Only For Tonight, page 12
“I don’t know about you.” I move to have her in my lap, needing to touch her. She sits in my lap and I wrap one arm around her waist, while I place the other one at her stomach. “But we have some pretty big shoes to fill.” She smiles and I see the tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to be a vacation dad,” I admit to her, and she inhales. “Yeah. You live in New York.”
“I do, and you live here.”
“I have to live here,” I correct her statement. “I’d do anything to make this whole situation easier on you,” I say softly, “but I can’t leave California. I’m locked into a contract.”
“The big man throwing out the law,” she tries to joke. “I’m not going to lie. That was the first thing I thought about.”
“I promise that I’d do anything for you and the baby and I’ll do anything to make the both of you feel at home here. Do you think you could think about moving here?” I ask her, trying not to get my hopes up.
“I mean, if anyone would have to move, it would be me. Legally that is.” She uses my words and I don’t waste a minute more without kissing her. She inhales deeply before hugging me and it’s not a soft hug, no, she gives it all to me. Tightening just enough for me to feel her heat on my body. She puts her head on my shoulder and buries her face in my neck. “I broke our promise,” she murmurs softly as she adjusts in my lap and straddles me, not moving her face from my neck. My arms wrap around her, hoping she likes my hugs as much as I like hers.
I inhale the smell of her, loving that she smells like me and my body wash from the shower mixed with her citrus. “How so?”
“We said we wouldn’t tell anyone about that night,” she reminds me softly. “I told Zoey.” I close my eyes and roll my lips. “I’m sorry, it was just seeing you at the restaurant and then with Spencer.”
“That guy is a tool, by the way,” I quickly tell her, trying not to be bothered by his name but secretly hating him.
She laughs and then kisses my neck softly. “He is,” she agrees. “I was freaked, so I blurted it out.”
I rub her back. “It’s okay.” I let her off the hook. “I’m pretty sure the fact you’re having my baby—” I move my hand to her stomach now, holding her and our child.
“Our baby.” She sits up. “It’s not just yours.”
“Baby,” I say softly as she glares at me.
“Don’t say it,” she warns me.
“But it’s my baby.” I try not to laugh. “I put it there.”
“Jaxon Stevenson,” she growls my name between clenched teeth.
“It’s biology, baby.” I shrug. “I put it in there.” The sound of the doorbell ringing has her looking that way.
“Saved by the bell.” She gets off my lap. “That better be my food and not your crazy ex again.” She stands up and I grip her hip, pulling her to me and kissing her. She melts in my arms, and if the knock at the door would stop, I’d be fucking her on the couch.
“I should get that.”
“You should,” she pushes, “then you should do me.”
I look over my shoulder. “I did you this morning.” I wink at her. “It’s time for you to do me.”
fourteen
Ariella
“Ready?” he asks me when I finish putting on my white sneakers and standing up, wearing the same clothes I was wearing yesterday, minus the panties since those are now in the trash upstairs in his bathroom.
“I’m ready,” I reply as he slips his hand in mine and walks over to the side door that leads to the garage. “Can you please explain to me why it’s necessary for you to take me to my hotel room to grab my stuff?” I ask Jaxon when I walk around the front of the SUV in his garage toward the passenger door. “I could easily go over there when you leave to go to practice and pack up my stuff.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He winks at me as he presses the button to open up the garage door. The sound of it slowly opening fills the garage, as well as the sunlight coming in. “Besides, I’m not going to let the mother of my child carry her own luggage. Then we’re going to go on a date.”
“A date?” I ask him, opening the door and looking at him through the SUV. He opens his side and stands there. He’s wearing blue jeans with a white T-shirt and a tan-colored button-down, long-sleeved cotton shirt over it. His sleeves are pushed up, showing off one of my favorite parts of him, his tats. “Isn’t it customary to ask a woman out on a date and not just assume she’s going to go out with you on a date?”
I fold my arms over my chest, watching him, my mouth watering at the sexiness that he is. “We are already going to be out”—he smirks as he gets into the driver’s seat and looks over at me—“so might as well do something.” He presses the button to start the car. “Now get in.”
“You are lucky I have zero energy left to fight with you.” I get into the SUV and close the door before reaching for my seat belt. I feel his hand at the side of my neck and then at the back of my neck and his face is in front of me. He puts his other hand on my cheek and then kisses the ever-loving shit out of me. Me gasping out in shock gives his tongue easy access to my mouth as he twirls his tongue with mine. The hand not holding the seat belt comes up to hold the back of my head. He finally lets go of my lips and my eyes flutter open. “What was that for?” I ask him as I try to get my body to calm down. The minute he touches me, it’s like zero to a hundred and I want to climb him like a monkey climbs a tree. But obviously sexier.
“Couple of things,” he starts, moving away from me and buckling his own seat belt before reaching over to do mine. “One, you look fucking cute.” He smiles as he reaches for his sunglasses, putting them on, and I want to take them off of him and see his eyes.
“No one likes to be called cute, Jaxon, unless they are under ten years old.” I shake my head. “What would you say if I said ‘Oh, Jaxon, you look so cute today’?” He glares at me. “Exactly, that look.” I point at him. “It’s much better when I say ‘Oh, Jaxon, you look so hot today.’ Or ‘Oh, Jaxon, no one is sexier than you.’”
“You think no one is sexier than me?” I don’t know if he’s asking me. “The feeling is definitely mutual.” He winks at me. “I will refrain from calling you cute from now on.” I turn to look out the window as he continues talking. “Two, I remember why you have zero energy left in you.” His smile gets even bigger. “And three, because I wanted to.” He puts his hand on my headrest as he puts the car in reverse before backing out his SUV, rendering me speechless because, who am I to argue with that? I don’t know how cute I look wearing last night’s clothes, my pants wrinkled and my hair just brushed and tied on top of my head. I really did wear myself out riding him, though my performance was stellar. And the last one, if he wants to kiss me and I want him to kiss me, I guess there isn’t anything wrong with that.
“Ariella,” he calls my name and I look over at him. “Do me a favor,” he says as he puts the car in drive, “put the hotel in the GPS for me.”
“Okay,” I reply softly, reaching in the middle and grabbing his phone. “You need to put in the password or look my way so I can unlock it.”
“It’s two, four, one, one,” he rattles off without skipping a beat.
“You just gave me your code to your phone,” I tell him. “Now you are going to have to go in and change it. Which is a pain in the ass if you forget it and then it locks you out for a certain amount of time.”
“Why,” he asks me, confusion in his voice, “would I have to change the code?”
“You just gave me the code to your cell phone.” I hold up the phone, showing him.
“Okay, I don’t understand.”
“Now I can go through it,” I groan and look out the window before turning back to him. “Literally unlocked I can search anything I want to. I can go on your history in your browser. I can check your pictures. I can delete certain numbers in your contacts. The list is endless.”
“Okay,” he repeats, looking at the road, then quickly at me, then back at the road.
“You can’t give a woman the code to your phone.”
“Is that a rule somewhere?”
“Yes,” I gasp. “It’s like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit.”
“How so?”
“You can’t be this clueless.” I turn my back to the door to watch his facial expression. “Unless you change your password, I can go into your phone at any given time.” I hold up my hand. “I’m not saying I would, I’m just saying now I can.”
“Ariella.” He takes a quick look at me. “I have nothing to hide. So I don’t care if you have my code or not.” The only thing I do is blink. “Besides my father, you are the only other person who has the code. Although, I think Tori now has the code because she changed her contact name in the phone.”
“See?” She points at me.
“I said, I think she could have also grabbed the phone after I unlocked it and changed it then. But for sure two people have it.”
“What?” I almost shriek. “Two people, that’s it?”
“Yeah.” He smiles at the road. “How many people have your code?”
“I mean”—I shrug when I think—“my parents, for sure. Most of my friends, but I’m not sure they remember it since they are always asking me for it.”
“I don’t know a lot about phones and stuff”—he side looks at me—“but that seems a tad unsafe.”
“Probably,” I admit to him, “but I don’t know.”
“Are you going to give me your code?” he asks me.
“Absolutely”—I look down at his phone—“not.”
He laughs. “What? Why?”
“Because it’s private.” I avoid looking at him. “And girls are different than boys”—he laughs softly—“like, I’m going to be telling my friends about you. There are things we share with each other that you should not know.”
“Like what?” he asks me, trying not to laugh but softly chuckling.
“Like how good of a kisser you are,” I start at that, “and then sometimes it’s like good things you’ve done with certain parts of you.” He full-on belly laughs. “Or bad things that you’ve done and we didn’t like but you seemed to enjoy, so we have to ask each other if it’s normal. Then there are things like how we feel about you guys.” I shrug, knowing I should shut up about now instead of just word vomiting, something that Jaxon pulls out of me.
“So?”
“So,” I shriek, “so that’s private!” I put his phone to my chest.
“What if I ask you for the code?”
“I’m going to need five minutes with said phone and then I can give it to you.” I swallow. “After I make sure it’s safe for you.”
“Safe for me or safe for you?” He turns it around, his hand coming up to rest on my upper thigh.
“For both,” I state, making us both laugh. “Safe for me not to be totally embarrassed by anything I might have said and then safe for you to not think I’m a dweeb.”
“I could never think you’re a dweeb,” he mentions softly and I open his phone, putting the address into the GPS. “You’re way too sexy to be a dweeb.” I look at him. “See what I did there, I didn’t use the word cute.”
“Genius,” I mock him and his joke, not saying anything else, I just look out the window at the water as he makes his way toward the hotel. I reach over and turn on the radio and hear the voices of sportscasters. “I’m not listening to this,” I tell him. “The rule is the passenger gets to play DJ.”
“Where is this rule?” he asks me as he follows the directions to my hotel.
“It’s literally a universal rule.” I grab his phone and open up his music app.
“Is there a handbook out there somewhere I can get so I can know all these rules? I feel like I’m very much uninformed on things.”
I roll my eyes at his question. “Let’s see what Jaxon Stevenson likes to listen to.” I scroll through his list. “Eminem.”
“Pregame,” he informs me, “also, the greatest rapper of all time.”
“Agreed.” I nod at him. “Ohhh, someone likes country music.”
“It’s good,” he defends himself, “it’s like a story within a song.”
“It’s okay to like country music.” I put on one of my favorite songs. “This is top tier.” I look over at him as the strums of the guitar come through and he smiles.
“We’re going to do something after we get your luggage that I’ve wanted to do since I saw you again,” he says and I raise my eyebrows.
“I think we did that.” I wink at him, making him laugh. “I think doing that got us in this situation in the first place.”
“Not that.” He chuckles. “But what we are going to do can definitely lead to that. Hopefully, if I play my cards right.”
He pulls up to the hotel and parks in the valet, the man handing him the white ticket as I wait for him. We walk into the lobby and he slides his hand with mine. I’m so surprised by this, all I can do is look down at our connected hands. He presses the up button, and once we get in, he looks over at me as I press the button for my floor.
His hand never leaves mine as we walk out of the elevator and I head to my room. I have to let his hand go to grab the key card, holding it over the magnetic lock before the click sounds and I push open the door. I step in and he follows me in, looking around. “Do you want something to drink?” I ask him and he shakes his head as he looks around at the room.
“I’m going to go pack up my clothes first,” I inform him, pointing to the bedroom and he nods. I expect him to sit on the couch and turn on the television, not follow me into the bedroom. “What are you doing?” I ask him and he stops walking, looking at me.
“I was going to sit on the bed while you pack,” he replies, looking behind him. “Why are you being so weird?” he asks me and I shrug.
“I don’t know, it feels weird,” I admit to him and he laughs. “Like, I have to change my clothes.”
“I’ve seen you naked.” He walks past me to the bed and plops down in it. “I’ve had my mouth on you and my fingers in you. You’re having my baby.”
“I know.” I look up at the ceiling before walking toward the closet and taking some of the clothes down. “It’s just, it’s daylight.”
“Do you want me to close the shades?” he asks me as he watches me. “Turn on the lights?”
“No.” I take my shirt off and fold it, putting it on the bed. “It’s fine, just, can you stop ogling me?”
“Absolutely”—he shakes his head and his eyebrows pinch together—“not.”
“Jaxon, you can’t just sit there looking like that.” I point to him and turn to grab stuff, placing it in my open suitcase.
“Like what?” He folds one arm behind his head and the other on his stomach.
“Forget it,” I huff and walk back to the chest of drawers, taking out a pair of leggings.
“No, say it,” he urges, and I look over at him.
“No,” I groan, taking off my pants and then leaving me in just my bra since he destroyed my panties, “you don’t need me to say it.”
“I want you to say it.” His eyes roam over my body, the blue of his eyes almost clear with the light in the room from the sun.
“Fine,” I concede, grabbing a pair of panties, “you sit there, or actually, you lie there looking like sex on a stick.” I see him trying not to smile. “Like, all you need to do is beckon someone and they’ll drop to their knees. Like Himeros.”
“Himeros?” he repeats the name.
“The sex god,” I tell him and he sits up, laughing. “Stop laughing, it’s irritating. And my body is filled with all these hormones.” I shimmy the pair of panties up, feeling less exposed.
“When were you supposed to check out of here?” he asks me, laughter gone from his face.
“Tomorrow by noon,” I tell him, not moving because his stare has me captivated.
“Come here, Ariella.” He motions with his head for me to go to him.
“I have to pack,” I respond softly. “We have a date to go on.”
“And you’ll get packing and then we’ll go on our date.” He turns on the bed, sitting with his feet on the floor. “Now, come here.”
I walk over to him, standing between his legs, his hands going to my hips. “I want to kiss you,” he announces, looking up at me as I step closer to him and put my hands on his shoulders, “really fucking bad.”
My hand comes up from his shoulder, moving to the side of his neck, and then trailing my fingertips up his stubbled jaw. I’m trying to memorize his face, trying not to think about me leaving and then not seeing him. I hold his face in the palm of my hand and bend so my face is in front of his. “Then kiss me, Jaxon.”
fifteen
Jaxon
I hold up my parking pass to the security guy, who nods at me as I drive down to my parking spot. Five other people arrive at the same time as me. I grab my cell phone from the center console, placing it in the inside of my suit jacket pocket before getting out and shutting the door. “Hey,” Kirby says to me when he gets out of his car, giving me a chin up.
“Hey,” I reply, opening the truck door and grabbing my black, stainless-steel carry-on bag before grabbing the black duffel bag, putting it on top. “I hate travel days,” I mumble to him as he grabs his own luggage and we walk over to the plane, parked and waiting for the team.
“You aren’t the only one,” he mutters to me as we make it to the stairs. The porter grabs my suitcase from me as I carry the duffel with me on the plane.
I sit by myself in the row, hoping like fuck no one sits next to me. I’m not in the best mood today, which is fucking with my head. I know I don’t like travel days, but I especially don’t want to be travelling today.
Before coming to the private airport, I drove Ariella to catch her flight, which is probably why I’m in this mood. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone to stay as badly as I wanted her to stay, which was so strange since I wasn’t even going to be home. But knowing she’s not going to be here when I get back is messing with my head.
