Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,52

froze. Hell, so did I.

Maybe Atwood's advice made me so uncomfortable because she was right. It was a thought I didn't want to dwell on too much.

Jude gently turned our positions, so my back was against the column, his arm caging me in, an effective barrier from any prying eyes on the quiet, tree-lined street.

"Not yet," he admitted. His hand snuck under the back of my shirt, and he traced the bumps on my spine. "Soon."

I opened my mouth, this time not even sure what I was going to say, and he leaned in, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth.

“H-how was work?” I asked, tilting my mouth away.

He kissed down my neck. “I hardly want to talk about work when I could be doing this.”

My fingers curled into the material of his shirt, and even as I recognized what he was doing—serving up a delicious distraction—I wasn't able to find the strength to resist it.

Not conventional.

Maybe not even wise.

But I tilted my head and yanked him closer, earning me a grunt of satisfaction when my tongue slid wetly against his. One of his palms spread wide over my stomach, and I felt a warm glow somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.

Wise, conventional, whatever word someone else might suggest ... I decided they were all overrated, and I lost myself in his kiss.

Chapter Sixteen

Jude

By the time we were back at my house and Lia had curled up in her favorite corner of my couch, I'd sort of stopped hearing that little whomp-whomp-whomp sound in my head.

Sort of.

I scrolled the screen of my phone.

"Did you know the average heartbeat is up to a hundred and sixty beats per minute?"

Lia glanced at me, a bemused smile on her face. "I did not."

"His was fast."

Whomp, whomp, whomp. Like a horse galloping on hard dirt.

Now the smile spread on her face. "His? I thought it was my job to get a feel for the sex."

"Awfully sexist of you." I lifted my phone screen and tried to pretend I wasn't a little embarrassed that I'd been the first to admit which gender I thought the baby was. "Sir Google says that boy heartbeats average a bit higher, so you can sod off."

She laughed. "There are so many girls in my family, it's just weird to imagine having a boy."

Weird was not the adjective I would've used.

Everything laid out in my head like a road map, all the ways I'd be able to do right by him when my parents hadn't done right by me. And maybe everyone did that to a certain extent when faced with impending parenthood. The mistakes of our own families felt like blinking beacons, bright and obnoxious. And not just obvious but easily avoided.

My parents, from simple, hardworking stock, couldn't imagine anything other than the life they'd both been raised in. My father was a farmer because his father had been a farmer. He dug his hands in the dirt, day in and day out, because it was what McAllister men did.

Until me.

And Lewis.

Though they accepted the life he lived because my brother still worked his fingers to the bone in his pub. He wiped down dirty counters and cleared tables, if need be. He poured drinks and stayed until the middle of the night if required. To them, it wasn't farming the ground for our food, but it was honorable because it was service. But to them, I was nothing more than a show pony who could kick a ball into a very large, very easily found target. My success, in their mind, was rooted in vanity and excess, a failing on their part that I wasn't more content in the life that they'd raised me.

To them, I didn't serve anyone except myself. No matter that the entire world understood the unifying effects of sport, and the passion and joy and camaraderie of cheering on the same team. The entire world except my bloody family, it seemed.

To them, it was frivolous, this thing I loved and had dedicated my life to.

My son—or daughter—would never feel like that.

Whatever passion they were born with, whatever thing lit them up inside, I'd move heaven and hell to help them hone that into a life. I'd never make them feel like less for loving something different than I did. The opposite actually. If they wanted to paint or draw or write or spin pirouettes or design clothes, I'd tear my hands to blood and bone if I could carve out a place in