THEY WERE IN the car and had gone a short way when Meghan took off her seat belt and climbed onto her husband’s lap. Knowing they were on the last leg of a journey that started months ago when she left Arizona for her hometown and the wedding of her dreams, and that had taken them to faraway lands on different continents, she was suddenly overwhelmed.
She felt a little like everything was coming full circle. Behind them lay their first meeting. A whirlwind romance and a gut-wrenching breakup followed by the most romantic proposal and weddings ever. Yes, weddings. Plural. Because her wonderful alpha beast had seen to her every need. Even the spiritual ones.
And then the honeymoon of all honeymoons. She was a happy, content bride.
Seeing the model of the compound shook her up a little bit. So many changes since she had last been here. It hit her that a honeymoon like theirs—far away and removed from the daily grind—was in many ways surreal. For her, Villa life was on pause—stuck in a moment of time—and until this second, she thought, just waiting to be set free.
The Great Justice Shuffle, Ben had called it. Very definitely surreal. But while she was on a pause, life went on for everyone else.
She’d been so anxious to get home. To get back in the groove and find a daily rhythm. The idea of hanging out with the girls and laughing, gossiping, sharing stories, drinking coffee, and doing inappropriate Goggle searches—she missed all that.
But so much was different. Heather was now part of the scene and Finn too. Things weren’t the same, not how she remembered, and they were going back to something that didn’t really exist anymore.
“Everything okay?” he asked as she settled.
Meghan burrowed into his neck and feathered her fingers along his strong jaw. “Just making one last memory before Justice explodes all over us.”
The way his chest rumbled and shook as he chuckled made her smile. “You mean like a can of Coke shaken furiously and then cracked open?”
“Something exactly like that.”
Ben called on the intercom. “Sorry for the interruption, Boss. Just wanted to let you know construction is slowing things down near the turn off for Bendover.”
Alex snickered. “Our very efficient driver letting us know we have an extra twenty minutes.” He grunted in that totally sexy way he had and drawled, “You know the first question the old fucker asked was if you were pregnant. Come to think of it, Parker did too.”
She sighed. Ugh. “We’re going to be getting a lot of that, I’m afraid.” Tracing her fingers along her husband’s rugged mouth and chin, she tilted her chin and kissed his jaw. “I wish it would just happen already. Y’know?”
He placed his hand on her tummy. “It’ll happen when it’s supposed to. Look at me.”
Meghan was reluctant to change positions. She rather liked laying on his big chest. It always made her feel small and delicate, but if they were going to get serious, she had no choice.
Shifting, she sat up and leaned against the leather at her back. He kept one arm around her waist and reached for her hand with the other. Kissing her knuckles, he curled his hand into his chest and held her fingers tight.
“It’s been good. Just the two of us. Hasn’t it?”
Aw, she loved him for where she knew his comments were going.
Looking at him with all the love she had shining in her eyes, she assured him in a husky purr, “I will cherish this time forever.”
“We’re already a family, Meghan.”
She removed her hand from his grasp and reached into the bodice of her dress to pull out the chain with two hearts she liked to keep close to her skin.
“Yours,” she murmured, suddenly feeling very shy.
“Mine, indeed,” he answered before putting his hand on her neck and pulling her face in for a romantic kiss. When their lips drew apart, she couldn’t hide the wistful expression.
The man she would adore with her dying breath reacted. “I want a baby too.”
The second she heard the words, her inner narrator laughed and barked in a teasing voice, Be careful what you wish for. Her tummy did that butterfly tumble again, and she stopped to wonder what the hell that was all about.
“Thank you,” she murmured softly.
“For what?”
“For loving me the way you do. For a thousand different things but most of all for being you. I feel so”—she searched for a good word—“safe. It’s weird. That feeling of knowing you’re half of a whole and never doubting you’ll protect me. Always. Thank you.”
He got all kinds of serious and stared deeply into her eyes. “I’ve told you before, nothing matters except your happiness. All of this,” he said with a jerk of his head, “could be gone tomorrow, and I wouldn’t care as long as you were happy. And by my side.”
A minute went by, and he said in all seriousness, “If you want, we can turn the car around right now and go back to the airport.”
Could he be any more wonderful?
Meghan smiled sweetly and made a teasing face. “Can’t do that, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?” her alpha beast grumbled.
“Because Ben says there’s a brisket in the oven at the Villa with your name on it.”
It was just the right touch of levity, and they both laughed.
“Well, okay. I suppose,” he mocked with a long-suffering sigh.
Meghan giggled and patted his rock-hard stomach. “It’s a wonder my awful cooking didn’t make you waste away, Major.”
“Hey now!” he crowed with good-natured humor. “You did okay, baby. Got that tapas thing down to a science.”
She snorted a grim laugh. “Right. Woohoo! Tapas. Stuff bought at the market and artfully arranged on a platter.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But you arrange so well.” He ran a finger down the center of her chest. “Especially naked. I like the naked tapas arranging very much.”
“Well”—she sniffed indignantly on a half giggle—“all that panty-ripping bullshit got old. Just seemed easier to dispense with the underwear before I ran out.”
Alex chuckled. “Is that a complaint? I thought you liked my gorilla hands shredding your panties.”
“Shred away, oh masterful one,” she snickered with a wag of her eyes, “when we’re at home and replacement lingerie is easily procured.”
“Oh,” he challenged. “So shaking your sexy bare ass in my face was just because you were worried about your wardrobe? It had nothing to do with how much you enjoy being bent over the table with your legs spread?”
“Actually,” she said with a deliberately bratty fiddling of his tie and a super sexy pout, “not being bent over, although that is my favorite, as much as it was being slammed down on the wood table with my legs up on your shoulders.”
He roared with laughter. “Then we’d better figure out a way to get a table in our bedroom, my lusty Irish Fuck Goddess, because whatever you want, I’m determined to provide.”
“Maybe we need a playroom like the one your sister is getting.”
“Seriously?” he complained. “How the hell do you even know that?”
“It was all she talked about in Boston. Poor Parker.”
They both had a good laugh.
Alex grew serious. “Do you want a playroom, Meghan?”
“We already have quite a few,” she reminded him. “Let’s see,” she said with devilish delight. “There’s the old truck. Not very roomy but good for a delightfully bumpy ride.”
His expression was priceless.
“And then there’s Vortice Amore. Also—not a room, per se, but we need a hash mark board to track the number of times we’ve made love there.”
The leering sparkle in his eyes made her insides tingle.
“Let’s not forget the tack room. Or the tech cave. Or the pool cabana. Now, that was fun as shit. Who knew being tied arms out and legs spread with a bad man’s talented mouth making me scream could be so fun.”
He grunted at the memory. Somehow, the man always managed to have a length of silk rope at the ready.
“Or our favorite private playtime space.”
“The music studio,” he drawled in a smoky, turned on voice.
“Angie can have her little romper room. We have a whole complex of play zones.”
Her husband definitely looked pleased by her answer, so she went a step further. “I suppose you’ll want to start practicing right away.”
He looked at her with a question on his face.
“With your drums. Practice. Parker said something about Desert Thunder.”
“Oh, right,” he murmured. “Those fucking Chixie Dicks are trying to steal our spotlight.”
“Cool,” she said with a lip bite. “So you’ll have to spend some time in the studio. Getting in shape.”
“My shape is fine,” he protested the way only an affronted alpha could.
“Actually,” she told him with a suggestive smirk, “your shape is more than fine. I was referring to Thunder Cock. Oh, sorry.” She giggled. “I meant Thunder Foot.”
The light bulb finally went on over his thick skull.
“Oh,” he grated out followed by another revelatory, “Oh!”
“I like when you get all sweaty and pumped up. Watching you pound the shit out of the drums is quite the turn on, Major.”
“Does it make you horny?” he asked in a hilarious English accent.
“Extremely,” she assured him gravely.
“Tied or untied?”
Ah. So he did get it.
“Definitely tied.”
“Captive to the Thunder Cock,” he teased in a silky drawl. “Sounds like one of the trashy books you love so much.”
She chuckled and gave him a toothy smile. “Blame Victoria. She started it. Your eyeballs would bleed if you ever got a look at what’s on her Kindle.”
“Fifty shades of mommy porn?”
“Oh Jesus,” she mocked in a pithy and totally snarky way. “She rolled beyond fifty a long time ago. She sent me one of those highlander-and-a-virgin stories as a wedding gift. Holy crap. Talk about a ravishing defilement. Plenty of rope and being tied spread eagle to a bed with a few riding crops and paddles thrown in. Romance authors wrote that crap ages before some tie-wearing billionaire got everyone’s panties soaked.”
“My mom loves that stuff. Yours too. Is that some secret weapon women use on their men I should know about?”
God, he was funny. “Don’t mock what you don’t understand.”
“Maybe you could read some of it to me. Help me understand.”
“Tell you what, big guy. I’ll choose the story, and we’ll meet in the studio. You can practice and then well, you know …” She laughed suggestively. “A bit of tying up and then you do the reading. Out loud. To me.”
“Sounds hot.”
“Thunder Cock like?”
“You have a wicked mouth, wife. And yes, Thunder Cock like very much.”
“Good,” she exclaimed with a cheerful hoot. “It’s a date, Major Marquez.”