I barely have time to take in a shocked, elated breath before Connor reaches me, his blue eyes intense as he sweeps me into his arms and crushes me with a kiss.

I lose myself in him, swaying with him in our passion for each other, clinging to his jacket lapels. He hasn’t said a word, but he’s here. For some reason, he’s braved his family and the media to come to me, and his kiss is long and furious, telling me that I was never as alone as I thought.

My breathing is unsteady as he pulls back enough to lean his forehead against mine, holding me closely and securely.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he says. “I put off reading your note as long as I could. I knew that if I did, there’d be no turning back. Eventually, I broke down. I thought about you every second of every day and I told myself the pain of missing you would go away, but it never diminished.”

“I still can’t believe you’re here.” I’m half crying, half smiling, my body in such chaos that it’s not sure what to do. All I know is that the man I love and long for with every pounding cell is here.

“Yes, I’m here,” he repeats. “I waited out the media’s wrath. Another news cycle always brings another scandal, and we’ve been doing our damage control all the while. I wanted to try and put things right, try and figure out a solution so you could come back to me again.”

Tears run down my face at the love he’s not hiding anymore. “This has got to be unreal.”

“It’s very real.”

“Deep inside I hoped you would realize that you felt something about us…anything.” I hadn’t been paying attention to the Highest Bidder media storm, because it anguished me too much.

He cups my face in his hands. “After I finally read your note, I knew it was time. I knew that I couldn’t control the media, our families, the outside world. But I could come and find you and make a stand.”

Feverishly, he presses a kiss to my forehead, then my nose, then as I rise to my tiptoes, buries his face in my neck. I laugh and grasp at him, showing him that I’m never going to let him go.

“God Connor, I was hoping you’d say all of this.”

“I finally said it. It just took some time. Since the very beginning you had me, and I didn’t want it to be that way. You were inconvenient.”

“So were you. At least at first.”

He strokes my hair, looking down at me and watching me as if he can’t quite believe I exist. “After I got out of the plane, I drove as fast as I could to see you.”

“But not in a Kenyon car.”

“Rental, whatever was going to get me here as fast as I needed to go. I would’ve run all the way here if I’d needed to.” He keeps touching me all over: my hair, my face, my shoulders.

We smile at each other, still holding on, until the slam of a screen door cuts through the air.

I turn around to see Mom, Dad, and Aunt Dee standing on the porch, absolutely stunned. Then I sense someone else standing nearby on the sidewalk.

Robbie.

Did they call him to come back to the house, even after I told him to get out?

Yet another betrayal tightens my veins, and I send them a heartbroken look that makes Aunt Dee and Dad lower their heads. Mom only shakes hers.

But Connor sees them, too, and he slowly gets down to one knee, holding my hand. I bite my lip.

Is he doing what I think he’s doing? In front of my disbelieving family? My god…

He slips his hand into his jacket pocket and brings out a diamond ring that catches the sunlight, sparkling like a beautiful promise.

“You’re the only thing in my life I’ve ever truly cared about,” he says. “I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone. Marry me, Ally. Say you’ll spend the rest of your life with me.”

Without even thinking about it for a second, I reach out to him, offering my hand.

“Yes. You had to know I’d say yes!”

He slides the ring on my finger then draws me down to sit on his knee. He pulls me in for the kiss of a lifetime, all the butterflies I’ve ever felt before flapping in my belly now, all the blue fire I’ve ever seen in his eyes flaring between us.

It seems like a wonderful eternity until we need to come up for air, and I look up to the porch. My family is in shock. Another look around me reveals that that Robbie is gone.

I remember how he mocked me earlier. Did you think you found true love with Connor Kenyon?

Why yes, Robbie, I did, I think. And you know what? True love does exist.

But I don’t need to tell that to anyone. For the first time in my life, I don’t care what anybody else thinks about true love or Connor and me. I only care about my future husband and the life I’m destined to have with him.

As my family files back into the house, I look at Connor.

“I guess that’ll be another battle to fight another time,” I say. “But not today.”

With a heart-stuttering smile—god, I’ve always wanted to see him this happy—he picks me up in his arms and carries me to the car. I feel the ring on my finger, reminding me that this isn’t just a fantasy. It’s as real as real can be.

He sets me in the rental car, and soon, we’re on our way to the small private airport nearby. He shows me to a sleek little jet that looks like it’s the sports car of planes. As he sits in the cockpit pilot’s seat while I strap myself into a passenger seat, I laugh.

“You never told me you fly planes. Is this one of yours?”

“One of many.” He slips a headset on. “There’s a lot I never told you, Ally. But I promise that’s going to be different from now on. And I promise even more than that.”

I hold my hand to my thudding heart, allowing this dream to seep into me. Cinderella, not Goldilocks. I’m finally living in the right fairy tale.

“I promise,” he says, “that you’re going to be by my side when I stand up for you at a press conference tonight and tell everyone that our relationship is real.”

As he says the words I asked him to say on that terrible night when the Highest Bidder information was leaked, I hold back joyful tears again.

“I promise,” he says, “that I’m going to love you more than humanly possible.”

“And I’ll love you the same way, Connor.”

“I also promise to keep the vow I made that night when I said I would take you to my bed, Ally.” His gaze burns hot. “And I’m going to fucking get us there as soon as I can.”

My body fully becomes his. He isn’t paying for me this time—he really does own me without a contract, without anything between us this time.

Just as much as I own him.

* * *

This time when I enter his penthouse, I’m not Goldilocks wandering into a place where she doesn’t quite belong, trying on different things to see what fits just right. I’m Ally and he’s Connor, and I have a ring on my finger that glimmers with the shine of our future.

He brings me to his room, and I stand in front of his massive, white bed. He comes behind me to rest his hands on my shoulders, and I close my eyes and sigh.

“The lady of the house,” he says. “The lady of my heart.”

As he drags his fingers down my back, he stimulates every inch of me. I’m a shimmering flow of liquid need, and I press back into him. He kisses my neck, then my shoulder, bringing down the strap of my dress.

My body recognizes him. It wants him more than anything, and I’ve got him now. I give myself over to the man I won over, even after he won me in an auction.

He takes off my dress, my sandals, my panties and bra, and after I’m exposed to him, he gently lays me on the bed.

I look up at him, trying to fill my lungs with air as he eases off his jacket, his tie, his shirt, then everything else. Like a golden animal with tight, hard muscles rolling under his skin, he crawls on the bed to join me. My pussy pumps for him as my heart imitates every beat.

“I love every part of you,” he murmurs. Then he kisses my lips. “For instance, right here.”

I revel in the heat, the rising need.

He lowers his mouth to my neck, and I arch up to meet him. He sucks my tender skin, gnawing and licking. He’s going to leave a mark on me, but I’ve been marked for a while.

Then he whispers against the burning spot he’s left me with. “I love you there, too.”

“I love how you love, Mr. Kenyon.”

With a quiet laugh, he travels to my breast, branding me with another I love you here on my nipple. I lift myself to meet his wicked kiss again, and he licks me, lazily circling me until I’m aroused. He flicks his tongue over my nub, and I feel his cock getting harder against the inside of my leg.

“Where else?” I ask on a gasp. My clit is pulsing, and I spread my legs, my lips making a drenched sound as I rock up to him.

He laughs again, and it rumbles through his chest. I can feel it against my skin.

“How about here?” he asks just before he presses another kiss to the center of my stomach.

“There is…good.” I restlessly move around as he grasps my hips. “Everywhere is so good.”

He runs his tongue down to the center of my belly, stroking it lightly. An ache nearly splits me apart. I’m open for him, begging for what I hope is coming next.

And it does.

In one practiced move, he slides his arms below me, lifting me to his mouth. He laves me as if tasting me for the first time, and I reach my hands over my head, flailing for pillows to grip. The sound of his tongue bathing my already wet sex turns me on until I’m moaning for him, unrestrained, delighted, and frustrated at the same time.

But I know he’s going to be everything I need in a man, and I’m going to be everything for him.

He doesn’t disappoint as he works me until a low keen sings through my belly, pushing down to my pussy and clit until I’m making the same, sharp sound out loud. The rapturous wail rises, taking over the room as Connor eats me with ravenous kisses, completely owning me and thrilling me until I scream inside and outside for him, coming hard and fast.

He pulls me up until I’m straddling him. With deliberate devotion, he moves my legs until I wrap them around his beautiful, muscular body, his cock nudging my pussy.

“Ally…” he says.

“Please!”

Then he thrusts into me, causing me to lean my head back in pure euphoria. Time suspends as I arch back from him. He thrusts inside me again with his massive cock, and I pull myself back up to face him.

As we press our lips together, panting, we writhe, undulating in a fever, getting the most out of each other that we can get as heat rises between us. A flame. A growing fire. Then, out of nowhere…

An explosion thunders through me, and my cry fills the room.

But he’s not finished off, and I reach between us, grabbing the base of him, and then he curses and comes into me once, again, again with such force that it leaves me breathless…

In the end we collapse, breathing, facing each other in his bed. His territory.

Our territory from this point on.

“I’ve loved you since I saw your picture,” he whispers to me. “And I’m going to keep loving you.”

Love at first sight? But he didn’t know it—not until I showed him it was okay to love. Not until I learned it, as well.

“I love you, too,” I say. “So much that I can’t imagine existing without you.”

We don’t let go of each other. We stay together, just as we’ll always be, no matter what tries to come between us.