CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE IN IT TO WIN IT, BABY
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
IN IT TO WIN IT, BABY
LUNA
“Please. Please, stop. I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. Please.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my nonsensical rambling was hard to make out. “I can’t.”
My torture master was unmoved. “I know you have one more, hellcat.”
“I don’t. The tap has run dry. I’m dehydrated. I’ve got nothing.”
Rhys switched my vibrator to his other hand and held up the first one so I could see the blend of my arousal and release that coated his palm to contradict my claim of dryness. His lips held that same shine since he’d been working my clit with his mouth while he fucked me with the toy.
Making me come over and over and over again. I was paying my tab like he’d threatened. Promised?
Both.
I changed tactics. “But I need you to fuck me.”
He hesitated before moving the vibrator in and out. “Is that why you’re such a swollen, needy mess?”
His description didn’t help the messiness or the restless pleasure he was easily building despite the fact I’d come multiple times.
But that torment was his objective. I’d been trying to make him break by stoking his own desire. He knew my angle and was using it against me.
“Want to be filled with me?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Want my cum deep inside you?”
I nodded harder still. “Even with everything else tonight, I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen when we got home.”
For whatever reason, that did it. The vibrator was pulled free and tossed to the side before Rhys was between my legs.
Replacing the paltry substitution with something so much better.
He filled me in one powerful thrust. But rather than moving in and out, he stayed planted deep. “Love hearing you say that.”
I wrapped my legs around his and tried to make him move as I asked, “Say what?”
“Home. You’ve called it that a few times now.”
I hadn’t even noticed I’d done it once, much less any more than that.
Unintentional or not, Rhys was taking the opening I presented. “Glad you feel that way since you’re moving in.”
It wasn’t a suggestion or a request or even a question.
That was fine. I had enough questions for both of us. “What? When? Why?”
“Already said the what. When is ASA-fuckin’-P. Why is ’cause I said so.”
The sudden declaration, along with the fact he was literally inside me, made it hard to form a complete thought and even harder to force it out as a coherent sentence. “But… I… You… We can’t…” I shook my head to clear it.
He misinterpreted the motion, and his jaw set. That was the only warning I got before I was flipped so I was on top of him.
“Is it ’cause I don’t want kids?” he asked suddenly, his expression blank as he stared up at me.
Oh shit.
It wasn’t. Not at all. But I answered his question with one of my own. One I’d been wanting to ask, but the timing had never felt right. “Why don’t you?”
At the way he tensed under me, I shifted up his torso until his cock slipped free. I tried to roll off of him, too, but his hold tightened. “If I’m gonna talk about this shit, I want you close.”
Oh shit, times two.
When the silence stretched, I let him off the hook. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”
“Just trying to figure out where to start.” He dragged his palm down his face.
“Okay. A few years after I opened Rye, I was seeing this woman. Amy. At the time, I thought I was in love. Actually, I thought that up until recently, when I felt what real love was and realized it’d never been like that.
Not even on the best day, not that we had many of those.
We fought a shit-ton but so had my parents.
That was what I’d grown up with. I figured it was normal.
When I started to find more reasons to stay at work ’cause I dreaded going home, I knew it was time to call it quits.
Amy told me she was pregnant before I got that far. ”
Sourness churned with the dread in my stomach since his story clearly didn’t have a happy ending, but I kept my mouth shut so he would keep sharing.
“I didn’t want my kid growing up with parents who hated each other like I had, but I also felt like I owed it to both of them to give the relationship a chance.
I put everything I had into it. Did up a nursery in my apartment.
Took care of her. Went to every last appointment and ultrasound.
I spent months falling in love with that baby before she was born.
Then she was and… Let’s just say it was obvious to everyone in the hospital room that she wasn’t mine.
Amy broke down crying and confirmed she’d cheated but begged me to forgive her.
In my mind, I was Ellie’s father. I had been since the day I found out about her.
I was pissed and hurt, and it really fucked with my head, but I wasn’t heartless.
I wasn’t kicking Amy and a newborn out right after she’d given birth.
That was still my baby, even if it wasn’t by blood and the relationship with her mother was done. ”
My heart ached for Rhys, and I knew he wasn’t done. That it was about to get worse. I braced even as I asked, “What happened?”
“Amy pushed for reconciliation, but it didn’t happen.
I couldn’t touch her. Didn’t love her. I barely wanted to talk to her unless it was about Ellie.
I slept on the couch. Amy lived in the bedroom like it was her own mini apartment.
I think she stuck around so long, assuming that I would eventually give it a try for Ellie’s sake.
She knew how much I loved that baby, and it made her resentful.
But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be my folks.
That wasn’t fair to anyone involved. When Ellie was six months, she called me dada for the first time.
Christ, I was so happy. I was telling everyone at the bar.
Amy must not have shared my joy ’cause by the time I got home that night, they were both gone.
No number. No forwarding address. Amy packed up their stuff and left.
I spun out and followed her lead. Packed some shit in my saddlebag and rode off on my motorcycle without a single plan or destination.
Thankfully, I had good people at Rye to keep things running when I took off, but at the time, I didn’t care if the place went under. The fewer roots I had, the better.”
“Couldn’t you go after Amy for visitation?”
“With how shit went down in the hospital, I never signed the birth certificate. In the eyes of the law, I had no claim to Ellie.”
“Did you try to find her?”
“Succeeded at it, too. But I’m not Glitch or Nox, and I didn’t know those guys at that point.
By the time I tracked them down, Ellie was old enough that my sudden appearance would’ve been confusing.
She wouldn’t remember me. I was a stranger in her life.
I dug in enough to see that they were safe and had a good life, and then I left.
It fuckin’ killed, but it would’ve been selfish as hell to mess with her stability. ”
It reminded me a little of my brother Silas and Addy, just a million times worse. His ex was inflexible with their schedules, but at least he got to see Addy and be in her life.
“Anyway,” Rhys continued, “between that and my own childhood, I made the decision I didn’t want to bring a kid into the world. I didn’t want to even risk it. I never regretted that decision.”
I didn’t fault him for that. Not one bit. The amount of hurt and betrayal he’d faced and put aside to take care of Amy and Ellie was admirable. But to do all that, bond with the baby, and then lose it all with no notice?
It was fucked.
Beyond fucked.
“And you don’t have to,” I rushed out.
“Till—”
“Seriously, I’m fine with never having kids.”
“But you want them. And—”
I covered his mouth with my hand.
His eyes narrowed, nearly distracting me.
I didn’t let him. “Even before you and this, I always assumed that having kids wasn’t in my future because my focus was on building my career. If I was already happy with that, then I’m obviously more than happy now that the future also includes you.”
He turned his head to uncover his mouth. “You gonna let me finish a damn sentence?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Are you going to be a heavy-handed jackass who tries to push me away because you think you know better?”
“Fuck no. Already told you there’s no going back, Luna. You’re mine.” He repositioned me so he could fill me again. “This is mine. If you think that I’m stupid enough to let what we have go, then I’m not doing a good job of showing you how in this I am.”
“I’m very aware of how in it you are,” I teased with a hip wiggle.
It distracted him the way I wanted, and he used his hold to slide me up and down his length a few times before planting deep again.
“Like I said, you’re different. This is different.
I never regretted my decision not to have kids or settle down till you.
Already been thinking about it, but when I was holding Bonny earlier, I couldn’t get it out of my head. ”
Guessing Bonny was Nox’s baby, I focused on the rest of what he said. “What?”
His gaze heated, and his dick seemed to grow somehow harder as he slid his hands from my hips to cup my little belly. “Putting my baby in you. Starting a family with you. Living a life I never thought I’d have or even want.”
“And you’d want that?”
“More than my next breath, baby. I want everything with you.”
My heart surged, breaking all those locks I kept so tightly secured, bringing the abstract future I’d worked hard to ignore into something real and plausible. Something I could picture so vividly, it was like a memory already seared in my brain.
Overwhelmed and stunned, I leaned down to bury my face in his chest. There was no way to shove the feelings back down, and no reason to, either. I did, however, temper my expectations. “We don’t have to decide anything right now. This is new. It might—”
“If you’re about to say it might end, I’m going to handcuff you to the bed.”
“I could get behind that.” I lifted my hand to gesture vaguely over my shoulder. “Or you can get behind. Either way.”
“Your cuteness isn’t getting you out of this.”
“What if I add that you’re handsome?”
His hand went up the back of my hair to fist the strands as he tugged me up, forcing me to meet his somber eyes. “You have doubts about us?” I opened my mouth, but he added, “Not trying to be confrontational. Swear I’m not. If you’re having them, I wanna know so I can fix it.”
“If you’d let me finish, I would’ve said that it might not be a possibility even if we both want it. I don’t know the logistics behind a vasectomy or a reversal.”
“Then we go a different medical route. Or adopt. Or do both.” Rhys cupped my face.
“Not fuckin’ around here, baby. I want this.
Want you. What I sure as hell don’t want is to waste time just to say we waited.
” A hint of a smile brought out his dimples.
“Me and my old man knees are too old for that shit.”
It was fast. Way too fast.
But that didn’t make it wrong.
“Then yeah,” I said, finally confirming his assumption. “I do want kids.”
He grinned, and it was… beautiful. It was the wrong word to use to someone so ruggedly handsome, but it was the only one that fit.
“We’ll talk again after all this chaos is done,” I stipulated.
“Might be chaos out there,” he said, slowly rocking his hips. “But in here? You and me? For the first time in my whole damn life, Luna, I feel peace down to my bone marrow. Can promise you now, my mind isn’t gonna change.”
His hand slid slowly down my face, his thumb dragging across my lips on the way down to cuff my throat until my breathing was restricted.
His other fingers dug into my hip as he used both holds to move me up and down his length.
It was rough. Unhinged. Blinding love and adoration filled his eyes while possessive obsession powered his brutal thrusts.
I took it all. Happily.
Blissfully giving as good as I got.