clarification.

“Yes, in bed,” he says gruffly. “And out of it as we raise Lilly.”

I raise up to my elbows so I can look at him better. “And in between bed and parenting?”

“I don’t know,” he answers after a brief hesitation. “I mean…what else is there?”

Well, at least he’s honest.

I scramble out from underneath him to prop myself up against the headboard. I pull my feet in, knees to my chest, and wrap my arms around my shins. Marek sits up, leaning toward me with a palm to the mattress.

“That clearly wasn’t the answer you wanted,” he says guardedly.

“You left me because you wanted freedom,” I remind him. “You didn’t want to answer to a girlfriend. I’m not stupid, I know that meant you wanted to be free to be with other women.”

“Gracen,” he says in a chastising tone, but I hold my hand up to silence him.

“I’m not built to be just one of your women, Marek. I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough for me.”

I expect a few things. Anger, mostly that I’m cutting him off. Possibly some chagrin.

Instead, the nut job laughs at me. A deep belly laugh as his eyes sparkle with amusement.

“How is this possibly funny?” I seethe at him.

“Because I’m an idiot and don’t express myself very well, apparently.” I jolt at his proclamation and yes, there’s the chagrin I’d been expecting, but for different reasons.

Marek crawls onto the bed. His hands go to my ankles, and with a quick pull and a yelp from me, he has me lying on the mattress again.

Nudging his way between my legs, which shamelessly part just as easily as they did a few minutes ago, he presses his elbows into the mattress near my ribs. This brings his face right over mine, his eyes locking onto mine. “Gracen…I haven’t been with another woman since that day I walked into the church to stop your wedding.”

“You haven’t?” I ask, my eyebrows furrowing inward.

He shakes his head. “I can’t lie and tell you it’s because I was obsessing about you the entire time. Mostly, I was just so thrown by having a daughter that I was trying to get my feet underneath me. I couldn’t really think about anything else. But ever since I kissed you that night I was drunk, well…you’re definitely the only woman I’ve been thinking about.”

“For now,” I can’t help but say, my voice small and meek. I hate that he makes me doubt everything.

“Yeah, for now,” he confirms, and I hate his honesty even more. “But, Gracen…now is all we have. And right now, you and I have reconnected in a way that I don’t think either of us planned on. You and I share something that I’ve never shared with another woman, and for some reason, that’s changed something inside of me. I just…I want you. I want only you. I don’t know what this means past that, but I’m guessing we’ll figure it out.”

It’s not a declaration of love, but then again, I never expected that. While my feelings for Marek always remained, I know my actions—not telling him about his daughter—destroyed anything he may have felt for me.

Which is why this is confusing right now, but I guess you don’t have to love someone to be intimate with them. While I was in love with Marek when I decided to give him my virginity, I’ve been with men after him I didn’t love. I cared for them, and they weren’t meaningless, but I’ve never loved anyone but Marek.

“Talk to me, Gracen,” Marek says as he holds his weight off me.

I nibble on my lower lip a moment to collect my thoughts. “So we’ll have a sexual relationship, be monogamous, and raise Lilly together?”

I don’t know whether to like the fact or not that he actually winces over the way I put it, but that’s exactly what it is.

He nods. “It’s a start.”

And yes, I suppose this could be the start of something new. We’ll never have what we did before, because there are too many hurts that run way too deep. But what we have now is something I think I can handle.

I love him, after all.

Bringing my hands up to curl around his neck, I tell him, “I think I can get on board with that.”

Marek’s smile causes my heart to flat-out skip a few beats. You’d think he’d won the lottery or something, but I’m the one who feels like a winner as he settles his weight onto my body and kisses me deeply.