by April Lust
And this time, in front of witnesses we both care so dearly for, people I fought to protect from Art Dayton’s brand of evil, I tell Lily what I’ve felt grow stronger each day I spend with her.
“I love you.” I breathe my soul into each of those three words.
Lily leans in and touches our mouths, her breath mine, and mine hers. “I love you too.”
Epilogue I
Lily
Ten months later…
“Are you crying?”
I wipe at my eyes and face Ellen and Floyd Hanley. They’ve pulled off the dance floor where they shocked everyone with their fast feet and quick moves, and they gesture at the empty seats at my table. I nod for them to sit.
Kerry insisted that as her most favorite, valued bridesmaid I should be sitting with the others near the head table, but I chose to sit nearer the exit. It’s the first time I’ve left Noah at home and my heart is panging.
But smiling at Ellen and Floyd’s concerned faces, I say, “It’s nothing. I just miss the baby.”
Ellen shakes her head, her smile warm. “Oh, dear,” she pats my hand and then surprises me with a hug. She squeezes me tight and soon I’m grateful for the embrace, glad to pour some of the maternal grief out to an understanding ear. Floyd nods my way, his eyes bright and sympathetic.
“Where’s my son?” He raps the tabletop with his knuckles. “You two should be giving us a preview of your dance moves so we know how far to steer clear at your wedding.” Floyd shares a look and grin with Ellen.
“Luke can’t dance?” I ask, looking between them.
“What? You didn’t know about his two left feet? More like hooves.” Floyd throws his head back, laughing. “Oh, you’re in for a real treat then. Forget about the bride not revealing her dress to the groom, Luke has to keep his dancing under wraps.”
Ellen gives my hand a squeeze. “Don’t you worry a smidgen—that’s what dance classes and choreography are for; we’ll get Luke into shape before the big day.”
I take a sip of my water, shyly informing them, “There’s no wedding date yet.” I don’t add that there’s no engagement ring either, or a proposal. Sure, Luke and I moved in together, and baby Noah’s finally here, brightening our world. But that’s it. Lately I can’t shake this stuck-in-limbo feeling shadowing me everywhere I go.
My family doctor referred me to a psychologist, but I know she was thinking post-partum depression. There’s no pregnancy blues with Noah. If anything I’m learning to cope with separation anxiety from my little baby boy.
It’s getting to the point that I hear his cooing.
“Oh!” Ellen’s exclamation and wide eyes have me turning to answer Luke’s deep, rumbling voice.
“What’s that about my two cloven hooves?”
“Noah,” I gasp, leaping up and circling my chair to Luke and the car seat he’s carrying delicately in both hands. We’re both staring down at our boy, wide awake and cooing up at us, flailing his fat little arms through the nautical-themed shirt.
I hug Luke, burrowing my face in his side, crying again. He seems to understand as he smooths his hand over my back. He spent most of the evening dealing with my whining for Noah. I felt bad considering we’re here to celebrate Kerry and Russ’ whirlwind romance and wedding.
“I slipped out to relieve the babysitter early. Noah woke up during the ride, but he’s in a good mood. For now.” Luke grins. We’ve both had our late nights blundering around, rocking the baby back to sleep.
Settling Noah down on the table, all four of us gather around him.
“He’s such a precious little thing.” Ellen reaches out to stroke his cheek with a finger. At nearly one month old, Noah makes a grab for her digit, holding her fast with his tiny hand.
“A fighter, that’s what he is. He has Hanley blood in him all right.” Floyd nods. But did he ever doubt it?
Noah’s tuft of white, barely-there blond hair is enough of a salute to his father. But he has my dark eyes, and they’re now assessing us all with much infantile curiosity. One day he’ll be able to pick out his parents and my heart swells, eager to catch every moment with him.
“So?” Ellen rounds on us, on Luke really. “When’s the big day?”
“Soon,” Luke insists. He squeezes me tighter to his side, his fingers massaging my hip bone.
Floyd nods, hands straightening the lapels of his tuxedo. As Luke tells me, Floyd insisted on dressing super-formally for the picnic-themed wedding. We took the reception to a community hall, though, once we enjoyed the ceremony and early drinks outside.
“Just don’t take too long.” He warns. “Some of us old geezers would like to be there.”
“We won’t. It’ll happen.” Then Luke changes the topic to the bride and groom, a little too hastily in my opinion.
While he chats up Ellen about Russ and Kerry’s plans for their honeymoon cruise and week-long resort stay in some warm island paradise, I fade out of their conversation.
I frown, ducking my head to Noah before Luke can see. We’re as close to a family as possible, without the legal institution of marriage binding us together.
For some reason I think of the late Art Dayton. I haven’t thought of the detective since his suicide was reported in both St. Louis and Potentia ten months ago, a week after he attacked me in my apartment.
I never asked Luke if he had anything to do with it, and I didn’t care. Any pity I had for Art Dayton died the day he barged into my home with threats of rape and death.
Russ is the reason I’m alive, even if his man, Keith Raymond, teamed up with Art to torment me. I owe Russ and his new sidekick, Ian, sales representative at Hanley Auto, for my life. Ian had been keeping surveillance on Luke inside the shop, and, now I’m Luke’s woman, I have eyes watching over me as well.
I quit work in the last month of my pregnancy, and I’m glad I did. Noah is a handful and being a first-time mother is a learning curve that requires my full attention. Luke is more than happy to have me at home with Noah.
Our life together is wonderful, a fairy tale come true.
Sure, I wouldn’t care if Luke never proposed and we continued living happily as we do now, and have been for nearly a year, but I’d be kidding myself.
I want Luke to propose.
I want him to make this really official.
I’d love to be Mrs. Luke Hanley.
So why do I get the feeling he doesn’t want me to be his wife?
Epilogue II
Luke
I can see Lily overthinking us.
Leaving Noah with his grandfather and step-grandmother, I grab Lily and drag her from the festivities.
I need to speak to her privately. I need to figure out how much damage she’s imagining of us up in that pretty head of hers.
She gasps a little when I press her around the staircase, out of the immediate sight of passersby. My body traps hers to the brick wall behind her, caging her in. I can’t control my mouth from seeking hers, lovingly sucking her bottom lip.
A quickie is not what I have planned, but we haven’t had sex in two months. I’ve been patient, and I’ll be patient if Lily stops me right here and now and isn’t ready for this. Lifting my head away, I study her.
When I rub my raging hard-on against her belly, she instinctively wraps her arms around my neck, arching off the brick wall to join us closer, harder.
“I missed you,” I whisper, and I don’t mean just her body. I see a spark of light in her eyes I haven’t seen with the anxiety of motherhood falling over her. I know what she’s like around Noah; it’s a wonder I managed to pull her away from our little boy.
“Luke, ahh,” she pants when I get some friction going.
So it’s going to be a dry hump
I figure penetration can wait a couple more weeks. She rubs herself on me, and I imagine her clit working away in her underwear. That sore little pink button begging for my fingers, her snatch hugging air—it’s too much, I have to get in there.
“Luke!�
� Lily’s cry prompts me to crash my mouth over hers. I won’t let anyone rip me from her now. I need this, she needs this, and I damn well am going to give it to us.
I lift the flowing skirt of her lavender bridesmaid’s dress up, crushing the material between our chests, and my fingers find their purchase as they crawl over her soft belly, no longer taut with Noah, to the top elastic of her panties. I drag my hands lower, shifting the underwear aside to assail her clit and cunt.
In and out, I pump fast with two fingers, my thumb flicking her hard button.
Lily’s mouth is hot and wet, and her moans are soft and smothered by my relentless lips and tongue.
When she short wires from her orgasm, I have to hold her back to the wall. Lily jerks with her pulses, her snatch slurping my fingers up. I keep fingering her until she’s spent, listless and happy, in my arms.
“Oh, Luke,” she whispers against my mouth, her lips puffy from my punishing kisses.
Making her appropriate, I smooth her skirt and peck her mouth, a grin pulling my own. Very slowly I raise my fingers coated with her juices to my mouth. I drag her scent under my nose and then suck my digits dry. Popping them out, I kiss her again, let her have a taste of herself.
I’m still hard, but I’m prepared to let her take us home and then once Noah’s asleep, she can allow me to stroke myself to the sight of her naked glory spread out on our sheets.
What I don’t expect is Lily’s eagerness to return the favor so soon.
“Sweetheart,” I start, ready to tell her I’ve got it handled, but she makes quick work of my zipper and draws my steely erection out to the open.
In her crouch in front of me, Lily licks the tip of my cock, sucks my raging red glans in and releases me with a pop before her tongue drags over my slit and she takes me in deep. She slurps me in, her mouth a vacuum, her hands goading my taut balls.
It’s not long before I bathe her mouth with my seed, and Lily swallows, sucking me dry, squeezing my balls until she’s sure I’m satisfied for now. Releasing my half-hard cock from her mouth, she stands and wipes the back of her hand over her glistening lips.
She’s come a long way from the girl who sputtered out my semen after we learned she was pregnant ten months back.
We kiss again, and now that we can both think straight, I jump into the reason I lured her out her. But I go down on one knee to do it.
Realization slowly flowers on Lily’s face. She clamps both hands over her mouth, watching as I draw a ring box from my pocket. The princess-cut pink diamond with its white gold band is raised for her taking, but she waits until I pluck it out and I hold her hand, angling the ring onto its new, pale and slim throne.
“Will you marry me, Lily Erickson? Let me be the father to all your children and the husband of your dreams?”
I have no speech, so I hope my heart will do.
“Yes,” Lily gasps, her response, her attention jumping from her new, very special jewelry to me.
As I stand, she throws herself into my arms and I have to grab her quickly before she takes us to the floor. Not a bad place to be with Lily, but I want to be upright for this moment.
Neither of us can concentrate for the rest of the evening at the reception. Lily and I decide to keep it under wraps for Kerry and Russ. It’s their big day.
Lily says we need a year to prepare, but I could marry her tomorrow. She’s not just an alibi and hasn’t been for a long time now. She’s real and she’s mine.
THE END
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More by April Lust
Wild Ink: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Devil’s Horns MC) (Devil’s Desires Book 3)
I’ll screw her ‘til she learns to do as I say.
She’s sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.
So it’s time to teach her a lesson – the way only an outlaw biker can.
I don’t give a damn if her daughter’s missing.
This is club business – and that means I’m in charge.
GRANT
Sometimes, running an outlaw motorcycle club means getting your hands a little dirty.
Thankfully, I know a thing or two about that.
I’ve killed enough men and f**ked enough women to fill the entire Devil’s Horns MC clubhouse with their bodies.
And I’ve got the jagged scars and furious exes to prove it.
But this mission is a little bit different.
One of our prospects has disappeared without a trace.
He should know better.
You can’t back out of joining this club.
Once you’re bearing our brand, there’s only one way out – in a coffin.
I go looking for the little snot to teach him a lesson about loyalty.
Then I came across something I never expected.
Turns out our missing prospect had a girlfriend.
And the girl’s mother is desperate for a sign of her adopted daughter.
She’s on their trail, too.
And she thinks she can jab her finger in my chest and pry answers out of me.
But I don’t take kindly to that kind of treatment.
And I’m prepared to handle the situation – violently.
Because in my experience, there’s only one thing you can do with an angry mare like Victoria:
Pin her down and break her.
VICTORIA
He thinks I’m scared of him.
I can’t let him know he’s right.
Deep down, I’ve been terrified of Grant Reardon since the second I met his eyes.
It’s obvious he’s a sinner and a playboy.
That just comes with the biker territory.
But Grant is something else, too, something more than that.
He’s a stone-cold killer, and he’s warning me to stay away.
But I can’t.
My daughter is missing, and I’ll move heaven and earth to find her.
I’ll do whatever it takes.
Knock on any door.
Chase down any lead.
And, if the bad boy biker demands it…
I’ll fall to my knees and give him everything he wants.
But Grant knows more than he’s letting on.
And sometimes, the truth you’re desperately seeking is lying closer than you ever expected.
Reckless Ink: A Motorcycle Club Romance (The Twisted Saints MC) (Devil’s Desires Book 2)
I’ll brand her so the world knows she’s mine.
F**k the consequences. F**k the rules.
I’ve found what I was looking for:
The perfect woman to claim and corrupt.
And I won’t rest until she’s bearing my ink.
HAMMER
My plan to rob her daddy was simple.
Get in and get out.
But when I saw those begging eyes and that curvy, perfect body…
Things got a little more complicated.
I have plenty of notches on my belt.
Plenty of satisfied women, sent home moaning and sore.
But this girl is different.
It won’t be enough to take her to my bed.
It won’t be enough to hear her scream.
No, this time around, I need complete and utter dominance.
I have to own her.
And I won’t rest until every son of a b!tch in the whole d*mn country knows that she belongs to me.
Sure as hell won’t be easy, though.
Because Maggie isn’t just any broad.
She’s the daughter of the city’s most powerful Mafia capo…
Who’s also the man I’m about to rob blind.
The stakes might be high, but that’s the way I like ‘em.
I want to ride out:
For blood and glory.
For club and kutte.
Starting with her.
MAGGIE
I’m fighting tooth and nail to avoid the fate my father has set out for me.
He’s used to treating the women in his life like objects, like bargaining chips.
I guess that comes with the mob boss territory.
But I refuse to be bought and sold.
I won’t let him marry me off to some creepy, disgusting mafioso.
I’m going to get the hell out of this family, this city, this life.