by Cox, Whitley
His chest rumbled, and she was granted another rare smile before his teeth found her neck and his thrusts picked up vigor. Harder and harder he hammered into her, the sounds of their heavy breathing and bellies slapping the only noises in the room. And then, even though she was close to combustion, she couldn’t help the fleeting thought that interrupted her brain—thank God the mattress wasn’t squeaky, because they’d never hear the end of it in the morning.
“I … I’m close,” she panted, angling her head back into the pillows as his teeth raked down the vein. The vein that pumped her hot-for-him blood.
“Me … too.” He grunted.
“Look at me,” she ordered. “I’m still in charge. Look at me.”
Brock lifted his head and gazed down at her. What stared back at her in those endless pools of emerald was startling. A carnal need that mirrored her own along with a whole lot of other confusing feelings. And they did a bang-up job of confusing her, too. She knew she had feelings for him. Strong feelings. Yes, he was an overbearing control freak, but he was also kind and caring, and the way he’d stepped up to the plate with the baby spoke volumes of his decency. She just had to figure out a way to get deeper beneath his tough shell. Chisel through to the heart of her hard Hart and find out what he was really all about.
And then she broke. Completely and utterly. The look in his eyes, the way his body took hers in such a perfect and all-consuming way, she fucking shattered. Squeezing her eyes shut on impulse, Krista bowed her back and arched up into him, letting her nipples rub against his hard chest and his pubic bone slam mercilessly and divinely against her throbbing clit.
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip to stem her cries while Brock dipped his head again and smothered his grunts of release in her hair and the pillow as he poured himself inside her.
A few moments later, after Krista had hastily ducked out to the washroom to clean up, thankfully not seeing a soul—a big burly Hart, tiny matriarch Hart, or Santa Claus himself—she pulled her pajama shorts back on and climbed into bed.
“Should we talk about names?” she asked, running her tongue along the seam of her lips as she took in the sexy, sweaty beast of a man lounging on the bed. His eyes were shut, and his breathing had returned to normal, but a sexy dash of red still colored his cheeks, and his cock beneath the sheet hadn’t completely returned to rest.
“Names?” he grunted, seeming to be almost asleep.
Damn it, were the walls back up?
“For the baby.”
He didn’t bother opening his eyes. “Oh. Uh … yeah, we can.”
“I like Hannah for a girl and Ansel for a boy. What about you?”
He shook his head and tucked his hands up and under it, the sheet shifting with his movements to reveal a dusting of pubic hair.
“All the men in my family have one-syllable names.”
Well, now they were getting somewhere. He was going to talk about his family. She’d just spent the evening with them but all in all still knew very little. She turned over onto her side and propped herself up on her elbow, giving him her full and undivided attention. “And that’s a tradition you want to stick with?”
He nodded. “Yeah. If you’re okay with it, I wouldn’t mind naming the baby after my dad, if it’s a boy.”
Krista nodded. She was a reasonable person. As long as his dad’s name wasn’t something atrocious or heinously feminine, she could probably go along with it. “What was your dad’s name?”
“Zane.”
“Zane?”
“Yeah.”
“And is that your middle name?”
“No. My middle name is Lionel.”
“As in Lionel Richie?”
A small grin lifted at the corner of his mouth. “Exactly. I was named after Lionel Richie because my parents were listening to him when I was conceived.”
She couldn’t control the unladylike snort that roared through her nose. “Really?”
He nodded again. “All our middle names are whoever our parents were listening to during conception. They had a warped sense of humor, those two. My mother still does.” Krista noticed that from the start. Joy Hart was a little spitfire.
She shook her head and sat up higher, loving the glimpse she was getting into their baby’s family. They were proving to be fun and loving people, people she enjoyed being around.
“What are your brothers’ middle names?”
“Chase Marvin, for Marvin Gaye, obviously. Rex Barry, for Barry White, and Heath Leppard.”
“Leppard?”
“Def Leppard,” he said dryly, with an amused eye roll.
“Is that a tradition you want to continue with our kid, too?”
He reached over, and his hand grazed her hip. “No. Mainly because we didn’t have any music playing when he or she was conceived, but also because we can start our own traditions, if you’d like.”
She moved closer to him, allowing her breasts to touch his arm, the zing of arousal and need flying through her body once again, settling between her legs.
“Besides,” he said, rolling her over onto her back and covering her with his menacingly powerful frame. She locked her ankles around his back and let her heels rest in the crevice of his butt cheeks. “A Pink Floyd song was playing at the bar before we left, and Zane Floyd just doesn’t have a very nice ring to it.” Then he shucked her shorts off and drove home, ending the conversation.
* * *
Brock’s eyes flashed open at the sound of someone rattling around in the kitchen. Even though this was his childhood home and the sounds and smells were as familiar as the back of his own hand, it wasn’t his home anymore, and he was wide awake at the simplest noise. Barely moving, so as to not disturb the naked, snoring woman next to him, he grabbed his phone and released it from the charger.
It said seven o’clock.
Jesus, couldn’t his routine-obsessed mother sleep in even one day a year?
Of course not. She was probably up at five thirty like she was every day, ran on her treadmill downstairs for forty minutes, did thirty minutes of yoga and had a shower. Now she was getting the coffee going and preparing the Finnish coffee bread her mother used to make each Christmas. Joy Hart was a creature of habit and routine if he’d ever met one.
He pried himself out from beneath the sheets, grabbed what he needed from his duffle bag and slipped out the door. When he returned roughly thirty minutes later, he had to stifle a chuckle. Krista was taking full advantage of the empty bed now. She said she found sleeping on her belly painful, but that didn’t stop her from getting comfortable. Arms and legs spread wide, head on his pillow, she was a sprawled-out, sexy naked starfish snoring louder than any man he’d ever met or any bear he’d ever come across while out grouse hunting.
She was something else, that’s for sure. Fierce, hard-headed and frustrating as fuck. And as much as he told himself her stubbornness was annoying and just going to get her into trouble, he had to admit that it also made him admire the crap out of her. She was not a woman who just rolled over and exposed her belly at the first sign of a problem. She was a fighter. And fuck if he wasn’t falling for her. Hard.
Careful not to wake her up, he stuffed his toiletries bag back into the duffle bag, then pulled out Krista’s Christmas present. He’d driven around all fucking day yesterday looking for it. And of course, because he’d left it to the last minute, nearly every store had been sold out. But at the eleventh hour, for a price that made him damn near have a coronary, he’d found a suitable gift.
Would he have preferred something a tad more feminine?
Yes.
But at the eleventh hour, beggars and procrastinators can’t be choosy. This would have to do. Next year he’d get her a better one if she wanted. A matching one with the baby if he could find one.
Fuck! Did he just think about next year?
Shaking his head, he laid the gift out on the bed for her, turned the receipt over, grabbed a pen from off the nightstand and scrawled, “Put th
is on before you come out” on it. Then with one last look at the naked mother of his child and a smile that made his face hurt, he headed to the kitchen to go and find some coffee.
* * *
“Dude, that’s the sweater you bought her?” Heath asked, causing Brock’s head to snap up from where he’d been staring into his coffee, willing Krista to wake up. He glared at his brother and shook his head. Heath ignored him. “That sweater is more freaky than ugly.”
It was true though.
He’d been desperate in his hunt for an ugly sweater—a Hart family tradition. They all had one. And Krista couldn’t be any different. Though had he started looking sooner than December 24th , he probably would have found something better than a bright red sweater with a ghoulish-looking snowman on it who looked more like that character from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The figure was holding his head in one of his branch limbs, like some kind of headless horseman/snowman. And of course, he’d found it at some hipster novelty store downtown and it had been fifty bucks. He’d balked, blanched, choked and coughed as he took it up to the till and the goateed, man-bunned cashier in various patterns of plaid had rung him up, going on and on about how big of a seller this sweater had been this year.
To who? Brock had no idea.
But despite the moderately terrifying sweater print, Krista pulled it off. She’d tugged it over her nightshirt and had traded her shorts for those flannel candy cane PJ pants. Her untameable mane was pulled back into a messy bun on the top of her head, and fuzzy bunny slippers scuffed down the hallway. He’d never seen anything so adorably sexy in all his life.
Rex sat down on the opposite side of the couch as Heath and barked out a laugh. “Oh, poor little Krista. Brock really dropped the ball with your sweater.” He clucked his tongue disapprovingly at Brock.
“It was all I could fucking find,” Brock said with a growl. “I ran around for hours yesterday trying to find an ugly sweater, and they were all sold out everywhere.” He made room for Krista next to him on the couch.
He watched Krista’s eyes widen as she took in the sight. A comical one if there ever was. There was no getting around how big Brock and his brothers were. They were all well over six feet and two hundred pounds. So the fact that all four of them had crammed their muscles into various ugly Christmas sweaters was hilarious, even for them.
But they did it for their mother.
There wasn’t much they wouldn’t do for her.
“You guys look like bears in brightly colored leotards,” Krista said with a snort as she leaned forward and grabbed a shortbread cookie off a tray. Rex and Heath both chuckled.
“Insulting, but accurate,” Heath said with a head bob.
“I especially like yours,” she said, nibbling on the cookie.
Heath beamed proudly at his outrageous sweater. He’d picked it out himself, the sick bugger. It had two reindeer, one of them being Rudolph, of course, engaging in some X-rated behavior. Rudolph appeared to be enjoying himself at least.
Brock’s wasn’t nearly as pornographic. Though he’d have to talk to Heath about his sweater next year when there was a kid crawling around. He might have to force his brother to get a more G-rated alternative.
Krista bumped Brock’s shoulder. “Your floppy-eared puppy with holly on his collar is quite a bit tamer than your brother’s. Who picked out yours?”
“Decaf coffee? Tea? Hot apple cider?” his mother asked, poking her head out of the kitchen.
Brock nodded in his mother’s direction. “She did.”
Krista chuckled before turning back to his mother. “Apple cider would be lovely, thank you.” She made to get up and head to the kitchen, only Brock’s mother and Chase were already emerging, a tray of cider and mugs in hand. Chase had a plate with more cookies and coffee cake, along with some fresh fruit and yogurt and granola. They always went light for Christmas breakfast in the Hart house, because for dinner they went hard.
Brock’s mother set the tray of ciders down, and Brock heard Krista cough beside him, cookie crumbs flying all over the sweater.
“That’s, uh … that’s quite the sweater you have on, Joy. Which one of the boys picked that out?”
Heath’s grin was wide and jolly as he sipped his coffee. “I did.”
Brock simply rolled his eyes. Heath had thought it appropriate to get their mother a sweater as X-rated as his. Only hers had two gingerbread people on it in the sixty-nine position, and both of their crotches had distinct bite marks on them, while the female gingerbread person appeared to have a face covered in icing.
“Next year you’re both going to need some tamer sweaters,” he grumbled, taking a sip of his Bailey’s-laced coffee. “Can’t have that shit around the innocent eyes of my kid.”
His mother chuckled softly as she handed Krista a steaming, Christmas-themed mug. Krista brought her nose down to the rim and inhaled.
“Oh, dear,” his mother started, “I didn’t think I raised such a prude. Sex, oral, vaginal, anal and otherwise is all very natural and healthy. I was never shy about discussing such things with you boys growing up, and you all turned out just fine.”
“Well, I’m a nymphomaniac,” Heath said with a laugh. “I’m not sure how fine I turned out.”
Their mother rolled her eyes and made a rude noise in her throat. “You are not.”
Brock glanced down at Krista, and the poor woman’s cheeks were nearly as red as her hair. “We, and by we I mean my mother, Heath and Rex, have a bit of a warped sense of humor in this family. Sex has always been an overly open topic here.”
Krista swallowed and nodded, wincing slightly when she sipped her cider.
“Well, I am a therapist after all,” his mother added, her bright blue eyes twinkling.
Heath and Rex had inherited their mother’s eyes and coloring, while Brock and Chase were clones of their father, right down to the green eyes, serious demeanor and dark hair—though Chase, like Rex, kept his head shaved bald for some reason. It was days like this, especially, that he really missed his dad, missed their family banter and all the jokes, because for a serious, no-nonsense cop, Zane Hart could toss out some wicked one-liners.
“Is that what you do?” Krista asked, some of the color leaving her cheeks. “You’re a sex therapist?”
Joy took a seat right smack dab between Rex and Heath on the couch. “Well, family therapist, but I specialize in sex, sexuality and relationships. But I’ll still see you if you’re not having issues in the bedroom.” She winked.
Brock cringed slightly at his mother’s wicked little smile. The last thing he wanted to think about was his mother’s sexual prowess or knowledge about how to “spice” things up in the bedroom. As far as he was concerned, his mother had not had sex since the night Heath was conceived.
Oh fuck. Now Def Leppard was in his head.
He shuddered.
His mother rolled her eyes again. “I certainly hope he’s not this big of a stick-in-the-mud at home,” she said, not blinking and looking dead serious at Krista.
Brock’s coffee tasted foul on his tongue.
The mother of his child in a godawful Christmas sweater chuckled next to him. “Not at all. No need for intervention.”
His mother seemed pleased with that, nodded and leaned forward to grab a strawberry. “Shall we open gifts?”
Brock let out a long, loud sigh of relief that made everyone, including Krista, laugh until cookie crumbs were flying.
* * *
Krista wandered into the kitchen an hour so later, after all the hubbub of the gift opening, to find Joy elbow-deep inside a turkey, packing it full of stuffing.
Despite the fact that Brock was still so tight-lipped about his family and life, she loved how open and honest Joy was. Maybe she could get his mother to spill the beans about Brock, save Krista the headache.
She saw a few dishes in the sink that needed to be scrubbed, so without even thinking twice, she donned the gloves, poured in some soap and went to task. “Can you
tell me about Brock?” she asked, not bothering to look up from the sink. “What was he like as a kid? What were his hobbies? What are his hobbies now? Does he have any friends?”
The men had all gone outside to shovel the driveway and bring in some more wood for the fire. Though when she’d peeked out the window a moment ago, Brock was shoveling, Chase was stacking wood in the wheelbarrow, and Rex and Heath were having a snowball fight. Now was the perfect time to get the skinny on Brock while he was out of earshot.
Wiping the sweat from her brow with her non-turkey hand, Joy paused and waited for Krista to look at her. “Let’s just get a couple of things straight, honey.”
Oh, shit, what did she say wrong?
“I know my son can be a closed book. A hard nut. A fucking frustrating grump who acts more like a caveman some days than a human being. But he’s my son, and his secrets, his information is his to give and his alone. I know it’s like pulling teeth to get information out of him. I’m his mother. I know that shit firsthand. But I won’t be the one to tell you about him. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you. You have to figure out your relationship,” she waved her hand flippantly, “whatever it is, on your own. With no help from me or anyone else. I’ve seen him do things for you I’ve never seen him do for anyone else. His shell is cracking, just maybe not as fast as you would like.” Her eyes softened. “But I won’t be the one to spill the beans. Just like if you told me all your dirty little secrets, I wouldn’t breathe a word of them to Brock. You’re both adults. Act like it.”
Krista swallowed hard, feeling like a child who’d just been slapped with a strap across the wrist. Her cheeks burned, and her gut churned.
