Chompin' at the Bit (Horse Play #2) (30 page)

“Good. She was wise to go home with your parents; she felt great this morning.” 

There seemed to be something on Madison’s mind as she stirred her dinner, her blank eyes staring into the stew. I was just about to ask what was troubling her when she spoke up. “I think I’m starting to remember what happened last night.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah.” She set her spoon down and placed her hands in her lap, her eyes following them. “I’m worried things got out of hand in the hot tub. I’m pretty sure I remember you taking my top off before we stripped the rest of the way …” 

I swallowed thickly; it wasn’t sounding promising. “What else?” 

Even with her eyes downcast, I saw her clench them shut in frustration. “Ugh! I don’t know! That’s all I can remember right now.” Slowly, she brought her gaze to meet mine. “If I do the math, I’m about two-and-a-half weeks from my next cycle.”

I nodded, suddenly nervous again because I knew how this shit worked.

“Normally I wouldn’t be this freaked.” Madison’s eyes held mine, something akin to worry burning into them. “But I’ve been on antibiotics for just over a week. You heard what the doctor said.” She shrugged. “Not really the best time to pull the goalie, if you know what I’m saying. We’ve been together a month. I was scared shitless when I thought you were going to propose last night, so
this
isn’t any easier to process.” 

Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself a little. “I want kids, but not yet. What if …?” 

I reached over and clasped her hands in mine, bringing them out of her lap and onto the table. “Then we’ll handle it,” I told her softly. 

She still didn’t seem entirely convinced by my words, so I decided to tell her of my earlier findings. “I don’t know if it helps, but when I was in our room after you left, I found a discarded condom wrapper that I know wasn’t there yesterday when I moved us into the room. Maybe we knew things were quickly escalating and we moved inside.” 

“Yeah? You think so?” 

“Anything’s possible, love.” I offered her a smile, which seemed to put her at ease while my panic returned.

It wasn’t the possibility of us being pregnant that scared me stupid, it was because Madison was so upset, and I couldn’t help but see the parallel to my past. 

I smiled wider, squeezing her hands. “Let’s just see what happens. If we dodged the baby-train, then we’ll be more careful to avoid this from happening again. And if we didn’t, well, like I said, we’ll handle it together.” 

Madison’s eyes glistened with tears as she threw herself onto my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You’re so amazing. Most guys would be freaking out about this, and you’re handling it as though it’s just another Friday afternoon.” 

Chuckling, I returned her embrace, trying my damndest to remain calm for her. “Baby, there’s no sense getting upset until we know there’s something to be upset about. As long as we stick together, there’s nothing we can’t handle.” 

Deep down, I knew my words to be true, but I couldn’t help that one nagging thought from whispering,
What if?

Chapter 25. Two-Week Wait

“
Y
ou really mean that?” I asked, my voice muffled against his neck as I held him tightly. 

The events of the night before in the hot tub were still really hazy, certain parts still missing entirely. Getting my memories back seemed to be the only thing I could focus on as I drove out to Savannah to pick up Jillian; honestly, I wasn’t even sure what it was that triggered the ones that did come back. 

I wrestled with the idea of telling Jensen at all, and initially, I decided not to. At first, I tried to tell myself it wasn’t a huge deal; I was on the pill, after all. That was when I remembered the antibiotics and the doctor’s warning. It wasn’t until I started doing the math to make sure Jensen and I were at least in the “safe-zone” that I knew I had to come clean.

“Of course I mean it,” he said, combing his fingers through the length of my hair. “Listen …” He shifted until I pulled my face from his neck. My hair had fallen over the right side of my face, so he reached up to brush it aside. “The way I see it, we’ve got two choices. One, we can stress and dwell on the ‘what ifs’ for the next couple of weeks until we can take a test …” I may have swooned when he said “we” and not “you.” “Or, we can
not
focus on it; try to put it in the back of our minds until the time comes. Now, I know it’s not that easy to just forget about it, but it has to be better than walking on egg shells for the next two weeks, right?” 

Ultimately, he was right. While I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget about it completely, I didn’t want it to control my every waking moment. How did people who were actually trying to procreate stand the wait?

I offered Jensen a smile, really willing to try and not stress. He was right; we really had no reason to believe that we had let things get out of hand. Maybe our drunk-selves had common sense after all. I mean, he did say he found an open wrapper in our room. Anything was possible. 

“Okay. You’re right. Let’s not worry about it until we have to.” 

“That’s my girl,” he said, his famous crooked smirk returning before he kissed me sweetly. “Now, let’s eat, and then I’ll draw you a bath so you can relax. Let me take care of you.” 

That phrase … There was something familiar about it, I just couldn’t put my finger on it until something in my memory snapped, recoiling like an over-stretched elastic band. I gasped as the dam burst, and everything came rushing forward. I couldn’t stop it, not even if I wanted to …

Clothes came off, and the shameless moans of a wanna-be porn star carried off into the night. Deep, guttural groans of pleasure and fingers digging into my hips, pulling me forward … faster … faster …

My bottom lip stung with the memory of Jensen’s teeth claiming it, and I could practically hear the water splashing over the edge of the hot tub as Jensen guided me onto him.

“Oh, God,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“I know we said we weren’t going to stress, but … I think I remember what happened.” Jensen’s body went rigid beneath me, his eyebrows pulling up and in with worry. All I could do was nod.

“So we did? In the hot tub?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah.” Panic gnawing at me, I slipped back into my seat and picked up my spoon. Both of us were silent as we stared into our bowls, not particularly interested in eating.

“You know what?” he finally said, cutting through the quiet. “It doesn’t change anything.” I stared at him, letting the confidence in his voice soak into me. I took it in like I needed it to live. “We’ll continue to wait. After dinner, I’m going to draw you a bath like I said I would, and you’re going to try and relax.”

“Okay,” I agreed quietly, suddenly feeling like I didn’t want to be alone. “But only if you join me.” 

“Well,” he said with a light chuckle. “When you look at me with those big beautiful eyes of yours, it’s kind of impossible to say no.” 

Which could explain how we might have gotten ourselves into this mess. 

After dinner, Jensen left to go draw my bath as he promised, and I knelt to the floor and pulled Bones into my arms to snuggle him. I was placing dozens of kisses into the soft fur atop Bones’ head until he started wriggling in my grasp, his tail wagging as he yipped and tried licking my chin. Laughing, I released him and watched him run over to his water and food dishes. 

“Babe?” Jensen called from down the hall. 

I hopped to my feet, leaving Bones to his dinner, and made my way for the washroom where Jensen was standing next to the tub. The lights were off, the natural light from the setting sun coming in from the lone window higher up on the wall. In addition to that, Jensen had lit the thick pillared candles I kept in here for when I felt the need for a relaxing bubble bath, and placed them on the floor on either end of the claw-footed tub. The bath looked so inviting with its steaming, bubble-topped water; I hadn’t even hit the water yet, and I could feel the tension beginning to leave my body. 

Extending a hand to me, he smiled. “Madi?” 

I accepted his outstretched hand, and he pulled me to him before lowering his hands to my waist and slipping his fingers beneath the hemline of my shirt. As he crept the soft cotton fabric up over my waist, I raised my arms above my head to assist. His hands swept over my upper body as they made their way north, starting at my waist and moving over my ribs until they slid up my arms. He tossed my shirt to the floor beside us. 

Wrapping his arms around me again, he slowly stripped me of my bra; the look in his eyes assuring me that none of this was about sex. He was assuring me that, no matter what the future had in store for us, he would be right there with me. I shuddered, overcome with so much emotion between us as his hands moved down into the waist of my now un-done jeans and panties before sliding them down my legs, the denim pooling around my ankles. 

After stepping out of my jeans and pulling my socks off, Jensen held my hand as I stepped over the side of the tub and lowered myself into the hot water. I leaned forward, hugging my knees to my chest as I rested my cheek on them and watched Jensen discard his own clothing. 

“Scoot up,” he instructed.

I shifted forward in the tub, leaving him enough room to slide in behind me, and once he had nestled in and stretched his legs out on either side of me, he ran his hands up and down my upper arms, easing me back against his chest. With both of us in the tub, the water had displaced enough that it was only a few inches from the top, the bubbles covering me almost to my collarbone as I leaned against him. I could feel his heart beat against my back as his fingers trailed lazily up and down my arms and over my shoulders. 

Every once in a while, he’d place a sweet kiss onto the top of my head, or on my temple, or the shell of my ear, while his hands slipped beneath the water so he could massage my lower back. “This is nice,” I whispered, my eyes closing as the sensation of his amazing massage combined with the warm bubble bath caused me to melt into a puddle of goo. “Why have we never done this before?” I moaned when his fingers pressed deliciously into the muscles of my lower back. 

“We bathed together in Memphis,” he reminded me, his whispered words tickling my ear and making me giggle. 

“That wasn’t the same. That tub could have fit four or five people. This, though? Way more intimate,” I explained, raising my hand and running it over his scratchy jaw until I found the back of his neck and teased the hairs there. 

“We will definitely have to do this more often, then.” 

I nodded against his chest before tilting my head up to look at him. “Thank you,” I said. 

His eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “For what?” 

There was so much I was thanking him for. For loving me, for being so patient with me when I had a tendency to be just a little bit irrational, but most of all, for being so great about everything we had been through today. My response to him was simple, hopefully summing up everything I was feeling in that moment. “For being you.” 

His smile widened, reaching the corners of his blue eyes, as he leaned forward and captured my lips in a kiss that told me he understood implicitly. “Right back at ya, baby,” he whispered against my lips, pulling back slightly. 

Exhaling a happy sigh of contentment, I lowered my head again and relaxed back into his arms, the raw emotions of the moment magnifying his embrace exponentially. It wasn’t missed at all when his right hand flattened over my stomach, because now I wasn’t just afraid of
the possibility
being too soon. Now my biggest fear was how disappointed he might be if I
wasn’t
.

Chapter 26. Distractions Never Work

O
ver the next few days, we had acquired several new additions to the barn, and Jillian had to take some time off to go to Lubbock because her father had fallen ill. With her gone, I was picking up her lessons, which left little time for anything recreational. 

With everything going on, Jensen and I offered to cancel our trip, citing that it wasn’t really that necessary, but Dad assured me that things would be fine. Tom even offered to teach the weekend lessons until we returned. So we went, leaving Bones in the care of my father who was more than happy to take him in for a few days.