EPILOGUE
THE FOLLOWING JANUARY
“Was it everything you imagined it would be, love?” Jace asks me when we stumble into our hotel room.
“You mean all the ass plugs and spreader bars and chains?”
“Oh, my,” he drawls teasingly. He shuts the door behind us with the toe of his boot, then turns to look at me with a positively wicked look that ignites me, body and soul. Pinning me up against the door, he frames my face with one hand, fanning his fingertips softly over my skin. I close my eyes and arch my back. I’m grateful that, for the first time since we touched down at Heathrow, we’re able to have a moment. Peace. Silence. “So, back to my question…”
When I yawn loudly, he reaches behind me with his free hand and gives my ass a slap that echoes through our luxury hotel suite. So much for peace. Or quiet. My eyes fly open, and I meet his amused steely blue stare. “It was interesting.”
“Interesting, hmm?” Caressing his hand from my cheek, he moves it over the crook of my neck and over the tiny tattoo on my shoulder. He nudges down the zipper running along my spine before his fingers finally stop to rest with his other hand—at the curve of my ass. “One does not simply call the IFD festivities interesting, Williams. Or yawn about it.”
“You didn’t let me sleep before our flight,” I point out hotly, then sink my teeth into my bottom lip to suppress the moan that comes along with the way his hands spread over my skin as he pushes the back of my dress open. “You were all, ‘Come on, love, I’ve got to taste you one more time before we leave because I’m not sure how soon I’ll get to do it again.’ And then, even after you promised me sleep, you—”
He cuts me off with a scalding kiss, claiming me harshly as his fingertips slip beneath the lace of my panties to plump my ass cheeks. He had kissed me like this before we left for the airport last night, too, promising me that he wanted more of me as soon as it was possible. The moment we landed, though, he immediately immersed himself in promoting EXtreme for the IFD event. This is my first time in London. Although it’s only 9 pm and I’m anxious to see everything the—his city—has to offer, I’m jet-lagged. My only thought on the elevator car as we came upstairs was that the only thing I desired was our bed.
But of course, that was before Jace kissed me stupid and sent heat racing straight to my core.
By the time he draws away from me to touch his forehead to mine, my wants have completely shifted. The idea of sleep a thing in the past, I race my hand down the front of his button-up shirt—the first I’ve ever seen on Mr. EXtreme other than at my mother’s wedding last summer—popping a few of them in the process.
“Oh, love,” he rasps. “You know what it does to me when you’re rough.”
“Good. First roughness,” I say between kisses as we make our way over to the bed, our clothes flying in all directions in our scramble to get undressed. “Then sleep. Because I really, really need sleep.”
“It’ll be awhile before you get that,” he says apologetically before pulling me to him and on top of the cool sheets.
He wasn’t lying when he promised that I wouldn’t find time to sleep for a good long while. Still, after we’re done and tangled up with each other, I still don’t close my eyes. I stare up at the ceiling, listening to his shallow breathing intermingling with the sound of mine.
It’s a sound I’ve yet to get tired of, even after living together since August.
“You’re fucking incredible, Lucinda Jane Williams,” he says, and I cover my face with my hands and shake my head. “I’m not kidding, love, I swear you just broke my cock with that fancy little—”
I roll over on my stomach, lowering my lips to his to stop him from using his words to bring on the waves of desire again. His tongue slips past my lips, hungry and unapologetic. I can taste myself on him, mixed in with the flavor of his gum, and heat swells through me. My head spinning, I ease away from him and close my eyes.
“Didn’t have quite the effect you hoped it would, did it?” he teases, and I shake my head.
“We’re not doing this again, Exley.”
“Yes, well, there’s always tomorrow.”
We sink into silence again, and I’m just about to doze off when I feel his lips on my shoulder. Then my shoulder blade. I draw in a sigh and curl my toes. “What happened to tomorrow?”
“Bringing you to that convention today made me think, Lucy.” He sits back on his side of the bed and gazes down at me, his eyes moving appreciatively over my naked body before they return to my face. “I think it’s time we take our relationship to the next level. Something different, you know.”
Popping one hazel eye open, I give him a wary look. “Exley, if you’re asking me if you can put me in a cage and gag me, it’s a hard no.”
“My beautiful, smart-mouthed, Lucy,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He slaps my ass again, causing me to open the other eye. I flip back over on my back and give him a dark glare as he continues, “The last several months with you have been the best of my life. Considering the best before I fell in love with you were spent here—in London—I figured this was fitting.”
Hoisting myself up slightly to rest on my elbows, I crane my neck to see what he’s doing as he reaches over to the nightstand. I half expect him to turn around with some new design he wants to try on me, but then he places something small and cold on my belly.
I stare at the stainless steel band for a long time, my eyes memorizing the smooth surface, and then I look up at Jace. He reaches down, brushing strands of black hair out of my face. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice thick with the same emotion that’s coursing through me as I return my focus to the ring. “When we go back to Boston, I’ll take you to Tiffany and you can pick out the most outrageous diamond you can find, but I wanted to make it special. To make it real. I wanted—”
“No.” I sit upright, the tiny metal ring—Jace’s creation—clutched in one hand as my other grips his shoulder tightly for support. I don’t realize I’m crying until he strokes his thumb over my cheek and then presses it to his lips. He gives me a shaky smile.
“I don’t want to take no for an answer, love. I want you to marry me. I want babies with you and orthodox and attachments. I want—”
“No. I meant no to the going to Tiffany for an outrageous diamond,” I whisper, shaking my head. I had one of those once—a three carat monstrosity—and it never made me feel an ounce of the happiness and pride I’m experiencing right now. In this moment. With Jace, the man I stupidly once wrote off. “This is … perfect. And yes. Yes, I absolutely will marry you.”
“I was thinking we could do it in the spring. Here in London, maybe, or somewhere neither of us have ever been. Then we can…”
I see his lips moving, and it's honestly quite lovely watching them move, but my brain goes hazy as I examine the ring. My engagement ring. When I fix my gaze on Jace, he’s paused himself and is staring back at me with one eyebrow raised.
“Are you falling asleep on me again?” he drawls.
“Never.” I could have jet-lag for days, and I wouldn’t fall asleep after something like this. I hold the ring close to his face, running my fingertip along the engraving inside. “I know the initials are ours—LJW and JCE—but the date is…”
“When we met. May 24, 2001—three days after your twelfth birthday in stuffy ass Collins’s class. You were an arse that day because I told some girls in the cafeteria that I hated classwork.”
“You remember that?” I murmur, and he moves closer to me.
“I remember everything about you, love. The way you smell.” He skims his nose along my collarbone, inhaling deeply, sending a shiver down my spine. “The way you taste. And even when you piss me off.” His lips twitch at the look I shoot his way. “But don’t ever think there’s anything about you that I don’t notice. That I don’t love.”
My heart pounding wildly against my chest, I look at the metal in my palm again until he finally closes his hand around mine. When he guides the ring onto my finger, my breath catches, and I close my eyes. “Say something.”
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you.”
“Good.” He pulls me to him, and his hands are in my hair and on my face. “I love you too. Something else I’ll always remember to do when it comes to you, Lucy.”
-The End-