Love Bug (The Prescotts Book 3), Tara Wyatt [best mobile ebook reader .txt] 📗

She laughed softly and shook her head. “No one’s keeping score, Max. But if we were, I think I’d be miles ahead of you in the orgasm department.”

He chuckled, because she had him there. He loved making her come more than he had a right to love anything. Loved the way her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted, a pretty pink flush blooming across her cheeks and chest. Loved the breathy moans and shaking screams she made. Loved the way she gripped him and milked him when he sent her over the edge.

But most of all, he loved the way she looked at him like he’d hung the moon when she opened her eyes again, bright and sated. He’d do anything to have her look at him like that, like he wasn’t broken.

Although, he had to admit, he’d been feeling a hell of a lot less broken lately, and he knew it was because of her.

Willa retreated into the bathroom to freshen up, and he tucked his still tingling dick back into his suit, carefully arranging himself. He still felt ridiculous in the costume, but for Willa he’d walk through Times Square wearing whatever she wanted if it made her happy.

“Don’t forget the bag with our clothes,” she said from behind him. “We’re meeting my brother and his boyfriend for lunch.”

“Right.” He nodded and picked up the backpack from the corner of his bedroom. “Ready if you are, Cupcake.”

She grinned and slipped her hand into his.

“So, what did you think?” asked Willa, her small hand in Max’s as they walked down East 67th Street towards 1st Avenue. Max didn’t spend much time in the Lenox Hill area, to the east of Central Park—he lived in SoHo, and Lucian lived on the Upper West Side, so it was rare for him to travel further north than the West Nineties, or further east than Park Ave. But it was a pretty area with beautifully maintained historical buildings interspersed with newer ones, all glass and steel. The new world meeting the old. A surprising number of trees lined the street, making it feel cozy and fresh in a way he wasn’t used to.

He traced his thumb over her delicate knuckles. “It was…different,” he said carefully, still processing the morning.

“Different good, or different bad?” she asked without any recrimination or judgment in her tone.

“Different good, I think. Any of the volunteering I’ve done over the past decade has been in the form of sitting on boards or attending charity galas. This was a lot more hands on than I’m used to.”

She squeezed his hand as they turned on to 1st Ave. “You were awesome. The kids loved you.”

“Yeah?” Pride suffused him at her compliment. He’d tried to stay in character while he’d read them stories, played games, and told them how proud he was of how strong and brave they were being.

“Absolutely. You were a natural.”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I kept getting distracted watching you.”

“Because I was being such a dork?”

“Because you were so warm and engaging and sweet. The kids all clearly adore you.” His pulse picked up a little as he remembered the sight of Willa with all of the kids. As soon as they’d stepped onto the ward, the healthier ones had swarmed her, excited to see her. And then watching her with them, with her gentle humor and warmth, had tugged at something deep inside Max’s chest. Something he hadn’t even known was there. But once he’d uncovered it and examined it, he hadn’t been surprised.

Did he see himself marrying Willa and having a baby or two with her?

Hell, yeah he did. Not tomorrow, but someday. Someday in the not-so-distant future.

She blushed a little. “I like making them happy.”

Something stuck in his throat, a cold, hard knot, and he swallowed around it. “Is it hard for you? Being around them, knowing how sick they are? That some of them might not survive?” He’d never dealt with cancer in his life, and he’d found it absolutely gut wrenching seeing how sick some of those kids were. Knowing that some of them wouldn’t beat their disease because life wasn’t fair.

She shook her head, a stray fleck of glitter on her cheek catching the sunlight. “No, it’s not hard when I’m with them. But it’s devastating when they die. It’s happened a few times now.”

“How do you cope with that?”

She gave a little shrug. “You grieve. Because that’s what cancer is. Even among the survivors, there’s grief. Grief for the treatments and trauma endured, grief for what could’ve been that was lost, grief over a future tainted with a giant what if.”

His chest went cold and tight. “Is that how you feel?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I feel angry that I had to deal with something so scary at such a young age, when all of my friends were partying and backpacking across Europe and having fun. Sometimes I feel sad that when I’m ready to have kids, it won’t be a simple, straightforward process. Sometimes I feel scared that it’ll come back and I’ll have to do it all again. And that anger, that sadness, that fear, it’s all grief. Because grief is like water, and it takes on the shape of whatever it’s filling. It looks different depending on where it is, and how much of it. Sometimes it’s a puddle. Sometimes it’s an ocean.”

He’d spent a lot of time thinking about grief, but he’d never thought of it that way. For the first time, he wondered if all of the blame and guilt he’d felt over Sophia’s death was just grief taking on the twisted shape of him.

“But it’s not going to come back,” he said quietly, tucking her against him as they wove around a man with a dolly unloading a truck.

“Probably not, no. My long-term prognosis is good. But like I said, there’s always a chance.”

He stopped walking and pulled her against him. People filtered in and out