ROMANCE: SPORTS ROMANCE: Bad Boys of Sports: A Complete Collection (Alpha Male, Football, Hockey Secret Baby Romance) (Contemporary Sports Romance) (4 page)

Chapter Ten

Blaze

It was worth every second.

My kisses were brutal on her neck as I whispered wicked promises against her shivering flesh. Hearing her moan was like hearing music for the first time. My fingers fingered the edge of that little silk robe, flirting underneath to caress her thighs.

“Blaze.”

She shouldn’t be allowed to say my name. My mind melted as I brought my fingers up to brush over the nipples peaking through the silk. She gasped, arching her back into the pillows on her bed. I watched her face, jaw slack, as I teased the flesh through the fabric. Her facial expressions were lethal.

Her eyes parted open, half-lidded with desire. I licked my lips as she stared at me, her swollen lips begging to be kissed again.

“Blaze, please,” she begged in a breathy whisper. “I want you inside me.”

Well, fuck, what else was I supposed to do? Every withering thread of hesitation was evaporated from my cells. I tugged my boxers off and smirked when she let out a happy sound. A confident remark was about to roll of my tongue when her hands pressed around my hardened member.

“Shit,” I breathed. Her touch sent a surge of euphoria through me. She shot me a naughty look through the last remains of her reserved defenses. Her robe was partially opened from our tussling, revealing cleavage that I’d only been able to admire from afar.

My fingers ripped off the belt around her waist. She gasped at the sudden movement, but I was already pulling her towards me. Her hair splayed out against the pillows as I positioned myself in front of her entrance. She writhed beneath me.

“Blaze,” she whined.

I was never good at turning down the ladies.

The first thrust was heaven and every movement after was only better.

My eyes rolled back as I moved against her, feeling her hot core wrap around me. She moaned loudly and with a sudden realization, clamped a hand over her own mouth. I watched as she tried to stifle her cries as I rocked against her.

“Emma,” I moaned. My movements were becoming frantic against her as she squeezed her muscles around me. Her hips rolled up against mind as she let out a muffled cry, her cheeks flushing pink as I felt her peak. My own eruption of pleasure followed right behind her.

She’d never looked more beautiful, panting with pleasure as I collapsed beside her.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged her as I pulled her into my arms. “Not like last time.”

“Okay,” she said softly. “I promise.”

Chapter Eleven

Emma

The sound of faint laughter woke me up in the morning.

My mornings aren’t filled with laughter. They’re usually filled with the sound of the garbage man coming too early, the neighbors across the street cutting the grass for hours, or Chloe crying for me after waking up from a nightmare in the other room. I glanced at the baby monitor I still used with her by the side of my bed. Nothing from her room.

I sat up with a rush of heat, realizing that I was naked underneath the sheets. And sore. I groaned, a pleasant pain bloomed as I stretched my arms. In my vanity mirror, I spotted a few bruises on my sides, and my lips were swollen.

The other side of the bed had been slept on. My hands flew to my face as I let out a soft gasp.
Blaze!

Quickly, I wrestled into pajamas. My robe was nowhere to be found. Only the belt was lying among the rumpled comforter of the bed. When I opened the door, Chloe squealed.

“Morning, Mama!”

Blaze was sitting across from her with a smile. A plastic crown was nestled into his tousled hair. The matching one in Chloe’s tangled locks, a mess that would have to be dealt with after my heart recovered from the overload of cuteness.

A fine enormous football player was getting along with my tiny daughter.

And apparently had been introduced to her love of tiaras.

“Chloe wants me to be a princess,” he said.

I snickered, covering my hand with my mouth. “You should wear that crown out on the field.”

He smirked. “My helmet would get in the way, don’t you think?”

“Noooooo,” Bella squealed with a shake of her head, reaching up to pat the crown on his head. He had to lean his entire neck down for her to reach. “Princess Blaze, Princess Chloe.”

I wished I had a camera. Suddenly, my alarm sounded off in the bedroom. I ducked back in to turn it off and came back in with a frown. “I’ve got work soon.”

He nodded, gently removing the tiara from his head despite Chloe’s irresistible pouting. “I’ll head out then. I’ll pick you up tonight for the rehearsal.”

A shiver of excitement ran through me.

“That sounds great.”

Somehow, I was making more promises than I’d ever had lately.

Chapter Twelve

Blaze

Andrew was yammering on about production values and Hollywood budgets while the attendant in the formal menswear boutique went to fetch our suits. He was bent over a display of glittering cufflinks, rambling on.

I wasn’t paying a word of attention. My mind was on math – admittedly unusual unless it was for crunching my stats. I tried to think back to a timeline of Caroline’s graduation party which was nearly four years ago. I furrowed my brow, wishing I had a notebook to scratch some numbers on.

If Chloe was three, then she could be mine.

And if Emma expected me to believe that she’d slept with half of the guys in school then she was greatly overestimating her lying abilities. There was no way. I knew for a fact that Emma was too busy with music classes back then for dating.

Besides, the night we’d been together–I felt the nervous tremors of her body. It was unbelievable, but there was still an anxiety that I felt from her.  She might’ve had one partner before that night, but there was no way.

Chloe’s dark hair and skin tone came to mind. I wondered if I could call up one of my old college teammates, who was now in medical school, to give me a refresher on genetics.

Fuck, was I just wanting to make something from that night? I was pining after romance like Caroline was while planning her wedding. But the connection we had couldn’t be faked. I sucked in a breath, just as Andrew cleared his throat loudly next to me.

“Blaze, are you listening?”

I must’ve zoned out. “Yeah?”

“I asked if you had cufflinks.”

“Yeah, tons.”

Just then, the sales associate popped back up to clarify something with him. I tore my attention away to dive back into my thoughts as they chatted. Three years old, four years, high school graduation, she was supposed to go to that conservatory.

Acid rose in my throat. Had she given up on her dreams because of Chloe?

My throat dried in the next instant. I tried to think about being a woman, about what it must be like being Emma and finding out you were pregnant from a one-time incident with your best friend’s older brother. 

Shit
. I scowled.

Maybe the media was right. I am an asshole.

“Caroline is lucky to have you,” Andrew said after the woman went back into the room. His statement brought me out of my haze. I cast a glance over at him. “You’re putting up with a lot to help with the wedding. It must be hard with your training schedule.”

I hadn’t meant to scowl, but it came out anyway. Anger at myself had boiled up, ready to burst. My lips pressed hard into each other as I tried to contain my reaction. There was no use in causing a scene.

“I’m about as selfish as they come,” I muttered with a shrug. Luckily, he’d drifted back to the cufflinks just as it came out of my mouth. He turned back to me.

“Did you say something, Blaze?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

I buried the desire to self-destruct deep in my chest as the woman came out with two plastic bags covering our suits. Since I was picking her up, I could get my answers tonight.

Chapter Thirteen

Emma

He was mad. I could tell, but he kept clearing his throat anytime my tone would suggest that he was acting out in a foul mood.

When he’d picked me up for the rehearsal dinner, my heart was fluttering wildly in my chest. Now a creep of dread was crawling up the back of my spine. After the first course of food, we were matching one another’s pace for drinking, which was unwise on my part, I knew.

Except I was getting glasses of wine to get tipsy and his mixed liquor drinks seemed to make him in mood that was fouler than before. The only thought going through my mind was that he knows, somehow, about Chloe. Something in me nagged that he was aware that I’d lied to him. As the dinner wore on, the anxiety tore at my mind.

When the dinner was barely over, his drunken hand wrapped around my waist and dragged me off to the parking lot. I nearly squeaked when his warm arm encircled me. The smell of whiskey that was coming from him somehow made him even sexier than before as he leaned into me.

I was up against the side of his truck with his hands on either side of me. Nobody was out in the parking lot with us, and we’d parked behind a sprawling tree. My eyes darted beyond his shoulder to make sure nobody could see us. If Caroline saw–or heard–or…

The smell of his cologne underneath the tell-tale sign of his fresh cocktails drowned my senses. I nearly moaned as his face leaned towards me, hot breath feathering over my neck. Everything he had, I wanted.

“You’re so beautiful, Emma,” he said in a husky voice. My cheeks burned. I opened my mouth to reply, but he shook his head as if to stop me. “You do something to me whenever I see you–hell even when I don’t see you. I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”

A pause passed between them. I sucked in a deep breath as his eyes, filled with pain, bore into mine.

“Emma, I need you to be straight with me.”

But my hands were already wandering to his chest. His gaze darted downward, mouth twisted with torn emotion. The cleavage of my dress seemed to make up his decision. His hands were quick.

He tore the truck’s door open and hauled me inside the backseat. I moaned as his lips slammed onto mine. His fingers fumbled with the zipper of my dress, and my hands struggled to remove the pieces of his tuxedo. We didn’t bother with taking our clothes all the way off.

I cried out as he entered me with a sudden thrust. He moaned as he leaned against me, sending a spike of pleasure as we began our rhythm. The truck shook as we rocked together in the back, legs cramped and sweat pouring down our limbs. With a growl, he brought me to completion and finished with an exhausted sigh. We crumpled against one another, barely fitting and breathing together in the tight space. My bones felt heavy in my body, and I melted into the seat beneath me. I leaned my forehead against his disheveled shirt as his hand came to rest on top of me.

“Tell me the truth,” he begged. Stinging tears welled up in my eyes. He leaned towards me. “I need you to tell me the truth. Please, Emma.”

My walls were breaking. They had been broken for a while now. Ever since he’d tumbled back into my life with the grace of a bomb, I’d been dealing with these feelings and this secret. I cried before I could stop myself, but everything was coming out.

“I never wanted to hurt you.” The tears burned down my cheeks. “I just want you to be happy. I didn’t want to mess up your life, Blaze.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “Emma, what are you saying?”

Deep down, he knew; I knew that he had to. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve looked at me hard enough and gotten me to spill every secret that I had tucked away. That wasn’t how Blaze Hadley was going to do this. He wanted to hear it from my mouth. The tears began to fall in earnest. 

“Chloe is yours,” I confessed. My voice broke at the end. I buried my head in my hands, the tears streaming freely now.

He was quiet. We sat together for what seemed like hours, but I knew it only felt that way because waiting for his reaction was excruciating.

“I know I should’ve told you. But I was afraid, Blaze. You’re in a different stratosphere than me. What if you didn’t want her–?” My voice caught, followed by a long pause of silence between us.

“I thought about telling you many times. I’m sorry I wasn’t brave enough to ever do it until now. It just kind of snowballed into this pathetic situation–I didn’t mean for it to.” Little rivulets of tears stumbled continuously down my face. “I just thought that maybe it was better this way.” A long silence followed.

“Should we go?” I asked. For a moment, his face had twisted in anger, but He nodded numbly, climbed into the front seat and helped me get back into my seat without another word. As he pulled out of the parking lot, my stomach twisted when he finally spoke.

“I can’t believe you made a decision like that without involving me.” His voice was firm, but the sting of it sent a fresh wave of silent tears cutting down my raw cheeks. I turned away from him, leaning up against the window to console my reflection in the window. My makeup was running. My nose was bright red from sniffling. I looked an awful mess.

My heart had never been as heavy as it was when he pulled up to my apartment.

“Goodbye, Emma.”

The way he said it without glancing my way, it felt final. I cried as I slipped out of the truck and dashed up the stairs. Maybe I couldn’t keep my promises like I said I would.