He nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just tricky to put it together into a single picture of a person, you know? I suppose I shouldn’t expect to understand Maria, though—I met her literally one time, but she’s had this huge effect on my life ever since. And now? She’s changed the entire course of my life.”
I tilted my head side to side. “I mean, did she, though? You and I were going to be together, right? She didn’t change that. Which means you and I would have lived together—alone, and in a smaller house, maybe, but still together. And whether it was in six weeks or six months, you and I would have had a child together. We still will, if that’s what you want with me. But this whole situation with Isabela…it really just accelerated the timeline of how things worked out for us. Now it’s sort of a trial by fire. We’re together now, sink or swim. That little girl up there is going to need both of us, full time, all the time.” I touched his lips with mine, a not-really-kiss, a brush of my mouth on his. “So, really, if you think about it…how much has this altered the course of your life? I would suggest not that much.” I chuckled. “Now, if it had happened a year ago, that might be a different conversation.”
He laughed. “Is this what being with you is going to be like? You being right all the damn time?”
I nuzzled his throat. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“I guess I’m okay with that.” He touched my chin. “And just so we’re clear and on the same page…yes, Laurel. I do want that with you. A child. Marriage. The whole white picket fence, happily ever after thing. I never thought I did, but then I met you, and suddenly I do.”
I wiggled as his hands wrapped around my backside, pulling me closer, tighter against his hard body. “There’s no white picket fence, here, buddy. Wrong house if that’s what you wanted.”
He huffed in amused annoyance. “Smart-ass. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Know somethin’ weird?” he asked. “I don’t even know where the master bedroom is in this place. My head is still spinning and I don’t remember if it’s up or down.”
I pointed over his shoulder, down the stairs. “That way. Past the kitchen.”
He turned, carried me down. “This way?”
“Yup.”
To the kitchen. Set me on the island and ran his hands up my jeans-clad thighs. “Not sure how much farther I can go without some sugar.”
“Sugar?” I asked, snickering. Reached for the fly of his shorts and undid it, slipped my hands inside, collecting his erection and stroking it. “Is this what you mean?”
He shook his head. “No, I meant this.” A slow, deep kiss, his hands sliding up my spine to undo my bra before his fingers delved into my hair. “Fuck, Laurel. Need you so damn bad.” A growl. “How can I need more, the more of you I get?”
“Take me to bed, Titus. We can’t do this here. As much as I want to christen this kitchen island right now, we probably should start getting used to doing this stuff behind closed doors.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He glanced over his shoulder at the hallway that led to the laundry room, mudroom, and the master wing. “Through there?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not that many places it could be, honey. So yes. Through there.”
“Hey, I’ve lived in a converted semi the last several years. The whole thing is smaller than the fuckin’ garage—shit, one bay of the fuckin’ garage. Sue me if I’m not used to a real house yet.”
I hooked one arm around his neck to hold on and slid the other between us as he lifted me once more and carried me toward the bedroom. “I’m teasing. I’m just impatient to have you inside me.”
“Trust me, I’m just as impatient to be inside you.”
We finally reached the door of the master suite and he closed it with a foot while I locked it behind us.
He spun in place, pressing my back to the door. “Now the only problem is that we’re both wearing too many clothes.”
“You handle the clothing situation, I’ll handle this.” I caressed his length as he set me to my feet.
He laughed a groan. “I like the way you think, my love.”
“You know what I think?” I stepped out of my jeans as he tugged them off, along with my underwear. “I think if we want to have a baby any time soon, we’d better start practicing. I’m nearing forty—it might take a while.”
He had his shirt off, his shorts. “Does that mean no condom?”
He had us both naked together, then, and I’d only let go of him long enough to let him peel my shirt and bra off. I clutched his neck with one hand, pulling myself up onto my toes, leaning against him as I guided him to my opening with my other hand.
“That, Titus my love, is exactly what that means.”
He groaned as I lowered myself to take an inch of him, then two. “Fuck, Laur—I…god. I don’t think I can do this standing up.” He hooked both hands under my ass and lifted me one more time, staggering with me—not under my weight, but rather under the shaky need to be deeper inside me.
“Then take me to our bed and make love to me, Titus.” I wrapped both arms around him and palmed his nape and his jaw and kissed him with all I had as he brought us to our bed. “This time, make it slow. Soft and sweet and slow.”
He gently cradled me as he lowered me. Crawled over me, and his arms were the pillow under my head and shoulders, and he nuzzled more kisses against my lips. “Make love.” He nudged against me, drifting and bumping against my opening; I gasped as I fed him into me. “Gonna make love to you, Laurel McGillis. Soft…and sweet…and slow.”
His forehead met mine, and our lips shuddered together.
“Make love,” I whispered, echoing my own words and his. “Make love to me. Make love to me and never stop.”
“Never,” he whispered back. “Never.”
15
I woke to Titus behind me.
His arm was a hard strong bar over my belly, his cock soft and nestled against my buttocks. He was snoring. We’d made love last night, soft and slow and sweet, and his voice had whispered I love you into my ear as a chant as he plunged into me, as we reached climax together.
This was right.
This was everything. Waking up to Titus in my bed, wrapped around me…it was everything. I needed this.
My eyes watered and my stomach lurched into my chest and I blinked tears of pure overwhelmed understanding…an epiphany. A knowing.
This was my forever.
How could I go another day without this? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
I had to do something…for him. So he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was all his, always. What could I do?
How did I show him I needed him, wanted him, that I was totally his? What could I do that I hadn’t already done?
I knew, all at once, with absolute clarity.
I wiggled out from under his arm as carefully as I could, so as not to wake him yet. Tiptoed over to my jewelry box, hunted in it for the two items I had in mind. The first I found quickly, a platinum chain of rather thick, heavy links that I’d once found during a showing—it was an obviously masculine necklace, but it was valuable and the previous owner of the house was long since gone, so I’d kept it. Why, I’d never been sure, but I did. And now, I knew why—for this. The second item was harder to find in the rather disorganized jumble of my jewelry. Eventually, I found it, at the very bottom and back of a drawer full of seldom-if-ever worn items.
A ring.
A single karat solitaire diamond, round cut, in a simple gold band. Not much to look at, not very valuable in terms of the weight of gold and diamond. But the age of it, who’d owned it…that was where the value came from. The meaning behind it.
I strung the ring onto the chain, tucked the whole into my palm. Crawled into bed. As I sidled back under the covers and wriggled my butt against Titus, he murmured sleepily, gathered me under his arm again. Nuzzled his nose against my spine, and I felt his breath on my skin.
But he was awake, the
n. I felt it in the shift of his breathing. The stir of his muscles. The roll of his shoulders, the tightening of his hand against me, low, just beneath my navel but above my sex. I waited.
“Hi,” he whispered.
I twisted in place, already eager. “Hi.”
He blinked at me, eyes bright with a sleepy smile. “Been awake long?”
I shook my head. “Mmm-mmm. A minute or two.”
He ran his hand over my hip, caressed the outer swell of my buttock, up my spine. “I really, really love this. Waking up with you. Naked, skin to skin. I can say with absolute truth that I have never been happier.”
I petted his jaw with one hand, the hand with the ring and necklace in it, keeping the hand closed but for a finger or two, scratching his beard. With the other, I caressed his cock. “Me neither.”
He rumbled in his chest as I stroked him to full, throbbing life. “It just got better.”
I kissed his chin, his cheekbone. “Why, then, Titus, you should allow me to make it even better yet.”
His eyes went half lidded as I fisted his now-hard cock. “God, woman. How could you possibly do that?”
I slid a thigh over him, straddling him without removing my lips from his. “Like this.” Took him into me, bare.
He filled me with a single thrust, and I gasped as I split open around him, stretched around him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Laurel. If last night was incredible, this is even better. I don’t understand how it’s possible, but you feel even better every single time I make love to you. How?”
I shook my head, gasping as I rode him slowly, taking my time bringing myself to arousal on him. Grinding his thick shaft against myself, using him to stimulate my clit, taking him for myself, taking my pleasure on him. He just held me, his hands clawing into my ass with the increase of his need, the rise of his pleasure. His clawing fingers raked down my back, dug into my hair, and he demanded a kiss, lips savage on mine even as our joining bodies moved slowly, achingly, delicately.
My lips shook against his as I neared climax. “Titus…” I sat up. Rose up, sank down. One hand pressed flat against his chest for balance. “I love you, Titus.”
He held my hips and guided my movements. “I love you, Laurel. So fucking much.”
I let the necklace dangle from my fist, the ring dropping to swing in a wobbly circle, the diamond catching the dawn’s light. “This was my great-grandmother’s—Darlene Oldfield.” I had to pause for breath as I moved on him, gasping and moaning as pleasure ripped through me in wave after building wave.
He held my hips and moved with me, meeting my sinking, rolling, rising core with thrusts of his own. “Laur…” he whispered, voice ragged, broken with ecstasy.
I fell forward, palm planting again on his chest. I had to pause my movements, then, so I could fasten the necklace behind his neck.
“Wear it for me,” I whispered, motionless, my eyes on his, my nascent orgasm held off another moment—to be all the more powerful for the denial of it. “Wear it for me, Titus.”
“Of course.”
“My great-grandfather put it on her finger the day he asked her to marry him, and she wore it every single day until the day she passed.” I was weeping, suddenly, but not unexpectedly. “Wear it for me, Titus. Be mine.” I choked. “Marry me—I’m asking you to marry me. I’m asking if I can be yours forever.”
He was wet-eyed, groaning a masculine version of overwhelmed sobs as he clutched me, pulling me down to kiss me, his thrusts taking over now, surging up into me, filling me and shattering me, smashing me into a climax that shook me to pieces, making me scream out loud with the fracturing intensity of it, my sobs of emotion coalescing with my screams of orgasm.
“Mine,” Titus was growling, yanking my hips down to meet his crashing thrusts. “Mine. Mine.”
“Yours,” I whispered back. “Yours, yours.”
He rolled, then, pressed me to the mattress and chased his own climax, then moving hard and fast, taking his release in me, whispering I love you as a liturgical chant as a counterpoint against my sobs of his name, my own I love you song on my lips. One hand fisted into the pillow beside my face, and the other reached over, to the nightstand drawer. Yanked it open, fumbled for something—found it.
Came back with a black velvet box. “You beat me to it,” he murmured, opening the box one-handed, setting it down to pluck out the ring within. “I don’t have a hundred-year-old family heirloom, just a plain old four-karat one that I had custom designed.”
Still moving. Still thrusting.
I laughed and caught at his ass with both hands, pulling him against me. “Shut up and come first, you dork.”
He shook his head, nearly making a lie of it as he shook, lingering at the ragged edge of climax. “Not until you’re wearing my ring.”
I reached my right hand between us, circled my fingers around him and squeezed, stroked. My left, I held up to him. “Put it on me, then.”
He slid the ring onto my finger and kissed my palm, the underside of the gold band. “Now you’re mine and I’m yours. We belong together forever, now, my love.
“Forever ever?” I whispered, lips on his, plunging my touch around him to hasten his crash into orgasm.
He laughed at the reference. “Forever ever.” His movements went frantic, then, smashing against me with a long low groan. “Laurel, Laurel, god…god…god, my love, my love, my love…”
I let go and wrapped my thighs around him and clung to his neck and bit his earlobe and met him with my own frantic wild thrashing thrusts. “Titus, Titus, yes, my love, yes—give it to me, give it all to me.”
He exploded, then, bursting apart within me and filling me with a flood, with wet heat and crashing love, his voice wordless with furious detonation in my ear, love whispered, love made, love joined, love tangled.
We sagged together, rolling to cling side by side, gasping in unison, his hands scouring my back and butt and hair, mine in his beard and trailing down his chest and scratching between his shoulder blades.
“You asked me to marry you,” he murmured.
“I did.” I found the underside of his chin with my lips. “I had to. I had to…I woke up and I just…I had to know you’d be mine, that we could wake up like this together forever. I just…I had to.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“You’re not mad I preempted your proposal?”
“Hell no. It’s hot that you proposed first, while riding me.” He held the ring on the necklace in two fingers, kissed the diamond. “I was going to propose over breakfast. I was gonna bring it to you in bed and ply you with a mimosa.”
I giggled and wriggled against him. “Hey, just because the proposal’s out of the way doesn’t mean you can’t still do that.”
He huffed a laugh. “I guess I have to put on pants for that, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“You should stay naked. In case there’s time for round two after we eat.”
“There’s time for round two right now…”
He hummed thoughtfully. “You might be right.”
“Assuming you’re able to rise to the occasion this soon.”
He groaned as I found him indeed rising to occasion. “You, Laurel McGillis, can get me to rise faster than I’ve ever thought could be possible.”
“I have two requests.”
He rolled over me. “And those would be what?”
“I don’t want to be Laurel McGillis anymore. From this day forward, I want to be Laurel Bright. I want to get married as soon as possible and take your name and be your wife.”
“Is that one? That feels like more than one.”
“That’s one. Take me to the county and make me your wife, and then we can have a party for our friends later. That’s one.”
He filled me. “Okay. And number two?”
I pulled away from him. “Take me to the shower and bend me over the tub while the water gets hot, and then we take a shower together, and then you feed me.”
“Aga
in, that feels like more than one.”
“Work with me here. It’s one thing, three parts: part one, bend me over the tub. I want you from behind, and I want it hard and fast. Part two, get me a long hot shower. Part three, feed me.”
He stood up and brought me with him, and took me to into the bathroom and set me on my feet next to the soaking tub. Turned me around and pushed me forward. I spread my feet apart and braced my hands on the cold porcelain as he filled me from behind.
“Wait!” I said. “Water on first.”
He laughed, but pulled away, angling for the shower, twisting the water on, not taking his eyes off me—I stayed as I was, bent forward with my hands on the rim of the tub, breasts swaying heavily under me, ass rounded for him. He resumed his place behind me, feathering a touch over my sex.
“Now, where was I?” He circled his touch over me, soft and quick, bringing me to the shaking edge within seconds before filling me one more time, before driving into me with a slap of hips meeting ass cheeks.
“You were right there,” I gasped. “You were about to fuck me really, really good.”
“Really really good?” A hard thrust. “Like this?”
“Fuck yes,” I gasped. “Just like that.”
He ground into me, again and again. “Would it be weird if I asked you to marry me every time we were together?”
I laughed, or tried to around the shaking whimper of orgasm. “I don’t know. Would it?”
He wanted to laugh too, but couldn’t, too caught up in his own pursuit of climax, pounding into me faster and faster, his grunts wordless and wild.
“Laurel, Laurel, oh god—my love,” he snarled. “I’m there already.”
Laurel's Bright Idea (Billionaire Baby Club Book 3) Page 25