Part One Hundred and Six

Kalen was out like a light by the time we pulled out of the aquarium’s parking lot. Katiya had a tired smile on her face and I felt oddly content. We were already a family, even if Katiya didn’t know it yet. Last night solidified it for me.

For the first time in my adult life, I was in love with a woman. She hadn’t just taken the darkness away for a while. The darkness had completely disappeared and I couldn’t even pinpoint when exactly it had happened.

Katiya had come into my life by chance and without meaning to or even knowing it, she’d healed me. I’d given up hope of finding love and watching her raise my daughter for eight months had been excruciating because I wanted more.

I carried Kalen inside to her bedroom and Katiya wiped her face with a wet cloth, we changed her into pajamas and she slept through it all, like the little trooper she was. Katiya switched the light off and I took her hand.

“You’re sleeping in my bed,” I said and pulled her toward my room.

Katiya had been in my room too many times to count but this time it felt different. She wasn’t just Kalen’s nanny, she was someone I cared deeply about, someone I loved and it felt more intimate than it had the previous night in her room.

“Kage-, “ She began but I shook my head.

“Don’t overthink it,” I whispered. “This is where I want you. It’s where I’ve wanted you since that day you knocked on my door and said we could handle our one-night stand like adults.”

She stood looking up into my eyes and when she took her shirt off I knew there was no going back. I kissed her slowly, taking my time to really savor everything about her. Her hands snaked underneath my shirt and I pulled away long enough to take it off.

I had Katiya on the bed and by the time I pushed inside her, I was sure I wasn’t going to last. I’d never been so aroused in my life and a mere touch from her had me instantly hard. I gritted my teeth as her tongue licked its way up to my chest.

“I’ve wanted to do that since that night at Justin’s house,” she whispered huskily.

My thrusts just deepened in answer and she arched her back. I didn’t last as long as I would have liked but we were both gasping for air by the time I was done. She looked like she belonged in my bed, disheveled hair, plump lips and a look of sated lust in her eyes.

We were lying face to face and I cupped the side of her face. “This isn’t just sex for me, Katiya. This is real.”

“You could have anyone you want,” she said.

“Have you seen you?”

She chuckled and pushed her hair behind her ear. “I see you, Kage, so do the rest of the world.”

“I don’t care what the world sees,” I said and placed my hand on her back. She was there with me but she still felt so far away. “Why are you so scared to give this a chance?”

“I grew up with Alexei for a brother. He’s always been a player, even in high school and I had this perception of ice jocks being players. I had one rule since I was fifteen, no ice jocks. I’ve lived with you for eight months and I know you’re not a player.”

I hooked my leg over hers and rolled onto my back, making her straddle me. I had one hand on her upper back and my other hand on her ass. “Then I really don’t understand it.”

Katiya took a deep breath and she looked so perfect on top of me that I wanted to kiss her again, but her answer was more important. She was the first woman that didn’t clamor for my attention, the first one to actually outright reject me and if you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said that Katiya was oblivious to my presence.

“It’s not that I don’t like you, I do. You’re like a unicorn, Kage.”

I frowned as I looked at her and then I chuckled. “A unicorn? You’re calling me a unicorn?”

“You’re too good to be true, honestly. You’re great at what you do, at the top of your game. People everywhere know your face and yet you’re still this down-to-earth, nice guy that doesn’t drink, that doesn’t chase women. I mean, you come home every night and you tuck your daughter into bed and when you say all these things to me, it scares me.”

“I’m just a guy that fell in love with a woman. The fact that we’re already living together, raising a daughter together, that’s just a bonus. I’m not going to suddenly change just because you move into my room. I’m still going to be exactly who I am now. You’re the only woman Kalen knows, and honestly, I’m surprised she hasn’t started calling you mommy yet. I like the idea that she might. Don’t look at what can go wrong between us, look at what we are now,” I said.

“You don’t get it, Kage. You’re always going to be you, Kage Hawthorne, NHL star player. Women are always going to be vying for your attention, asking for your autograph in the hopes that you’ll want to hook up. You married your high school sweetheart and then you divorced her and took her baby away from her,” she said.

I shifted into a sitting position with Katiya still on top of me. “Madison was the first girl I loved and we didn’t get married because we were in love. We got married because she had no other options in life. I married her so I could adopt Jared. It was a mistake and it was bound to end badly. I divorced her not because I didn’t love her anymore, I divorced her because she kept lying about everything in her life. When she was eighteen she got pregnant and didn’t tell anyone. She gave that baby up for adoption, my baby, knowing that I was in foster care, knowing to some extent what had happened to me and I couldn’t forgive that.”

Katiya’s eyes were wide with shock as she looked at me. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that? You let me think that you were the bad guy.”

“I was the bad guy. I feel responsible for her death and Jared hates me so much that he refuses to take my calls, even now. I didn’t handle things the right way with her but she also made her own choices, I didn’t hand her that blade, she chose to pick it up and while there are a thousand more things that I could say about Madison, I don’t want to. This is about you giving me a real chance because you know the real me. You’ve seen me angry, moody, hurt, and happy. What you see is what you’ll always get, Katiya, the real me, not the me the world sees. Just give me a chance, or I’ll have to call your brother.”

She laughed and shook her head. “You’ll call my brother?”

“Yeah, he’ll tell you that I’m the real deal and he’s also feeling kind of sorry for me because he knows you and what you’re doing to me,” I said.

“I’ll compromise. I’ll sleep in your room at night but I need more time before I move in here with you,” she said.

“I’ll take it,” I said and kissed her.