9. Jack
Chapter nine
Jack
I woke up burning hot with damp hair plastered on my chest, a numb forearm, and a leg draped over my waist. It took a few beats for me to realize where I was: in a tiny bed with Maggie Rynne.
A small cottage in the middle of nowhere for the night, with my horses grazing in the pasture out front.
On a road trip to Wyoming for a new job and a new life.
I opened my eyes and let them adjust to the light before taking in the scene.
The covers were halfway down the bed, exposing Maggie’s impossibly long, golden legs.
Her shirt was ridden halfway up her stomach, and I did a double-take before realizing she wasn’t wearing shorts.
She simply sported a tiny piece of underwear that left little to the imagination.
Of course, her leg pressing into my hardening length didn’t help the situation.
My eyes raised to her face, taking in her beauty for as long as she’d let me.
Maggie usually had her guard up. She always snuck something witty into a conversation to make sure it never got too deep.
There weren’t many people or many things that got under her skin, but I’d had the privilege to see her freak out with me twice now.
I didn’t know why it filled me with pride that she felt safe expressing her fears to me, but it did.
This felt like another vulnerable moment.
She was peacefully sleeping, her chest rising and falling evenly—something I was grateful for, since she was breathing so heavily last night, I thought she was having a panic attack—and her resting eyes begged to be graced with a tiny kiss.
My gaze moved to her full lips, and I wished I could brush mine across them.
No matter the situation or where we were, Maggie always smelled, tasted, and felt exactly the same: her lips as soft as silk, tasting of honey and cider.
They begged for more every time I touched them, but the words that exited her mouth always contradicted that particular detail.
Last night was close. Too close. Sitting in that truck for nine hours with the woman I impregnated caused a sense of vigilance to take over.
She was no longer just Maggie. She was the mother of my unborn child.
A woman I would be connected to for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t offer her anything romantic, no matter how drawn I felt to her.
My notorious history of commitment and trust issues would never allow me to be lucky enough to have her for myself.
Becoming the father of our child was a massive responsibility, but the more I thought about it, the more it began to feel like a privilege.
I spent my high school and college years messing around with different women, never staying in the same place for too long, and throwing caution and sense to the wind, but this was my wake-up call.
A sign to remind me there were repercussions to my actions, and, in this case, that repercussion was a child.
Though Maggie’s confession nearly gave me a panic attack and scared the living fuck out of me, her pregnancy cleared the smoke to reveal a new, unexpected path I never expected to find.
An opportunity to grow and change the narrative.
I would give this baby everything I didn’t have as a child—the knowledge that both parents equally loved them and wanted to be there for them.
The knowledge that they were not an inconvenience for someone who wanted to live independently and leave them behind like they were nothing.
Thinking of my mother brought back impending insecurity and doubt.
I hated how much her absence affected me.
God knew where the hell she was, and she hadn’t had the nerve to call me or my dad back.
I ran a hand through my sweaty hair, trying to rid my body of the heat without leaving Maggie’s side.
The movement caused her to shift in her sleep.
A small, sleepy hum escaped her mouth. “Jack?”
“Mornin’, Mags.”
She rolled to face me, and suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my previously numb forearm.
I flinched and tried not to yank it from beneath her shoulder, but she noticed it anyway.
Worry crossed Maggie’s face as she lifted her neck so I could slide my arm upwards.
Her thoughtfulness pinched my chest as I gazed into the brunette beauty’s eyes.
Shit . I had to stop going there.
At least for now. We needed to have a conversation about our relationship, and I wasn’t chomping at the bit to admit my reluctance to a real romance.
“Morning,” she yawned and reached a hand to my cheek. “Are you okay?”
Shit, shit, shit. The lovey-dovey stuff from last night and this morning was not going to work. I wasn’t cut out for it. I would disappoint her. And yet, the feel of her soft hand felt so… right. “Yeah, I’m good. My arm just fell asleep.”
“Oh… oh. ” She realized what she was doing and immediately pulled her hand to her chest, curling it into a fist. No doubt she didn’t notice what her leg was draped over either. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I lifted the side of my mouth. “Did you sleep well?” I didn’t miss my accent come out, the way it usually did in the mornings before I was awake enough to mask it.
A sly grin crossed Maggie’s face. She didn’t miss it either. “I was kind of overheating, but yes. Did you?”
Her answer brought my attention to her leg, which was still draped over my waist, pressing what was uncomfortably hard into my stomach.
I tried not to look, as I knew her eyes would follow mine and she would take her heat away from me.
Part of me desperately wanted to claim her mouth with my own and take care of the problem together, but it wasn’t happening.
Not under these circumstances. “I was pretty hot too, but I slept well.”
I brushed a piece of hair from her face as she gazed into my eyes intently.
Whatever she was thinking was beyond me, but a small part of me—and a big part that was fucking throbbing—wanted her to throw her senses away with me and take advantage of the little time we had left that morning before we had to pack up and get on the road again.
“That’s good.” Her voice was a whisper, only making me harder.
My grip on her jaw tightened, and her forehead fell close enough to touch mine.
She let out a long sigh. My thumb rubbed back and forth on her cheek, and I breathed in deep with her.
The intensity was rising as rapidly as my body’s temperature.
“I was so glad to finally get into a bed.”
“Uh-huh,” she answered, but I knew she wasn’t really listening. Her gaze moved from my eyes to my lips, and within seconds, my arm inched down to grab her waist to pull the rest of her body closer to me.
She hummed so quietly in her throat, I barely heard it.
There was no doubt she felt my cock between her legs now.
But this was where I needed to be careful.
Maggie didn’t realize it now, but in a few hours, when we were both silently sitting in the truck, this would be on her mind, replaying like a record, making her overthink everything that just happened.
A lump formed in my throat, warning me that, if I crossed this line, there was no going back.
Realizing that I had stopped whatever I was doing to her, Maggie’s eyes met mine again.
I dropped my head into the crook of her neck and breathed in deeply.
It wasn’t meant to be sensual—I was honestly just trying to gain control of my actions.
But something about this woman’s scent drove me crazy in a hundred different ways.
She smelled like sleep. She smelled like warmth. She smelled like home .
“Jack.” Maggie squeezed my shoulders.
“‘We can’t do this, Jack.’” I turned to humor and imitated her words from last night in a high-pitched voice—anything to ease the urge to bury myself inside her for hours in this tiny cottage.
It earned me a belly laugh and a playful shove to the shoulders.
After she caught her breath, her eyes turned solemn. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“What?”
“This back and forth. Us almost doing things we shouldn’t be thinking about in the first place. It’s not good for us or the baby.” She reached down to caress her still-flat stomach.
“Maggie, I—”
“No, look,” she interrupted. “I know this is the weirdest possible situation for us to be in, and we seriously need to have a conversation about us , but I don’t want whatever this is to get in the way of being there for the baby.”
We both took a deep breath as the realization set in.
I knew she was right. We couldn’t risk our chances of becoming enemy co-parents.
Both of us were terrified of turning into our parents. If anything, that would be our downfall.
But the truth was…I could never hate this woman.
“Okay,” I breathed.
“Okay?”
“No more of this. I’m not going to kiss you again. We need to be the best parents for this little one, and as much as I’d love to have you,” her eyes flashed with need for the slightest moment. “We are co-parents first.”
“Thank you,” she replied as my throat dried up like I swallowed a handful of sand.
It felt as if we both decided on something we were unsure about.
But with my emotional baggage of abandonment issues, it was clear that I was in no place to be a true partner to her, and she had sworn off the idea of marriage entirely. The baby came first, no matter what.
Now all I had to do was prove I would be a worthy father.