Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 117201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
I’m screwed.
That was her final thought before passing clean out.
Chapter Twenty
Burgess woke up knowing Tallulah wouldn’t be in bed beside him.
But he couldn’t help but stack his hands beneath his head and smile, perhaps a tad smugly. Because she had been there as recently as a couple of hours ago. He’d woken up to find her nose smooshed up against his chest, her eyelashes making fringy, black half-moons on her cheeks. He’d planned on waiting until the last possible second before sunrise to carry her back to her room, because he didn’t think she’d want to be discovered in his bed by Lissa, but the warmth of her must have put him back to sleep.
Burgess allowed himself a final, fleeting grin, directing it up toward the ceiling, seeing nothing but memories from last night. Tallulah being so generous on her knees that he was pretty sure he’d died and left his body twice. That slippery clutch of her mouth, the vibration of her throat, those eyes glassy with heat. Walking upright today was going to be a challenge with those images at the forefront of his mind, but the one now making him stiff beneath the top sheet was Tallulah’s body shaking, how she’d gone limp between him and the door, falling right into his arms where she belonged.
I’ve still got it.
He stroked a hand down his face and beard, scrubbing the satisfied smirk off his face.
All right, so maybe he still had it.
Didn’t mean he had the girl. Yet.
That thought handily erased the final traces of his smile and he tossed aside the covers, climbing out of bed. His back gave an ominous throb as he stood, a wave of queasiness rolling through him before subsiding, the ache settling into one he could manage. Would manage.
You were amazing out there.
Well maybe you had a couple steps to spare.
With Tallulah’s voice in his head making him feel ten feet tall, a puny little backache was nothing. It no longer felt like an injury signaling the end of his career; it was a minor worry—and he had a major one that needed his attention.
Tallulah was endgame.
He needed her to get that.
Burgess brushed his teeth, finger combed his hair, and threw on a pair of sweatpants. He started to put on a shirt, then remembered his muscles seemed to be working wonders and left it off, padding out of the bedroom and down the hallway. He heard Lissa and Tallulah before turning the corner into the living room and had to pause, the rightness of it hitting him right in the jugular. He liked their voices together. He liked the gentle sizzle of pancakes and his daughter giggling about something Tallulah said. These things made his apartment seem like a home for the first time since he’d moved into it.
Furthermore, he didn’t feel like an intruder as he stepped out into the open. Didn’t feel guilty for showing up and trying to fit into the family unit after being absent, thanks to hockey.
He belonged. She’d made him belong.
Now he just needed to convince her she belonged with him.
And when she turned at the stove with a deer in the headlights expression, he knew that probably wasn’t going to be easy.
Fine. Fuck easy.
“Hey, Dad,” Lissa sang, her bag packed at her feet. A quick check of the clock said Ashleigh would be there in ten minutes to pick up their daughter. Shit, he should have gotten up sooner. Blame the gorgeous grad student who’d melted his bones last night. “Good job, last night. You were extra mean.”
Burgess’s lips twitched. “Was I?”
“The other team looked so sad at the end.”
“Losing is good once in a while,” Burgess said. “It makes you try harder.”
“Losing is good?” His daughter’s eyebrows went up. “For you, too?”
“Hell no. Not for me. Other people.”
Lissa laughed. He started to walk past her, but decided to lean in for a hug instead, patting her gently on the back. “You’re good luck. Told you.”
She ducked her head, but he still caught her smile. “Yeah.”
Burgess locked eyes with Tallulah when he circled the breakfast bar into the kitchen, suddenly hungry for some acknowledgment that they’d given each other orgasms last night and slept in the same bed. He didn’t want to pretend it hadn’t happened. “Morning.”
“Morning,” she said back, pink filtering into the tan of her cheeks. “It’s raining.”
His attention drifted to the nearest window, taking in the gray sky, the droplets clinging to the glass. “Is it?” His eyes ran a lap around her face. “The sun is shining in here.”
She fumbled the spatula slightly, but caught it before it could clatter onto the surface of the stove, a telltale pulse moving at a gallop just above her collarbone. “Do, um . . . do you want pancakes or are you sticking to your Diet of Doom?”