by Mignon Mykel
“I’m good,” she answered, turning her smiling lips up toward me. I took the opportunity to kiss her lightly.
“Don’t drop her..!”
Brenna and I collectively turned at Rory’s voice, only to watch as Conor shook his head, readjusting Ava in his arms.
“I’m not going to drop my kid. She’s not the first one.”
“You weren’t supposed to admit you dropped Aiden, Con,” Mia whispered from the bed. My eyes swept to her, only to catch her laughing and holding up a hand. “I’m kidding!”
“I wouldn’t drop my kid,” Conor grumbled goodheartedly. “Rore, can you take Aiden please?”
Rory’s auburn brows rose but he did as he was asked. “Sure. Hey, kid. It’s your real uncle,” he said, picking up the boy from Mia’s side. Aiden babbled and pulled at Rory’s hair, making him wince. “Yeah. Alright. Watch the hands.”
“I think she’s hungry,” Conor said, offering a very much sleeping Ava to Mia.
Mia lifted a brow but accepted the baby. “She’s sleeping, Con.”
Conor shifted after standing. “Well…she was fussing a little out there.”
Brenna shook her head against my side, her arms still wrapped around me. “N—” she started, but Conor cut her off with a glare.
Yeah.
A glare.
Like, she would have been struck by lightning if she dare speak a word otherwise.
“I love seeing you so concerned,” Mia said, her words laced with laughter. She glanced around the room and shook her head before looking back down at her newest baby.
“We should probably start to get going though, so if she does wake up, you can do… you know, your thing,” Rory said, waving toward Mia. “I’ve seen your boobs one time too many.”
“Rory!” Brenna exclaimed but Mia only grinned at him.
“Hence the extra locks,” Conor said. “You guys should stay for a few more minutes.” He seemed fidgety. I had never seen the man anything other than overly secure in his spot in the world.
“Knocking works wonders too,” Mia told Rory. Then, looking down at Ava, she added in a smaller voice, “Doesn’t it, baby girl?” She brushed her finger down Ava’s cheek, down her neck, and over her shoulder. Her finger caught on something under the blanket though and she turned her face up toward the group then Conor.
“Conor…”
He nodded at her, then gestured with his chin toward her hand. Mia placed Ava on the bed between her legs, slowly unwrapping the swaddle Ava was in. I felt Brenna jump slightly against me. Her excitement was coursing through her and I couldn’t figure out—
“Oh!” Mia said, just as Conor lowered to a knee right next to the bed, reaching for Mia’s left hand as her right picked up a ring that was in the swaddling blankets.
“Mia Hampton. You’ve made me the happiest man in the world, not once, but twice. Heck, a hundred and two times. I don’t have a pretty speech because frankly, I’m a little afraid you’ll shoot me down again but please. Please, Mia baby, will you marry me? Take the same last name our babies have? Let me love you forever?”
While I wasn’t privy to all the details, I knew that this wasn’t the first time he had asked, but I was pretty sure this was the most formal time he’d popped the question.
Brenna let go of me, only to move around and stand in front of me, leaning back. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, loving that her chin rested on my forearms.
“Yes, Conor.” It was whispered but it was through tears.
Conor shot up from his kneel, leaning into his now fiancée and mumbled against her lips, “Fuck yes,” before kissing her soundly. It was almost embarrassing to watch.
“It’s about time,” Rory mumbled.
“You’re next,” Conor said, pulling back from Mia with a huge-assed grin on his face.
Rory shook his head. “Nah. I’ve got some time. But those two…” Rory pointed at us. “You shoulda heard Stone. He’s planning on—”
“Close it,” I told him. It took me five years to get Brenna to admit to us as a couple in public. I wasn’t about to throw a proposal on her without talking through some things first.
Brenna grinned over her shoulder at me. “You’re planning on what?”
I kissed her temple and shook my head. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I should have realized she’d never let it be.
“What were you planning?” she asked when I got into Mia’s car after getting Aiden. We were headed back to Con’s house for the moment. Brenna’s mom and dad were sticking around the hospital for a little longer but then would meet us at Con’s house and switch guard of Aiden.
I couldn’t wait to get Brenna back to our place.
God, I missed her there, what with the last two times I went to bed and she wasn’t there.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said around a chuckle, turning the ignition. “I’ll tell you later.” I looked over my shoulder, pulling out of our spot.
I caught Brenna looking at me, her brows up, before she looked in the back where Aiden was already fast asleep.
“God, I hope I have kids as good as Aiden,” she said.
“You want to have more kids?” I asked her, glancing over her.
She nodded, still looking at Aiden, before turning her attention back to me. “I do. Holding Ava was a little hard, but there wasn’t any room in that maternity suite for sad feelings of things that weren’t meant to be.” She offered me a smile and I reached over to take her hand, squeezing it once in support.
She squeezed mine back. “Do you?” She paused, as if weighing the silence. “Want kids? I mean, I know you said...”
It may not have been something I thought about at length before Brenna, but, “Yes. I do.” I grinned over at her, winking once, before turning my attention back to the road.
“You know,” she started, looking out her window. “Five years is a long time. And we have been living together for a year.”
“Mmhmm.” My lips tightened, the corners lifting.
“Maybe...” She glanced over at me then shook her head. “Never mind.”
I let her have her silence, knowing without a doubt what she had on her mind—because it was on my own, too, and by the end of the day, I was going to ease her thoughts.
Brenna
His hands roamed under my shirt, his tongue sweeping into my mouth. My own hands were fisted in his hair.
We made it back to our place a little bit ago and no sooner than walking into the duplex, Grey tossed me over his shoulder and headed for the stairs, carrying me up to the loft while I laughed into his back. Rather than tossing me on the bed though, he slowly dropped me to stand in front of him, my body rubbing against his deliciously on the way down.
“I love you, Brenna O’Gallagher,” he said against my mouth, pulling back so he could lift my shirt over my head. I let go of his hair to allow him to do so. When it was off, I went to work on his jeans as he took off his own shirt. We undressed one another in hurried silence.
Still standing, he pulled my body close. I stood on tip-toe, my chest pressed to his, so I could pull his lips down to mine.
With our lips connected, he lifted me, an arm under my butt and the other banded around my back, and this time, brought me to the bed we shared—the one we spent many all-nighters in—to lay me down gently. I kept my arms wrapped around his neck, loving when he lowered his body to press mine into the bed.
I ran my toes up his calf slowly, causing his body to flex into mine. His hard cock trapped between our bodies twitched and I smiled into his mouth.
“You like that, do you?” he asked, a grin on his own face. Pulling back and kneeling between my legs, he grabbed his cock in his hand and slowly stroked his length. “Do you want this?”
“Yes, Grey,” I said, but two could play this game. I shifted slightly, just enough to spread my legs more, and brought my fingers to my core, rubbing a slow circle over my tight clit. “Do you want this?”
“Fuck ye
s, baby.” He squeezed himself once more and went to bring his mouth down to me but I covered myself with my hand completely.
“No, Grey. I just want you right now. I need you right now.”
He pressed his lips to the back of my hand. “I need to taste you, Bren. God, I’ve missed this. Missed you.”
I couldn’t help the smile. “It was only two nights.”
“Yeah.” He kissed my hip bone. “Two nights where I stared at the ceiling hoping you’d come back to me.”
I pushed up onto my elbows, peering down at him. “I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“Don’t be.” He moved up to kiss between my breasts, making me lie back down. “You needed time. I got that. I pushed you, I should have expected it.” His arms caged me again as he loomed over me, his face directly over mine. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
I smiled up at him, reaching to place both my hands on his now day-old scruffy cheeks. “Thank you for being my rock. For not giving up on me.”
“Never giving up on you, Angel,” he said quietly as he lowered himself, his mouth closing over mine. We did some of his favorite “naked making out” before he reached for a condom at his bedside table where the boxes had lived, and had been utilized, since we began this adventure.
Thinking about our earlier conversation, I put a hand on his forearm to stop him.
He wanted babies. I wanted babies.
We should probably do things in the correct order, but I wasn’t anywhere near my fertile window, and I was protected in other ways.
“We don’t…have to use one,” I shrugged, suddenly slightly self-conscious. Immediately, my head went through all the times I slept with men, some safely and others not. “I’m clean,” I rushed on to add. And I was. Thank goodness for that, with my history.
He lowered his reach to place his elbow on my side, laying half on me, half off. With his other hand, he brushed wayward strands of hair from my face, staring down at me. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I’m clean.”
His face split in the crooked grin of his that was incredibly endearing to me. “Angel, I wasn’t questioning that.”
I sunk into my pillow, slightly embarrassed that that was where my head went. “Ok.”
He leaned into me again, licking the seam of my lips before kissing them once, sucking on my lower lip. “I know bareback isn’t a big deal to some people, but it’s a big deal to me,” he offered.
“I’m sure,” I whispered against his lips.
He moved himself over me again, lifting one of my legs as I did the same with the other, wrapping my ankles at his back. With slight guidance from his hand, he thrust into me, rocking us slowly at first, our mouths fused and kissing as slowly as our bodies moved with one another.
Eventually the pace picked up though and with my arms wrapped tightly around his neck, I pulled myself close and pressed my open mouthed moans to his chest.
“Fucking…love…you,” he said with each hard thrust in the mix of his short, quick ones. His hips moved against mine and I release my hold on his neck to hold on to his ass with one hand, feeling his muscle bunch with each quick thrust.
He rolled us, wrapping his arms around me this time, keeping me close and unable to sit up and ride him properly. With his feet bracing against the bed, he pounded up into me again and again.
I let out moans, most louder than the previous, as the feel of his corded cock continuously hit nerve endings in my pussy. I was so close.
With one of his arms banded around my hips and the other, my shoulders, I wasn’t going anywhere. My open mouth was still pressed to his shoulder, my breaths coming out hot against his skin, the moisture from my breath mixing with his sweat. His grunts in my ear told me he was getting close too.
“Squeeze down on me. Squeeze, Angel. God, come all over my cock,” he demanded between grunts.
I did what he asked, squeezing my muscles down around him, making the feel of him that much greater, sending me that much closer. Two, three, four more thrusts and my jaw dropped further and I fought to move my head to press my forehead to his shoulder. My moan as I came echoed through the duplex.
“God.” Thrust. “Damn!” He thrust up into me one last time before his hot cum jetted inside my walls, his cock twitching and pulsing in me. “God, I love you, Brenna,” he said against my ear, a shiver running through his body as his cock emptied.
Stone
Brenna lay in my arms, completely sated. I could do this for the rest of my life—love her, love on her, and hold her through the night.
Knowing what I wanted to do, I pulled away from her with a kiss and moved to the closet. Brenna sat up, holding the sheet to her chest for no reason other than the open windows in the place allowed a cool draft to circle through.
“What are you doing?” she asked as I went through a few of the boxes I had stashed back there, full of off-season clothing.
“Looking for something.”
Before I moved in with her, I knew that this was the direction I wanted to take.
That Brenna was it for me.
Maybe it had been presumptuous of me, especially seeing as she hadn’t allowed us to be in public for so many years, but I knew in my heart this day would eventually come. Finding what I was looking for, I took the ring from its box and carried it back with me, closed in under my fingers.
Brenna moved to sit against the headboard, watching as I returned to her. I tapped her legs and she folded them to her, allowing me to sit across from her. I kept one leg on the floor and the other folded between us, completely naked and not giving two shits about it.
“Brenna.”
She turned her head and narrowed her eyes playfully at me. “Grey.”
I grinned at her and held out my free hand for hers, which she placed in mine quickly. I squeezed her fingers, never taking my gaze from hers.
“You know I love you.”
This time she grinned. “Yes. Yeah, Grey, I know. You know I love you, right?”
I lifted her hand to my lips to kiss her fingers. “Yes, Angel. I know.” I kissed each finger before bringing our hands back down.
“I want to love you forever.”
Her breath hitched and her fingers tightened in mine.
“I know you just got around to accepting who we are in public, but I’d love nothing more than for you to say you’ll marry me. We can take our time; it doesn’t have to be fast.” I paused, actually fearful that she might say no.
But she smiled and there were tears in her eyes as she nodded her head. “Yes. Yes, I’d love to marry you, Greyson Stone.”
My smile was the widest it had ever before gotten, I was sure. “Yeah? It’s not too soon?”
Her smirk was cute and her words were mimicking. “It’s been five effing years, Grey.”
I chuckled, pulling her to me. She scrambled close, allowing the sheet to drop, and curled her body into mine.
“You did just get around to admitting us to your brothers, though.”
“And they took it really well. I was worried for nothing.” She traced her hand down from my shoulder to my closed fist.
Shit. My closed fist.
With a grin, I turned my fist upward and revealed the ring I had chosen for her two years before. I hadn’t seen it in that time, but it was still as radiant, still as “Brenna” to me, as it was when I first bought it.
It was a simple square cut diamond, but the band had its fair share of the brilliant stone too.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, staring at my hand. I leaned back from her so I could pick it up, holding it between us. “It reminded me of you. In a sea of all things radiant, you stand out. You always have.”
She smiled, then bit her lip. “Put it on me?”
“With pleasure.”
Then I slid the ring on its rightful home.
Eight Years Later
Brenna
“Bren! Come on, we’re going to be late!” I heard as I scrambled to get the baby’s ba
g together. At some point today, Chris, our eighteen-month old, thought it would be a really good idea to hide the baby’s diaper bag.
I still couldn’t find it.
So rather than continue to search for the missing bag, I was putting together a new one. I just couldn’t find…
Aha!
I closed the closet in the nursery after finding one of Mikey’s favorite two binkies.
They were all the same, but for whatever reason, the boy fell asleep better with one of these particular two.
“Bren! Angel, come on. The boys are getting antsy!”
“I’m coming!” I hollered back, running down the stairs to our renovated farm house. We moved a little way away from San Diego, but still close enough that we could go in to the pub when needed.
These days, I did a lot of the business minded things, while Con handled more of a human resources roll. We didn’t need to both keep working at the pub; I could have left or he could have, but we both liked to keep busy. Grey had been the head trainer for many years, right up until we had Matt four years ago. He asked to be a stay at home dad.
Grey was not afraid of me being the breadwinner, something that had me laughing a time or two.
I had two boys with black hair and gray eyes, but I was pretty sure baby Mikey’s hair was going to keep turning lighter. I wasn’t destined to hold another baby girl and call her mine; Grey and I were done having kids and I was completely ok with the fact I was going to be a boy mom. Nova was my baby girl and she’d always be my one and only.
When I rounded through the mud room, Grey was standing in the doorway with the door propped open, grinning at me. “You find what you were looking for?”
“I had to pack a bag! I told you this.” I lifted the bag to show him.
“Why?” Grey frowned, allowing me to step past him and into the garage where the Pilot was running and waiting for us.
“Because Chris moved the other one. My goodness, Grey, I’d think you had baby brain.” I shook my head and got into the passenger side, setting the bag between my feet.