by M. Leighton
Sig sets me on my feet. The heels of my shoes sink into plush carpeting. “Where are we?”
“Home.”
“Home?”
Moving around me, Sig stops at my back and gently unties my blindfold, dragging it away from my face. “Yes, home,” he whispers at my ear from behind me.
It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust, but when they do, my mouth drops open in awe. I’m standing in the center of a big, beautifully appointed master suite. The carpet is cream, the walls are sand and the enormous king-sized bed is covered in a thick apricot duvet. Pillows in shades of peach and rust and chocolate are piled high toward the head and a luxurious mink throw is draped over one corner. On the windows are dreamy sheers and on the mahogany chest and dresser that matches the bed are candles of every size and shape. The flickering tips bathe the room in a warm, romantic glow and play over a beautiful painting that hangs above the bed. It’s of a woman, sitting on a delicate stool in front of a vanity, brushing her golden hair. Her face is visible in the oval of the mirror. The reflection is mine. My face.
I turn to Sig. “Sloane?”
His lips quirk. “Who else? You know I didn’t paint it. Or decorate in here.”
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe, awestruck. Turning, I reach up to wrap my arms around Sig’s neck. “Where are we?” I ask again.
“I told you. We’re home. If you want it to be, that is.”
“Did you buy this place?”
“I did. It’s the house they were building near my sister’s neighborhood, the one where you said you could imagine kids playing in the yard.”
I can perfectly recall the house he’s speaking of, with its gabled roof and picket fence. “Y-you bought it? For us?”
“I bought it for you.”
“But why? Why would you do that? Do you even like this place?”
“Honestly, I could care less. It’s a house. It won’t be a home until you’re here. But now?” He looks around at the room, his eyes straying to the picture above the bed, the one of me. “Now, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”
I gnaw on my lip as I think of what this could mean and of how I might screw it up. But then I feel a finger tug at my lip, freeing it from the prison of my teeth. “What?” I ask when I see Sig staring down at me.
“Stop worrying.”
“I’m not worrying.”
“You are worrying.”
I sigh. There’s just no hiding things from a cop. There’s just not. “It’s so beautiful here, but what about…what about…”
I hate to even ask about my brother. Somehow it feels like foisting unwanted responsibility on Sig. I mean, it’s different when it’s me taking care of Travis. In my house with my money. But this would be us taking care of him.
“It has a finished basement. All for Travis. A gaming-obsessed teenager’s wet dream.” At his words, a lump forms in my throat. I didn’t even have to ask. He’d already thought of my brother. “And it’s closer to your mom, too.”
My mom. My brother. My dream house. Sig has thought of everything.
I blink back tears. “It’s perfect, Sig. Just perfect.”
“Well, almost.”
Slowly, Sig sinks to one knee in front of me. He reaches inside his pocket and removes a tiny velvet box that makes my heart flutter in my throat.
“For weeks after Mom died, I’d wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I’d sit up in bed and gasp until my lungs felt like they were working again. And then I’d cry myself back to sleep. I never went to Dad. I knew he was more lost than I was. I promised myself then that I wouldn’t fall in love, that I wouldn’t give anybody that kind of power over me. The night that I held you in my arms, blood all over both of us, I felt the same way. Like I couldn’t breathe. I realized then that it’s you who keeps me breathing. Since the day I met you, you’ve had the power to hurt me, to devastate me, to destroy my world if you leave it, but you’ve also kept me breathing.”
“Sig, I–”
“Tia Lawrence,” he interrupts, “will you marry me? Will you stay with me, in this house, in this life, until the day I die? Will you keep me breathing until there’s no breath left in me? Because I can’t think of a life worth living if it doesn’t have you in it.”
“Sig, you–”
“I love you. More than a thousand dictionaries could define, I love you. Please say yes.”
I laugh. “Are you gonna give me a chance to answer you?”
His grin is lopsided and adorable and everything that I love about him, all summed up in a smile. “I guess.”
I drop to my knees in front of him, brushing aside the box so that I can press my chest to his. We are eye to eye, nose to nose, heart to heart. “Yes. That is my answer to everything you could ever ask me. Yes. Yes, I will marry you. Yes, I will keep you breathing. Yes, I will live here with you. You are my dream. My only dream. Your love, your kiss, your touch–you are everything I will ever need and more than I could’ve hoped for. I will follow you wherever you go. Until both of us stop breathing.”
He watches me quietly, intently. “I have one more question.” His voice is low and hoarse. Raw.
“What’s that?”
“Slow or rough?”
I see the wicked glimmer light the warm brown of his eyes, turning them golden in the flicker of the candles. “Slow,” I answer, pressing my mouth to his. “And then rough.”
His tongue slips out to trace my bottom lip as he unbuttons my blouse. “One more question,” he says, pushing the material from my shoulders and setting to work on the clasp of my skirt.
“Anything,” I say, arching my neck when his lips start to skim along my jaw. Sig nudges my skirt and panties down to the bend of my legs, leaving me in only my bra, kneeling in front of him. His hand slides up the outside of my leg, curving toward my groin at the last minute. When his finger finds my core, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Wh-what was your question?” I prompt, knowing I won’t be thinking clearly for too much longer.
“Can I put a baby in you?”
His finger moves within me and I’m filled with a gush of desire that’s perfectly blended with unimaginable glee. A breathless laugh escapes my lips.
“Well?” he asks, licking at my nipple through the thin lace of my bra.
“I thought I told you my answer to anything you asked me was ‘yes’.”
I feel his lips curve against my breast and my heart soars. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
THE END
Dear Reader,
Music is a big part of this book. Songs are often referenced in my work, and many have played a big part in setting the emotional tones of certain scenes. If you enjoy listening to playlists or would like to know which tunes helped inspire this novel, here is the link to my playlists on Spotify. If you don’t have Spotify, here are the songs for this book in list form:
She Looks So Perfect, 5 Seconds of Summer
This Is How We Roll, Florida-Georgia Line
Glamorous, Fergie
Bottoms Up, Brantley Gilbert
Bang, Bang, Jessie J
Don’t Tell ‘Em, Jeremiah
Glycerine, Bush
Crazy, Seal
All Around Me, Flyleaf
Ain’t It Fun, Paramore
Say You Will, Mona
Undressed, Kim Cesarion
I Will Never Let You Down, Rita Ora
Love Runs Out, One Republic
Love Robbery, Kalin and Miles
Save Your Love, Great White
I Can’t Stop Drinking About You, Bebe Rexha
You & I, One Direction
I’ll Follow You, Shinedown
Break Free, Ariana Grande
A FINAL WORD
If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review and recommending it to a friend. You are more powerful than you know. YOU–the words from your mouth, the thoughts from your heart, shared with others, can move mountains. You ma
ke a huge difference in the life of an author. You have in mine. You do every day, which brings me to my gratitude, my overwhelming, heartfelt gratitude.
A few times in life, I’ve found myself in a position of such love and appreciation that saying THANK YOU seems trite, like it’s just not enough. That is the position that I find myself in now when it comes to you, my readers. You are the sole reason that my dream of being a writer has come true and your encouragement keeps me going. It brings me unimaginable pleasure to hear that you love my work, that it has touched you in some way, that it has made life seem a little bit better for having read it. So it is from the depths of my soul, from the very bottom of my heart that I say I simply cannot THANK YOU enough, which I say a lot of in this post.
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Other M. Leighton books
All the Pretty Lies
All the Pretty Poses
All Things Pretty
Down to You
Up to Me
Everything for Us
The Wild Ones
Wild Child
Some Like It Wild
There’s Wild, Then There’s You
YA and PARANORMAL
Fragile
Madly
Madly & the Jackal
Madly & Wolfhardt
Blood Like Poison: For the Love of a Vampire
Blood Like Poison: Destined for a Vampire
Blood Like Poison: To Kill an Angel
The Reaping
The Reckoning
Gravity
Caterpillar
Wiccan
Beginnings: An M. Leighton Anthology
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author, M. Leighton, is a native of Ohio. She relocated to the warmer climates of the South, where she can be near the water all summer and miss the snow all winter. Possessed of an overactive imagination from early in her childhood, Michelle finally found an acceptable outlet for her fantastical visions: literary fiction. Having written over a dozen novels, these days Michelle enjoys letting her mind wander to more romantic settings with sexy Southern guys, much like the one she married and the ones you'll find in her latest books. When her thoughts aren't roaming in that direction, she'll be riding wild horses, skiing the slopes of Aspen or scuba diving with a hot rock star, all without leaving the cozy comfort of her office.
About Michelle: I love coffee and chocolate, even more so when they are combined. I'm convinced that one day they could be the basis for world peace. I also love the color red and am seriously considering dying my hair.