Chapter 8

Stephanie

“How are you feeling?” Lucas asks as I stare at him in the doorway. He’d knocked, my heart rate accelerated, and I swung the door open wide.

And I’m not sure how the man can get more beautiful to me.

Sexier.

Safer.

Wait…safer?

But yes. As I look into those hazel eyes that have an obvious low-burning flame because let’s face it, the sex is phenomenal and we’re going to get to it, I also see other things in his expression. There’s joy to see me, concern about me, and perhaps even some mischief brewing in his eyes and that causes me to have butterflies in my stomach.

Yes. Luc makes me comfortable and I feel safe in this friendship we’ve developed so far. I never talk about my parents, and yet I did with him. Bottom line, I’ve got a level of trust in him. He knows what makes me the way I am and yet he still wants to get to know me as we embark on this pregnancy together.

I love how he’s standing at my apartment door and not entering until he asks the most important thing to him right now.

“I’m feeling great actually,” I say with a smile, then back away from the threshold so he can come in. “A pattern has been firmly established.”

He nods as he walks past me because he knows I’m talking about my morning sickness. While we haven’t seen each other for four days, we’ve kept in contact mostly via text, although there was one late-night call while he was in Florida this week that may have gotten a little too hot for both of us.

I continue as I shut the door and follow him into the living room. “So it seems it’s truly just morning sickness with me.”

“Every morning, right?” he asks.

Nodding, I watch as he sits on the couch and kicks his legs up onto it like he owns the place. I kind of like the way he’s so comfortable here. I never imagined I’d be the type of person to have someone over and have them kick their feet up into relaxation. “Lasts a few hours, just like on Sunday, then it’s gone and doesn’t come back until the next morning. And I don’t always throw up, which is good, because I hate throwing up at work.”

Everything I’d read about morning sickness said it could happen sporadically or consistently, but would usually go away by week sixteen. Since mine started, it’s been consistent, but I’m grateful it hasn’t lasted long.

Last Sunday, Luc observed me at my worst. Barfing my guts up, hairy legs, and rank breath. And he still hung around with me all day. In the early evening, after I’d showered, scrubbed my teeth for the fourth time, shaved my legs, and we were assured I wasn’t going to get sick again, Luc had his way with me in my bed and it was magnificent as always.

Everything about him is magnificent on a sexual level, but as I discuss my morning sickness with the father of the baby I’m carrying, I know he’s about more than that to me. That scares the shit out of me, as I still have my boundaries, but he’s slipped under my guard so seamlessly that I haven’t begrudged him his worry about the pregnancy.

“I thought you were bringing a pizza,” I say as it strikes me I don’t see a pizza.

“Thought we’d go out,” he replies casually.

My head jerks back and my brows furrow. “Excuse me?”

“Let’s go out to get something to eat?”

“Like a date?” I mumble.

Luc smirks at me. “We don’t have to call it that. We can just say it’s friends out for a pizza, or baby daddy feeding the baby mama. Whatever you want.”

I consider this and his casual attitude, and while yes, it’s been amusingly comfortable so far, it’s been that way because we agreed this was nothing but casual sex. We were taking advantage of a prime opportunity to have really amazing, phenomenal sex to capitalize on the chemistry between us. In my mind, going out to a restaurant to eat dinner together is a far cry from him bringing a pizza and having no-holds-barred dirty sex after, the pizza nothing more than fuel for stamina.

And this makes me feel unsettled. It makes me feel hopeful and excited about what’s beyond the horizon with him, and that scares the living daylights out of me. I’ve refused to be hopeful about any person in my life since about the age of six, and the fact that Luc is having a deep effect on me is dangerous. This threatens my walls, which sadly are crumbling around the edges.

Yes, I love being physical with Luc.

That’s a given. I crave this man, and that’s not going to change. I don’t want it to change, and in fact, the safest course for me would be to keep to our agreement and maintain this in a casual manner. I want him very much, yet I don’t want to want him in a way that’s necessary to me. I’ve never given that part of myself to anyone before. At this point, I’m not sure if my duality is from raging hormones or my past experience, but I’ve got to get things settled down to a level that’s comfortable for me. I know if I don’t do this, I’ll shut down and shut him out, and that’s not an option either.

So I decide to focus on exactly what I can have with him so we can return to what is working very well for the both of us. I walk to the couch, my hands gripping the material of the soft cotton skirt I’d put on with a T-shirt after I’d gotten home from work. I slide it up my thighs and get a tingling between my legs as Luc’s eyes darken with a desire for me and not dinner.

Putting one knee on the edge of the couch, I swing my other leg over to straddle his hips. My skirt is full so the material doesn’t move up any higher than midthigh, but Luc isn’t satisfied with that. His hands immediately knock mine out of the way, spreading across the tops of my legs and pushing the hem up farther.

His gaze slides up, locking eyes with mine. “Guess you don’t want to go out for dinner?”

Luc’s voice is roughened with need, and that turns me on as much as his touch does.

“Not hungry,” I murmur, hoping to encourage his hands to move higher. We’ve yet to have sex on my couch.

“Well, I am,” Luc says adamantly and for a moment, keen disappointment courses through me that I can’t entice him. But that thought is quickly put to rest as he jackknifes off the couch, his powerful body propelling his weight and mine upward. My arms latch around his shoulders, my legs around his waist, and his hands come to my ass to support me.

He spins us around so quickly I get dizzy, then he’s dumping me down on the couch. I grab at some cushions to pull myself up but his hand comes to my chest and he pushes me back down. I make the mistake of looking into his eyes and see they are blazing, and I swear a micro orgasm hits me between the legs as my sex convulses.

Luc’s hands snake under my skirt, take hold of my panties, and he strips them off with a rough pull. His hands come to my calves and he yanks my legs apart, draping one over the back of the couch and the other he lets fall to the floor. His movements are assured and domineering and he doesn’t say a word. He’s all alpha man right now and I find that I like this Luc very much. The velocity of my heartbeat goes into overdrive, and as he shoves my skirt up to my hips, the cooler air hitting me lets me know my panties are already soaked.

If I was unsure of Luc’s intentions before, there’s no doubt now that when he says he’s hungry, he’s not talking about pizza. He falls to his knees and buries his face between my thighs. My elbows dig down into the seat cushions and my head falls back as a ragged groan tears free from me. Luc’s hands slide under my ass, pulling me up to him as his head moves back and forth. He makes little sounds of appreciation as his mouth works at me, making no bones about the level of desire he has.

I tip my head back up and look down my body, the sight of him feasting causing my ragged breath to stop. Luc’s eyes—those beautiful green eyes shot through with gold and brown—look up to me. He pauses, lifts his mouth to lick his lips, and grins. “Way better than going out to dinner.”

My breath comes out in a massive rush. “I’ll never go out to dinner again.”

Luc chuckles and drops back down, the reverberations of his laugh pulsing through me. His tongue draws circles around my clit, causing my body to tremble violently from the exquisite feelings he’s causing within me.

“You taste too damn good, Stephy,” Luc murmurs against me before pursing his lips to suck.

I cry out as pleasure shoots straight to my core. He rolls my clit with his tongue, swirling and lapping and fluttering. My hips start to gyrate, not exactly needing more but wanting to participate in this beautifully intimate joining. It’s one of the most intimate things a couple can do together, and because of that, I’ve always pushed guys away from it.

“Luc,” I moan as my body starts to stiffen. “I’m so close.”

He growls in response, more vibrations hit my clit, and with another strong swipe of his tongue over me, I start to break apart. Not in a violent wave but more like a gently rolling thundercloud. It sweeps over me and through me in such a lovely rumble of release that I start to softly chant, “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” in cadence with my orgasm.

Slow to release, slow to finish, my orgasm takes its time sliding away, but it’s more than enough time for Luc to crawl up my body and press his weight down onto me. I can feel his rock-hard cock pressed into my stomach as his face hovers over mine, the burning in his eyes not calmed in the slightest.

“Wow,” I say softly as I press my hands into his chest. His heartbeat is firing rapidly and I love that he is as excited by what he did to me as he is by what’s to come.

Luc gives me a slow smile before tilting his head to kiss me. It’s a soft brushing of his lips against mine, then they feather across my cheek to my ear where he whispers, “Going to enjoy doing that to you again.”

A delicious shiver assaults my body and my hands slide up over his shoulders and then around his head, where I tug at his hair. He pulls back to look at me and I tell him, “I’m going to enjoy returning that favor to you.”

He makes a rumbling sound of agreement in his chest and then he’s pushing up off of me. Before I can even take a breath, he’s hauling me up into his arms and spinning toward the hallway. “Let’s take this into the bedroom. More room in there.”

“Then we can order pizza?” I ask with a sly grin.

“Then we can order pizza,” he agrees.

Much, much later, after I returned the favor and we ate pizza, after Luc put me on my hands and knees and fucked me from behind, and after we collapsed onto the bed, we talked and talked and talked.

It was becoming effortless to do that, and I wondered if that meant more walls were crumbling. I wondered and I stressed over it.

“You’re sure you’re okay with me going to your doctor’s appointment next week?” Luc asks me as we sit side by side on my bed sharing a container of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. It’s been a craving of mine and I’ve got it well stocked.

“Yeah,” I say as I scoop out a spoonful and pass the pint to Luc. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugs as he takes the container, then grabs the spoon from me. “It’s just kind of personal I guess, and well…this is a casual thing we’ve got. I’m having a hard time understanding where the line is between the casual sex and being part of the pregnancy.”

“Huh,” I huff out, realizing that I really don’t know where the line is either. We haven’t talked about this in particular. Taking a deep breath, I let it out and hope to fuck this doesn’t crumble my walls further. “I think as far as the pregnancy goes, you were fifty percent complicit in me getting knocked up, I think you should have equal share in everything. So yeah…share the appointments with me. You can actually birth the child if you want, but point is…we just keep that separate from the sex part.”

“So pregnancy stays pregnancy, and on the other side we have no strings sex other than we’ll be monogamous?” Luc asks to clarify, still holding the spoon and container without having taken a bite.

“Pretty much,” I say as I nab the container back from him and he lets it go easily. Don’t get between the pregnant woman and her ice cream.

“Okay, we’ll try it,” he concedes, and I’m relieved that I don’t hear any hesitation.

It’s a gamble whether we can truly maintain this, but I suspect both of us are enjoying each other so much that we are refusing to consider this is probably the dumbest idea two people could ever come up with. I think we’re both sticking our heads in the sand at this point.

And as I lie here eating ice cream with Luc after the incredibly beautiful orgasms we gave each other, I realize I’m okay with that for now.

“Jules told me about your idea,” Luc says as he reaches across to take the ice cream and spoon from me.

I hesitate before I answer, because this idea of bringing kids and the elderly together is so personal to me that I’m not sure I can handle any critique of it. It was a gamble for me to reach out to Jules, but given her background in geriatric care, I’d at least know she’d understand the appeal of it. With Luc, I don’t know if he’ll get it. Moreover, I’m afraid he will think it’s a bad idea.

I’ve made some stupid decisions in my life, but I’ve owned them and I’ve done so with pride. Because for every mistake I’ve made, I’ve learned from it and become stronger. I’ve made stupid decisions and made mistakes because I’ve never had the counsel of anyone. I never had parents to depend on, no close friends, and when Hilda died, I didn’t have a single person to give me support or help me along the way. I’ve chosen to look at this as a benefit, because I alone have made myself into the fierce and independent woman I am today. And if I choose to think of my pathetic childhood as a good thing, it makes me feel less lonely.

I smooth the sheet on my lap, thinking it’s funny that we’re both lying here with the sheet over our naked bodies. Luc’s is pooled around his waist, leaving his amazing torso bare, but I’ve got it pulled up over my breasts. Here we are, having explored each other’s bodies intimately, and yet when the sex ends, we put our armor back on—physical armor like this sheet, or figurative armor like the way I am afraid to let anyone in.

“Jules?” Luc says softly, and I blink my eyes to clear my thoughts.

I make a command decision to take a risk and open myself up a little to see what Luc thinks. “Sorry, but yeah…I knew Jules would have some good insight based on her experience.”

“Jules will give it to you straight,” he says softly, his affection for her evident. She’s not even officially his sister-in-law, but I can tell Luc thinks of her like that already.

“And what do you think?” I ask, and then feel like I want to throw up by inviting his opinion. Why does his opinion even matter to me? But dammit, it does. I hold my breath and shake my head as he offers me the ice cream.

Luc pushes the spoon into the top, turns away from me to put the pint on the nightstand, and then turns back to me with a big smile. “I think it’s an amazing idea.”

“Really?” I ask with a goofy smile on my face.

“Absolutely,” he says with so much conviction that I get excited from the possibility. “If you do it, though, how are you going to manage your duties at the museum?”

Ugh. The museum. “Well, I might not have that job much longer.”

“What?” Luc exclaims as his eyebrows shoot high.

“My promotion was just an interim position, and it appears due to lack of funding, they’re going to delete my original position when they hire a new director of research and acquisitions. So I’m looking for another job that offers health insurance. I’ve got to make sure I’m stable before I give this idea any attention.”

“But wouldn’t this idea become your career?”

“Well, I’d make it a nonprofit,” I say.

“Nonprofits pay their directors and other employees,” Luc points out.

“Yeah, I know,” I say wistfully as my gaze drops down to my lap. “But it’s just too iffy. I don’t think I’d look at doing something like this until I got a steady job first to make sure I could pay my bills. And it would just be like a passion project to get it started, and then someone else could run it.”

“But if you could run it, you would?” he asks.

“Run it or just work for it.”

“What’s the real deal with you getting zoology and geology degrees? And don’t tell me it’s because you like rocks and minerals.”

I lift my head to look at him. His head is tilted at me quizzically.

I could play stupid, but I think Luc knows he’s got me figured out on that front, so I tell him the truth. “They were fairly easy degrees and I knew my parents would probably have a cow that I wasn’t going to Stanford or something. I did whatever I could to get their attention, even if it was bad attention, and well…that totally got a reaction from them.”

“Not a good reaction, I’m guessing.”

I smile grimly. “It wasn’t well received. But you know, I had absolutely no direction in life. No clue what I wanted to be. I had no role models except for Hilda, and while she took very good care of me and gave me love, I didn’t get a lot of guidance about important things like what I could be when I grew up.”

“Then I think you should really look into doing this,” Luc says as he reaches over and squeezes my thigh. “It’s something that’s clearly dear to your heart. I can help you do some research on how to get it started.”

That simple offer to help do research actually makes my heart swell a little. I’ve learned enough about Luc to know he’s a gallant being, and I almost expected him to offer me money. But he didn’t, and that makes me like him all the more, because I think he also knows I’m proud of the way I’ve taken care of myself since I was old enough to understand the concept of responsibility.

“I’ll take your help,” I say with a smile, feeling very much okay with my decision to accept what others offer me. “Jules said she’d help with that too and put some feelers out.”

“You should come with me Saturday afternoon to a party,” Luc throws out. “It’s for a teammate’s birthday and Jules will be there. We can all bat some ideas around.”

I just stare at him, trying to figure out if this invite is different from him wanting to take me out to dinner. He sounds very laid back about it, and it would be nice to talk about the concept with two people who think it’s a great idea. It wouldn’t be like a date because I’d be hanging out with him and Jules. That would keep this clearly on a friends-with-benefits level, as I’d be strengthening friendships with both of them. Then I could even lie to myself that things were staying casual between us if I accepted his invitation as just a means to toss around some ideas for this project.

“Okay,” I say with a bright smile. “I’d love to hang with you and Jules.”

“Awesome,” Luc says as he twists his torso, reaching across his body to grab me under the jaw. He leans over and gives me a rough kiss before pulling away. “And you can meet my sister, Simone. She’ll be there.”

“Sister?” I ask in surprise. I knew Luc had one, but didn’t know she was here, and now I wonder if this is a setup so his sister can meet me.

“Yeah,” he mutters, and I can hear the disdain in his voice. “She showed up on Max’s doorstep today and told us she dropped out of school.”

My brows draw. “Didn’t you tell me she was graduating this year and going to medical school?”

“That was the plan,” Luc says acidly. “But Max and I talked to her a bit this afternoon and she’s adamant she’s not going back, so she’ll be here indefinitely. I have no clue what’s going on with her, but it looks like she’ll be around for a while, so you might as well meet her.”

“Have you told her about me? And the baby?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’ll just introduce you as a friend of ours.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief. I think it’s wise Luc is holding off telling his family until we get a little further to ensure everything’s okay, but I am dreading the day when people will find out. I’m a private person, and having a child with a single professional athlete can get very messy.

I guess I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I get to it, and no sense in worrying too much about it now. Besides, I have enough to worry about given the fact I’m developing feelings for Luc, and it’s wonderful and terrifying all at the same time.