Marek (Cold Fury Hockey #11)(53)

“Marek,” I murmur in frustration.

“Let go, Gracie. Just let go and fall with me.”

His words. He does it again with words.

My body opens up and accepts what he’s been building. I feel like I burst apart from the inside, and I have to turn my face into the pillow to muffle my cry of release.

“That’s it,” Marek praises me, presses into me ever so deeply. Then he goes still, his arms slipping under my stomach and wrapping around me tightly. His chin comes to my shoulder.

Marek’s hips tilt, pushing me impossibly deeper into the mattress, and his entire body trembles against me. He groans as he starts to come, holding me so tight I can barely breathe.

“Shit, Gracie,” he mutters as his arms relax slightly. He huffs out a long breath. “That was intense.”

All I can do is nod as I turn my face away from the pillow to look at him over my shoulder. He smiles at me, eyes softly glazed with satisfaction.

I let my head drop back to the pillow, completely satiated and weak limbed after that massive orgasm. But I do have enough strength left to smile back at him.





Chapter 21


    Marek


I look at the pancake bubbling nicely in the pan before looking over my shoulder at Lilly. She’s sitting in the living room, eyes glued to Moana on Netflix. It’s only about the hundredth time she’s watched it since moving in, and I find myself humming to Maui’s song “You’re Welcome.”

I look back to the pancake and feel pretty darn proud of myself. Lilly surprised both Gracen and me this morning by jumping into the bed with us. We had been wrapped around each other, but luckily the covers were pulled up to our shoulders. Lilly didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about her mother and me sleeping in bed together. She just started bouncing up and down on top of us, saying that she was hungry.

“Lilly, did you go potty this morning?” Gracen asked her.

Lilly grinned shyly and shook her head.

Gracen gave her a stern look—something that I have not yet mastered with Lilly—and pointed to the bedroom door. “Go potty and put on a pair of panties. Then we can go have breakfast.”

Lilly is such a great freaking kid she merely grinned at her mom and in a chirpy, happy voice said, “Okay, Mommy.”

She bounded off the bed and ran out the door.

I turned to look at Gracen, who was smiling fondly after our daughter. I reached out and pulled her closer to me, laying a hard kiss on her mouth. When I drew back I told her, “She’s such a good kid. And she listens to you so well.”

Gracen gave a deep laugh and pushed at my chest. “Oh, she has you so fooled. You haven’t seen Lilly in full-blown tantrum mode that only a toddler can pull off.”

“And I don’t want to see it,” I tell her with a laugh. “You can handle all of that and I get to do just the fun stuff.”

Gracen laughed again. “If only parenting worked that way. Let me get some clothes on so I can go down and make her breakfast.”

“No,” I told her unexpectedly. “You stay in bed and relax. I’ll go make breakfast.” Gracen arched a beautiful eyebrow at me before making a sweeping gesture with her hand toward the door. “Go get her, tiger.”

And now here I am, in my kitchen fixing pancakes for my daughter. It’s amazing how much my life has changed in just a month.

I look over at Lilly again and back to the pancake, which is in need of flipping. I feel a little frisky about my cooking abilities, so I take the silver handle of the pan and give it a sharp snap upward from the flame. I expect the pancake to launch off and into the air, whereby it will tumble three times gracefully, falling back bubbly-side down in the pan. To my dismay, it flies forward and splats against the Italian tiled backsplash behind the stove before it slides down leaving a trail of batter behind.

I snicker to myself, making a note that I will never try to flip a pancake again. I look over my shoulder and find that Lilly still has her eyes pinned on the TV. My neck, however, flushes red as I see Gracen standing there with arms crossed over her chest smirking at me. I give her a sheepish grin and turn back to the stove using the spatula to scoop up the broken pancake from the wall.

“Was just trying something new,” I mutter. “Won’t be doing that again.”

Gracen laughs joyfully over my antics as she walks to the Keurig. “I’m merely impressed you’re actually making pancakes. Most of the time I just use the frozen ones that you can nuke in the microwave.”

Chuckling, I slice a pat of butter to throw into the pan to melt. “I’ll make a note of that.”

After Gracen fixes her cup of coffee, she comes to stand near me at the stove, resting a hip against the counter. She put on a pair of gray yoga pants and a tank top, the form-fitting material leaving nothing to the imagination. She looks sexy as hell, and if Lilly weren’t in the room with us right now, I’d have her on the kitchen floor.

Or the counter.

Or against the wall.

Stop it.

“How many pancakes you want?” I ask her before I start to get a hard-on that I most certainly don’t need to be sporting in front of my child.

“Two.”

I nod and pour some batter into the pan. “Let me make one for Lilly, and then I’ll get you next.”