Page 96 of The Score

Chapter 31

Pen

I wake up with Bear spooning me. Keeping my movements small, I check the ancient clock on my bedside table. It's the same one I've been using since I was a teen, now living oh so casually with me in my husband's bedroom. The familiar, impossible-to-miss sound will go off in a few minutes. To make the most of the little time I have left in bed, I snuggle back into the temporary haven of my best friend's arms, and close my eyes.

We have another busy day ahead. Bear has amped up his pre-season training since the gala ten days ago, but that isn't what will change the home's current schedule. Minicamp is here. For the next few days, Bear and the team will join the rookies in acclimatation, drills, and team-building events. It's an important step in preparing for the new season and, since my parents are still here, Evie arranged for a small private viewing.

Later in the day, I will drop my parents off at home, get ready, and then I'll meet everyone else at the club for a casual get together. Because that's how we roll these days. We do the same things we used to do before getting married, even if these days it feels like more, somehow.

I burrow back into the protection of Leon's arms. Damn. Everything we're doing fits with how Normal Couples go about their lives.

Bear makes a soft, deep noise behind me. It sends shivers down my spine. If we hadn't taken that photobooth picturefor fun, I wouldn't be feeling this way. But he dipped me back. He threw me off balance while holding me in place at the same time. He gazed at me like he might kiss me again, echoing our wedding kiss but, this time, like he was about to send everything to hell. Now the smallest moments tickle my nerve endings, and shoot signals up my brain I shouldn't entertain. All because of that picture and how he held my thigh and me and…

That's a lie. This feeling has been building up since the wedding and that kiss. Not to say anything of how glorious it is to wake up in his arms, having him call me his wife like he means it, then that clinch moment I can't seem to get over. Of course it's confusing.

Good thing I'm still half-asleep and extremely comfortable in bed with him. It makes up for any awkward feeling I don't know what to do with. Being in Bear's embrace has always been a top tier experience but, since sharing a bed, mornings like these have become my favorite.

It's the coziness. The warmth radiating from him, through me. In those hazy minutes when I could fall asleep again, my brain conjures up fantasies I can't afford in the light of day. Images of what it might be like to wake up together like this, but taking it further. To move slowly against each other, until all coziness is left behind and we make each other breathless with touches and…

I'm pretty sure Bear is asleep, except the hand on my tummy is gently caressing my skin. Two of his fingers make lazy circles, and it feels amazing. Like those half-awake dreams, where touching each other starts as simply as this, but we end up sweaty and forced to share the shower if we don't want to be late.

Gah, he makes another rumbly noise. The two-finger caress becomes a whole-hand journey over my skin, until it settles on the round of my hip. It's nothing racy, but it wakes me up fully. Days upon weeks of moments like thiswith my best friend, and if we've ever been affectionate with each other, an ocean of want has built drop by drop since he kissed me last.

Something primal has been triggered in me. The kind of drive encoded deep into our DNA, that makes a large portion of this world go round. Now the smallest things push buttons I didn't know I had.

My alarm clock goes off. I whine. One of his arms is trapped under my neck, but the other is free. He reaches above me and taps on the old device until the sound stops.

Bear's hand comes back to me, right to the soft hill of my hip. He sighs, like morning came too soon for him, too. But my body doesn't care. I hear the sound and it registers as if he's taking in the scent of my hair between us.

What kind of sounds would he make if we ever did the kind of things taking over my mind?

"I want to stay right here," I whisper.

The words echo in my mind, but they have changed somewhat.

I want to see what happens next.

And that's the truth.

"When's the last time we slept in, do you think?" he asks.

His voice is raspy from sleep, and his breath plays with the small hairs of my neck. I shiver in his arms.

"Mmh," he utters.

Fuck, I bite back. Or whisper. I'm not sure.

"I— well." Leon moves back.

I pursue him. "Don't go away. This… this is good."

His large hand clings to my hip.

He grabs the soft flesh with hard fingers. "Pen."

"Just a little longer." I snuggle closer to him. "Two minutes, tops."

It's all I'll give myself, to feed my fantasies for when I'm alone and I can do something about it. Or the next time I'm half-awake and thinking of sex.