Page 147 of Just This Once

“Oh, Grumpy,” I murmured, going to him so I could wrap my arms around his waist and set my head on his shoulder. “Don’t you know you already have a family? The Eisners. The seven. Me.”

He hugged me back, tightening his arms as if afraid I might try to pull away. “I know,” he grumbled. “I know that. I just?—”

“It doesn’t ever feel like enough, does it?” I guessed.

“No,” he admitted with a whisper. “It doesn’t.”

Closing my eyes, I started to rock slowly in his arms. “You’re like one of those poor kids who was starved as a child or grew up in extreme poverty. Now that you can afford it, you can never stockpile enough food, never make enough money. You have to collect more and more family and keep them in reserve because you’re always afraid you’re going to lose what you have.”

“I might,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against my hair. “If Younger learns how badly I’ve disrespected him, he might just leave me and take the others with him.”

“He won’t,” I assured. “Alec wouldn’t do that. And I wouldn’t let him even if he tried. You’re not going to lose a single one of those boys.Orthe Eisners. Chauncy and Ezekiel couldn’t love you more if you were their own flesh and blood.”

When I lifted my face from his shoulder to give him a reassuring smile, he only furrowed his brow in concern. “What about you?” he wondered. “You didn’t say I couldn’t lose you.”

Agony filled my chest. Tears flooded my soul. But I kept them from showing. Sniffing, I rolled my eyes. “Why in the world would you evenwantme?”

“Good question,” he murmured huskily as he let his gaze fall to my chest where my towel wrap was barely covering my breasts. “Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you look really good when you skinny-dip; or that I feel a certain responsibility to you since I seem to be theonlyperson who can give you an orgasm; or that your Mario Kart skills impress certain ten-year-old boys that I’m fond of; or because you give such amazing graduation presents.”

As he reached for the knot holding my towel dress together, I felt myself blush, and I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. “I knew you liked the socks.”

“I like the socks,” he admitted in a low voice as he slowly tugged the towel off. Then he lowered his mouth to my chest and tenderly kissed the top swells of my breasts.

With a moan of need, I arched up to meet him and sank my fingers into the back of his hair, holding him against me as he kissed his way down to a nipple.

As he wrapped his mouth around it, I gripped his shoulders and sucked in a tight breath. Parker growled deep in his throat and picked me up to carry me toward the bed.

35

PARKER

We stayed in bed the rest of the morning. I found some blueberries in the refrigerator and bagels on the counter, so I carried the meal over to the mattress and we dined naked together.

Hope tore off chunks of her bagel and dipped them into a cream cheese tub instead of smearing the spread onto the roll. I’d never seen anyone eat them that way; it was fascinating to watch.

I tried to impress her with my own uniqueness by lining berries along her stomach before picking them off one by one with my teeth. When I placed them strategically down her thigh, I finally noticed the tattoo on her ankle just as I was eating the last blueberry.

“Mmm. This wasn’t here last weekend,” I said as I chewed, lifting her foot in my hand to study the Roman numeral four just below her ankle.

“I know.” She lifted her other foot to show me the matching black number there. “I got them yesterday. What do you think?”

I glanced up at her, realizing, “You checked another item off on your list.”

“Yep.” She seemed proud of herself.

But I couldn’t share her pleasure because the tattoos bothered me. I’d been present for the first few items that she’d checked off, so it had started to feel likemylist too.

For her to go off and complete something without me… It stung.

“What else have you done?” I asked, sliding my hand up from her ankle and along the outside of her thigh as I crawled back up her body.

“Let’s see.” She lifted her gaze to me from the cream cheese tub and frowned for a thoughtful minute, licking the side of her lip. “Oh. Alec and I went to your restaurant without reservations on…Thursday, I think, and we got right in. That was pretty cool.” Setting her bagel and schmear aside, she sat up so she could dance her fingers up my chest. “I didn’t think getting into a fancy place without reservations would ever get checkmarked off the list, to be honest, so thank you for that. And thanks for clearing the tab too.”

When she kissed me, I hummed out a hungry sound and wrapped my hand around the back of her neck, a little more okay with her doing that bucket list item without me being present because I’d at least been involved in some way.

But the tattoos…

They had nothing to do with me, and I found myself jealous of them. My gaze dropped to the one under her right ankle with a bit of resentment as Hope started to kiss her way along my neck.

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