Especially now, when I turn back to find her wearing one.
“It came with the dress,” she explains, hiking it an inch higher and, in doing so, cranking my heartbeat up to lethal levels.
I run my fingers over the lace until she shivers, then do the same with her delicate white thong. “The underwear, too?”
“No.” She lies down and shuts her eyes, melting when she feels my breath on her thigh. “Those, I picked myself. Just for you.”
“You have excellent taste.” I sink my teeth into the garter first, peeling it down her leg like I’ve done it a hundred times. I’ve definitely imagined it that much.
I start to do the same with her thong, but she giggles and warns me I’ll break it.
“I’d love to break it, actually.” I rest my head on her thigh and give her a fake pout. “Can I?”
“Why are you even asking? We both know you’re about to do it, anyway, now that I put the idea in your head.”
I pretend to think about this. “True.” Two seconds later, I’ve snapped both of the thin lace straps tucked below her hipbones. It took almost no effort, but Juniper laughs and says she’s impressed.
“If you like what I can do with my teeth,” I tell her, tossing the underwear aside, “you’re going to love what I can do with my tongue.”
Before she can think up something clever, I duck my head back down and envelop her clit with my mouth. She gasps my name, back arched until she relaxes into the plush bed.
My fingers fill her. Two, then three, hitting her G-spot until she goes from “wet” to fucking soaked. The scent is addictive, like everything else about her.
I know we had a long engagement for a reason, saving up my paychecks from Frey and hers from Rue Royale so we could get the wedding she deserved—but right now, I’m kicking myself for not locking this in sooner.
Not to show the rest of this world she’s mine...but to show them I’m hers. Proof this woman and I will always circle back to each other, no matter what gets in our way. Even ourselves.
Van makes me orgasm twice before his panting face, breath laced with my own sweetness, appears overhead.
“Yea or nay?” He holds up the condom between two fingers.
Brain swimming in chemicals, body still shivering from what he did to me, I almost tell him to forget the condom. I want a baby. I want his baby.
But one tiny piece of clarity hits as we reposition ourselves under the covers, and I nod. “Condom.”
Without hesitation, he puts it on. “Changed your mind?”
“Not even a little,” I smile, brushing his hair back from his forehead as he slides inside me. I breathe deep, adjusting, and go on. “Knowing you want one makes me want a baby even more.”
“Then why the hell am I wearing this thing?”
“Patience.” I bite his lip when he kisses me. “Tonight’s the first time we’ve ever talked about it. Maybe it’s best if we discuss it at least a few more times?”
“Not exactly my style.”
“Oh, I know.” Everyone knows. When Van wants something, he goes for it without hesitation.
It’s one of the things I love most about him: he lives his life with intense, unbridled passion. It just took him a couple decades and some change to channel it properly.
“This is different, though,” I explain. “It wouldn’t just be about us. We’d be creating this whole new life.” A whole new story, joined with ours.
Van fills me completely and pauses, breathing hard from the effort of holding back. His eyes flicker between mine, and he nods.
“You’re right,” he says. “Just because we want it, doesn’t mean we’re ready for it.”
“And maybe you’re right, too: that you’re never really ready, and you have to figure it out as you go.”
Both can be just as false as they are true.
So for now, as Van rocks his hips to withdraw and fill me again, we let all talk of our future crumble into dust.
This moment is all I care about: the shine of sweat on his sculpted chest, his crazed pulse beating inside each wrist…and those eyes that make time slow down, every time I look into them.
He decreases his pace, then stops completely. My fingernails rake his scalp as he pulls my nipple into his mouth, teasing me.
“Don’t stop,” I beg. “I’m close again.”
“Patience,” he tells me.
I groan. Screw patience.
Time for the last resort—the thing that always, without fail, gets Van so close he can’t help but drive into me with all his strength.
“Fuck me, Van,” I whimper, writhing under his teasing tongue as he migrates from one breast to the other. “Fuck my pussy with that throbbing cock until I come.”
“Shit,” he exhales. As predicted, his hips start moving again. “You’re getting really good at that.”
“Learned from the master.” I press my filthy mouth against his infinitely filthier one, every moan buzzing on his lips.
“You know,” he breathes against my ear, “it’s actually growing on me. Mrs. Durham-Summers.”
For reasons I can’t understand, and already know I never will, this one utterance tips me over the edge.
“Juni,” he sighs, releasing as soon as my orgasm starts. His forehead presses to mine, sweat mingling; I sink my nails into his back and hold him close, long after the high ends.
When he finally slips out, I catch the wheeze in his throat.
“Here.” I find his inhaler, off its lanyard for the day and nestled in the pocket of his tux. He rolls his eyes, but lets me administer it.
His need for it has been drastically diminished since he gave up smoking (and took to wearing a bandanna across his face while skating; my idea). But I still listen for it, always: any hint of a struggle in his chest. Any sign that he needs help, even when he doesn’t want it.
“I was fine,” he says, when I place the inhaler on the nightstand and settle into his arms, “but thanks, Mrs. Overprotective.”
“You like that one better than Durham-Summers?”
“It’s certainly more fitting.”
“You would know.”
Van laughs softly while I kiss his chest. His skin prickles in the cool air.
I am overprotective. We both are. Maybe even a little paranoid, at times.
But when you’ve already lost the best thing that ever happened to you, very few things sound too crazy to make sure you never lose it again.
“I love you,” he whispers. His fingertips trace my ring tattoo.
“I love you, too.” I turn his forearms over and trace his names.
Andresco, given to him from a woman I never met, but feel like I have. I hope she knows what an incredible man she raised.
Durham, from the family I joined today...but was welcomed into long before this. A legacy of soft, kind hearts hidden in stone.
Next, I trace the paper airplane—permanently aloft, forever pointing upward to the sky.
Last, in the seconds before we fall asleep, I touch the moon on his shoulder.
Not just the inked-out craters drilled into his skin, but the blank spaces in between: every peak where the real moon reflects the light of the sun.
* * *
The End
* * *
Thank you for reading Seven Sins, the second standalone in the Durham Boys series.
You can click the cover to read Fake Halo, Wes and Clara’s novel, or sign up to my newsletter for updates on Theo’s novel - coming soon!
You’ll also receive a free copy of my subscriber-exclusive novel, Think I Wanna Marry You.
Thank you again,
Piper
Also by Piper Lennox
Durham Boys
Fake Halo
Seven Sins
(Book 3 coming soon)
Now Entering Hillford
The Midwife’s Playlist
The Carpenter’s Wedding
The Poet’s Cookbook
The Bartender’s Countdown
The Hawthorne’s Girl
The Fairfields
Darling, All at Once
Honey, When It Ends
Baby, Be My Last
Love in Kona
Pull Me Under
Crash Around Me
When We Break
Standalones
All Mine
Teach Me
The Road to You
Think I Wanna Marry You (Subscriber Exclusive)
About the Author
Piper Lennox is the author of Darling, All at Once and the Fairfields series, the Now Entering Hillford series, All Mine, and more. Her favorite heroes are sexy and broken; her favorite heroines are feisty (and, usually, also a little broken). Seven Sins is her seventeenth novel.
Piper lives in Virginia with her husband, their children, and a Siberian Husky too smart for his own good. Before she spent her days writing about life and love, she wrote copy for insurance companies. She will never, ever go back.
www.piperlennox.com
Seven Sins: Durham Boys, Book 2 Page 31