"Sweet mother of –" Colton says from where he stands behind me.

"I told you I was serious," I say, smiling as I look at the assortment of sex toys on the bed. I turn around to face him, placing my hands on his massive pecs and he flexes them repeatedly one at a time for my benefit, the way he always does because he thinks it's funny. "Let's work out your stress."

"I'm going to get stressed out more often," he decides, his voice deep as he slides his hands underneath my skirt.

"We'll have to work on prevention," I say, taking his hand.

"I think I dropped the ruler on the side of the road, but if I had it I'd spank you for being naughty." His hand skims my ass cheek. We didn't make it home without a pit stop.

"Make it up to me in the shower," I say, leading him into the bathroom. I get a little ping of "holy crap" when I walk in here, every time. Colton redid the bathroom a year ago for me, putting in a giant tub and a huge shower that could fit both of us.

"After I clean you off, I'm going to get you filthy again," Colton whispers in my ear.

"I'm counting on it."

He delivers on that promise. Throwing me onto the bed, he pulls me to the end of the mattress and buries his face between my legs without a word. His tongue flicks my clit over and over again, and then inside me with the expertise of a man who knows exactly how to play my body, a man who approaches sex with the same kind of focus and determination with which he approaches football. I swear that Colton has studied and refined his plays in the bedroom as much as he’s studied his plays on the field.

In other words, he’s fucking fantastic in the bedroom. Sex with him has been explosive since the first time we were together. Nothing about that has changed a bit over the past nine years.

I'm putty in his hands, a quivering mess when he pulls me to my knees without letting me come. He spins me around, my back to him, and grabs both pigtails in his hands, yanking me hard against him. His cock presses into the side of my ass cheek, and the throbbing between my legs grows incessantly from the anticipation.

When he runs his palms over my shoulders and down my arms, I shiver. Nine years, two kids, and three dogs later, he still makes me shiver.

I love this man. I adore this man. I love the life we’ve built together.

He pauses, his mouth close to my ear. "What?" he asks, like he senses what I'm thinking.

"I love you."

"Right back at you, sweetheart," he says, slipping a vibrator inside me. He doesn't turn it on yet, but I know what he wants to do and the thought makes me moan. "Put your hand between your legs," he orders, his voice gruff, and I press the vibrator inside me, my palm against my clit, not moving because I don't want to come. Not yet.

I look over my shoulder at him, watching him coat his cock in so much lube it glistens. I lean forward as he spreads my ass cheeks, slapping me hard on the ass before he puts the tip of his cock against my hole.

"Naughty tutor," he says, bringing his hand down on me again. The blow vibrates through me all the way to my core and my muscles clench hard around the vibrator.

"Schoolgirl," I correct him.

Colton growls. "Next time, we play naughty professor."

"Colton," I warn, urgency in my voice. If he keeps spanking me, I'm not going to be able to keep from coming, and I want him inside me when I do. "Stop dicking around and put your cock in me."

He slaps my ass one more time for good measure. "Quit being so bossy, Cassie." He puts a hand in the middle of my back and pushes me forward so that my body is angled down and my ass is in the air.

The cold from the lube makes me tense up, but only for a second, before he works his way inside me, so slowly — the way he does, taking his sweet time. My eyes water when my rim burns, but only for a second.

"Turn the vibrator on, Cassie," he orders, and when I do, it sends a wave of arousal through me that relaxes everything, and he's inside me.

The sensation of being completely filled up, the vibrator in my pussy and his cock in my ass, is almost too much to take. It's like he flips the "on" switch, waking up every single cell in my body, because every inch of me feels like it's more sensitive than it's ever been.

"Yes," I moan, encouraging him as he begins to fuck me, his movements slow and steady, his hands on my ass pulling me against him as he eases deeply inside me. It doesn't take me long to adjust to him, and then he's thrusting inside me with slow steady strokes — the way he knows I like it — bringing me higher and higher until I'm close to the edge.

He says something unintelligible, his hands gripping my hips, and by that point I'm so far gone that I can hardly think.

"More," I beg, because I can't string together a sentence or say anything else, not when he has me so close to oblivion.

"Mine," he groans, and I realize that's what he was saying before, and the word immediately sends a rush of arousal through me from my head to my toes.

"Yours," I moan. "Yours, Colton King. All of me."

"Mine."

He thrusts inside me, and I don't hold back, because I can't. I'm screaming his name, my eyes clenched as my orgasm washes over my body, a tidal wave that eclipses anything else. I feel Colton's large hands grip my hips as his body convulses. He calls out my name and unleashes everything he has inside me.

Afterwards, Colton lies on his back in the bed and I lie nestled in the crook of his arm, my heart still thumping loudly. He doesn't say anything for a while and I listen for the deep sound of his breathing. It's already eight o' clock and he's usually out like a light pretty early, with all of the training he's doing.

But there's no snoring. He squeezes my ass cheek and presses me tighter against him. "I'm glad it's been you," he murmurs.

I roll over on my stomach, pulling my arms up on his chest so I can look at him. He looks exactly the same as the day I stood in front of him at that pool party — except for a couple of errant strands of grey hair at his temple, but I pretend not to notice them because he totally freaked out the first time he saw one. He's only thirty, but his dad went grey early, and when I told him he was a sexy old man, he didn't talk to me for the rest of the afternoon.

"What do you mean?" I ask, tracing the outline of his pecs with my fingers and think about how damn lucky I am.

"Just…all of this," he murmurs, his eyes meeting mine. "I don't take it for granted, you know. I'm a kid from East Texas who grew up dirt poor on a farm and now we're… here. I'm lucky and so grateful."

My eyes flicker over the bedroom in our home. After Colton's insane first contract, we decided we weren't going to buy some crazy monstrosity of a house and luxury cars that cost more than some peoples' homes. Colton still drives his dad's pickup truck. Granted, he's done a lot of work to restore it to pristine condition, and it's really a thing of beauty. The first house we bought was this little postage-stamp sized place that was just big enough for the two of us. Then I got pregnant with the twins, and we knew we'd have to buy a bigger house, but Colton insisted he didn't want a place that was so big we'd never see each other.

I'm not letting you grow apart from me, he'd said.

So we got a huge piece of land and a medium-sized house. This place has been our home for the past six years. We built Doreen a house on the property, when she finally agreed to move here four years ago. Nana K. thinks there's nothing on earth better than her grandbabies. That goes for Drew and Beth's kids too. Drew got a contract to play for a baseball team in Japan and they've been living there for three years now.

I'm pretty sure we're the luckiest people on earth.

"I'm glad it's you I've gotten to share this life with," he says, kissing me on the forehead. "I can't imagine it with anyone else but you."

"Right back at you," I say, kissing him on the chest and nuzzling back into the crook of his arm.

We lay there for a few minutes before Colton lets out a giant sigh. "Are you worried about the kids?"

I don't even try to hide my laughter. Colton has perfected the art of being an overprotective daddy. When another kid at kindergarten pushed Adam off of a swing a couple of months ago, I had to threaten Colton with no sex to keep him from going crazy at the kids' school. "I'm more worried the four of them have duct-taped Sable and Jonathan to chairs and are plotting their escape. Do you want to call them?"

"Just to say goodnight."

I'm dialing before he even finishes the sentence.

"Shouldn't Cole be knee-deep in your muff by now?" is the first thing Sable asks. No hello.

"You're on speaker," I inform her.

"Knee-deep doesn't make any sense, Sable," Colton says loudly. "Are the boys destroying the house?"

"Nah," she says. "Jonathan put them on the trampoline in the backyard and let them bounce for, like, an hour straight. They just finished eating mac n' cheese and they're watching a movie. Then they're going to bed."

"Dude, why are you on the phone with us?" Tank's voice booms in the background.

"I'm checking on the kids," Colton shoots back. "Don't give me grief. They're not going to go to bed without us saying goodnight. Or we can come get them now, too."

Sable laughs. "You guys are the boringest old married couple ever. It's eight o'clock."

"Um, Tank?" I hear Adam in the background.

"Hey, little dude," Colton says. "Are you having fun?"

"Yeah, dad," Adam yells. "But my stomach kind of hurts."

That's followed by the unmistakable sound of Adam retching.

"Yeah, that's puke," Sable groans.

"We'll be there in ten minutes."

Five hours later, I'm lying on the bed in my sweats and one of Colton's old jerseys. The kids have some kind of stomach bug, but they're not puking anymore. I reach over and push James' hair off his forehead, since he always gets itchy when it falls on his face. Then I touch my hand to Adam's forehead. No fever.

On the other side of the bed, Colton snores so loudly that he jerks awake. Rubbing his hand across his face, his eyes lock on mine and he wrinkles his forehead. "Go to sleep, Cassie," he whispers. "Get some rest."

"I will," I promise him. I don't get the words out before he's fallen back against his pillow, snoring loudly.

This is our happily ever after. It's not wild and exciting like the lifestyle of the professional football players that you see on TV, but it's ours. And that's all I need.