Page 50 of Bombshell (Whiskey Dolls 1)

“You’re still awake,” she noted groggily. “Everything okay?”

Was it? I didn’t know for sure, but I decided that tonight wasn’t going to be the night to delve into all that shit. “You’re naked beside me. I’ve come three times tonight, you six.” My lips curled up in a satisfied smirk. “I think it’s safe to say everything’s pretty fucking great at the moment.”

She smiled lazily and lifted her arms, stretching her long, lithe limbs out like a cat basking in the sunshine. “Well then you’re welcome,” she teased, that light of hers effectively blasting away the last of the shadows that had been clouding my thoughts only seconds earlier.

I rolled until she was tucked beneath me. My dick stirred to life, but in a half-assed sort of way, like a man who’d just gotten the shit beat out of him, but still insisted on getting up and facing his opponent instead of staying down. I’d given him quite the workout tonight, and I wasn’t as young as I used to be. I’d maxed myself out, at least until the sun came up. But I wasn’t dead, and Marin was... well, Marin. So any sort of reaction was a given.

“Oh God,” she said in a pathetic pout. “Pierce, I can’t. Not again. I need a break. As it is, I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk tomorrow.”

Good Lord she had a gift for making a man feel like a king. “Relax, babe. I’m not going to attack you again. I’m good, but I’m not a machine. I don’t think there’s any fluid left in my body.”

The relief that flitted across her face was ridiculously adorable.

I reached up to brush the hair away from her face, enjoying the way she sighed and pressed her cheek against my palm. “I just wanted to look at you for a bit.”

Her eyes widened with surprise before going half-mast. She liked that, and a bolt of male pride shot through my chest that I’d been the man to put that look on her face.

“Man, you can be sweet. Who would have guessed?”

I jerked my chin back and scowled in mock offense. “What are you talking about? I’m always sweet.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes playfully. “Uh-huh. I’m not buying it. You’ve basically hated me from the moment you met me.”

This time, the jerk and scowl weren’t fake at all. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on. Like you don’t know. You didn’t exactly keep it a secret you didn’t like me.”

“Marin, I never hated you. Not for a second.”

The surprise registered over every inch of her face. “But... any time I was around, you were always frowning and giving me dirty looks. If I entered a room you were in, you’d storm out. You did your best not to be anywhere near me.”

Ah hell. This was a conversation I knew would be inevitable, but I’d hoped I’d have a little more time to warm her up to me before we had to get into the whole ugly truth.

“Sweetheart, I never hated you. I avoided you because, from the moment I first laid eyes on you in my mother’s kitchen, I wanted you. And when I found out you were with Frank, it pissed me off. I couldn’t be around you because I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself for long. You were my brother’s, and I knew before I even talked to you that you were too good for him. But I told myself it didn’t matter, nothing could ever happen between us, because he’d had you first. That meant you were off limits to me.”

Her sweet, minty breath fanned against my face as she exhaled a gust of air. “Really?”

“You were the first woman who made me feel anything after my wife died,” I confessed on a whisper, the pressure in my chest building and squeezing even tighter. “I didn’twantto want you, but I couldn’t help myself.”

The sadness she felt for me couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d taken a Sharpie and written the words out on her cheeks. She’d make a terrible poker player.

“What—I mean, are you—can I ask what happened to her? Your wife? I don’t know the story there, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I totally get it. You don’t have to. I don’t want you to feel like I’m pressuring you into—”

I silenced her rambling by placing a thumb over her lips as my brows pinched in confusion. “You don’t know? Frank never told you?”

She let out a frustrated huff and wrapped her fingers around my wrist, pulling my hand away so she could speak. “I think we both know what an asshole your brother is. I asked him once, and let’s just say, my curiosity about you didn’t sit well with him. I never asked again after that.” She said it in a way that made my skin prickle and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, but I knew not to ask as I watched in fascination as those shutters I’d only seen when my brother was mentioned slammed down over her eyes.

This wasn’t a conversation I could have lying on top of her so I moved, propping myself up against the headboard as I blew out a breath and raked my hands through my hair.

Marin eyed me warily as she sat up, holding the sheet across her naked breasts. She didn’t scoot close, somehow sensing that I needed space to get out what I had to say.

“Constance was six weeks pregnant with Eli when we found out she had breast cancer.” Just saying those words made it feel like all the air had been sucked out of the room. “We’d been trying to conceive for a few years by that time, but weren’t having any luck doing it on our own, so we’d started seeing a fertility specialist. It was still early enough in the pregnancy that she could have terminated it and begun treatment, but she’d wanted a baby so badly. We both did. Eli was our little miracle, so it wasn’t even a decision for her. Ending it was absolutely out of the question.”

Her eyes had gone glassy with tears as she lifted a hand and pressed it against her mouth. “Oh God.”

“I fought with her at first. I told her we could try again once she was in remission, but she refused. It took me a while to see her point, but I’m glad I did, because I can’t imagine a world without my son in it.

“The cancer had progressed too far by the time she had Eli. There was nothing we could do about it by then. Eli was three months old when she passed away.” I looked over to see Marin had tears streaming down her cheeks. “She might have been sick, but those were still the best three months of her life, because she got to spend them with our son. I’m thankful every day for that.”

---