by James, Ella
“And love you,” she whispers.
I wipe my eyes, then stroke her hair. “I was surprised,” I repeat quietly.
“Just as long as you aren’t in the future.” She kisses my arm, and I try to bring the emotion level down while Brian asks more questions about the weeks after I woke up.
Gwenna finds a way to keep things light and teasing, joking with Brian that she had to wipe my ass. When my face heats up and I swat at her, she cackles.
I grab the recorder. “That’s a damn lie. Nobody loses that much muscle in a month. I was walking around in a couple of days. Not far, and Piglet held my hand.” I give her a tender smile.
“We’re hand-holders.”
“And your hand worked? The left one?”
I nod. “Not perfect, but yeah. More than it did.” I flex it for Brian. “I broke a rib back there: the second one from the top, here on the left side. The nerves to this hand were never damaged beyond repair, they just had pressure on them. That’s how they explained it to me. Something about that rib breaking gave the nerve more room to breathe.”
I put my hand down, and Gwen laces her fingers through mine.
She ends up helping me describe our coming home, on tax day, as it were. “We both filed for extensions.” She smiles.
“So tell me what you’re doing now.”
I tell Brian about the studio, the renovations we’ve got going. “Gwen’s still singing, so we go to Nashville once a week, like she told you.”
“How’s that going?”
She beams. “I’m in talks with a small label about a record deal.”
I can’t help grinning, too.
We talk about the bears—all doing well—and I go through Kellan and Lyon’s story, and Kell and Cleo’s. When I think I’ve given all the facts and have started thinking about peeling Piglet’s little jean shorts off, Brian says, “Just a few more things. I need more details for the character sketches.”
Gwen takes a swig from her water bottle, passes it to me. I take a long swallow.
“I’d— Can you tell me more about when you first came here?” he asks. “You were watching her. What was that like?”
I look down at my boots. It’s something Gwen and I have talked about, of course. But I don’t want to share it.
“You liked her right away?” Brian prompts. “Were drawn to her in some way?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Obsession.”
Brian blinks and glances down at his recorder, then looks up at me intensely. “That’s what you would call it?”
“I just did.”
“Obsessed with the outcome?”
“With her fate, and mine. Obsessed with her. I wanted her from the first time I saw her. When she kicked me, though…” I shake my head. “When we talked in the woods… I— Left. I tried to get away from her because,” I rasp, “it scared me. How I felt for her. It felt…out of hand. I couldn’t stop.”
I wrap an arm around Gwennie and pull her close to me. “I can’t stop loving her. I tried,” I tell him quietly.
“Oh, I tried too,” she chimes in. “After he told me on the mountain. And he left.” I hear the pain in her voice as she remembers the night I hurt her so badly by leaving her with Jamie. Leaving just like Elvie did. It’s on my long list of regrets.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her again now, because I need to. Every time. If there’s an audience or not.
“I don’t blame you, B. You know I don’t.” She strokes my cheek. “Our situation is unusual,” she says to Brian. She smiles. “I guess that’s why you came to me about it.”
He nods. “But what I like the best is how you are together. Not the facts, but you, the people. Characters sell movies. Love stories like this one… People see it as redeeming.”
“It is.” I’m surprised by my own quiet words. I didn’t plan to speak. It happens more since I woke up. I’ll just…say something. Doc says it’s a good thing. That I’m moving further from my old self and becoming more like a civilian.
“Tell me more about that,” Brian says.
I arch my brows and kind of want to kick myself. But I know what he wants. I think I know what he needs more of. I decide to give it to him so he’ll leave and I can fuck my fiancé.
“I did a lot of bad things. Some for the job, and other things because I fucked up as an individual. Like the hit and run.”
“Which you’ve paid a fine for.”
I nod. “And I’ll be doing some community service there before the summer ends.”
A gentle summer breeze drifts through the trees, and I feel Gwenna’s hair against my shoulder. For a second, my eyes close. It’s so damn strange. That this is my life.
I felt so damn dirty when I tracked Gwen down those months ago. So wrecked and ruined. Like I would never, I could never, be clean again. Every time she smiles at me, I feel like I’ve been baptized. Her love cleanses my soul, restores me, in a way I had no fucking clue was possible.
“I have a perfect life,” I tell the man in front of us. I look at Gwen. “One that I don’t deserve. But you can’t earn somebody’s love. It’s given or it isn’t love to start with. I don’t know why this happened to Gwen and me. If it was God or something like that. But it’s one of hell of a coincidence.” I smile at Gwen. “We’re going to spend our lives together, and this—it’s just the start. It’s just the first chapter of our story,” I say, giving Brian a funny look, then smiling back at Gwen. I can’t help it. “After the movie is over, our story will still be going. Just the two of us.”
And when Brian goes, I show her what I mean. Pig and I walk to her house, still holding hands, and when I get her in the door, I toss her on the couch and peel her clothes off— shirt, then bra, sucking her nipples, wriggling her jean shorts down. All she’s wearing is a small, white thong. I drag it off and part her legs, tasting her sweetness.
Gwenna moans and pulls my hair. Inside my jeans, my cock throbs.
“Mmmm,” I rumble as I stroke her up and down her slit, and ease a finger into her heat. “So warm and wet…”
“I’ve been waiting!” She laughs. The sound is husky. Beautiful.
She wraps her legs around my neck, lifting herself up to my face, and my balls tighten. “Jesus, woman… I’m not gonna last…”
“Oh yes, you are…” She tugs my hair and moans as I kiss between her lips and slide another finger into her. “You’re going to last forever.” She laughs, rocking against my face again. “I need you, too…please!”
I flick her clit with my tongue. “What can I do for you, Piglet?”
“Your cock…” She pouts. “Put it inside me!”
Leaving my fingers in her, sucking on her clit, I take my jeans down with my right hand, then jerk myself off while I smirk down at Gwen. “You want the whole thing?”
“Yes… Oh, please,” she moans as I swirl my head between her lips. “Please…Bear.”
She spreads her legs wider. I draw my fingers out and tease my way from her clit down to where she wants it. “Please… right there.” I work my way inside, just the tip, and Gwenna groans so loud I feel it in my balls.
She pushes against me, trying to take me deeper. I pull out a little.
“Barrett!”
I grin. “Okay.” I curl down over her and kiss her chest, and then I shove inside, a little rough—the way she wants it.
“OHHHH!”
“Like that?”
“Oh God… Again!”
I draw myself out, shuddering at how fucking tight and hot and good she feels. I push back in.
“Ahhhh… Love you, Barrett.”
I hold her gaze. “You more.”
She grunts—and arches up against me. I know what she’s asking for. I stretch out just a little, ignoring the ache in my back as I roll my tongue over her nipple. Gwenna likes it when I bite them, as I fuck her—hard.
I can tell when she’s getting close, because she gets so slick and stops saying my name, jus
t panting as I fill her up and leave her empty, gasping as I fill her up and moaning when I leave. I fucking love the way her body starts to shake. My muscles tighten and I feel myself get even fucking harder. Pleasure spins out from my cock all down my legs, making my lower belly tighten, too. It’s like a roller coaster. I hold onto her.
“Love you, Piglet…”
“Love you.”
Our moans blend together in a symphony of need, and this time, like some others, we come at the same moment. Afterwards, we lie there in each other’s arms and hold on tight.
And Gwenna cries.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
“Happy.” She smiles as she wipes her tears. “Tell me you are too.”
“Oh fuck, there’s no one happier than me.”
“You love me lots.”
“And lots.”
“Forever? And ever?” She giggles.
“And ever, and ever, and ever. With everything I have, and everything I am.”
“Can we write our own vows?” she murmurs as her sleepy eyes sag shut.
“I’m all yours, Piglet. Tell me what you need, I make it happen.”
She yawns, smiling. Her hand reaches for my face and cups my scratchy cheek.
“Just you.”
I top it off with dinner while she sleeps. Some of her favorite wine—a strict half glass, and none for me—and then I go into the laundry room and bring out a gardenia. I put it in the center of the table before setting plates for us. I guess she’s tired from the day, because she sleeps while I serve chicken parm and asparagus for both of us, and even find and light a pair of candles.
When she wakes up, she smiles until her eyes are wet. “This was really sweet.”
I shrug.
“You’re really sweet.” She kisses my chin, pulling on my neck so I lean down. We share a slow kiss.
“For you,” I whisper.
“Mine.”
We eat in near silence, just smiling, while the small white flowers look down on us.
“You look hot in my apron.”
It says Hers, and it’s right. This is right. No matter how hard the road here was—for both of us—the destination is where we belonged.
That night, as we fall asleep under the twinkle stars, I send up a thank you for our long, sad, perfect fucking story.
Gwen and Barrett. Pig and Bear.
There are almost no dreams now: only our two warm bodies, curled together underneath the rainbow.
THE END
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Also by Ella James
www.ellajamesbooks.com
Off-Limits Romance
Crown Jewels
The Boy Next Door
Fractured Love
The Plan
(Coming November 2017)
Sinful Secrets Romance
Murder
Sloth
Erotic Fairy Tales
The Complete Box Set:
Red & Wolf, Hansel, and Beast
The Love Inc. Series
Selling Scarlett
Taming Cross
Unmaking Marchant
Stained Series
Stained
Stolen
Chosen
Exalted
Here Series
Here
Trapped