Chapter Ten
When Bodie came to, she was sitting on her haunches between his legs again looking pleased with herself.
She grinned. “Hey.”
“Sorry.” He shot her a self-deprecating smile. “I think I blacked out there for a moment.”
Her laughter was almost giddy. Yeah. She was very pleased with herself.
And sexy as hell, looking all accomplished like she’d graduated from sex ed with full honours and she knew it. He laughed, too, his dick surprisingly firm despite the orgasm.
Atta boy.
“So…what’s the verdict?” He cocked an eyebrow which was about all he was capable of at the moment anyway. “Swallowing yea or nay?”
Frankly, Bodie couldn’t give a shit. As long as she still wanted to suck his dick in some capacity, he’d take whatever happy ending she was willing to give him.
She wrinkled her nose as if she was judging the bouquet of a fine wine instead of the taste of his spunk. As if she wasn’t sitting there stark naked with Ruck Me twinkling at him from between her legs. “Well I wouldn’t order it on a menu, but I didn’t hate it. Honestly, I think you were so far back when you climaxed, I didn’t get much of a taste.”
“Oh really?” He smiled. “So you might need to study the conundrum a little more?”
Deadpan she said, “I think I need a much bigger sample size.”
Bodie laughed. “I’m sure I can oblige.”
He pulled her down beside him, and he loved how natural it felt for her to snuggle her body into his. How right it felt for her hand to slide over the top of his heart. Bodie stroked her arm, and her skin roughed to goose bumps beneath his slow caress.
“I feel like I must apologise for my speed. I don’t usually blow my load so quickly, but I seem to be making a habit of it with you. It’s like I’m fifteen all over again.”
In his defence, he didn’t usually have a gorgeous, generous, curvy woman eager to try out her newfound sexual appetite on him, either.
She stirred, propping herself up on her elbow and looking down at him. “Being able to make you lose control so quickly makes me so hot I can barely see straight.”
“Hot, huh?” Bodie smiled. “In that case, I’ll let my inner fifteen-year-old run wild.”
She smiled as she slid down and rolled on her side. “Spoon me.”
Bodie snuggled in behind her, his chest to her back, his thighs cradling hers, her naked ass pushed into groin, his still very interested cock resting against the cleft of her buttocks. He slid his hand over her waist to cup the soft rise of her belly where his child—his child—was growing.
“How does it feel? Knowing there’s a baby in there?”
She placed her hand over top of his. “Surreal and kinda hard to believe, really, when all I have is six positive test kits, a few days of breast tenderness, and some vague, occasional nausea.”
Bodie laughed. “You took six tests?”
“Seven if you count the one the doctor did.”
He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “I wish I’d been there.”
She squeezed his hand. “You’re here now.”
He was. And he wasn’t going anywhere, either. He was going to use these next few weeks to prove it. Open himself up. Let her get to know him, so she knew he was a man of his word. And he could get to know her, too.
Of course, he already knew a lot about her. Where she came from, the names of her parents and siblings—particularly her brother—and that she lived and worked on the family cattle property. He knew she was also an accomplished seamstress and businesswoman and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things nineteenth century. He knew she was shy and sweet and when she got nervous she talked too much.
And she was carrying his child.
“Eleanor.” His lips brushed her nape as he sounded out her name. He’d told her the night they’d met that it suited her and he’d meant it. “You said it was your grandmother’s name?”
She sighed and snuggled her ass in closer. “Yes. She lived with us until she died when I was fourteen. I take after her, short and round, and she introduced me to Georgette Heyer when I was ten. I was hooked.” Her chest expanded against his in a deep sigh. “And she taught me how to sew. She was the only one who called me Eleanor. Until you.”
“Why does everyone call you Nell?”
“My brother couldn’t say Eleanor properly when he was little.” Her response sounded rote, as if she’d told the story a thousand times already. “Ryder could only say Nell, and it just kinda stuck.”
Ryder. Bodie tensed at the mention of his name, his sense of guilt from earlier revisiting.
“I don’t really mind it for the most part,” she continued. “But I wish it had been spelled with an i. Like Jane Austen’s Elinor in Sense and Sensibility. I think I’m probably most like her out of all Austen’s characters so it seems kinda fitting. I went on a campaign as a kid to convince my mother to change it by deed poll but…I couldn’t persuade her.”
“Hmmm.” His lips buzzed her neck. “Well I like it, however it’s spelled,” he murmured in low, hushed tones. “Or do you prefer Miss Davis?” She squirmed and his lips curved. “Oh yeah, that makes you hot, huh?”
She gave a half laugh. “I think you can take it as your mere existence makes me hot.”
Bodie chuckled and rubbed his dick, back to full throttle again, along the seam of her ass. “Right back at you, honey.”
She slid her arm up behind her, ploughing it into the hair at the back of his head and holding him there. “You are a fifteen-year-old boy.”
“What can I say? You make me so fucking horny.” The hand low on her belly headed south, the bareness of her, the scrape of her jewels an erotic reminder of the lengths she’d gone for him.
His cock hardened to stone.
“Your turn,” he murmured, his hand grabbing her top thigh, urging it back over his, grunting in satisfaction as her foot locked in behind his calves. His fingers slid immediately into the slickness between her legs, taking advantage of her splayed position, zeroing in on the nub already engorged.
“How long can you last?” he whispered in her ear and she gasped and arched her back as he squeezed the hard bead in a pincer grip.
“Not very long if you keep doing that.”
“What? This?”
Bodie did it again and again before easing back to a circling motion, pressing harder and closer with each revolution. She was moaning in his arms, panting, everything so hot and slick between her legs now that his cock had slid into place, gliding back and forth along the swollen seam of her sex.
“Please…” Eleanor’s hips flexed as she rode the thick edge of his cock, her body telling him exactly where she really needed it.
“Please, what, Miss Davis?” He whispered it deliberately, breathing it into her ear. “What do you want?”
“Please, I want…I need…”
She was grinding so hard against him the friction between their bodies would have been enough to light a New Year’s Eve fireworks display. She was trembling in his arms.
Close, so close.
“You can tell me.” He kept his voice to a whisper, his finger on her clit easing off a little. He wanted her to come the second he entered her, not before.
“Bodie.”
God, he was probably going to go to all the kinds of hell for wanting to corrupt her, but he wanted to hear her say fuck. Hear that dirty word coming from her prim, little mouth.
“It’s okay, you can say, fuck me.”
“Bodie.”
It came out as a growl this time and damn if that didn’t make him harder. “Come on, honey, you can do it. You know you want to say it.” He’d seen how her nostrils flared every time he used crude language. He teased the head of his cock at her entrance for incentive. “I know how much saying fuck turns you on.”
She cried out then a deep, dark bellow. “Bodie!” She sunk her nails into the back of his neck. “Fuck me. Now!”
Bodie surged into her on a roar of triumph, gloriously bareback, his fingers flying over her clit, holding her tight as she broke apart in his arms, her snug, wet heat clenching around him as her orgasm burgeoned. He gritted his teeth, fighting against the pull of his own climax, his hips bucking, ramming inside her, pushing her higher and higher until he couldn’t any longer, spilling inside her, joining her in the rapture.
“Christ.” He breathed heavily into her neck as they came down in the aftermath, his pulse still a faint echo in his ears. “I think I’m regressing. I’m getting quicker.”
She laughed, low and raspy and clearly not concerned at all about the speed of their orgasms. “Maybe I’m just getting better?”
Bodie chuckled, disturbing the tiny dark hairs at her neck with the puff of air. What a thought. Eleanor growing more and more sexually powerful. The magnificence of it was breathtaking and a hot illicit tingle shot straight up his spine.
He smiled, his lip buzzing the side of her neck. “Sounds like I created a monster.”
“Fucking A.”
Bodie laughed. Bring it on.
…
Eleanor’s bliss lasted three days.
Three days of lazy lie-ins while Bodie was at training—a beautiful novelty for a country girl—then rising to catch an art exhibition or a visiting museum show or passing a few hours haunting material shops. Then some more long, lazy hours in bed with Bodie in the afternoon, into the night.
No matter how tired he was from the physical exertion of his training, he stepped through the heavy steel of the front door and he was reaching for her—if she didn’t beat him to it first.
He’d even sacrificed poker night, despite her urging him not to. She didn’t want to disrupt his usual routine, and she’d discovered his Netflix account—a luxury for a girl from a place where the internet was basic at best. She’d told him she could occupy herself for a few hours. But he’d just shook his head and pulled off his shirt, and all of her protests died on her lips.
But then Thursday arrived and their quiet evening in with some gourmet takeaway took a very bad turn. A knock at their front door alerted them to the arrival of their meal.
“That’ll be the delivery guy,” Bodie called from the bedroom.
She was in the kitchen. “I’ll go.” She hummed as she crossed the expansive space she still wasn’t quite used to.
“No, I’ll get it,” he said from the top of the stairs, and she rolled her eyes as she unlatched the door.
Bodie didn’t like her opening it because he said it was too heavy for a woman in her condition. If it hadn’t melted her heart every time he said it, she’d have probably been cranky about it. It was a stupidly heavy door, but she was pregnant, not an invalid.
She braced herself as she rolled the solid hunk of metal back on its tracks. But it wasn’t the delivery guy.
“Nell?”
Ryder’s brows beetled beneath the rim of his standard black akubra. His puzzled expression took in the old Sydney Smoke jersey of Bodie’s, which, thankfully, almost reached her knees, and her bare feet. Beside him, his fiancée Juliet blinked, owl-like.
Well…damn.
“Honey.”
She shut her eyes as Bodie’s voice grew closer. This was not the way she’d planned to tell her brother about her new relationship.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to open the—”
Ryder’s gaze switched to Bodie as he came into sight, the creases in his forehead deepening as he obviously tried to compute what the hell was going on. Juliet appeared to have caught on pretty quickly, if the hand she slid onto Ryder’s forearm was any indication.
Ryder looked from one to the other before glaring at Eleanor. “I thought you were at Miriam’s?”
“Surprise.” She shot him a fake smile, knowing humour was the last thing warranted here but hoping that one day they could all laugh about this.
“I think you guys better come in.” Bodie stepped to the side and gestured for them to enter.
Ryder didn’t move, glancing at a bare-chested Bodie in nothing but his jeans with the top button undone. Eleanor hoped he wouldn’t guess Bodie was going commando. Or that she was, for that matter.
“What the fuck is going on?” he demanded.
Juliet sighed. “Not here, cowboy.” And she half dragged Ryder into the apartment. “Sorry,” she apologised on her way in, kissing both Bodie and Eleanor on the cheek. “We just thought we’d pop in for a drink on our way into the city. We should have…called first.”
Eleanor shot Bodie a furtive look. The expression on his face was closed. She knew this was exactly the kind of thing he’d been dreading, but he dredged up a smile for her as they both turned to face her brother.
“Why are you here, Nell?”
Bodie slid his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “She lives here now. We’re together.”
Her heart skipped a beat at Bodie staking his claim. She should be trying to explain about the month trial, trying to qualify Bodie’s assertion, but everything, including her will, had gone a little weak.
Bodie was so getting laid as soon as her brother left.
“What?” Ryder’s jaw looked like it was about to shatter as he stared at Bodie’s show of possession. “No.” He shook his head. “That’s crazy. She’s a virgin, for God’s sake.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. As much as she’d often fantasised about living in the nineteenth century, she could never have coped with this male patriarchal crap. Bodie opened his mouth to say something but Eleanor wasn’t going to let her brother lord it over her.
“I hate to break it to you, but I’m not anymore.”
If it had been happening to anyone else, the look on Ryder’s face might have been comical. “Oh my God.” He glared at Bodie. “You popped her cherry?”
Juliet winced, so did Eleanor, but she was not going to stand by and let Bodie and her brother have this conversation as if she wasn’t in the room at all.
“Yes. At your engagement party.” She wasn’t ashamed of what had happened.
Ryder gave another comical male double-take. “You slept with my sister at my engagement party?”
“I didn’t know she was your sister.”
Ryder cut his annoyed glare to Eleanor. “You didn’t tell him you were my sister?”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because I didn’t think he’d sleep with me if he knew.”
Eleanor announced it calmly, noting how Juliet pressed her lips together like she was trying to suppress a smile. Ryder, on the other hand, looked like he wanted a bucket of brain bleach.
“I absolutely would not have slept with her if I’d known.”
“Oh my God.” A sudden clearly horrifying thought occurred to Ryder. “She made those nail marks? No—” He held up his hand. “Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”
Bodie wisely kept his mouth shut as Ryder looked like he wanted to drink the brain bleach now. Not that he needed to say anything with Eleanor’s blush pretty much confirming it. Ryder dragged his hat off his head and started to pace as if the information would be more palatable while he was walking.
“So…you guys have been…screwing around for a couple of months now?”
“No.” Eleanor watched her brother pace. “It was just that night, and then I looked him up when I landed in town last week.”
“And you—” Ryder stopped mid-pace and glared at Bodie. “Couldn’t keep your grubby hands to yourself.”
Bodie tensed beside her and a swift bubble of rage exploded in Eleanor’s chest. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
Ryder glowered but started pacing again. “So, what now? You’ve known him for less than a fucking week and you’re shacking up with him?”
“Yes,” she snapped. Eleanor was far too angry now to clarify the situation. Let her brother stew on that.
Ryder gave a harsh laugh, pulling up again. “Do you have any idea how many women this guy has slept with?”
“Dude.” Bodie’s voice was laced with warning as he stood practically rigid beside her now.
Rage was like ice in Eleanor’s veins now. She loved Ryder, but his hypocrisy was stunning and she wouldn’t put up with his holier-than-thou attitude. “Considering he was in a long-term relationship for five years, probably nowhere near as many as you.”
Juliet laughed. “She’s got you there, cowboy.”
Ryder shot his fiancée an exasperated look that clearly said you’re supposed to be on my side. Juliet just shrugged and smiled some more. “I don’t want you to be just another woman on his rebound list.”
Eleanor felt the tension jump in every muscle of Bodie’s body, primed to spring into action. “It’s not like that,” he said, through clenched teeth.
She squeezed his waist to stop him from lunging at Ryder, even though it was exactly what her brother deserved.
Ryder snorted. “Sure.”
Eleanor’s patience snapped loud enough to be heard on the other side of the planet. She’d had just about as much as she could take of her brother’s carry on. “I’m sorry, but did I miss something?” she demanded. “He is your best friend, isn’t he?”
“He was.”
“Have I not heard you say a thousand times what a great bloke he is?”
Ryder crossed his arms and stared at her with a sullen set to his jaw, not happy with her application of logic. “Bodie’s the best,” Juliet confirmed when Ryder clearly wasn’t going to answer.
Ryder shot her another exasperated look but she just smiled at him pleasantly as Bodie nodded and said, “Damn straight I am.”
“So if he’s a great bloke, if he’s the best, and he’s good enough to be your best friend, why is it so shocking that I’d like him, that I’d want to be with him? Or is it too hard to wrap your head around anyone wanting your ugly duckling sister?”
Bodie squeezed her waist as Ryder shoved a hand through his hair. “Jesus…Nell…of course not.”
“Fuck, Ryder.” Her brother’s eyebrows shot up at her profanity. She’d shocked herself, too, but she wasn’t sorry. “My name is Eleanor.”
Ryder shook his head like he couldn’t take in any of what was going down. He started to pace again. “I just don’t understand it. This is so…crazy and sudden and just not you…” His gaze searched hers. “I mean, what’s the fucking rush? Unless you’re—”
He stopped pacing abruptly, and Eleanor saw the exact moment the penny dropped. “Jeezus…you’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Maybe Bodie, the poker player, could have bluffed it out, but Eleanor was lousy at cards. She dropped her gaze, but it was too late. She could tell he’d seen the truth.
Ryder cut his gaze to Bodie, the glare back. “She’s pregnant?”
Bodie shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”
Ryder took a step toward Bodie and adrenaline shot through Eleanor’s system. Ryder wouldn’t hit his best friend and teammate, surely? Juliet slid her hand onto Ryder’s arm again and he didn’t advance any closer, but he clenched his hands.
“You didn’t even use condoms?”
“Of course we did,” Bodie snapped. He was clearly as done with Ryder’s crap as she was.
“Christ.” Ryder took a deep breath, and Eleanor felt a little sorry for him. It was rare to see Ryder at a loss. He shook his head at Bodie. “When were you going to tell me you were sleeping with my sister, man?”
Eleanor ignored the note of injury in her brother’s voice. She couldn’t bear the thought that she might cause a rift between Ryder and Bodie. “He wanted to tell you on Monday. I asked him to hold off until this weekend when I ring Mum and Dad to tell them of my real whereabouts.”
“And when are you planning on telling them about the baby?”
“Not yet. In a few weeks. After the first trimester. So please, just don’t say anything, okay?”
She appealed to him with her eyes, but Ryder didn’t seem to be comprehending very much. “He won’t,” Juliet assured.
“They’re going to worry.”
Guilt twinged in her abdomen. She didn’t need her brother to tell her how her parents would react. They’d be supportive of course but they would worry, for all the reasons Ryder was—because it was so rushed and so out of character.
But this was her life.
She raised her chin. “Just as well, I can take care of myself.”
Bodie looked directly at Ryder. “They don’t need to worry.”
Ryder’s jaw was still set tight but he seemed more resigned now as he glanced at his sister, the puff gone from his chest. “And this is what you want? What happened to romance and courtship?”
An unexpected pang of longing hit Eleanor in the chest. She’d resigned herself to the mismatch of the fantasy and her reality the day she’d decided to move in with Bodie.
Or so she’d thought.
“This is what I want.” She wanted Bodie. She wanted their baby.
Ryder sighed heavily, clearly not happy. But her brother didn’t get a say in her life. Neither did her parents. Ryder flicked a look at Bodie. “You shouldn’t have slept with her behind my back, man.”
The hard line of Bodie’s shoulders relaxed as the tension in the room dialled down. “I know.”
Ryder glanced at Juliet, who smiled at him sympathetically and gave his arm a squeeze. “Now that’s off everyone’s chests, I think we should probably leave these guys to their evening, yeah?” She smiled at Eleanor. “Sorry for interrupting your night and congratulations on your pregnancy.” Juliet came forward and hugged and kissed Eleanor while both Ryder and Bodie stood stiffly. “We should get together for a coffee or something soon?”
“Oh…yes.” Eleanor smiled at Juliet, surprised and pleased at the invitation. “I’d like that.”
And then Juliet was dragging Ryder out of the apartment, crossing over with the food delivery guy who handed over their meal. Bodie shut the door after him, placing the food on the floor as he turned to face Eleanor, leaning against the solid metal for support.
“Well. That went well.” His shoulders were slumped as he rubbed at his neck and a fresh surge of guilt washed through her system.
“I’m sorry. I know you wanted to avoid something like that.”
“I’m fine.” He shrugged it off like a rift with his best friend was no biggie. “Are you okay?”
She waved a dismissive hand as she moved closer to him. “Ryder will get over it. He was just blowing off steam.”
“Yeah, I know.” And Eleanor supposed he did know. Bodie and her brother were pretty tight, after all.
Or had been, anyway.
“But…was he right about your parents? Will they worry?”
Eleanor slid a hand onto his bare chest as soon as she was close enough. It was warm and smooth, and she couldn’t believe she was the lucky woman who got to touch him like this whenever she wanted.
“They’re parents. That’s what they do.”
His inky blue eyes darkened to indigo. “I am going to take care of you.”
She smiled. “I know.” And she raised up on her tiptoes and kissed him. She didn’t need him to take care of her. As she’d told Ryder, she could take care of herself. But damn if it didn’t go straight to the cockles of her romantic heart that he wanted to.
She broke off, and he groaned as he nuzzled her neck. “I feel terrible that Ryder found out like that.”
Eleanor did, too. She wished it had been different, but she couldn’t wind back time. She could help make things a little easier to bear though. Quickly, she grasped the hem of her jersey and whipped it off over the top of her head.
“Does this help?”
His eyes almost popped out of his head as he checked out every naked inch of her skin, his gaze lingering on the flashy ruck me invitation. “You know, it really does.”
And then he swept her off her feet and carried her up the stairs to the loft.