by Addison Fox
The light play of her fingers over his chest, coupled with the sexy light in her eyes, had Cade leaning into her. “So now we’re morons?”
“The worst sort.” She nipped at his chin before teasing his bottom lip between her teeth.
He ran the tip of his tongue over her mouth, drawing a smile before she let go of his lip. “And why’s that?”
“Because we’ve let our mutual stubborn natures keep us from doing this.”
She moved in a flash, her fingers slipping beneath the waistband of his shorts and his briefs all at once. Those long, beautiful fingers of hers wrapped around his erection, and Cade would have sworn his living room dissolved into an explosion of stars. “Jaz.”
Her name came out on a half whisper, half moan as he gave her free rein over his body.
Long, generous strokes. Tight—gloriously tight—pressure where her palm held him in a firm hold. Whatever fantasies he’d had about her—and he was now wonderfully free to admit he’d had quite a few—nothing compared with the real thing.
Nothing compared to Jasmine.
His hands skimmed her waist, tugging at the bottom of her shirt to lift it off her. The motion caused her to break contact with his body, giving him a moment to regain some of the control that was rapidly slipping away.
He dragged her T-shirt over her head, his hands going to the slim lines of her stomach. Cade traced a path around her belly button, pleased when her stomach contracted at the touch. “Does that tickle?”
“A little.”
The gentle tracing over her flesh grew more urgent as he followed the arc of her rib cage, his hands skimming flesh before reaching the line of silk that made up her bra. Her breasts filled the pretty pink cups, small but firm, and he filled his hands with her, plying her nipples into tight points.
Her heavy exhale escaped as a light moan, a breathy acknowledgment of her pleasure, before she matched his movements. She tugged on his shirt and dragged it over his head before she began an exploration of her own, her hands following the lines of his body.
Cade breathed her in—the warmth of her flesh, the arousal they shared, even the light scent of cotton candy was still there—before he stilled, his hands, reaching for hers.
“Are you sure about this?”
A small pout tilted her lips before shifting into a wry smile. “It’s a bit late to change my mind.”
“It’s never too late.”
Sobering, she nodded. “I know. And thank you for that. But, Cade Rossi, if you stop right now, I might have to call your mother and tell her she raised a lazy, incompetent man who can’t finish a job.”
“My mother doesn’t usually come up in moments like these.”
“Then kiss me, dumb ass.”
* * *
Jasmine had to admit, her past relationships hadn’t included mentions of anyone’s mother or calling her sexual partner a dumb ass. Yet with Cade, it seemed to work.
Was it the fact they’d known each other for so long? Or the beauty of what he’d been saying all along? They were friends. It’s where they started, and it would be the center for them, no matter how much else spun from that beginning.
Before she could consider it further, Cade had her up in his arms and was heading for the bedroom. The same bed she’d made so carefully that morning welcomed her as he laid her on it. He made quick work of the rest of his clothes before reaching for her shorts and panties and tugging them both down in one long move. He stepped away from the bed to toss her clothes to the ground, and Jasmine got her first look at him.
And he was perfect. That large brawler’s form she’d eyed for more years than she could count bore a few scars. A puckered ridge ran over his waist, the result of a knife wound on an op that went south. The white stamp of a burn scar rode high on his right thigh, a run-in with a hot fireplace poker when he was eight.
The things she knew, she realized, as she catalogued him.
So many things, yet there was so much more to learn. The feel of his body. The way he’d fill her. The slick flesh beneath her hands when he joined his body with hers.
It stretched before them, like a wide-open promise. Reaching behind her back, she undid her bra and sent it sailing toward the rest of the pile he’d made somewhere on the floor, and opened her arms. He joined her, pressing his chest to hers, skin to skin, his gaze locked with hers.
Despite the urgency of the moment and the desperate yearning of her body to join the two of them, she gave herself a moment to simply savor. She’d wanted this for so long—had wanted him for so long—that she was insistent on taking this moment for herself.
“Jaz.” He whispered.
“Hmmm?”
“This. Us. It’s real.”
“I know.”
He leaned down and captured her mouth, the kiss full of as much promise as his words.
And then there was nothing more to say. There was only everything to feel.
Moment spun into moment, impression and sensation merging, morphing into something even more. His hands returned to her breasts, exploring the sensitive flesh before following with his mouth. Pleasure consumed her at his touch, each stroke of his tongue like a brand on her body. The mark that she was his.
A claiming.
Shifting in his arms, she turned the momentum, her focus on his chest and the hair that descended over the firm ridges of his stomach, narrowing toward his erection. She followed that path, trailing kisses over his flesh until she reached him, taking him into her hands and claiming him in return.
His deep moans and the contraction of his stomach muscles were the signs of his pleasure as she maintained the long, sure strokes, but it was the near animalistic moan when she took him in her mouth that had her own pleasure soaring to new heights.
He was hers. And as she used her tongue to show him all she felt in her heart—all the things that had no words. She could only marvel that they were finally together.
Her dreams had become reality.
Cade gently pulled on her shoulders, stilling her movements and pulling her over his body. “Much as it pains me to ask you to stop, I can’t—” He broke off pressing his forehead to hers. “There’s time for everything.”
And there was.
It all spread before them, a banquet that would fill them for a lifetime.
And then he tilted the playing field once more, shifting her onto her back and placing a row of kisses over her flesh before reaching for a condom in the end table. In a matter of moments, he was positioned against her, his body seeking entrance.
Jasmine opened for him, her body welcoming him in.
They found their rhythm immediately, an instinctive joining that had pleasure eddying through her body in continuous waves. Every time she thought she couldn’t get higher, he stroked harder, filled her more deeply, and she was lost.
She was his.
And as the pleasure finally overtook them both, Jasmine understood what had started that long ago day with water balloons on the Rossi porch.
Her soul had known him forever. Had loved him forever.
Now that their mutually stubborn heads had caught up, the beauty of forever stretched out before them.
Epilogue
“You’re nervous?” Jasmine’s surprise was genuine as she looked over at him, poised to knock at his parents’ front door.
“Aren’t you?”
Cade fought the urge to tug at the neck of his T-shirt and kept his voice casual. They were late to Daphne and Landon’s engagement party and he was already anticipating the stink eye from his mother. And somehow the sudden realization the two of them were going to get the nosy eye from everyone else at the party struck him as painful in the extreme.
“What are you nervous about? This is your family.”
“I don’t—”
He was prevented from saying anything by his father’s bright smile as he swung open the door. “Just tell your mother you got here a half hour ago and have been mingling ever since. I’ll back you
up.”
“Thanks, Pop.”
Frank patted his back as they walked in. “She’s been so out of her mind with the preparations for today, you may get lucky and she hasn’t even noticed you’re late.”
Cade had no doubt his mother had noticed, but he’d take the out his father offered and play it to the hilt.
He and Jasmine did as instructed and spent the next half hour mingling. Although the two of them got more than a few eager looks (aunts who were meddlesome on the best of days) and the occasional wink (his cousin Buddy, who usually played the family asshole), most everyone seemed to take it as a matter of course that he and Jasmine were together.
“I think you worried for nothing.” Jasmine whispered in his ear, her hand locked in his as they surveyed the yard from his parents’ back patio. “Everyone’s in a happy mood. And no one really cares all that much that we’re here together.”
“Most of them are wondering why it’s taken us so long.”
Mischief lit her dark gaze as she turned to him, a cocky smile tilting her lips. “Yeah, Rossi. Why did it take so long?”
“Because I’m a bonehead?”
“No arguments from me.” Jasmine pressed a quick kiss to his lips. The kiss was chaste, there in the middle of his parents’ back porch, but it promised so much more.
“Jasmine. Behave.” Lynn Shane’s admonition echoed from somewhere behind his head as she and her husband, Percy, stepped outside.
“Mom! Dad!” Jasmine hugged them both, and Cade did the same. He’d always loved Jasmine’s mother but, if he were honest, was a little scared of her, too. She had the same quality as his mother—an odd ability to make you feel like you were the most important thing in her world, while at the same time assuring you she’d whip your ass if you took a step out of line. Lynn also had a scary resting face that would give cops a run for their money.
“Why don’t you and your dad go get us some drinks? I see a few empty lawn chairs over there, and Cade and I will snag them.” Lynn’s instructions brooked no argument, and Jasmine and her father disappeared as Cade and Lynn headed for the chairs.
“Your mother did a beautiful job, as always. And I’ve never seen Daphne so happy.”
Cade looked across the lawn, where Daphne and Landon were surrounded by well-wishers. He knew Lynn’s words for the truth. “She’s lit up inside. I can’t decide if I want to punch McGee or hug him.”
“I’m not a proponent of violence.” Lynn smoothed a hand over her summer skirt. “Unless, of course, it’s while someone’s protecting my daughter.”
Cade nodded.
“Tell me that animal’s behind bars.”
“For a good long time.”
“But he will get out some day.”
“We can spend the next twenty years worrying about it, or we can live our lives. Barrow’s already fifty. And since he turned snitch to get out the first time, his chances of surviving long in prison aren’t good.”
“Oh.” Lynn’s eyes widened at that. “Well, then . . .”
Cade normally avoided being quite that honest about criminal behavior, but he was willing to make an exception for Lynn. He would remain vigilant over Barrow’s case, and he’d already raised holy hell the man had gotten out in the first place, but the man’s actions while on parole didn’t bode well for him. Stalking and attacking the victim of his first crime in public was the first nail in his coffin. Battling a cop sealed the lid.
“You’re dating my daughter.”
The swift change in topic shouldn’t have caught him off guard, but it did. “I—. Well, yeah.”
“She loves you.”
“I love her, too.”
Lynn’s eyes narrowed at that. “All the Rossis love my daughter. That’s no surprise.”
“I really love her. Make-a-life-with-her love.”
“You took an awfully long time figuring it out.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to go back to your old ways? Catting around town?”
Cade avoided the urge to tug at his T-shirt collar again and assured himself that he deserved the third degree. Yet even as he knew he needed to keep himself in check, he couldn’t fight the subtle layer of frustration. Yes, he’d been an asshole. And yes, he’d dragged one woman after another around town while the one he was meant for all along was left to watch.
But he loved her. And he had finally pulled his head out of his ass. Didn’t that count for something?
“That’s as much an insult to me as it is to your daughter.”
The dark eyes, so like Jasmine’s, narrowed. “How so?”
“She’s amazing. She’s bright and smart and beautiful and funny and about a million other things I’ve never found with another person. I’m in this. All the way in this. No matter what my history might suggest.”
“I see.”
“I know my track record sucks, and I know I deserve a few good jabs about that. But it’s not who I am.”
“Then that’s all I needed to know.”
“Why?”
In a heartbeat, that sharp, assessing gaze faded, replaced with something he’d seen so many times in his own mother’s eyes.
Love.
“I’ve watched my baby pine over the love of her life for the past twenty years, helpless to do anything about it. You’ll forgive me if I have worries it will somehow be snatched away from her.”
“It won’t.”
“I know that now.” Lynn leaned forward and pulled him close. “I just needed to hear it for myself.”
Cade pulled Jasmine’s mother close and sunk into the hug. He’d run for so long, it felt good to stand still in one place. Even more than that, it felt good to be welcomed into Jasmine’s family.
Something had his gaze shifting, and he saw his sister across the lawn, a bright smile filling her face. Daphne had her hand locked in Landon’s as the two of them talked to a small circle of friends. But her smile was all for him.
It was slightly superior, as all sister smiles were prone to be.
It was supremely satisfied, as if to say she’d finally gotten her way.
And it was full of love.
Bright and shiny and so very happy. The same love he’d seen between his parents had found its way to a new generation.
Jasmine and Percy rejoined Cade and Lynn, and the four of them toasted the day on a round of smiles and laughter. There, in the backyard he’d navigated as a boy, Cade toasted his sister’s future and then toasted his own.
They had so much to celebrate.
Author’s Note
For those of you who’ve visited the New York Aquarium, you may notice I’ve taken a few liberties in the physical layout as well as activities open to the public for the sake of the story. I hope you’ll forgive the slight creative license in my excitement to give Jasmine and Cade their happy ever after.
About the Author
Author photograph © ©Lifetouch Portrait Studios Inc. Used with permission.
Addison Fox can’t remember a time when words weren’t a part of her life. In addition to being an avid reader, she loves writing novels about strong-willed and exciting heroes and heroines—individuals who are meant for each other and who deserve their happy ever after. After she makes them work for it, of course!
Addison lives in New York. You can find her at her home on the web at www.addisonfox.com or on Facebook (facebook.com/addisonfoxauthor) and Twitter (@addisonfox).
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Also by Addison Fox
Just Once
At Last
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Addison Fox
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FOREVER YOURS. Copyright © 2017 by Frances Karkosak. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover photographs: couple © wundervisuals/iStock; fireworks © Anderm/Shutterstock.com; liberty © Mat Hayward/Shutterstock.com
ISBN 978-1-250-14377-8 (ebook)
First Edition: June 2017
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