“I don’t want to be that consolation prize,” I said again.
“No, you’re not. You’re the reason I could never settle for second best. Bailey, I’ve kept your wish in my pocket, and I knew that one day, if I tried hard enough, that I could be the kind of man you deserved. Every time I came home, I was scared you’d be dating someone, that you’d find love with someone else, but still, I couldn’t tell you. Then the barbecue happened. I’d upped my medication after the operation, not the docs, me, and then I drank, and all this hate and bitterness just leached out of me, and you guys took the brunt of it. When I got back to Albany the next day, I just knew I wanted to be done, that the things I needed weren’t in the city, playing hockey. They were here, in Wishing Tree, with family, but most importantly, with you.” He sat back then, as if the long admission had stolen all his reserves, then he spoke more quietly. “I love you, Bailey. Your entire family knows that. Dad and Brooke know that. Jesus, I bet the entire town knows.”
Abruptly my brothers with their offers to talk began to make sense.
“Do you know why I changed my jersey number to twenty-nine?” he asked.
I was thrown by the change in subject. When he’d left town, his number hadn’t been anything special—just what fitted in with the team, but I knew a few years ago he’d changed it. “No, I don’t think I read it anywhere.” And believe me, I’d read everything I could get my hands on when it came to Kai Buchanan.
“It was the twenty-ninth of November when you put the card on the Wishing Tree.”
“It was?”
“That was the day I took your words and put them in my heart, keeping them safe until I could be the right man for you.”
Oh god, tears pricked my eyes, and I moved, lifting Boots from his lap, and extending a hand.
“Come with me,” I said, empowered by the emotion in every word he’d said to me. I led him into the bedroom and shut the door on Boots, then turned to face him.
“Was it right?” he was so uncertain that it was my turn to reassure him.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Do you still… I mean… I don’t know… can I see?”
This was Kai, the only man I’d ever loved, and he would never be cruel to me, and he said he loved me. If I couldn’t trust him, then who could I trust?
“I can show you … if you really want me to do that?”
He groaned low in his throat, and crossed to me in two strides, lifting me and kissing me. He could hold my weight, and I wrapped my legs around him, feeling so small and cared-for as he deepened the kiss and held me tight. I wanted this feeling of being held, of knowing he was going to take care of me.
Was that wrong?
Because it had never felt so right.
Chapter Fifteen
KAI
I couldn’t get enough of kissing Bailey, the taste of him was intoxicating, and I’d just told him everything that was in my heart, and he hadn’t told me to leave. Hell, he hadn’t made me wait out in the snow, so I had to be making some kind of sense with what I was saying.
I broke the kiss, and then let him down gently, although my cock had something to say about that, straining against my jeans and begging for release. This wasn’t about me, this was all for Bailey, for me to show him I loved every part of him, from his beautiful golden curls to his silvery eyes, to the way he laughed.
“I can’t believe I get to see you,” I said, and bent to kiss him again. He ducked out of my way with a soft smile, then leaned past me to pick up the corset. All my blood headed south—the number of times I’d fantasized about Bailey in a corset, the silk caressing his skin, and the way I could see him laid out for me so I could worship every inch of him.
He backed away from me, placing the corset next to a small bedside lamp that was a tumble of crystals and wire, casting prisms of light around the room. Some of it fell on Bailey, and I traced each one with my heated gaze as he closed his eyes. He was trembling, I could see his hands shaking, and I immediately took them in mine.
“You don’t have to,” I whispered against his lips.
He smiled into the kiss. “I want to, just for you. I want to show you.”
I stepped back, and reached down to palm my erection, shifting it a little because the jeans might’ve been worn, but they were snug around my skater’s ass. His gaze dipped to my hand, and I waited for him to back off and tell me this wasn’t happening, but instead his tongue poked out to wet his lips, and I couldn’t help the soft groan that left me.
No longer trembling, he slipped the buttons of his shirt and placed it on the back of a chair, then did the same with his T-shirt, and I got my first real look at the man he’d become. There was a light covering of hair on his chest, his nipples hard in the cool air of the room, and I stared so intently that I was going to go cross-eyed with effort.
“I’m sure I’m not big like you,” he murmured, skimming his hands from chest to waist, and then unzipping his jeans and easing them down, toeing off his socks and standing in front of me, the outline of his erection obvious in silky red underwear. I picked up the jeans for him, and the socks, and placed them on the chair, and we exchanged secret smiles, and I couldn’t help tracing the boxers.
“Do you wear silk all the time?”
He dipped his head and flushed scarlet, then looked up at me with fierce determination. “It grounds me, it makes me feel… beautiful, I guess.”
I didn’t know what he thought I had in my pants, but when he eased the boxers off to expose his erection in full there was no way he was smaller than me. He was perfect, and I desperately wanted to go to my knees and taste him, but this moment was for him.
At last, he was fully naked. He blushed, and it spread from his face down to his chest, and I noticed he was trembling again.
“You’re beautiful,” I said. “You’re everything.”
He dipped his head and then sent me a shy smile before reaching for the corset. It was two pieces of material, with hooks at the front, and joined by intricate lacing at the back. He undid the hooks, then slipped it on, hooking it one by one, the lace at the top of the corset just under his nipples. His expression was one of focus and determination, and only when he’d hooked up all eleven hooks, I counted them, did he glance up at me. The corset was loose, and I guess next was tightening the laces, and I wanted to ask if he needed help, but he turned away from me, and I watched with rapt attention as he pulled each lace and the corset tightened. My gaze rested on the globes of his ass, high and tight, and when he flexed his muscles, I nearly wept at the beauty right there for me to taste. I wanted to kiss every inch of him, make him tremble with need and fall apart at my touch.
If I didn’t come undone first.
The final lace tightened, and he tied a double bow, the ends of the ties resting on the cheeks of his ass, and then he turned to face me, and I was overcome with so much emotion I didn’t know what to do.
He was a different man, not shy, not trembling, his chin tilted as if he dared me to disapprove. This was my strong Bailey, the man who could take on the world with his beauty and love and be the best man of all of us. He reached up and released his hair from the tie, and the curls fell around his face, and finally, he opened the top drawer of his vanity and swiped gloss onto his lips.