Her pussy squeezed, and I took over, lifting her up and yanking her back down as I thrust. She chanted my name over and over until it became one long moan. Then I kissed her until every last quake had wracked through her body and buried myself to the hilt with a roar.
After, I was more out of breath than when I ran the full length of the field.
“I love you, Bella Keating. You’re a gift.”
She flashed a crooked smile and wiggled her brows. “I love you, too, Christian Knox. But don’t get too comfy lying there just yet. If I’m your gift, I’m going to be one that keeps on giving.”
EPILOGUE
* * *
BELLA
7 YEARS LATER
“I think you need glasses, ref!” I yelled. “How could you not see that offsides?”
“Oh crap.” My husband climbed up the bleacher stairs two at a time. He looked at the person to the right of me, offering an apologetic smile. “Sorry. She gets hangry.”
“I’m not hangry.” I pointed to the field. “That ref has it in for us. He has since the start of the game.”
Christian sat next to me and handed me a big pretzel.
I frowned. “Did you remove the salt again?”
“Doc said to reduce your intake since your BP is already a little high.”
I rubbed my enormous belly and narrowed my eyes. “My blood pressure is a little high because you don’t know how to do anything like an average person—like have one child at a time.”
He leaned over and kissed my belly. “Who wants one little Bella when you can have two?”
“You won’t be saying that in thirteen years when they’re dating.”
Christian’s brows pulled tight. “Thirteen? Try thirty, sweetheart.”
Sadly for the two little girls in my belly, their father was serious. At least I had some years to work on him before we had to deal with dating. Though our other twins—Drew and Ben, who were now in kindergarten—had gotten a sack full of valentines last year when they were only in preschool. I blamed that on them having inherited their father’s dimples.
“There he is!” a teenage girl screeched behind us. “He is so freaking hot.”
I turned to find them pointing toward the entrance to the field, where the assistant coach was currently jogging in. Wyatt was now twenty-four and the starting kicker for New England, the team my husband had retired from only last season. But he also helped out with Drew and Ben’s pee-wee football team, assisting my grandfather, who was the head coach, whenever he could. Four years ago, Coach had moved up to New England to join us. He’d said he wanted to be closer to his family after the twins were born. And he was—because family has nothing to do with DNA. Tiffany and Rebecca had proven that when they’d stopped speaking to him after he called my boys his great grandchildren.
I leaned over to Christian and whispered, “I remember the days when the girls used to point to you and say that.”
“It’s a baton I will happily pass.”
Wyatt joined Coach on the sideline. After years of physical therapy, my grandfather now walked pretty well with a cane. But he was currently using it to point to a ref and yell about the last call. The two of them talked for a minute before Wyatt went over to the players’ bench and sat down next to Drew, who was currently sulking.
“I think you need to get one of them interested in a position besides quarterback,” I told my husband. “I can’t handle going home with one miserable child after every game.”
Christian smiled. “The competition’s good for them. Besides, Drew got the spot for the entire game last weekend. They’ll figure it out on their own eventually, like Jake and I did.”
My cell rang from my purse. Reading the name on the screen, I tilted the phone to show Christian.
He shook his head. “You’re supposed to be on maternity leave.”
“They’re having a problem with the forecasting module. It keeps glitching and shutting down since they loaded it onto the new computer system. I think the problem is the new system, not the program.” I tried to answer, but the phone disappeared from my hand before I could finish.
“Doc says no more work, or you’re going to wind up in the hospital for the rest of this pregnancy. You know how miserable you were last time on bedrest for a month. You can’t have stress.”
“It’s just a phone call. I’m not stressed…”
“It’s never just a phone call, sweetheart. When you can’t figure out what the issue is, you’ll wind up working until four in the morning trying to fix things from your laptop.”
Okay, so maybe I did do that the other night, but it wasn’t easy to leave my coworkers hanging. Especially since I’d created the statistics and forecasting software they now used. After Christian and I had moved to New England to be with his new team, I was bored staying home all the time. I wanted to find a job with flexible hours so I could travel for his games and also go back to New York to see some of Wyatt’s and visit my grandfather. That job fell into my lap when the director of team stats from the Bruins happened to take a job with New England. He’d always loved the forecasting module I’d been working on and invited me to consult with Christian’s new team on how to improve their system. A year in, I was working full time and building a brand-new program from the ground up. I’d stayed on part time after the twins were born, but it wasn’t easy because Christian was always on the road. Having another set of twins was going to make things more chaotic, but at least my husband was retired now and could help out more.