Rad stepped into Jacinda’s path. “Put it up top, darlin’. Let the men do the heavy liftin’.”

Jacinda gave him the look that comment deserved. “As I recall, I kicked your ass, so I think I can handle a box of pots and pans.”

He bent his knees, lowering the box he was already carrying. “Don’t be cocky. You caught me off guard once, and I won in the end, last I checked. Up top.”

“You underestimated me, you mean.” She sidestepped him and went around the U-Haul to carry her box, leaving him to follow behind her, not so quietly muttering about willful women as they headed into Apollo’s house.

And hers, now.

Once he’d proposed, after they’d had a careful kind of gentle sex that was their first since he’d been hurt, they’d lain in bed and begun to plan for the future. First, they decided that she’d finish what she’d already sort of started and just move in. She’d more or less lived at his house since he’d been hurt; they just hadn’t made it official, and until he’d proposed, they hadn’t talked about making it official. She’d been staying to take care of him and wondering, as he healed and especially after she got her period, when that would stop.

And then he’d proposed. In a way that would never make a story to tell their grandchildren.

The very next day, while she was out running work errands, she’d gone to her apartment and collected Zoë and all her things. In all the four years of her cat’s life, she’d never been so neglectful, and it had been driving her crazy. Zoë could hardly have been described as excited about the new development; she’d hidden under the sectional in Apollo’s living room for a week, only venturing out under cover of night to eat or use her box.

She was hiding under there again today, a month later, as the Bulls helped move Jacinda’s belongings from the apartment she’d had for seven years. There’d been times during this moving day that she’d felt a little jealous of Zoë, huddled safely in the dark while all the familiar features of their quiet life were tumbled like balls in a raffle drum.

But it was good. Exciting. She’d spent a very long time crafting a life over which she had—or could pretend she had—complete control: a tidy apartment in a gated complex, a cat for her most steady companion, and a private life of routine and familiarity, spending more time with her parents than any other people, even at the age of thirty. No romantic entanglements, only the anonymous safety of one-night stands. Her very career was intended to keep her in control, devoted to ferreting out secrets and knowing the facts. Armed and dangerous and always on the lookout.

Then a ridiculously handsome man had sent her a drink in a crowded bar. Just about the most made-for-the-Lifetime-channel beginning to a love story ever.

The balls of her life had been tumbling ever since. It was terrifying. And exhilarating.

She walked into the kitchen and set her box of cookware on a growing stack of boxes. A lot of shit had accumulated in seven years of her life in that apartment. Two weeks of going ruthlessly through every closet, every drawer, every shelf, two trips to Goodwill, and a full dumpster later, they’d still had to rent a U-Haul to get her moved out in one trip.

And a storage locker, while they negotiated whose duplicate of what would stay in use. The biggest fight of their relationship had been over that boring behemoth of a sectional sofa. She loved her living room furniture, especially her creamy sofa with the loose-pillow back and her lavender, vanilla, and mint throw pillows.

She’d lost that fight and would have to learn to live with the sectional. They’d agreed to buy new for the dining room; hers was too small for the space, and he didn’t care about his cut-rate set. They’d agreed that her kitchen stuff was better than his, overall, but they meant to combine as much as possible. They were still negotiating the bedroom, but she meant to win that shit.

Jacinda had been routinely stunned over the past few weeks by how much time and energy could be expended arguing about furniture.

And then there was the question of the office. He had a tiny third bedroom that he’d left empty and was now her office, but someday, they’d need another room. That was the plan, at least. They’d already sort of gotten started on that plan, just by virtue of getting lackadaisical about preventing it from happening.

Those couple of weeks of thinking she might be pregnant had revealed an entire new facet of her personality: baby lust. She’d always liked kids, and when she’d been young and naïve, she’d imagined herself marrying Blake in a lavish, lacy wedding and being a suburban mom, but she’d been too young then for it to be anything much more than a youthful fantasy. Throughout her twenties, she’d been sure she’d never love any man ever again, so she’d thought that fantasy of motherhood had dried up and blown away, following the same path as her brief college plan to be a journalist, her eighth-grade desire to be a marine biologist, and her second-grade plan to be President of the United States.

Then, for a dozen days or so, the possibility that she was pregnant had existed. In love with Apollo, caring for him during those first frightening days after he was burned, when his skin had been the ruddy, cracked terrain of a hellscape, and he’d been kept unconscious as much as possible so he wouldn’t go crazy with the pain, she’d sat in that room and imagined their child taking root inside her. The thought had made her calm.

Now, she thought about babies much more than she had since high school. What had been a dead fantasy had blossomed back to life.

Apollo wanted it, too. They both agreed that it would be smart to do things the right way—move in together, get married, then get pregnant—but they weren’t trying all that hard not to do things out of order, either.

So they really needed to figure out what they were going to do about their lack of space in this little three-bedroom house.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Jacinda dropped onto the sofa—okay, yeah, fine, it was more comfortable than hers—with a groan. “Oh my God, I’m exhausted. I had no idea I was such a hoarder.”

Laughing, Apollo sat beside her. “Baby, you had a big frame full of nothing but wine corks glued together hanging on your kitchen wall. How could you not know you’re a hoarder?”

“That’s a collection.”

“Of wine corks.”

“They were good bottles of wine. I didn’t keep the bottles.”

He cocked his brow at her.

“Only a few. I like them for candles on the table.”

“Hoarder.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, and he dove in and kissed her, drawing her tongue into his mouth. Moaning, she opened her mouth and coiled her arms around his head, leaning back, pulling him onto her.

Sectional sofas were really excellent for spontaneous sex, actually.

He pulled back before she could get his shirt off. “Hey, hold on. We’ve still got unpacking to do.”

It was late; they’d been working since right after breakfast. Almost the whole club had crowded into their house after the unloading was done to eat pizza and drink beer, and they’d finally gotten the place to themselves again. Every room was a labyrinth of boxes. All Jacinda wanted to do now was fuck her man and go to sleep. Unpacking could happen tomorrow.

“I can’t deal with the thought of opening even one more box tonight,” she murmured and tucked her face against his neck, swirling her tongue against the pulse of his artery, taking in the intoxicating scent and taste of his body.

His soft groan shook against her mouth, but then he pulled away. “Just one more.” He reached under the sofa and pulled out a small black velvet cube. He grinned. “Just this one.”

“You dog!” Jacinda snatched the box from his hands and opened it. In a bed of black satin sat not the diamond solitaire she’d automatically expected, but a star sapphire framed on both sides with small diamonds in a crescent. Like no other ring she’d ever seen.

They’d decided to play things cool and hadn’t even told anyone they were engaged. His parents were planning to spend most of the winter in California with his sister. Her parents were...complicated, still. Her father had accepted him—after the club had paid off the mortgage on Michelle Thompson’s house and contributed a substantial, anonymous donation to the Family of Jacob Prescott Fund, he’d been downright friendly—but her mother was a different story. Chilly tolerance was the most they’d gotten from her. She wouldn’t rejoice over a marriage between her only daughter and an outlaw.

Their plan was to fly to Vegas after the holidays and just do it, then spend the weekend at the tables, and just be married without making a fuss about it. She had an appointment next week to get her first tattoo, one he called ‘his flame,’ but she hadn’t expected an engagement ring at all.

“It’s beautiful, but we weren’t going to tell anyone,” she said now, moving the box so that the star in the stone shimmered in its blue field. “I didn’t expect a ring.”

“When I was over at Joanna’s shop last week, checking in on her, there’s that antique jewelry place next door. This was in the window, and I don’t know. I saw it and wanted you to wear it. It felt like it was your ring.”

He took the box from her and lifted the platinum ring from it. Sliding off the sofa, he actually put one knee on the carpet. “Just to make this official, and maybe don’t call me an asshole when you answer this time, but Jacinda Durham, will you marry me?”

The impish urge to call him an asshole again struck her, but she batted it away and let the moment be serious. “Yes, I will.”

“That’s more like it,” he whispered with a grin. Lifting her hand, he slid the ring on her finger. It was a little loose, but not so much that she couldn’t wear it.

It was absolutely breathtaking.

“My mom will notice. We’ll have to tell them.”

He eased up from the floor, over her, pushing her to lie back on the sofa, as she’d wanted earlier. “My mom and Mo’ll notice, too. Good. I don’t want to make a fuss, but I want everybody to know. Your mom doesn’t scare me anymore.”

“Anymore?” Jacinda smirked, setting her hand on his shoulder so she could see the star gleam in the light.

He chuckled and nipped at her bottom lip. “She’s pretty intense. I see where you get it.”

“I’m not intense!”

“Baby,” he murmured, trailing kisses down her throat, “you punched Rad in the face.”

“It was a palm strike.” She shifted beneath him so that he was settled fully on her.

He unzipped her hoodie and pushed her beater and bra up over her breasts. “That’s right.” He sucked one nipple into his mouth as his fingers tweaked the other, and she gasped and lifted her hips, grinding on him. “Yep, just a sweet, mellow little chick”—he flicked his tongue around the hard point of her nipple and pulled the other between his fingers, drawing spasming shocks through her muscles—“with your cat”—sucking again, he pushed his hand down into her sweats and panties—“and your pastel pillows”—he found her clit, grinning against her chest when she whined her pleasure—“and your black belt in Krav Maga.”

Rocking hard with the rhythm of his sucking mouth and rubbing fingers, she moaned, “You scared of me?”

“Not anymore.” He plunged his fingers deep inside her.

“Jesus Christ, shut up and fuck me.” As he pistoned his fingers into her, she snatched at the back of his t-shirt, being careful, even in her burgeoning throes, not to scratch his still-sensitive back.

He rose onto his knees and pulled his shirt off, and there was his chest—gorgeous and firm, as if created on Mt. Olympus. He’d fretted about getting soft during his weeks unable to work out, or to work at all, but she’d barely seen a difference, and a single week back on his routine had even him satisfied again.

She put her hands on him, smoothed her palms over the contours she knew so well, watched the light dance off his dangling pendant, but he pushed her hands away and grabbed her waistband. She lifted her hips, and he yanked her pants away, then pushed his own down, releasing his cock with a bounce.

“I don’t want to get up for a condom,” he said, lying on her again, pushing his cock between her legs, over her clit, wetting himself with her juices. “I just want to feel myself inside you.”

“Let’s stop pretending we’re even trying not to try. Fuck the condoms. Let’s get pregnant.”

“Works for me.” He grabbed her leg and pushed her knee up high. When he sank into her, Jacinda arched into the vast feeling of hot pleasure. She hooked her other leg around his and gripped his shoulders. Under her fingers she felt the uneven skin of his worst scar, earned protecting her and her father.

“Don’t close your eyes, J,” Apollo said, his voice beating the tempo of his driving hips. “Look at me. Look.”

She opened her eyes and latched onto his. Crystal blue. Starlit. He pushed his hand between them and found her clit again, bringing her the encompassing, brilliant aching pleasure of his cock and the sharp, explosive ecstasy of his fingers all at once. As her orgasm neared, rolling downhill at her, and she could only writhe beneath his heavy body and try to meet it, her eyes tried to draw closed, but she forced the urge away and clung to him, staring into his eyes until her orgasming mind and body was lost in them.

Her release came with such force that she lifted off the sofa, clinging at every point to his strong frame, and he held on and drove himself steadily, deeply into her, following the churning path of her climax, prolonging it, expanding it, and all the while he held her trapped in his gaze, even as sweat dripped from his forehead to hers, even as the sectional rocked on the carpet and began to separate.

“Oh God, oh God!” she cried and held on, tucking her face to his chest, no longer able to withstand the heat of his eyes as her body began to climb toward climax once again. Apollo grabbed her and turned, rolling onto his back, stretching his legs along the side of the sectional. He set her astraddle his lap and moved her with his hands as he latched onto her breast.

As good as that felt, it would bring her to climax again too quickly. She pushed his face away and shoved him against the back of the sofa, taking charge, and rode him with everything she had. He tried to hold off his own finish until she had another, but she didn’t want that. She wanted to control him, bring him off at her will, not his, and when his face went deep red and tendons stood out at the sides of his throat, victory charged through her with such force that she almost came before him after all.

“FUCK!” he shouted and went taut from clenched brow to curled toes. She rode him through every twitching throe and came again herself just as he finally began to relax.

Exhausted, she fell onto him, sagging against his chest. His arms flopped around her, and they hung onto each other.

Suddenly, Apollo started to laugh. She was surprised he had the breath to do it.

“What?”

“Madame Zoë is displeased with our shenanigans.”

She flopped her head to the other side and saw her cat, sitting on the arm of the sofa, peering at them with regal contempt.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

“Well, it’s a lovely ring.” Jacinda’s mother let go of her hand. “His taste in jewelry is as good as his taste in women. Do you have a date in mind?”

Jacinda pushed her take-out jambalaya away and leaned back on the sofa in the agency office. She wanted as much distance from her mother as possible when she answered this question. “January. We’re going to Vegas right after the holidays.”

Her mother dropped her spoon back in her carton of Cajun stew. “What?”

“We don’t want a big deal. I mean, can you see me in a frilly white dress? Honestly?”

“You used to wear dresses all the time.” Jacinda could see her realize that she’d stepped in dark water, and back up. “Anyway, wedding dresses don’t have to be frilly. There’s the Vera Wang style—you’d look fantastic in something sleek like that.”

“Vera Wang is a bit out of our league, don’t you think?” Apollo thought her parents were wealthy, but they weren’t. Just middle class. Maybe upper middle.

“I said Vera Wang style. Jaci, you’re my only child. My only daughter. If you’re determined to do this, please at least give me the chance to give you a wedding.”

“Mom, I don’t want a big deal. It’s not my thing. I don’t have many friends, anyway, and you’re not happy about me being with Apollo—”

“I’ve accepted it.”

“Barely. We don’t go to church. I don’t have that many friends to invite. I’m marrying a biker who would wear a suit if I asked him and rock the shit out of it, but he wouldn’t be happy in it, and none of his brothers would dress up that much. There’s literally no reason for us to have a big wedding.”

“I just told you the reason. I only get one chance at this. I’ve been imagining your wedding since you walked around the house in my veil when you were little.”

“Mom. Think about it. Do you really think you’ll get the wedding you’ve been picturing all those years?”

Now her mother sat back, sighing heavily and chewing her lip. “Why him, Jaci?”

Jacinda leaned forward. She reached across the span of the sofa and set her hand on her mother’s knee. She was in the office all day preparing for a deposition, with no client appointments or meetings away, so she wore a pair of brown worsted wool slacks and a creamy angora sweater, with brown and cream spectator pumps. What her mother considered dressing casually for work.

“I’m never going to have a better answer for you than the one I give every time you ask. Because he’s the one who let me trust again. I love him for a thousand reasons, but at the heart, it’s that.”

They sat there while her mother chewed on her lip and stared at Jacinda’s hand and its star sapphire ring. Finally, she laid her hand over Jacinda’s.

“Okay. I’ll still destroy him if he hurts you.”

“Fair enough.”

Jacinda lifted her hand, but her mother held it fast. “How about a party? After you get back? Can I throw you a party?”

She really didn’t want to give up anything about the wedding to her mother, who could only manage stiff civility with the man she meant to marry. “Bikers, Mom.” When her mother’s sigh was so despondent Jacinda thought she might be near tears, she threw her a bone. “I tell you what. You can throw the world’s most obnoxious baby shower when we have a baby, okay? Games, party favors, the whole embarrassing show. Whatever you want. How’s that?” She’d been forthright about their plans to have a baby soon. Another sigh-worthy discussion with her mother.

For that, she got a smile. “You do realize that I’m going to make you pay for stealing my wedding fantasy away, right? I will plan the most extravagant baby shower I can conjure.”

“Do your worst, Mom. I can take it.”

Her mother held out her arms, and Jacinda scooted close and let herself be bound up in that intense brand of love.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Jacinda eased her hands up Apollo’s body, starting with his feet, rolling her knuckles over his arches, pulling from him the sensual, stuttering moan she loved. He hadn’t been burned there, but he always relaxed, no matter how tense with pain or stress or both, when she massaged his feet, so she’d picked up the habit of starting there. When his pain had been acute and constant, and then when the itch had been as great as the pain, the only way she could rub the medicated lotion on his healing skin had been to give him that calming pleasure first.

The second week had been the hardest, when the antibiotic ointment, and the medicated lotion, had hurt him badly, and she’d knelt beside him for an hour or more, working it in as lightly as she could while his silent body tensed and twitched. The third week, when his burned skin had sloughed off in big sheets and strips—twice—had been the grossest. But she’d done it, gladly, every night.

After more than two months, he was healed, and she no longer used prescription lotion, but his new skin remained tender and delicate. Josh wanted him to keep it diligently moisturized for the next few months. So every night, when they turned in, he stretched out naked on his belly and she started at his feet and worked her way all the way up to his neck.

It was her favorite time of the day. Her beautiful, brave man, being made well under her hands.

Now that the lotion was only Eucerin, she could indulge fully in the electrifying sensation of his skin under her hands. She filled her palms again, rubbed the lotion between them to warm it—but not too much; he enjoyed the cool—and smoothed them up and down his calves. All the hair on the backs of his legs had burned away, and not all of it had come back yet. He’d joked about just giving up and joining her for a wax someday, but she hoped he’d be patient; the light scratch of his hairy legs on her smooth body was a feeling she’d miss.

He’d gotten through his ordeal without many scars. It seemed like the skin might always be a slightly different color than the rest of him, and even darker in some places, but other than that, he had only three true burn scars: smallish ones on his right calf and right butt cheek, each about four inches long and two inches wide, and a large one on his right shoulder. That one had taken weeks longer than the rest to heal, and the scar was bad—about seven inches wide and ten inches long, covering his whole shoulder blade and most of that quadrant in skin that was smooth and rough in striations, like a candle melting over time.

When she got to that spot, he went tense, as usual, and then relaxed, as usual. Expecting that touch to hurt had become a habit. She bent down and pressed her lips to his shoulder blade.

And then she was done. Unready to stop touching him, she trailed fingertips like feathers over his now supple skin, and he sighed luxuriously.

“How was your day?” he asked. They’d spent the evening planning their trip to Vegas; they’d never gotten around to the trivial daily curiosities.

“Uneventful. I spent the day digging around for financials on a client’s spouse.”

“Cheater?”

“He thinks so. That’s what we’re trying to find out. But I need to call Ryan. The password decryption scripts he wrote me aren’t working.”

Apollo chortled and turned his head to her side. “They don’t work everywhere or forever, kiddie. Systems evolve.”

“I know that. And don’t call me kiddie.”

“That’s what you are, just a script kiddie, riding on other people’s work. I could teach you to write your own.”

She poked his side. “Hey. I can code.”

“Not well enough to break a password, though.”

“I don’t usually have to. Most people use their fucking birthdays.”

“Don’t you want to learn?”

Badly. Ryan had always refused to teach her, insisting that she’d never call him if she didn’t need his techie knowledge. That wasn’t true, but one thing that had, truly, taken a hit since her involvement with Apollo was the time she spent with her one true human friend. Ryan had been her plus-one for a decade. Her drinking buddy. Her movie companion. Her confidant.

She’d only called him four times since Apollo had been burned, and she’d only seen him once. For work.

“You know what? It’s okay. I’ll bring Ryan doughnuts tomorrow and ask him to help me out.”

Apollo lifted his head and squinted at her. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” She scooted down and laid her head on the pillow, facing him. “Speaking of tomorrow, should I have a present for your father?” They were going to the farm for supper and birthday pie.

He grinned. “You are all the present you need.”

“What? They’ve already met me!”

“But they don’t know about this.” He rolled to his side, picked up her left hand, and kissed her ring. Then he rose onto his elbow and kissed the small flaming heart at the top of her right arm. “They don’t even know we moved in together. Nothing you could buy would make them happier.” He grew serious. “I think I’m going to tell them about the Bulls.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The secret’s really been leaning on me lately. Since everything that happened. I need to come clean. I’m kinda hoping Dad will like his book, and they’ll both be so happy about us, it won’t really register.”

Jacinda snuggled in close, pressing her nude body to his. “Even without knowing about the Bulls, they know you better than anyone. They’re the ones who made you so perfect. They’ll see the truth. They’ll understand.”

He brushed his stubbly beard over her temple. “You barely know them. How can you know?”

“Because I know you.”