by Kendall Duke
When it was all over, the moment of the occasion only hit me when he withdrew, sitting on the edge of the bed for a second before he stood up and did all of the things I always imagined happen first. He got completely undressed, his body magnificent as he turned on the light by the bed, and turned to gaze down at my face before stroking my cheek. “Is it like that every time?”
“No,” he said, his characteristic bluntness not necessarily the most welcome thing in that exact moment. “No, it’s not.”
I sat up and crawled over so that I could lean against him, and he wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled my forehead. “I’m sorry. I—”
“No, Delilah,” he immediately told me, pulling back so I could look into those black eyes, their seriousness replacing the tender gleam from moments ago. “No, that’s not what I meant—I understand your question. I should have been more specific in my answer.”
“So… It’s not that I’m so inexperienced... I mean…”
“It is that you are different, but not because this is new to you,” he said softly, and I met his gaze, forcing the flash of embarrassment out of my system. That didn’t belong here, not between us. Not now. “You are different, and this was different, because I could love you very much. Very deeply,” he told me, his voice husky and vulnerable in a way it had never been before. “It is never like this because I have never felt this way about anyone. Ever.”
“If it makes you feel any better… I feel the same way about you,” I confessed, wondering if that’s all there was to love, in the end—it was all luck, really, it was all up to chance. An article I needed badly enough to bargain for, a split second when I walked through the door first, an accident of perfect compatibility… I looked up at him. “I can’t believe this happened.”
“I didn’t think it possible,” he told me. “I didn’t think myself capable of it.”
“Of taking a chance?”
“No,” he said slowly, lowering his face to mine. “My life is entirely composed of accidents aligned with chances that presented themselves as opportunities… No, Miss March. I meant love.”
He kissed me, and we did it all again, every second, every single one, reminding me of that word, over and over: love.
As he touched me. As he kissed me. As he taught me, and teased me, and made me ache with want and trust and a new, ripe need: love.
Epilogue
Grant
She doesn’t want the baby to be born in New York, which I found maddening, but because she has consented—to me, to carrying my child, to being the great love of my very questionable life—I agreed to let her have the baby in Maine. In the house. In the master suite where our child was conceived…. Surrounded, admittedly, by a team of medical professionals ordinarily employed by Mass General, but she agreed that was a small concession to make.
But for this? For this I was putting my foot down.
“I don’t know,” she hedged, blinking her eyes at me; we were standing in the foyer, and I never imagined a woman this beautiful could exist. Her dark hair has grown out just enough to frame that exquisite face, the luminous skin alight with the glow of our seven month old child growing inside of her. Those eyes, so dark and bewitching, and that mouth… My eternity had lain in those lips, and I could never regret the impetuous kiss that first claimed them. But now this angel was shrugging at me in her impossibly American way, driving me slowly mad. “Is it really necessary?”
“Yes,” I said, and she let the corner of her mouth quirk up, telling me she still enjoyed teasing me in any and every way she could. An imp couldn’t do a better job. But what was to be expected from a candy-connoisseur turned baker-for-the-homeless storytelling scribe? She was utterly unique, and she possessed my heart fully. “My darling,” I said, and offered my arm; she assented and regally descended the stairs, her skirt flowing over the steps in a cascade of bright hibiscus printed satin. Her mother helped her make this one; only my love would make me wait to marry her until she was done making her own damn dress.
She was so beautiful though. I suppose it was worth it, although I preferred her naked.
And then Tracy stuck his head through the door. “Let’s go! Come on, sugarplum, you look like a vacation in Cuba! Your mom and I wanna get a move on by dark!” Jerseyites to the core, my soon-to-be in-laws spoke exclusively in capital letters, with exclamation points following every declaration. It shouldn’t have been charming, but it was.
It made me remember my mother.
If she’d been able to come, she would be so happy for me, so pleased. In the end, I found a Jersey girl of my own, and my life was now… Complete.
“She’s watching,” my beloved whispered in my ear, able, as always, to read my expressions immediately and innately in a way no one else ever had. I relaxed as we approached the limousine, ready to begin our life as a married couple.
My greatest victory, surely.
I escorted my pregnant fiancée inside, waved good-bye to the bouncing, giddy staff waving us off—giving a tearful Millie a nod, as she would join us there as an honored guest—and sat down in side, my heart and mind turned towards the future.
I felt… At peace.
At last.
She had agreed to let my team assist down at Let Them Eat Bread until after the baby was born; her article was chosen by Blue, but the piece they published about our relationship afterward made it almost impossible for her to work with them, although they begged. Fortunately for my beloved, she was suddenly no longer beholden to the culinary writing world. Her sweet bakery, which fed up to 700 people a day, was now a headline of its own and an incredible amount of funding could be found with my connections. She was hoping to open another one in Washington, DC.
And we were having cupcakes she baked after she finally, finally married me.
Right downtown, in Portland, where our baby would be born.
“I love you, you know,” I whispered in her ear as we settled in for the short ride. Tracy and Joanie snapped pictures of the town through the open window, enjoying the picturesque scenery.
“I know,” she whispered back.
The End
Be sure to check out the following preview of The Virgin and the Hero!
Kendall Duke’s Innocent Series
Follow the links and don’t forget to leave a review! I hope you enjoy reading these sweet little books as much as I enjoyed writing them.
The Virgin and the Hero: A First Time Military Romance
From the Flames: A First Time Steamy Romance
The Rookie and the Virgin: A First Time Romance
Heartbeats: A First Time Military Romance
The Virgin and the Convict: An Alpha Bad Boy First Time Romance
Her First Ride: A First Time Cowboy Romance
The Surfer and the Virgin: An Alpha Bady Boy First Time Romance
The Kissing Game: A Rock Star First Time Romance
Other books by Kendall Duke:
The Bodyguard Anthology: An Erotic Russian Alpha Romance Books 1-4
From The Hero and the Virgin…
Jordan
I was starving.
Cold. Way past hungry. And headed for exhaustion.
Marcus at the diner remembered me from way back, and he always gave me an extra cup of coffee, even on days when I couldn’t afford more than my regular meal. The mill had me whipped but I was determined to get in some more over-time if it killed me; I was still $400 short of my brother’s hospital bill, and I’d be damned if one more shift was the difference between him getting the help he needed, and not. I could barely see but I pulled my pick-up into the diner’s parking lot and was grateful they stayed open twenty-four seven. I needed to eat something before I went home and fell into bed to work another 18 hour shift.
The diner opened years before I was born, but Marcus hadn’t bought it from the old owner until I was seventeen, right before I joined the Marines. I remembered when he was just a server himself, still learning how to work the register and terrified
of the deep fryer. That was a long time ago now, it felt like, although it’d only been ten years. Ten very, very long years.
I parked the truck and made my way through the door, listening to the little bell ring over my head and scanning the room automatically. I couldn’t help it; the training never left you. There were three guys sitting at the big round table in the corner being louder than the hour necessitated, but they were young, probably around twenty, and obviously a little drunk. There was another old vet at the counter; we’d served in different wars, obviously, me being at least two decades younger, but we understood one another very well and nodded without speaking. Marcus was in the back; I could hear him rattling around the pots and pans. I sat down at the counter and waited.
And waited.
I am a patient man. I have a bad temper, yes, and I’m not known for saying much, particularly anything very clever, but the one virtue anyone would agree I’ve always had, even before the military, is patience. I’ve always been able to wait. And wait. And wait.
But I was fucking tired. And cold, and hungry. Very hungry.
Without speaking, I stood up and looked through the plate rack back to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Marcus, but he looked a little frazzled, as if he’d bitten off a big bite of something that he couldn’t quite swallow. And while he was standing still, looking frazzled, someone else was rattling around in the kitchen making all that racket.
Great. A new server.
I sighed and sat back down. Marcus got new people to work the graveyard shift all the time, and they never failed to fail. It was a difficult shift that didn’t promise a lot of tips, just a lot of harassment from the riff-raff that came in drunk or were too taciturn to be polite, like the other vet at the counter and me. I didn’t know his name—didn’t even know his regiment—but we’d been sitting at this counter every once in a while after a late shift for at least a year, since I got back from my second tour. He gave me a knowing look and then returned to his coffee. There was a new twinkle in his eye, though, that gave me pause, and when I finally saw the kitchen door swing open I immediately understood why.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight—didn’t believe in anything, any more. But when I saw that girl for the first time I knew something was happening to me—love, a heart attack, or maybe God finally had pity on me for all the things that had gone wrong in my life and sent down an angel just to say hello, I don’t know. But something was happening, something big.
She was only five feet tall, I was sure, and had freckles the color of cinnamon spread out across a dainty nose. Giant brown eyes and copper waves of hair, lips a shade of red I’d seen far too many times in my life but these… These were living, bright and bold. And her shape… She was wearing a uniform that clearly belonged to someone else, as it was a little too big and fell down around her shoulder, revealing a turquoise bra strap that sent my stomach down to my knees. She needed that bra, because her breasts were pushing at the sack of that uniform even though the rest of her was tiny, and her hips were so round I could see them swinging, shifting the whole thing left and right. I tried to stop staring, but I couldn’t. And when she walked right up to me, picked up her pen and looked me straight in the eye, it took almost all of my will to speak words like a normal human and not just sling her over my shoulder and walk out the door.
“Hi!” She had a voice with a laugh tucked inside of it, as if everything amused her. “What can I get you?”
I ripped my eyes away from her face and stared down at the menu for a long minute before I was able to answer her question. I thought she might leave, but she didn’t, and when I looked back up she was calmly waiting, that smile still dancing on her full lips. I felt the scrutiny of her eyes but tried to concentrate on my order. “Cup of coffee, black. Whatever soup’s on special. Two sides of bacon.”
“Okay,” she said, and walked back through the kitchen door, her hips doing a dance of their own across the floor.
The old vet next to me took a sip of his coffee and the silence between us filled with the unspoken conversation we didn’t need to have. That girl was like a slice of sunshine. A beautiful, sparkling note striking through the blackness.
But men like us lived in the dark.
I didn’t need the kind of trouble my heart already wanted to get me in—my cock was first to follow her, of course, standing at attention beneath the counter in a way it just hadn’t since I got back, but I had a funny feeling in my chest, too. I made my decision without having to think about it, though. I would eat my meal, enjoy the view, and leave. Nothing could pull me out of the shadows, and I’d be damned if I dragged someone—anyone, but especially something as beautiful as her—into the dark with me. I had enough on my conscience.
The old vet knew all that, without either of us having to say it.
All the same, I could swear he disapproved.
And fate, it seemed, had similar ideas.
The rest of Jordan and Jessica’s story is available on Amazon!