31
O U R E N D I N G
Fate was four hollow letters without meaning before you.
One Year Later…
DEAN SKIMMED THE CAP OF the red pen across my bare stomach and down the curve of my thigh. Goose bumps followed as he planted kisses over the invisible trail, whispering the words I had just written.
“If you don’t stop, we’re never going to finish, Mr. Editor,” I said, heat building between my legs. With just one touch, he ruined me, deliciously, bending me to his will.
“How can you expect me to control myself when you’re wearing nothing but a lacy bra and that thin strap of material you call underwear?” he said, scratching at the band around my waist, hunger in his eyes. “You’re nothing but beautiful torment. A delectable treat my mouth is watering to taste.”
I giggled as I placed my hand over his. “In case you forgot, I only have one week until this is due to my editor. And he isn’t very patient when it comes to missing deadlines. I have to finish.”
“Well, as your editor, I can make an exception and give you an extension so long as you’re a good girl and do as I say.” He kissed the dip below my hip bone lightly, his lips dangerously close to winning me over. “Now, lift up those hips of yours and let me inspire you.”
“Dean,” I pleaded as his lips hovered over my center, blowing softly. Tauntingly. “Please. I really…” He planted a kiss, slow and torturous, tongue swirling over the lace fabric. “Dean, I want to…” My thoughts scurried with the flick of his tongue.
I gave in, clutching the back of his head as he took us to the edge we always walked, and then we crashed beneath our covers, spent, my laptop glaring at me from the floor.
“At this rate, I’m never going to finish,” I said, feeling somewhat ashamed for not focusing.
“You’re on the last leg, Andy. One more chapter, and that novel will be ready for beta.”
This was how we spent most of our nights inside his loft. After summer started for Charlie, we took Dean’s offer to move in with him. As a trio, we made the three-hour trek across the state, settling down in Knoxville.
His loft was big enough to house us all, with two rooms and an open-floor plan that we spent so many nights dancing in while dinner cooked. Charlie had found a new passion to obsess over—books. He couldn’t get enough, and Dean had plenty to spare. Charlie’s e-reader was packed with novel after novel that he blew through every few days.
My bookworm heart adored him for it, but my bank account begged to differ.
“Do you think Ms. Violet will like it?” I asked, my nerves getting the best of me. Even though my book of poems did extremely well, I was a little hesitant about how my readers would accept my debut contemporary piece titled Lost Girls. It was different. Closer to home. Inspired by true events I was still living.
Dean looked at me over the rim of his glasses, sexy as ever. “You know she will. She’s been waiting for this novel for nearly six years. Now take those delicate fingers of yours and put them to work.”
He leaned over me, his musky scent and welcomed weight overwhelming my senses, and then picked my laptop up from the floor. Once it was on my lap, he kissed my cheek, and then reached for his own on the bedside table.
I stared at the screen, luck and skill evading me. I didn’t want cliché. Didn’t want predictable. Think, Andy. I tried to clear my mind of everything. Of his fingers padding against the keyboard. The warmth from his body brushing against me. Charlie sleeping across the loft, no doubt with a book splayed across his lap.
I wonder what he was reading tonight. Did Josh mean it when he said he’d be here in a week? If—
“Andy.”
I jolted a little. “What?”
Dean brushed his thumb over my chin, gaze devouring mine. His hair was mussed, dark tendrils covering his forehead, begging for my fingers to lace through them. I could never get enough of him. Being this close, able to reach out and touch him whenever I pleased. Even now, a year later, I still got that jittery, fluttery feeling in my chest when he touched me.
“I can hear those gears grinding in your head,” he said, reading me just as easily as he always had. “What’s wrong?”
I blew out a deep sigh, shoulders buckling forward. “I just… I don’t know how to end it,” I admitted, chewing on the corner of my thumbnail.
“We talked about it. I thought you decided.”
I stared at the screen, at the little cursor line blinking as it waited for my direction. “So much of myself was put into finding this ending. You. Us. The weight of how others will interpret it. Wondering if it’s going to meet its full potential or flop…” I paused, brushing my fingers across the keyboard. “I’ve been chasing this ending for so long that I think it outran me.”
He chuckled and moved the laptop from my lap. Wrapping an arm across me, he forced me to turn to him. “Every story has to end so another can begin, Andy. You can’t move forward until you finish this one, once and for all.”
“And then what?” I asked. “What happens after the end?”
He stared at me for a moment, searching my eyes, and then he lifted my hand, placing his lips against my ring finger. “What would you like to happen?” he asked as heat welled behind my skin.
His lips planted feather-soft kisses down my hand and across my pulse point. Shivers of pleasure spread up my arm.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, focusing on his tongue as it glided over my skin. “Us. I mean, for us to be together in the binding way.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “Marriage?”
It was a word we hadn’t brought up yet. A word I’d dreamed about, and then given up on.
“Would you want that?” I asked as my heart thudded to the beat of his name.
He didn’t hesitate. “Every day. For the rest of my life.” His words were solemn with adoration. “You just have to say yes when the question comes, and it will… soon.”
A knee-jerk smile lifted the corners of my mouth as my heart flew somewhere away from me. I had spent the past decade within a black shadow, unable to find a way out, and then he’d kissed me, good and hard. And he hadn’t given up. He was there, patiently waiting.
Always waiting, until our seconds and our minutes finally collided.
“Well, crap, now I have a new problem,” I said as I playfully huffed.
“What?” he asked, stiffening ever so slightly.
I couldn’t hide my smile. “Who do I make my maid of honor—Cami or Eric?”
T H E E N D.