“Just stick it in. I promise I’ll be fine.” I told her.

She didn’t look convinced as she crouched, her eyes on the swell of my ass. “Are you sure you want me to do this? Obviously, you have more practice at it.”

“You offered to assist.”

She let out a long sigh and then stuck the needle in the fleshy part of my behind. I flinched slightly at the sharp sting and the cold that spread as she pressed the plunger.

“Ok, done.”

She wiped the area with an alcohol swab, and I pulled up my pants and refastened my belt buckle.

The needle went into a biohazard bucket, and I placed the vial back in the refrigerator. She parked herself on my countertop where she usually sat as I cooked these days. “We need to talk.”

I started pulling vegetables from the lower drawers and sat them beside her on the counter. “Oh?”

“That ring you gave me is not going to work for me.”

I snorted, grabbed the last eggplant, and closed the refrigerator door. “You mean the two-carat-formerly-owned-by-a-princess engagement ring I gave you? Or some other ring?”

She rolled her eyes and shifted, waiting for me to be serious.

“Fine, what’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“Besides the fact that I’d need a security detail to wear it out of the house, I can’t put my hands in my jeans pocket. It gets caught on the edge. If you want me to marry you, then you’ll need to give me a smaller diamond.”

I froze in the act of grabbing a knife from the drawer and went back to stand in front of her. “Are you complaining about the engagement ring I got you?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Not complaining, but more like registering a concern. It’s gorgeous, and I love it, but I’m terrified I’m going to lose it, and the deposit on the insurance claim is probably more than my apartment in New York.”

I gripped her waist and pulled her in. When she wrapped her legs around my hips and her arms around my neck, I knew dinner was going to have to wait. “I’m going to tell you this again, because I think you might not be understanding me. When we get married, you will be rich. All of my considerable fortune will be yours.”

“How considerable are we talking here?” she whispered, leaning in to brush her lips against mine.

I pressed my swelling erection into her core. “Enormous. Gratuitously so.”

The laugh that filtered through her vibrated into my chest where we touched. “Fine, I’ll stop complaining.”

Finally, I’d gotten the woman to compromise. “I should finish this food.”

She shook her head and started on the buttons nearest my throat. “I know exactly what we should do.”

I carried her to my bed and tossed her on top of the duvet. When she had moved in, she’d switched my color palette to shades of maroon and black. It suited the rest of the décor, and I loved the idea of her making my home her own.

“Soon you’ll be Mrs. Gray.”

She made a face at me.

“What, are you going to object to my name too?”

“I think I should keep my own name,” she said.

I climbed up beside her and lay down so she could face me. “You’re going to have to explain your reasoning.”

“I don’t want people to start equating me to that book.”

“I think outside of high school literature classes, you’re pretty safe.”

She swatted at my chest and shifted closer to entwine our legs. “No, not that damn book.”

It took me entirely too long to figure out what she was saying. “To be fair, imagine if you’d had to deal with it through the entire process of publication and then movie rights.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have to, and I want to avoid it in the future.”

I leaned down and nibbled on her neck and collarbone before speaking again. “You mean you don’t want Fifty Shades of Gray?”

She sighed aloud, and I closed my eyes, committing the sound to memory. Those little noises she made could get me hard in seconds.

“No, I don’t need Fifty Shades when I have the original. Just one shade of Gray suits me fine.”

What sort of steam is up next? Try this adaption of Shakespeare you never read in school!

Twelfth Night taken to another level!