“Aunt Sylvia is gifted. Why is this pie the best I’ve ever had?” I ask as I feed a spoonful of key lime pie to Smith across the bar. I’m sitting in my stool, after the bar has closed. Jax left after finishing cleaning up for the night, so it’s only the two of us in here. “I’m glad it’s been a hit. I had a feeling everyone would want it.”

Smith gives me a wicked grin. “Well, it’s not the best pie I’ve ever had.”

I shake my head and swat at him. “You’re insane.” Insane, but I love it. We’ve been inseparable, spending as much time together as possible…and as many nights. The things we’ve experimented with—various types of bondage, clamps, spanking, even paddling—have made my toes curl with glee.

Apparently I’m into dirty shit. Who knew? I never would have guessed this about myself.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m into Smith so much that anything we do together feels wicked and fun. I watch him as he checks the taps and removes one. He’s so efficient and confident in his work. I really enjoy observing him, seeing him move with his usual prowess. No matter what Smith does, it’s sexy.

He bends over and pulls out a new tap handle, one that’s distinctly shaped like…

I laugh. “Do you realize how phallic that is?” I ask.

He raises that trademark brow at me. “Why do you think I ordered this beer?”

“Um, for its hoppy flavor? Or its exquisite mouth feel?” I tease as I move around the bar to his side.

“I’ll show you mouth feel.” Smith hauls me up to sitting on the bar, and he cups my ass to tug me close to him. Being in his arms, in his presence, feels so good, so right.

I’ve never had a man wreck me so completely as Smith has. I lean down to capture his mouth in a kiss. God, how I love this man—this hotheaded, crass, surly, protective, beautiful man. The last few months have been heaven, especially since Roger has left me the fuck alone. Thank God.

I caress his lips with mine, just a little tease, and he grips my hips tighter, a silent plea for me to give him more. But I refuse. I dart my tongue out and swipe it along his lower lip, along the seam. He groans, and then he’s spinning me to lie fully on the bar, and he jumps on top of me.

“Smith!” I cry out with a giggle. “Can the bar handle both of us being on here?”

His answering smile is so wicked it makes my pussy pulse in anticipation. “I guess we’ll find out. A little edge play for you, huh, sweetheart?”

I reach up to cup his firm ass, squeezing the globes through his jeans. My God, this man has the perfect body. He rests on one forearm to whip his shirt over his head, and I slide my hands along the lines of his tattoos. I’ve tasted each one intimately.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says as he stares at me in what looks like awe. “I can’t believe you’re mine.”

My cheeks turn a little warm from the compliment. “You make me feel beautiful,” I tell him.

“That’s because you are. And you deserve to feel it every damn day.” I can see the sincerity in his eyes. The heat radiating from him. His cock bobs between us, evident even though his jeans. I lift my legs and wrap them around his waist to get him as close as possible.

“I want to feel you every damn day,” I tell him hotly.

His eyes turn dark, and I can tell he’s thinking something naughty. I feel my body erupt in tingles. God, every time he gets that look, I end up coming like crazy. I swallow and feel my breasts swell, my nipples harden. My pussy throbs with my pulse now.

Smith sits up enough to unbutton my long-sleeved shirt and tug it off me. Then my jeans follow. Both are tossed to the floor without another thought. He slowly looks me over, his hands following his gaze, his rough fingers squeezing and kneading my flesh. “I want to fuck you so badly right now.”

I arch my breasts at him and cup them with my palms, offering them to him. “Then why don’t you?”

He growls, and my bra is almost ripped off and then thrown to the ground. Last are my panties. I’m lying on the cool bar surface, shivering, hungry, needing this man inside me so much I can’t breathe for wanting him.

I’m shaking now. He adjusts my legs until my feet are planted firmly on the bar. I’m exposed to him, naked.

When his tongue hits my clit, I jump. I feel his hot hand press my lower belly to keep me in place. “Don’t you fucking move,” he growls at me. “I want you right here, that sweet pussy open and dripping wet.” His mouth goes back to licking me, and I sigh and shudder from the expert movements of his tongue.

He sucks my labia into his mouth, which makes me cry out. God, that feels ridiculously good. I want to touch him but I do as he commanded and lie still. Smith rewards me when I obey him, makes me feel so good that I want to please him as much as I can.

He laps me and I’m dripping on the table; I can feel it sliding down my crack.

“Good girl,” he purrs.

“Yes,” I moan, as he continues fucking me with his amazing tongue.

“Does getting that wet pussy eaten on my bar make you feel dirty?”

I swallow. My pulse is skittering through my limbs now. My fingers and toes tingle and my breathing is shallow. “So dirty,” I admit.

He kisses my inner thighs and draws a small portion of flesh between his teeth. Bites down.

“Oh, God, Smith. Please…”

“Please what? What do you want, Aubrey? Tell me.”

“P-please…fuck me right now. I need it.”

“You’re so fucking sexy. I’m going to make you come all over my dick.” Smith takes out his cock and slides it in me, raw, and I feel every ridge and line on his perfectly bare dick, and oh God, it makes me start to thrust against it just to get it deeper. I can’t help it.

He pulls it out, pushes it inside me again, this time a little faster. He’s angled the tip so it rubs against my G-spot. “How hard do you want to be fucked?” His voice is so low I can barely hear him.

“As hard as you want to give it to me,” I find myself saying. It’s a challenge, a dare, me offering myself to him completely. Trusting him to give me what I want and need.

He groans. I feel him shift between my legs. “Oh, fuck yes.” Then he begins to pump into me, and I feel that familiar heat build in my belly. My clit is swollen and desperate to be touched. Like a mind reader, he says, “Stroke yourself as I fuck you, baby. I want to watch you pleasure yourself.”

I reach my right hand between my trembling thighs and brush my fingers on my clit. It pulses in my touch. I can’t stop moaning, arching, needing this, wanting to be his dirty girl. The waves ripping through me as he fucks me are impossible to stop. I’m bucking and stroking and squeezing my channel, and my pussy is so wet I can smell myself.

My orgasm starts to near. I pant, and Smith says, “Oh, fuck yes, give me that come. I want it. Come on my dick. Right. Now.”

My whole body is vibrating, moments from shattering apart and flying into pieces. My clit is pulsing beneath my frantic fingers, and he’s now slamming the full length of his cock inside me.

“God oh God oh God—” I arch and then as my orgasm hits me, I scream, scream, unable to bite back the enormity of sensations drowning me. It just keeps coming and coming, and I’m burning alive for Smith.

It seems to take a year for the orgasm to subside. My hands go limp, my legs sliding down the bar surface, and I gasp for air. Smith pulls the handle out of me and bursts, his cock shooting hot ropes of cum onto my lower belly.

“Oh fucking sweet Jesus, that felt so fucking good,” he says in a guttural tone. He moves to stretch out on top of me and takes my mouth in a hot, possessive kiss.

I give it to him, my body languid and sated, the stickiness of our body juices between us, my mind blissfully numb. He wraps his arms around me and kisses me, and I kiss him back, pouring all of my emotions into it. I’m overwhelmed by the love I’m feeling for him, my dirty, sweet boy.

After we kiss for a good minute, Smith pulls back.

He bends down to pick up his T-shirt from behind the bar and slides it over me. I love wearing his shirt—it’s like being wrapped in one of his hugs. At the sight of me in his big shirt, he smiles. Cups my cheek. “I fucking love you so much.”

I smile back. “I love you too. I can’t even tell you how much. It just grows bigger every day.”

“I miss feeling you in my bed every night.”

His admission stills me. After the shit storm with Roger was over, I went back to my apartment, though we spend at least three nights a week together. But on the nights I’m not with him, I lie in bed wishing I was. “I do too,” I tell him.

Suddenly, he licks his lips and seems to get an anxious look on his face. He seems lost in thought, his brow creasing, his eyes faraway.

“Is something wrong?” I ask, nervous suddenly.

He shakes his head. “Just…just hold on one second.”

Smith fishes in his pocket. Pulls out a small velvet box.

My heart slams against my ribcage so hard I’m sure it cracks a bone. Oh God, is it…

“I wasn’t going to do this like this.” He cracks the box open, and there’s a large, sparkling diamond sitting there nestled in black velvet. He looks up at me, and I see love shining in his eyes. “I wanted to do a fancy proposal. Really knock you off your feet. But in the end, we don’t need fancy. We just need us, you and me, together. What makes us work is how we satisfy each other’s needs, no matter how simple.”

My throat closes, and I feel a burn in the backs of my eyes. I nod.

“You’ve made me so happy, Aubrey. I know this is fast, but fuck it. I love you. I want to marry you. I need you to be mine, and I need to be yours. Will you marry me?”

I gasp and grab the back of his neck, tugging him to me. “Yes. Of course I will.”

I hear him exhale hard, and then his arms are around me and he’s hugging me so tight it’s like we fuse into one. “Oh, thank fucking God. Thank God.” His hands are stroking my hair and he’s almost overwhelming me with a surge of his love.

I begin to actually cry and I cover his face in kisses. My hands are shaking. He pulls back and puts the ring on my finger, and I swallow, then kiss him again.

My beloved.

My fiancé.

The man who believed in me when I needed someone. Who opened my eyes to pleasures I couldn’t fathom. Who accepts me as I am, frees me, cherishes me, protects me. How could I possibly want anything more than Smith? There’s no way.

I hold my fiancé in my arms, and we sit there, me on the bar in his shirt, him wrapped around me. Our own little bubble of happiness.

* * *

“Michaela?” I say later that morning after Smith and I went to bed in his apartment, had sex, then fell asleep wrapped in each other. I’m whispering into my cell phone in the kitchen. “How do you feel about visiting me in Rock Bridge?” I ask her.

“Hell yeah. It’s not that far of a drive. When can I come?”

“I’m not sure yet.” My heart skips a beat. “I’ll need your help.”

“With what?”

“With planning my wedding.”

Michaela screams so loud into the phone that I’m sure Smith can hear her from the bedroom. “Are you fucking pulling my chain right now? Because if you’re fucking with me, I’m going to beat your ass, you bitch.”

“I’m not!” I squeal and look down at the ring on my finger. “He proposed to me early this morning after the bar closed!” I decline to tell her what our activities were before said proposal—that’s our dirty secret.

“Oh God, I’m so fucking happy for you I could cry. I can’t wait to meet him. I’m coming this weekend, okay? And don’t say no, because I’m, like, already packing a bag as we speak and I’m going to call in dead to work.”

“I love you so much.” I’m laughing and crying again, and I feel so happy I could explode.

“So have you told your parents yet?” Her words are gentle; she knows about the fight that happened. I haven’t spoken to them in months, too upset to return their calls. Surprisingly, she’s left me messages every couple of weeks, nothing big, just saying she wants to talk. I just haven’t been ready to.

“I guess I should,” I say, discomfort tightening my chest.

“They might want to know.” Michaela’s voice is soothing. “But you do what feels right, okay?”

A pair of warm, familiar hands slide across my waist and cup my breasts through the shirt I slipped on before padding down to the kitchen. I lean back against Smith’s chest and look up at him. Michaela, I mouth as I point to the phone. He nods and kisses my forehead.

“Okay, bitch, I should go then,” I say. “I have shit to do and a fiancé to have more sex with.”

“Hell yeah. I support this.”

We blow each other kisses over the phone and hang up.

Smith gets his coffee pot going and turns to me, leaning against his kitchen counter. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just…don’t know how I feel about calling my parents right now, to be honest.”

He looks at me without judgment, but his face is serious. “Call them. I’d give anything in the world to call my dad right now and tell him about you. He’d love you, you know.”

The words pinch my heart with guilt. Fuck. “That was insensitive of me. I’m sorry.”

He gives me a small smile and rubs the back of my neck. “I know you weren’t trying to be. But I think if you talk to them, you’ll feel better. Just something to think about.”

“Will you stay here while I call them?”

“There’s nowhere else on the fucking planet I’d rather be than by your side.”

The warmth in his voice helps me gather my strength. I can do this. I suck in a slow breath, exhale. Turn to rest once again against the solidness of his chest. My fiancé. Soon to be my husband.

The most amazing and complicated man I’ve ever met.

I dial my mom’s number, and she picks up after a couple of rings. “Hello?” I hear the tentativeness in her voice, tinged with hope. It’s been so long since I’ve heard her voice that I feel a bunch of emotions slam into me hard.

My stomach twists in a hard knot, and I steady myself. Smith squeezes my shoulders. “Mom? Hi. It’s me. And I have some news for you.”

And then I start telling her our story, and I’m smiling, because finally it’s not just “I” anymore—it’s “we.” Smith and Aubrey.

Forever.