GABE
The proof that she was a goddess was that being inside her was fucking heaven. I gave her three ball-busting thrusts and felt her toes curl against the backs of my thighs. She made long, ruthless scratches down my back that stung like a son of a bitch. Pain of the very best kind.
With every drive, I wanted her more. More. Fucking more. I didn’t just want to fuck her because I loved her. I wanted to fuck her for keeps. I wanted her to be mine now and tomorrow and forever. I want to give her something that would bind us, now and always.
And the thing that would do that wasn’t a goddamned locket.
The idea had never even crossed my mind—not with Lily and not with any other woman either. Not once. Now, though, it was like an obsession. With every drive and every smack of the headboard against the plaster, the idea possessed me more and more. Us, doing that. Me owning her, and her owning me.
Me knocking her up.
She arched her back and planted her palm against my chest on the next drive, pushing me away from her and creating space. Space that I didn’t want to be there. “I’m not letting you go,” I told her as I rammed into her yet again, this time changing my angle like I knew she liked, bringing my shaft along that inside curve of her pussy.
“Prove it,” she said soft, sultry, naughty. Not a fucking Southern belle within miles and miles.
I took her old-school missionary. Good traditions die hard. “Guess what I really want, beautiful. Tell me. Say the words.”
Her eyes met mine as she rolled her hips back. “You want my pussy.”
Close. “Dirtier.”
“You want your cum inside me.”
Closer. “Filthier.”
She searched my face, like she was trying to figure it out. And goddamn, the idea of her thinking so hard to give me what I wanted almost got me there by itself. Still, though, I needed her to say it. I needed to hear it from her lips. “Be filthy,” I growled as I locked eyes with her, telling her, Go there. Say it. Fucking say it.
She set her teeth, lowered her chin, and dug her fingernails into me. I felt her squeeze my cock, and she ran her fingers up my flanks like a bitch in heat. And she said, “Put your baby into me right fucking now.”
I was coming hard before she’d even finished the sentence. With brutal drives and ball-draining pumps, I was hers forever. I didn’t need her key to find my way home. Because I was already there.
We lay tangled up together on the comedown, and I savored every minute with her. Every shift of her body, every breath, every sigh. There were a lot of mysteries in the world, but the way I felt about her wasn’t one of them. She was the one I wanted. She was the one I had been looking for. The one. “Tell me what you want, beautiful. If you could have anything.”
She rolled over in my arms onto her stomach. She traced a line up my chest, with her eyes following her fingertip, before finally looking at me. “Big dreams, you mean? Not picnic baskets.”
I pulled her closer, making sure we were skin to skin—not even the sheets keeping us apart. “The biggest. What do you wish for, right now?”
She scooped her hair over one shoulder and paused with her fingertip just above my heart. “You really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?” I swept a stray curl off her back and my hand down her arm and back up again.
Lily nibbled gently on her lower lip. She searched my face for a second, like she was trying to find the right words, before finally pressing her palm to her chest and saying, “I wish, with my whole heart, that you lived here.”
Here. With her. The only thing I’d ever known was constant forward motion—one army post to another, then California, the hustle, the grind, the next big thing. Now, though, it hit me—it was high time to start working to live. I wanted to make her happy, and I needed to know exactly what she had in mind. “Tell me more.” I studied her body, each soft curve and valley. Like a map of paradise. “Don’t be shy about it.”
She opened her mouth slightly before closing it again. Her eyes darted back and forth between mine.
“You’re not gonna scare me,” I told her, touching my thumb to her cheek. Even as I said the words, though, I knew it really was a lie. It scared me shitless; it was like thinking of my world getting flipped upside down. But it was also the good kind of fear, like that moment before you jump off a high dive. “Promise.”
She took a deep breath and turned away, placing her cheek to my chest, her ear right above my heart. “I wish we could stay here. In this house. Together. Christmas lights and Sunday roasts. Traditions. Kids and chaos. I would love that. I’d give anything for it to be that simple.”
It wasn’t simple. It was fucking beautiful. And lying there, with her in my arms, I had that feeling like when a compass finds true north.