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  “JoJo,” Sweet started to say something, but she wouldn’t let him, because she was about to lose her shit.

  “I’m so fucking sick of men ruining everything. First my dad and his fucked up stipulations, then my asshole greedy brother, and now I can’t even have a fucking girl’s weekend to try to forget the fact that my life is being snatched from me because I don’t have a dick!”

  “JoJo!” Sweet’s voice brokered no argument then. He used his authoritative voice on her.

  “No!” She blew out a frustrated breath and then continued with a rant to end all rants. “I don’t get to fall in love with someone and work my way to marriage. If I choose that for myself, I lose my business that’s been in the family for four generations. If I marry some asshole, I could lose my business anyway, because my father won’t even allow for a prenup. So, excuse me if my inability to ever have a bit of happiness for myself seems so far out of reach that they,” she floundered her hands around the room indicating the women present “are the only thing I’ve had to look forward to since my dad died. Now, you guys show up, and you bring the fucking prick who told me he’d buy my business out from under me through my even bigger prick of a brother when I lose it all.”

  JoJo scrubbed angrily at her face with her hands and then just lost every ounce of steam she had. Her shoulders sagged noticeably with the weight of everything pressing down on her and I just wanted to go to her and give her a hug. Then she spoke again, quietly this time. “Why don’t you guys all just go and enjoy Vegas. I’m really not in the mood anymore.”

  Keys stopped and glanced between Quickshot and JoJo. “Jo, we’re supposed to…”

  I’m ashamed to say that I tuned out the rest of what was going on as Sweet’s hand ran up under my shirt rubbing circles over the skin on my back and producing tiny little quakes of pleasure that erupted across my skin in gooseflesh. I knew when the actual strippers showed up and when they were dismissed, but other than that I was completely unaware of anything else. “Let’s go,” Sweet whispered in my ear and pulled my hand, guiding me out the door and down the hall to another suite.

  “I thought the rooms were all booked up?”

  He shrugged. “She asked for a single,” he explained. “I paid for a suite.”

  “Oh,” was all I could manage to get out as he pulled me through the doors and into the large room. “This is a lot. Are the other guys staying here too?”

  “Fuck no!”

  “Oh.” Yeah, ever the articulate person, I stood there just inside the door taking it all in and wondering where we were supposed to go from there. On one hand I was excited to see Sweet. I had missed him in so many ways. On the other, I was angry still. He ruined our honeymoon, and if my suspicions were correct, he did so over another woman. Even knowing that, my heart ticked up a beat when I watched him remove his jacket, then his kutte, and he kept going. The shirt followed and I just stood there.

  “You going to come in and get comfortable? I kind of want us naked for this talk so you can’t just get up and run out quickly.” He grinned at me then. “I’d like to be able to keep you prisoner here until you understand what’s been going on and why I fucked up so badly on our honeymoon.”

  “I don’t want to talk right now,” I told him truthfully. I wanted to know, but selfishly I wanted to be with him at least one more time before I had to give him up completely.

  “Jamie, it’s important,” he told me in a very no-nonsense way.

  “Of course it is, but this is more important right now.”

  “What’s more important?” His question was made while his eyes tracked the fact that I too was disrobing in front of him.

  “I missed you even when I was angry,” I told him truthfully.

  “I missed you too, Jamie.” He hissed out a breath as my shirt went flying free of my body. “So goddamn much,” he added before coming to me and taking hold of one the breasts I’d just freed from my bra. His mouth covered part of my breast sucking the nipple in and giving a light tug with his teeth before releasing it and giving the same treatment to the other side. As he did so Sweet was working the button and zip of my jeans free. It wasn’t until he tugged them down that a fresh worry prickled through my awareness. I didn’t think he’d cheat on me, but there were obvious concerns and we were, for all intents and purposes, separated.

  “You haven’t been with anyone else, have you?” I asked quietly causing him to stop with my pants at my knees and glare up at me.

  “Fuck no! I haven’t been with anyone else since I first watched you walk into that office, and I sat there with Peety and Spike.”

  “Really?” I asked as he continued to pull my pants from my body after relieving me of my boots too.

  “Really,” he answered. “How could I be with someone else when the woman of my dreams was finally within reach?” He stood and pulled me close to him then, our lips a whisper apart. “You are everything to me, Jamie. No one compares. No one has ever even come close. You light this fire in my soul and I couldn’t extinguish that even if I tried.”

  My heart took a hit then as I wondered how in the world our honeymoon had gotten so far off track if that was how he felt. He must have seen the question in my expression, because he leaned in and whispered in my ear. “We can talk first if that will help ease your mind, but there is no one else, sugar. You are it for me.”

  I shook my head, no. “I’m not ready for that conversation yet. I just want you right now. We’ll talk after.” His assurance that there wasn’t anyone else made me question everything I’d been imagining and I hated the fact that my friends had been right when they all told me it was better to know what was going on than to keep making up possibilities in my own head. Now I was seeing that they were probably right and none of it seemed that important anymore. What did feel important was having him back in my arms and feeling his body joining with mine in a way that would bring us both back to the bliss we had been missing in each other’s absence.

  Sweet was on his knees before me and managed to take a quick swipe at my center with his tongue before I grabbed hold of his shoulders and pulled him up to me. “No,” I told him breathlessly as I started moving for the couch. “I need to feel you in me.”

  Sweet grinned and then hoisted my ass to wrap my legs around his waist as he carried me to the bedroom instead of the couch. “That’s good, sugar, because I need to be inside you just as badly.” With that we were prone, me on my back, him on top of me, and he slid home with no hesitation. That was exactly what it felt like too - him coming home. He was the part of me I had been missing. The part that was miserable in his absence.

  “I missed you so much,” I told him again before nipping at his shoulder as he stroked into me a little harder.

  “You have no idea, sugar.” There were no more words as we crashed together. Before I could argue, he pulled out of me, flipped us both over, and then had me seat myself right down on top of him. The look in his eyes was feral and more hungry than I had ever seen before as I slid slowly up his length and then slammed myself back down viciously. I repeated the motion with a swirl of my hips each time so that he was hitting me in all the right places at all the right times. It didn’t take long to trigger my orgasm, especially when he started tugging at my nipples as his half-lidded eyes watched me with rapt, lustful attention. Our bodies picked up the pace, slamming desperately into one another. Sweet took hold of my hips and began maneuvering my body to keep up the pace by slamming me down with each of his upward thrusts. It was both brutal and beautiful all at once. The intensity in his focus, the rhythm of our coupling, and the emotions involved all swirled together to create a perfect storm of sensation that rocketed me over the edge and had me grasping at him tightly, triggering his own release.

  We’d both been tested before we got married, and knowing my odds of getting pregnant were slim to none, neither of us had thought about protection. Our honeymoon had been the first time I felt the sensation of him coming inside of me. The triggered
memory brought all my recent frustrations to the surface and I couldn’t hold back the tears or the sobs when they started. Once again, I was doomed to cry in Sweet’s arms after he brought me such pleasurable release.

  “I didn’t think this would become a regular, sugar,” he teased as he pulled me to him and rubbed soothing circles across my still sweat-slicked back.

  “It’s not supposed to be. Everything just caught up with me again.”

  “I know baby. I promise everything will make sense and start getting better soon.”

  “I want to go home,” I told him as his hold on me tightened. “I want to be there when I hear whatever news it is you think I’ll be able to get past.” His lips placed a tender kiss on my head before he scooted us to the side of the bed.

  “Let’s go then, because I don’t want to delay this any longer.”

  “Fine,” I told him. We didn’t even stop back by my room to get my things we just left with only a text going out to Tash that we were leaving.

  Chapter 23

  We were mostly silent the entire flight back to Asheville where Angel Girl and I both had our bikes stowed in storage waiting for us. We were just about to hit the road and head on the nearly two-hour ride home when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I nearly ignored it when I saw Angel Girl stiffen beside me and glare at it.

  As soon as I glanced at the screen I knew shit was about to hit the fan. It was Becca. “Hello?”

  “You have to get here quick, Sweet. She’s coming.”

  “She’s coming?” I asked and my heart rate ticked up a few notches. “Isn’t it early?”

  “Just a bit,” she answered, out of breath and panting. “I need you. Please!”

  I turned to look at Angel and saw the worry there in her eyes. The worry I had helped put there and this phone call wasn’t easing. “I’m on the way,” I said and hung up. “We need to have that talk sooner than later,” I explained quickly.

  “You’re coming where?”

  “Cedar Falls,” I admitted before watching her shoulders slump and whatever hope that we could reconcile our differences seemed to bleed out of her right before my eyes. “Angel,” I whispered. She didn’t look back up at me. “Jamie,” I tried as she threw her leg over her bike.

  “It sounded important. Maybe we should get there and you can handle your business while I see to my dad and Leanne since she’s up there right now.”

  “Jamie, we really need to talk before we head out.”

  “Will it upset me?” I nodded my head and swallowed thickly as the words got stuck in my throat.

  “Then you need to wait to tell me so I’m okay to ride.” She didn’t wait for me to say anything else; instead she started her bike and revved it while waiting for me to get my shit together. My hands shook as I put on my helmet and started my own bike. I was about to become a dad and my wife still didn’t know. There was so much wrong with this whole scenario. I should be ecstatic to welcome my little girl into the world, but every time I thought about holding her in my arms, I remembered that she also symbolized what I was about to lose.

  Jamie and I rode with the wind in our faces and nothing but the sounds of our pipes and traffic all the way to Cedar Falls. Where normally we would have turned to head to the clubhouse, I kept going. I didn’t miss the puzzled look Jamie threw my way either. It got worse when we ended up at the hospital. Not a single word was spoken as we moved to enter the hospital and straight to the nurse’s station.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Becca Masters,” I informed the nurse and I watched as the blood drained from Jamie’s face. She had obviously remembered who Becca was. Whether it was from the time I told her about the placeholders in my life while she was gone, or from her dad or Quickshot, I wasn’t sure. The nurse did her thing and told me she was in room 332. We moved away from the station with Jamie hesitating until I grabbed her hand. On the way up to the third floor I started to explain.

  “I told you that Becca was one of the women I was seeing before, remember?” Jamie gave me a look that could have frozen hell itself over. “Right. Well, she showed up the day of our wedding,” I started to explain, halting our progress as Jamie stopped in the middle of the hallway and just stared at me. “Just let me get this out. I promise, it’s not what you’re thinking right now.” I knew that, because she looked like she was about to mount my balls to the wall. “She was sitting in a chair when I first saw her in the room across from where I was getting ready. I told her I was marrying you. She tried to convince me not to. I told her it was always you and that nothing or no one would ever compare.”

  “If that’s so, explain our honeymoon or what the fuck we’re doing here right now,” she spat out.

  “She stood up then, ready to storm out, but before she went she showed me what she’d been hiding. She told me she was waiting for me to come back home from all the extended runs I’d been on to tell me. Then she ran into someone up here who explained that I wasn’t coming back and why. That’s when she decided to show up.”

  Jamie glanced around the hospital and I saw the moment she started putting everything together. Tears welled in her eyes and her lip began to wobble. “I’m not going to like what she had to show you, am I?”

  “She’s pregnant,” I admitted. “We never had unprotected sex, but there was the one time that the condom broke, and I guess that’s all it took.” I ran my hands through my hair nervously as I waited to see her reaction.

  “She wants you to be a family. That’s why she came on our wedding day, to stop it?”

  I nodded my head. She mirrored the gesture. “You married me anyway,” she stated. Again I nodded my head.

  “Of course I married you anyway. You are the love of my life, Jamie Marks. There is no one else for me. She wasn’t even a close second. She just…”

  “She’s just the woman who was able to give you a baby,” Jamie stated glumly.

  “It’s not like that,” I started to deny, because it wasn’t.

  “I get that. Still…” She turned her back to me and swiped at her face before turning again. “Why didn’t you tell me that day? Why all the secrets after promising something like this would never tear us apart again? It happened before us. I don’t know why you felt you had to hide it.” Her voice was breaking on the last and with it my heart cracked wide open too.

  “It was our wedding day. I knew I’d have shit news to deliver, but I was not going to ruin that day for you.”

  “And on our honeymoon?”

  He sighed. “I almost told you, and then I watched you sleeping. You looked so damn peaceful and happy. I figured I’d just wait until we got back to make sure you had your friends around in case you needed them. I was thinking about the fact that you lost your daughter, Jamie. I was thinking about how the hell to tell you I was having one, and it wasn’t yours. It wasn’t ours. Not in the way we both wish it could be. I just thought you’d need some support from people besides me to get through that.”

  Her arms had wrapped around her midsection as I spoke and watching that protective gesture killed something inside of me. I was causing her so much pain, and fuck if I didn’t wish I could take it all away.

  “She wants you still, doesn’t she? That’s what all the phone calls were about?”

  I nodded my head again. “I don’t want her though. She was threatening to go to Ghost, to find you, and she even threatened to get rid of the baby.” Jamie sucked in a breath.

  “That is horrible emotional manipulation,” she informed me as if I didn’t already know that. I simply nodded. “That’s what you were dealing with when I left you in Hawaii?”

  “Yeah,” I answered softly.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could share that with me, or that I wouldn’t have been there for you.” She turned again. “I wonder what kind of a person everyone must see me as to think that I would just turn my back on you and a baby. Do you not trust me? Did you not think I could handle the truth? Why? I don’t un
derstand why you just didn’t tell me.”

  “I just explained,” I started to tell her.

  “Yeah, you were protecting me. What you did was not to protect me; you hurt me more by making me come up with my own crazy scenarios. It hurts more to know that I couldn’t be there for you because you didn’t think I would react well enough. Yes, I lost a baby before, and that means I would fight tooth and nail to make sure you never felt that kind of pain. It doesn’t matter that it would be painful for me to watch you be with her - not the baby - Becca.”

  “I’m not going to be with Becca.”

  “But you will. Even if you aren’t together as a couple, you will be raising a child together. There’s a certain level of intimacy involved when you create a child with someone, whether it was intended or not.” She was quiet a moment and I didn’t really know how to respond to that. “We should go. I think you’re needed elsewhere right now.”

  “I need to know I haven’t permanently damaged us.”

  She smiled at me even though it was laced in pain it was still something. “We have a lot to work out, Sweet. We’re married though, so that’s what we’re going to have to do. We’ll work it out.” My heart nearly seized in my chest. She had just said the words I’d been dying to hear, and yet I still felt this ball of tension in my gut that wouldn’t release just yet. I knew her words were sincere in the moment, but I didn’t know what the next couple days would bring and the not knowing was something I was having trouble wrapping my head around. She told me I needed to trust her. So that was what I was going to do.

  I grabbed hold of Jamie’s hand and pulled her along behind me as we moved to the elevator and headed to the third floor to go find Becca’s room and maybe meet my daughter.

  Chapter 24

  You should come in with me,” Sweet offered, as I shook my head no.