Grinder (Seattle Sharks Book 1)

by Samantha Whiskey

  “I came here for you,” he said, taking a step toward me where I had stepped back. “Bailey, I love you. And I’m sorry I didn’t chase you down the second you left me in your bed.”

  I flinched, fastening an apologetic look to my face. I hadn’t wanted it to end like that. “I’m sorry I left like---“

  “Don’t,” he cut me off. “I should’ve fought for you. Should’ve made you realized how important you are to me, to Lettie. You’re our family. And we want you back. I need you back.”

  A new rush of tears spilled down my cheeks when he said the word family.

  “Hey,” he said, reaching to brush the tears off my face. “I’m not asking you to choose between us and your internship. I’m done putting choices like that on you. We’ll come here if you want. I’ll finish out the season and won’t sign on for another one. We can be the family you’ve always wanted. I don’t care where we are, Bailey. If I’m with you, then I’ll be happy.”

  I cried harder, pressing my head against his chest, letting him wrap his arms around me. “Gage,” I stuttered through my tears and sucked in a sharp breath to regain control over myself. I pushed back from him, locking with his beautiful blue eyes, my heart lurching at the thought of him leaving because of what I’d just learned. Of what he didn’t want. “I love you. I do. But there is something I have to tell you.”

  He instantly backed away from me, his skin turning a shade of white that matched my walls. His eyes darted all over my body, then around my apartment, a crazed look in their center. “Fuck. Is there someone else, already?” He clenched his hands into fists and I quickly shook my head.

  “No! Of course not,” I said, reaching for his hand.

  He sighed and uncurled his fingers before entwining them in mine.

  “Well, sort of,” I said and his eyes flew wide.

  “Bailey. Talk faster.”

  My heart raced and I forced myself to find some courage. “Look, I know you’re fixed,” I said and he went incredibly still beside me. “But I swear to God I didn’t cheat.” I tugged his statue-like form through my bathroom door and pointed to the two tests lying on the counter.

  “The procedure reversed…” he scooped up one test, then the other.

  “What?” I asked and he set the tests back down, his eyes on me.

  “I made an appointment. To see what I’d have to do to get it reversed, so we could try someday. The doctor called and told me yesterday that it had healed itself.” Gage looked at my tummy, then back up at me, a smile shaping his full lips.

  “So we fought for nothing?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said and we both chuckled. “We’re going to have a baby?” He asked me like he needed more assurance than the tests to make it real.

  I slipped my hand over my stomach. “Yes. You’re going to be a father of two.”

  Gage sank to his knees, timidly raising my shirt and placing his lips against the smooth skin of my stomach. I closed my eyes and sighed as he held my hips in his hands. “Hi baby,” he said, his lips grazing my skin. “Daddy loves you.”

  Damn these tears. They wouldn’t stop coming. I swiped them away, fingering Gage’s hair to make him look up at me. “Are you sure?”

  He slowly rose, planting kisses along every inch of my body until he made it to my mouth. “I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life, Bailey. You’re my best friend, the one I want to wake up with, go to sleep with, make love to, fight with, and make up again. I was an idiot for ever thinking you would be anything like the women in my past and I’m sorry I pushed you to another fucking country.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “You’re it for me. And I’m willing to do anything…and I mean anything for you to understand that. If you’ll have me.”

  I grinned at him, my heart swelling with his declaration as I glanced over my shoulder. “Those bags?” I motioned toward them. “They’re for my trip home in a few weeks.”

  He tilted his head, his fingers rubbing up and down my arms.

  “The Seattle gallery has a position opening up next month. I accepted it immediately. I’d left my heart there…with you, and Lettie.”

  Gage crushed his lips on mine, parting them with his tongue. I sucked him into my mouth, sighing between his lips as he angled my head to kiss me more deeply. He tasted like home and the connection made me slick between my thighs.

  He pulled back, his eyes a blue molten pool of lust. “Can we?”

  I nodded, wrapping my arms around his neck. “God, please, Gage.”

  He gently scooped me up and carried me to the full-sized bed that took up half the living room in my tiny apartment. He laid me down with the softest touch, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing his jeans and briefs on the other side of the room. My mouth watered at the sight of him, his carved abs, his broad chest—and he was mine, all mine.

  He kissed me with an even lighter touch as he positioned himself between my thighs.

  “We won’t break,” I said, locking my ankles around his hips, drawing his weight on top of me.

  “We. I love the sound of that.” He lessened the weight, kissing my neck and trailing his fingertips along the skin of my legs. Carefully he pulled my shorts off, followed by my panties, and stroked me with a feather-light touch.

  I writhed underneath him, begging for more pressure. “Gage,” I groaned.

  “Bailey,” he answered, slipping two fingers inside me while pressing his thumb against my clit.

  I bucked against his hand, meeting his kiss with a fierce ache building inside me.

  “Easy,” he said, slowing my pace, drawing out the torture as he stopping his motions inside of me.

  “It’s fine. I promise,” I assured him, knowing full well we could have sex and not hurt the baby.

  He cocked an eyebrow at me, kissing down my breasts, over my tummy, until he reached my center. “Oh, I know it is. I just like feeling you coil beneath me.”

  I bit my lip as he parted me with his fingers and dragged his tongue over my warmth. “Oh God,” I moaned, unable to stop the onslaught of pleasure rippling underneath my skin. My tightened muscles clicked tighter, his perfectly placed tongue pushing me to the edge.

  “Fucking delicious,” he said before sucking my clit into his mouth.

  I screamed, my orgasm rocketing through me like an explosion as I clenched around him. He brought me down slowly, stroking me with light touches again before he teased my hot, wet center with the tip of his cock.

  “I love you, Bailey,” he said.

  I could read it in his eyes, feel it in the way he moved, the way he touched me like I was precious to him. “I love you, Gage.”

  He slowly entered me, his cock fitting perfectly inside me, the friction one decadent, toe-curling sensation. I arched my hips upward as he gently rocked in and out of me, working up my already over-sensitive flesh into an aching, tight, spring.

  I dug my fingers into his back, holding on as we made love like it was our first time.

  “You really don’t want to me to leave hockey behind and stay here?” Gage asked, his naked lower half covered by my single, thin sheet.

  He had me tucked underneath his arm, and I trailed my fingers along his hard chest. “You look way too sexy in your uniform for me to want that, Gage.” I chuckled, the motion moving the leg I had wrapped around his hip, and suddenly I wanted to go for round three.

  “Is that so?” He flipped me over, pinning my shoulders to the bed. “This isn’t sexy enough for you? You need the ice and the jerseys too?”

  “Don’t forget the fights.”

  “You hate it when I fight.” He nipped at the skin on my neck.

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching it from time to time.” I pressed my breasts against his chest and he growled.

  “Again? We just---“

  “Don’t deny me. You can’t deny me anything for the next nine months.” I teased.

  He grinned. “Understood. What does the lady require now?” He asked in a terrible Pa
risian accent.

  “Honestly?”

  “Always.”

  “I want you to take me home.”

  He laughed and glanced down where I ground against his hard cock. “Really? Now?”

  I smiled. “After,” I said, angling so he slipped inside me, relishing the way his eyes rolled back in his head. “I miss our life. I miss our home. I miss our girl.”

  He stopped anything more I would’ve said with his lips on mine, kissing me until I was breathless and bucking against him. “Agreed,” he groaned as I rolled my hips upward and down against him. “But first?”

  “Mmmhmm?” I asked, unable to form a coherent thought.

  “Let’s enjoy Paris for a couple more days.”

  “Deal,” I sighed into his mouth.

  Epilogue

  Gage

  One year later

  “It’s so pretty!” Lettie said in a loud whisper as we stepped into the Seattle Gallery of Modern Art.

  “It is,” I whispered back.

  Her mom was going to be proud. Bailey had been working on teaching Lettie “gallery manners” for the last few months, and it was paying off. Our gorgeous little girl fidgeted in her red velvet dress but held her head high as she stepped up to examine a painting.

  I found Bailey across the room talking to one of her patrons. Fuck, she looked amazing. Her curves post-baby were phenomenal, and I still couldn’t get enough of her. In fact, we’d had sex on the floor right around where she was standing a couple of days ago.

  Nothing like christening a new gallery.

  The opening was a wild success, with people flooding the first floor of the gallery, and if I had to bet, I’d say the second floor was just as busy.

  And in the middle of it, my wife shined brighter than the diamond I’d put on her left hand on Christmas morning last year.

  Wife. I still wasn’t used to saying that word, but damn it sounded fantastic—almost as good as when “husband” rolled off her tongue.

  As Lettie moved to the next painting, Bailey winked at me before sliding up next to her. “So what do you think?” she asked our daughter.

  “I like the combinations of color, but the structure is weird,” Lettie said, tilting her head.

  Bailey did the same motion and I grinned as I watched my girls.

  “It is a little disconcerting, but maybe it’s supposed to make you feel uncomfortable.”

  Lettie nodded seriously. “I can see that. Maybe it just makes me too uncomfortable.”

  “Fair assessment,” Bailey said, kissing our daughter on her forehead.

  I adjusted the wiggling weight on my chest as my wife leaned in and took a whiff of baby shampoo. She closed her eyes in ecstasy and kissed our son’s forehead. “How did bath time go?”

  “Perfect. I’ve already signed him up for the 2032 Olympics. I’m expecting a champion swimmer here.” I kissed Ethan’s little forehead and he garbled his response, too busy chewing on his toy to care.

  “Have I ever told you how ridiculously sexy you look with a baby carrier?” she whispered in my ear.

  “Every day since Ethan was born,” I responded, turning so my lips could brush the shell of her ear. “But I never tire of hearing it.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll do a little more than tell you, later,” she whispered. “I promise I won’t keep you up too late. I know you have a game tomorrow.”

  How the hell could she do that? Turn me on with nothing more than a hushed promise? Let alone in public with both of our kids present?

  She brushed her lips against my cheek, gave Ethan a kiss on his forehead and then stood straight. “Is it time?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I said, barely able to contain my smile.

  “Lettie, I’d like to show you our latest exhibit,” she said, offering Lettie her hand.

  “I’d like to see it,” she said in a voice way beyond her age.

  Hand in hand they walked just in front of me to a corner of the room where a small, child-sized podium stood lit by a single beam of light.

  “What’s it called?” Lettie asked as she walked towards the exhibit.

  “Scarlett McPherson,” I answered, which earned me a set of five-year-old eyes as big as saucers.

  “Really?” she asked us both, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Really,” Bailey answered. “Why don’t you take a closer look?”

  As Lettie stepped forward, Bailey took my hand, her grip nearly crushing my fingers in her nervousness.

  Lettie’s lips moved as she read the papers we’d placed there, her forehead puckering at points, but never giving up. That was my girl. Tenacious, smart, and every ounce as courageous as her mother…her new mother.

  “Petition for adoption?” she asked, finally turning around.

  Bailey nodded, biting her lower lip as a lump crawled up my throat and lodged there. “I want to be yours forever,” Bailey whispered. “Is that okay?”

  Lettie’s eyes flickered between mine and Bailey’s, even stopping on Ethan’s dark curls. “Like Ethan?”

  “Just like Ethan,” I said, my voice cracking. Sure, I lost man-points for losing it a little, but God, this moment was everything.

  “Yes!” She screamed, forgetting all about her gallery-manners.

  She raced for us and we both sank to our knees, Lettie in Bailey’s arms, and all three of them in mine as they cried.

  Lettie and Bailey openly wept happy tears, and it felt like each one was a balm for my soul, bringing life to a land that had lived in drought for far too long.

  Ethan’s cry? Well, he was tired of being squished against his sister.

  I laughed, which came out as a choked, distorted sound. I’d never been this happy, but I knew it would only get better from here. Better with years, with additions to our family, with love and laughter and everything Bailey brought to me.

  “I love you, Bailey McPherson,” I said, as she stood, our daughter curled against her shoulder.

  “I love you, too,” she answered, happiness shining out of her gorgeous eyes.

  Never had four words meant so much.

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  About the Author

  Samantha Whiskey is a wife, mom, lover of her dogs and romance novels. No stranger to hockey, hot alpha males, and a high dose of awkwardness, she tucks herself away to write books her PTA will never know about.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my incredible husband and my awesome kids without which I would live a super boring life!

  Huge thanks must be paid to these amazing authors who have always offered epic advice and constant support! Not to mention creating insanely hot reads to pass the time with! Sosie Frost, Winter Renshaw, Gina L. Maxwell, and Heather Stone…there aren’t enough words for how much I adore each and every one of you!