URGENT (Book 2 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 31: Bad Girls Fight With Nice Guys

Mac, A Week Later

"I hate you today, Dawsie," I plop down in the leather captain's seat across from him, and accept a glass of champagne from the flight attendant, and glare at him, taking the smallest sip.

Dawes doesn't even look up from phone. "More than any other day?" he murmurs, thumbing steadily.

"Yes. A lot more."

Adam is glaring at my champagne, a look somewhere between resignation and irritation. This is how we do now...I accept drinks when I'm offered one in front of SCIC, so it doesn't seem weird that I'm constantly refusing one, and after I take the barest sip, Adam is obligated to sneakily drink them. He's worried about his liver, but worried more about me poisoning Babycakes.

Adam's narrowed eyes slide from my champagne to me.

He's angry with me. He has been all week, but that doesn't mean that he's not still taking care of me and Babycakes. I smile at him as sweetly and sincerely as I possibly can and his grumpy face melts away as heat comes into his eyes. He takes the glass, tips it in silent salute to me, and finishes it in two heavy swallows. I watch carefully as his throat moves—his Adam's apple bobbing and the powerful cords of muscle on either side undulating.

Oh god, I need him so bad. It's been an entire tortuous week since my fingers have had free reign of the wondrous playground that is Preacher's gorgeous, sinful flesh. A week since he's pressed me into a mattress and looked deep in my eyes and silently assured me he is about to become my everything—my ecstasy, my shelter, my victory, my surrender. A week since he's read me exactly right and sexed me just like I need—either fucked me hard until I thought my heart would burst from the intensity or loved me completely senseless until I thought maybe my soul would simply slip my body and meet his somewhere in the ether.

It never does though. because just when I feel on the edge of coming out of my body, another little soul tugs at me, deep down inside. It's like Babycakes feels me slipping and he doesn't want me to go, and he makes his presence known. Suddenly my womb will feel so...heavy and sensitive, and I'm anchored in my body again, feeling Adam inside me, feeling our baby's growing presence deep in his little nest. It's kind of freaky if you think too much about it—that there are actually three beings involved in our love-making...so I try not to. Think too much about it, I mean. I just know—it feels wonderful, Adam being so close to us, and loving us.

Except he hasn't been that close to us...not lately. I miss him so incredibly much, but...we've had a hard week. The hardest week since the week the condom broke.

I've been staying in Leed's suite. He's very depressed. I think he's decided that he will be a part of his son's life, he just doesn't know how to find his place with Tamara right now. He doesn't want to insert himself between her and Ben, and he's still angry with her for not being honest with him. He hasn't confronted her at all, since I told him the truth. She doesn't know that I told him the truth, so as far as she's concerned, Leed is still thinking he could be the father, not coming to terms with the fact that he is her baby's father.

He puts on a good front, when he has to be around her. He simply told her he hasn't decided how he feels and they agreed to let it ride for a few weeks. The silence when she styles him is deafening, but he's not unkind to her—he's just not there, in that chair, when she has his hands oh him.

Of course all that means, I'm still keeping secrets—now from Tamara. I'm cool with it. Fuck it. Bad girls do what they have to do.

Adam is not so cool. He's irritated—with me. At first, when I told Adam about Tamara's pregnancy, I withheld the knowledge that Leed was the father. If Leed hadn't wanted to know, I would have taken it to my grave. I would have watched my nephew grow up from afar, secure in the knowledge that I would never rock his little world by spilling the secret. Leed's needs come first with me. If he had decided to never know—to release his claim to Ben—I wouldn't have had any qualms about what was true, or right, or moral. I only cared about what was good—for Leed.