by Emily Snow
I place one more kiss at the corner of his mouth.
“I love you,” I whisper.
THIRTY-TWO
LUCY
FIVE MONTHS LATER
“You know, Williams, I’ve never been to a wedding,” Jace whispers, his warm breath tickling the side of my face, filling my senses with the scent of wintermint gum. “It’s not … what I expected.”
“Not enough metal for you?” I turn slightly to gaze into his blue-gray eyes, and my heart feels like it skips a beat. Or three. His effect on me is still like nothing I ever imagined and it’s breathtaking. He lifts one shoulder, and a slow grin inches across his features.
“Why the hell would I expect metal at a wedding?” he demands, and I draw in a breath when he playfully nudges my ear with the tip of his straight nose. “After, perhaps, but not during the actual—”
“Hush, Exley. They’re giving their speeches to one another.”
Placing one hand possessively on my thigh, he grins and sits back in his seat but says nothing as we watch the bride and groom speak just before they begin cutting the cake.
It knocks me off my axis when I realize that he’s been in my life nearly eight months now. I hadn’t planned to fall for him when I stepped foot into EXtreme in January—hadn’t wanted love because my awful experience with Tom had dug so deeply beneath my skin—but it’s what happened. It’s where we are now.
And no matter how crazy Jace drives me, how many times I want to slap him when he calls me Lucy-I-Know-Fucking-Everything-Williams, I wouldn’t change this.
I couldn’t.
After he forgave me for what had happened at Mr. B’s party, we had launched into a routine. Breakfast before we each went to our respective jobs. Dinner after work. And more often than not, I spend my nights with him, learning and taking and giving. He’s told me more than once that it’s the most orthodox arrangement he’s ever been in—even if I do creep off in the early hours each morning to go back home to Worcester before we start all over again.
“I thought you were unorthodox,” I’d teased him as we ate dinner on his living room floor just last week. He’d slid close to me, wandering his tattooed fingers over the straps of my sundress until a smile tugged at the corners of that mouth that never lost its power to steal the breath right from my lungs.
“In everything else,” he’d said. “But not with you, love. Now … finish eating. I’ve been working on something, and I’ve got plans to show it to you tonight.”
He had.
And the night after that too.
“Your mother looks happy,” he finally says in a low voice, dragging my thoughts back to the present. I glance right in front of us as my mom praises Neil, the man she’s been seeing for months. The “friend” who had quickly become so much more to her. Although I pretended to be surprised when she broke the news to me last month in July that they were getting married in a small, intimate ceremony, I had expected it to happen.
Nobody has made my mother smile like this since my dad was alive.
And now that she has something like that again, I don’t want it to go away.
I swallow back the lump in my throat and bob my head. “She is happy,” I whisper. When I glance up, I find Jace’s slate blue eyes darting around the reception hall that’s full of Mom and Neil’s closest friends, as if he’s searching for someone. I cock an eyebrow.
“Expected we’d see Armstrong at the ceremony or at least at the reception. She’s not been around for ages.”
“She couldn’t take off work,” I say, trying to keep my smile in place at the mention of Jamie having to miss out on today. Jace nods before he looks straight ahead.
“She’ll be at ours, though, right?”
I make a choked noise. Mom’s Bingo friend, Dean, shoots me a glare from the next table over, and I respond with an apologetic smile. Because my heart has become such a fierce drumbeat at his words, I keep my gaze on my mother’s beaming face as I murmur, “Are you asking?”
He spreads his fingertips over my thigh and the sensation of his touch moving the chiffon fabric of my dress around sends tingles down my spine. “Eventually.”
“You know, this is just like that time you got my hopes up during my interview—just to tell me you had to think about giving me the job.”
“I gave it to you, didn’t I?” When I twist my lips to the side, he turns to me and cups my face in his hand. “I want you to move in with me, Lucy.”
Oh, wow.
Before I can manage to get even a whisper out, he leans his forehead to mine and continues, “I love going to bed holding you close and waking up with you in the morning. I don’t like when you sneak out at four am. I love the way you tell me I’m doing it wrong when I don’t follow a recipe and the way you make me feel like I’m doing everything right everywhere else. I love you. I didn’t think that would ever happen for me, but now that it has, I want that.”
I follow the path his finger makes, to where Neil is serenading Mom in the middle of his speech. Twisting in my seat to return my hazel stare to Jace, I feel butterflies swooping through the pit of my stomach at the soft expression he’s sending my way.
Flicking my tongue over my lips, I drag in a sharp breath. “What happened to not liking attachments?” I tease at last.
“Some rules can be broken. And besides, we’ve got plenty of attachments. Stainless steel. Chrome. That little—”
“Jace,” I gasp lightly, stopping him before he has the chance to make my body ignite right in the middle of my mother’s wedding reception. “Yes, I’ll move in with you.”
To be honest, I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
“Though I should warn you, I can be a bit of an arse at times and you might…”
Now it’s my turn to lift my finger to his mouth, and the edges of his blue eyes crinkle as he holds back his laughter. “I don’t care. I just want … you.”
“Then you have me, Lucy.”
EPILOGUE
THE FOLLOWING JANUARY
“Was it everything you imagined it would be, love?” Jace asks me when we stumble into our hotel room.
“You mean all the ass plugs and spreader bars and chains?”
“Oh, my,” he drawls teasingly. He shuts the door behind us with the toe of his boot, then turns to look at me with a positively wicked look that ignites me, body and soul. Pinning me up against the door, he frames my face with one hand, fanning his fingertips softly over my skin. I close my eyes and arch my back. I’m grateful that, for the first time since we touched down at Heathrow, we’re able to have a moment. Peace. Silence. “So, back to my question…”
When I yawn loudly, he reaches behind me with his free hand and gives my ass a slap that echoes through our luxury hotel suite. So much for peace. Or quiet. My eyes fly open, and I meet his amused steely blue stare. “It was interesting.”
“Interesting, hmm?” Caressing his hand from my cheek, he moves it over the crook of my neck and over the tiny tattoo on my shoulder. He nudges down the zipper running along my spine before his fingers finally stop to rest with his other hand—at the curve of my ass. “One does not simply call the IFD festivities interesting, Williams. Or yawn about it.”
“You didn’t let me sleep before our flight,” I point out hotly, then sink my teeth into my bottom lip to suppress the moan that comes along with the way his hands spread over my skin as he pushes the back of my dress open. “You were all, ‘Come on, love, I’ve got to taste you one more time before we leave because I’m not sure how soon I’ll get to do it again.’ And then, even after you promised me sleep, you—”
He cuts me off with a scalding kiss, claiming me harshly as his fingertips slip beneath the lace of my panties to plump my ass cheeks. He had kissed me like this before we left for the airport last night, too, promising me that he wanted more of me as soon as it was possible. The moment we landed, though, he immediately immersed himself in promoting EXtreme for the IFD event. This is my first time in London. A
lthough it’s only 9 pm and I’m anxious to see everything the—his city—has to offer, I’m jet-lagged. My only thought on the elevator car as we came upstairs was that the only thing I desired was our bed.
But of course, that was before Jace kissed me stupid and sent heat racing straight to my core.
By the time he draws away from me to touch his forehead to mine, my wants have completely shifted. The idea of sleep a thing in the past, I race my hand down the front of his button-up shirt—the first I’ve ever seen on Mr. EXtreme other than at my mother’s wedding last summer—popping a few of them in the process.
“Oh, love,” he rasps. “You know what it does to me when you’re rough.”
“Good. First roughness,” I say between kisses as we make our way over to the bed, our clothes flying in all directions in our scramble to get undressed. “Then sleep. Because I really, really need sleep.”
“It’ll be awhile before you get that,” he says apologetically before pulling me to him and on top of the cool sheets.
He wasn’t lying when he promised that I wouldn’t find time to sleep for a good long while. Still, after we’re done and tangled up with each other, I still don’t close my eyes. I stare up at the ceiling, listening to his shallow breathing intermingling with the sound of mine.
It’s a sound I’ve yet to get tired of, even after living together since August.
“You’re fucking incredible, Lucinda Jane Williams,” he says, and I cover my face with my hands and shake my head. “I’m not kidding, love, I swear you just broke my cock with that fancy little—”
I roll over on my stomach, lowering my lips to his to stop him from using his words to bring on the waves of desire again. His tongue slips past my lips, hungry and unapologetic. I can taste myself on him, mixed in with the flavor of his gum, and heat swells through me. My head spinning, I ease away from him and close my eyes.
“Didn’t have quite the effect you hoped it would, did it?” he teases, and I shake my head.
“We’re not doing this again, Exley.”
“Yes, well, there’s always tomorrow.”
We sink into silence again, and I’m just about to doze off when I feel his lips on my shoulder. Then my shoulder blade. I draw in a sigh and curl my toes. “What happened to tomorrow?”
“Bringing you to that convention today made me think, Lucy.” He sits back on his side of the bed and gazes down at me, his eyes moving appreciatively over my naked body before they return to my face. “I think it’s time we take our relationship to the next level. Something different, you know.”
Popping one hazel eye open, I give him a wary look. “Exley, if you’re asking me if you can put me in a cage and gag me, it’s a hard no.”
“My beautiful, smart-mouthed, Lucy,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He slaps my ass again, causing me to open the other eye. I flip back over on my back and give him a dark glare as he continues, “The last several months with you have been the best of my life. Considering the best before I fell in love with you were spent here—in London—I figured this was fitting.”
Hoisting myself up slightly to rest on my elbows, I crane my neck to see what he’s doing as he reaches over to the nightstand. I half expect him to turn around with some new design he wants to try on me, but then he places something small and cold on my belly.
I stare at the stainless steel band for a long time, my eyes memorizing the smooth surface, and then I look up at Jace. He reaches down, brushing strands of black hair out of my face. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice thick with the same emotion that’s coursing through me as I return my focus to the ring. “When we go back to Boston, I’ll take you to Tiffany and you can pick out the most outrageous diamond you can find, but I wanted to make it special. To make it real. I wanted—”
“No.” I sit upright, the tiny metal ring—Jace’s creation—clutched in one hand as my other grips his shoulder tightly for support. I don’t realize I’m crying until he strokes his thumb over my cheek and then presses it to his lips. He gives me a shaky smile.
“I don’t want to take no for an answer, love. I want you to marry me. I want babies with you and orthodox and attachments. I want—”
“No. I meant no to the going to Tiffany for an outrageous diamond,” I whisper, shaking my head. I had one of those once—a three carat monstrosity—and it never made me feel an ounce of the happiness and pride I’m experiencing right now. In this moment. With Jace, the man I stupidly once wrote off. “This is … perfect. And yes. Yes, I absolutely will marry you.”
“I was thinking we could do it in the spring. Here in London, maybe, or somewhere neither of us have ever been. Then we can…”
I see his lips moving, and it's honestly quite lovely watching them move, but my brain goes hazy as I examine the ring. My engagement ring. When I fix my gaze on Jace, he’s paused himself and is staring back at me with one eyebrow raised.
“Are you falling asleep on me again?” he drawls.
“Never.” I could have jet-lag for days, and I wouldn’t fall asleep after something like this. I hold the ring close to his face, running my fingertip along the engraving inside. “I know the initials are ours—LJW and JCE—but the date is…”
“When we met. May 24, 2001—three days after your twelfth birthday in stuffy ass Collins’s class. You were an arse that day because I told some girls in the cafeteria that I hated classwork.”
“You remember that?” I murmur, and he moves closer to me.
“I remember everything about you, love. The way you smell.” He skims his nose along my collarbone, inhaling deeply, sending a shiver down my spine. “The way you taste. And even when you piss me off.” His lips twitch at the look I shoot his way. “But don’t ever think there’s anything about you that I don’t notice. That I don’t love.”
My heart pounding wildly against my chest, I look at the metal in my palm again until he finally closes his hand around mine. When he guides the ring onto my finger, my breath catches, and I close my eyes. “Say something.”
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you.”
“Good.” He pulls me to him, and his hands are in my hair and on my face. “I love you too. Something else I’ll always remember to do when it comes to you, Lucy.”
-The End-
SPECIAL SNEAK PEEK OF HIS WICKED WAYS
Keep reading for a special sneak peek of my next book, HIS WICKED WAYS. Add it to your Goodreads TBR to be the first to find out when it goes live!
Blurb
"I'm not safe, but I don't think that's what you're looking for. Not anymore."
I should've walked away when he told me that.
I couldn't.
With two months left to finish my manuscript, I had no choice but to research the darker side of Manhattan's night life. That's how I ended up at Eden. His club. I can’t say I wasn’t curious about my character’s lifestyle. That I haven’t imagined the type of man she attracts—a man who doesn’t treat me like a porcelain doll. But it was research. And Eden was only a night club—nothing more. At least, that’s what I thought before I met Cain Delaney. Before I got into his limo. Before he looked me right in the eye and said, "I'm going to break you, Michaela Bowick, and when I put you back together, I'm going to own you."
They say the best stories come from experience.
And he promises I’ll experience everything. No matter how wicked those things may be.
Chapter 1
Michaela
“‘You had no fucking idea what you were getting into when you came here.” A smirk curled his lips. Darkness dripped from his voice. But the darkest note of all—it came from his eyes. Predatory. Seeking. Beautiful. “Did you, Mercy?”
Mercy. Not Mercilla, but Mercy. I unraveled at the nickname. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” I said.
He laughed. And I came apart even more. “I’ll ask again once I’m finished.’”
–Michaela Bowick, Descent, Estim
ated Publication 2018
The arrival of my editorial letter is terrifying and exhilarating. I get the new message alert right after the waitress drops off our appetizer, and I quickly forget the hunger knotting my stomach. Taxis breeze by the outdoor patio and silverware clangs against plates, but the background noise slowly drifts away. The blood pumping to my ears becomes my new soundtrack. It’s only after I realize Trisha’s lips are moving that I jerk back to reality and speak.
“Sorry for playing on my phone. Lena just emailed.” My hearing comes back in time to hear the reverence I place on my editor’s name.
“Notes on Descent?”
I lay my phone on the table and reach for my water. My hand shakes around the cold glass. “Mmhmm.”
“If you don't open it now, you'll be a wreck and won’t eat.” Trisha pauses from shoveling a pork slider from the appetizer platter to her plate and shifts an eyebrow. “I’m going to be a wreck if you don't look at it.”
“I should wait.” And yet, I'm already grasping for my phone. It's been three weeks since I turned in my manuscript, and I've relentlessly stalked my inbox for feedback since. It figures the revision letter would show up now, the one afternoon I've dragged myself away from my laptop.
“Open the email, Michaela,” she urges. “I bet Lena loves it as much as I do.”
I click on the attachment. We have a general rule for lunch dates—no technology, since we spend most of our time glued to a computer screen—but she looks like she’s about to bounce out of her seat. “I feel like a dick checking emails in the middle of lunch. I promise, only a peek.”
“Take your time. And then tell me what it says because I'm dying to know.”
Lord, me too.
Descent was the hardest book I’ve ever written, far more difficult than Existence and Essence combined, because Mercilla Rivers is my favorite character—she always has been, even when she was only a secondary character with sarcastic one-liners. Mercy sought fulfillment in depravity. The taboo and the tainted and the risqué. She’s the character I've poured my secret fantasies into. I want her to work because I need some fucked up confirmation that I’m not …