15
ELLIS
Mckenna gasped when I jerked her back. That startled fear in her eyes woke me from my stunned shock. I eased her back down on the stool. “Sit down, Mckenna. Please.” I took both her hands. I had to stay calm.
She was pregnant! She was going to have a cub—my cub! This was the culmination of so many of my dreams, I had to struggle to get a grip on myself.
She wouldn’t soften no matter what I did. I had to make this right. “Please don’t walk away. You didn’t make a mistake by telling me. I’m just surprised. I couldn’t be happier. I always dreamed of us being together and having cubs, and now that it’s happening, I don’t know what to do with myself.” Hysterical laughter boiled out of me. I couldn’t contain it.
She blinked at me. “You did?”
I couldn’t keep my hands off her. “Of course! This is the best news I could hope for. You’re pregnant! We’re going to have a child. You’re the only woman I ever wanted to have cubs with.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re not joshing me, are you? You’re not upset about this?”
I drew her close. “Is this what kept you at a distance all this time? Did you worry I would be angry and push you away again?” I closed my eyes against the pain in her face. “Don’t answer that. We’re together now. That’s all that matters.”
“What do you mean, we’re together?” she asked. “We’re not together. We’re not even involved.”
I struggled to keep my voice calm. I had to keep reminding myself. Go slow. Don’t scare her away. Don’t move too fast. “I know we’re not, but I want to be. I want us to be the real deal. I want us to be a family.”
Her eyes fell out of her head. “You do? Since when?”
“Since forever, Mckenna. Don’t you know I always wanted you?”
She sank back on her stool. “No, I never knew that.”
“Well, I did. Maybe I didn’t really realize it until we got involved this time, but now that it’s happening, that’s what I want. What do you say? Is that what you want, too? We could have it all, you and me.”
“You know that’s what I want, but....”
I waited for her to continue. “But what?”
Her chin fell on her chest. “But nothing. That’s what I want, too. That’s what I always wanted. I just never thought you wanted it.”
I burst out laughing, but when her head shot up to stare at me, I swallowed it down. I had to be a rock for her. I had to be steady and rational. I couldn’t show her how much I was busting to grab her and tackle her to the floor right there in the bar.
I settled for kissing her knuckles. “Come up to my room. Let’s blow this popsicle stand and get off somewhere where it’s just the two of us.”
She let out a shaky sigh. “All right.”
That’s all I needed to hear. I guided her by the hand to the elevator and back up to the eleventh floor. I unlocked the room and showed her inside. When I closed it behind me, I turned around to see her standing on the balcony.
I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. She swayed in my embrace. I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath of her hair. She was pregnant, and she was all mine. She wanted it all. She wanted everything I could give her. She was my mate.
My heart threatened to explode out of my chest with love for her. I would give her everything. I would protect her and provide for her.
Her voice startled me. “It looks different now, doesn’t it?”
I kissed her hair. “What does?”
She nodded at the city spread out below us. Lights winked on, and the strip gleamed and shimmered into the distance. “The whole world. It looks different. I never thought it would be this way. I thought getting pregnant would be a nightmare, but it actually makes the world look so much more beautiful. It looks bright and clean and wide open. I feel like I could stretch out my hand and the world would fall into it like a ripe peach.”
Her words stabbed my heart. I almost burst into tears, she made me so happy. That’s exactly the way I felt. The whole world was ripe and ready to be picked, just like her. I buried my face in her neck, and she leaned into me.
I whispered into her pearly skin. “Be mine, Mckenna. Be mine forever. Let me claim you.”
She traced her fingers through my hair. “Shh. Shh. Everything’s okay now.”
My soul couldn’t contain so much happiness. I sank my teeth into that choice skin between her neck and shoulder. The air sucked through her teeth, and a delicious quiver passed down her body. When I pulled away my bite mark remained. She was mine now, forever. No matter what.
She turned to kiss me, passion flowing through her body. She wanted me all over again. That teaser in the hot tub only made her hotter than ever, the same way it always did.
Isn’t that what I brought her up to my room for? No, I brought her here to keep her with me, to keep her in my life and never let her go. I turned her around, so her body was facing out on the balcony. She rolled her back against me, and a moan escaped her mouth. She let go of the railing to grab my hips. She pulled me against her and bent over under my weight.
This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t feel the same way I did and want all the same mind-blowing happiness. What did I ever do to deserve a woman like this? Without really meaning to, I got hard for her again. I got hard for her heart and mind and soul. She excited my bear, not just my body.
She massaged down my thighs and back up between them to the package inside my pants. She nudged it to aching solid hardness. Could I keep up with a woman like that? Could I give her everything she wanted and keep her satisfied?
I never doubted myself before that moment. I wanted nothing in the world but to fill her up and keep her filled. I wanted to give her everything she ever wanted. I wanted to keep her careening through space on an endless sea of orgasm, and I wasn’t sure I could do it.
She didn’t give me a chance to balk. Without looking, she crept her delicate fingers up my cock to my waistband. She hummed under her breath while she untied my shorts. She got it out, and the heavy cock fell into her hand.
She stroked it alive, and I couldn’t keep off her any longer. I attacked her blouse to expose the damp swimsuit top underneath. I pawed her breasts in aching lust. She was mine. She was all mine. I never had to hide how I felt about her. I never had to sneak around. I could kiss her in the middle of Main Street. God, I loved her so much! I never wanted to be anything but hers. My whole life belonged to her.
I clawed up her skirt and ripped her bikini bottoms off. I had to be inside her. I had to fall asleep in that glorious embrace of her flesh around me. She bent forward and angled my cock between her butt cheeks. She stirred her own juices with it and guided it home.
I stared over her head at the city falling into night. My lips curled back from my teeth, and I howled in ecstasy at that burning fire incinerating my life to ashes. I existed only in her and because of her.
She eased her ass back against my hips to plunge my shaft into her forbidden zone. She bumped her voluptuous curves into my ever-increasing thrusts. This was the greatest gift anyone could give me.
She danced in my arms in the glory of life-giving pleasure, and the words crashed through my brain on endless waves of cosmic realization. She was pregnant, and she was all mine. She would give birth to my children and live in my house. We’d go driving on the weekends and shopping on the weekdays after the kids got home from school. We’d be so normal no one would recognize us.
I would come home from work and take a shower, and after dinner, she and I would crawl into bed together and do...this. This heaven, this rapture, this eternal daydream—this was what I had to look forward to for the rest of my life.