Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 49943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 250(@200wpm)___ 200(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 250(@200wpm)___ 200(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
“And,” he continued, “I’m a fool for not telling you before now. I love you.”
Tears burst out of my eyes. He was doing this now, on a night of so many emotions? I hadn’t even stopped to let myself process all that had been happening. Not to mention I was fucking hormonal and pregnant.
But I’d also needed this from him. Really, really needed this from him.
He slid out of me and spun me around so we were facing each other. And then he lifted me by my hips so that I was sitting on the table. I opened my legs to him and he stepped between them, hard cock bobbing between us.
I wrapped my arms around him and he bowed his forehead to mine. “I really am sorry for being such an asshole. I have… issues sometimes. And I’m not good about talking about them. There’s shit with Mom… well, you saw. It goes deep. Frankly, you scare the shit out of me and you always have.” He was silent a second before finishing, “Because I knew from the beginning you could be a game changer.”
I kissed him and shifted my hips forward to the edge of the table. Then I reached down for his shaft and put him inside me.
And then I wrapped my arms around his neck and for the first time maybe ever, Leander and I made love.
FIFTEEN
HOPE
The next morning, Milo had cooked breakfast for all of us. So I woke up to the sound of someone showering, the smell of bacon, and a warm body in bed behind me.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
I turned towards the source of that husky voice. And blinked in surprise when I realized it was—
“Leander?”
Leander held my gaze. “Surprised it’s me?”
I didn’t say no. He reached up and pushed some hair behind my ear. “It’s our last day of training today. Tomorrow, we start table reads with the rest of the cast.”
I paused, happy to have a quiet moment alone with any of them considering how busy they’d all been lately.
“Is that a good thing?” I asked, fully turned towards him now. I propped myself up on my elbow.
His body was still, his gaze on me like he was thinking hard about something.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Sure, it’s a good thing,” he said as if there’d been no pause. But he didn’t sound very convincing, or very convinced.
“Once you start filming, things will get busy, won’t they?” I asked softly. I slid an arm around his waist and snuggled into him. I wanted to appreciate the now while I had it. Mornings sleeping in like this were already few and far between.
Leander’s arm wrapped around me, embracing me back.
“Milo will be here to make sure you’re taken care of.”
I nodded, looking down. It was true. I loved being with Milo. I loved Milo. But I would also miss the twins like an ache in my bones. Yesterday I might have said some breathing room from Leander would be a good thing—
But then he’d gone and done the one thing that men usually seemed incapable of. He’d apologized and here he was the morning after, still meaning it. Not treating it like it was some drunken confession, spilled and then forgotten the next day.
It meant something.
It meant a lot to me, stupidly.
Maybe not so stupid, if I thought about it. For someone like me with a father who never once in his life could admit anything he’d done wrong…
Dad once spent three-thousand dollars on a fancy suit and then shouted at Mama and me for not having dinner on the table when there was not a single thing in the cupboard by the end of the month. And yet he would not, could not admit he’d made a mistake.
“Look, I wanted to say again that I’m sorry for what a jackass I’ve been ever since we found out about the baby,” Leander said. His eyes were a luminescent silver in the morning light. “It freaked me out really badly, to tell you the truth, which is just embarrassing. But holy shit—”
He grinned and slid his hands down my forearms to clutch my hips. And then they crept back up tentatively to my stomach. “I’m going to be a father.”
What the fuck was this man doing to me? Squishing my heart through the freakin’ shredder, that was what.
I grinned tearily back at him and nodded. Damned hormones.
What if… What if this could actually… work? Together. Leander, Janus, and Milo. Three men and a baby. And me.
Leander pressed his forehead against mine.
Good Lord, I loved it when he did that.
Leander was a passionate man. He threw himself fully into the things he cared about. The trick was becoming something or someone he cared about. And now… was he really saying I was one of those? He finally believed me about the baby, anyway.