The Bride (The Boss)

by Barnette, Abigail

  “You knew me,” he said, sleepy, confident. “You just didn’t know me in this context.”

  I flipped to my belly, relishing the slide of the silk between the duvet and my body. He slowly walked his fingers up my spine as I spoke. “No, seriously. I’m fascinated by this change.”

  A smile curved his mouth, then he rolled to his back and pulled me against his side, cradling my head on his shoulder. He combed through my hair with his fingers and sighed contentedly. “I suppose it’s because I’m home. I spent a large part of my childhood here—the happiest part, really. When I was in the ICU, I thought I would die. And I thought…I can’t die without seeing my brothers again. And I can’t die before I take Sophie to meet them.”

  A lump rose in my throat. In addition to our couple’s’ therapy, Neil had been seeing someone about the PTSD caused by spending weeks in isolation in the ICU, sedated and on a ventilator. He had a difficult time talking about those days, and I was worried for him now. “We don’t have to talk about that, if you don’t want to.”

  “Actually, I’m not that bothered; it’s getting easier. And this isn’t denial. I feel relieved to be telling you all this. I want you to share every part of my life with me. And I want to share every part of your life with you.”

  “We do sha—” I began, and his hand gently covered my mouth.

  “Sophie,” he said softly. “Do shut up. I’m trying to propose.”

  Propose? My head went light and my chest got heavy. My eyes flared hot and watery, and my skin tingled.

  It was the single best anxiety attack I’d ever had.

  He eased his arm from beneath me as he reached with his other hand for something in the nightstand drawer. I sat up, certain my face was bright red from the blood pounding into it.

  He leaned back on the pillows, turning a small clam-shell jewelry box like a Rubick’s Cube in his nervous hands. “Sophie… I love you. I’ve tried to think of a thousand different ways to say this poetically, but I really feel that the unadorned truth is utterly necessary right now. And if you don’t want to marry me, if you think it’s too old-fashioned an institution or against your principles, then that’s fine. Nothing has changed. I just needed to tell you… I love you so much that I regret having memories that don’t include you. I look back on my life before I met you and I see where you should have been. Some of my greatest achievements, the things I am most proud of, seem empty because you weren’t there beside me. You are the other half of me. And I would be so incredibly grateful if you would marry me.”

  I lunged forward, grasped his head between my hands and kissed him hard. And by hard, I mean, our teeth scraped together unpleasantly. But I didn’t care.

  I gasped when our mouths parted. “I love you so much.”

  He smiled against my lips, his arms wrapping around my back. “Do you want to see the ring?”

  I nodded.

  He rolled me smoothly beneath him, settling between my thighs as my nightgown rode up. Braced on his elbows, he opened the box and handed it to me. Inside, a huge, cushion-cut yellow diamond flared brilliantly, surrounded by a border of smaller white diamonds, set in flawless platinum. It was absolutely gorgeous, and absolutely me.

  I held out my hand, and Neil slipped the ring from the box onto my fingertip, sliding it down easily over my knuckle. It was a bit loose, and I giggled.

  “At least it’s not too small,” he said with an embarrassed laugh.

  “I’ll get it sized.” I kissed him again, letting him pull my hand to his chest and cover it with his own palm. I looked down at our entwined fingers. “You’ve had this with you the whole time?”

  He nodded, smiling ruefully. “It was in my pocket when we went to the lake. I thought I would propose to you there, but I chickened out.”

  “This is so beautiful. Really. I love it. And so romantic. I’m not as good with words as you—”

  “Says the woman whose first book is being published in three months,” he teased.

  “Okay, that was a little dumb of me. But I feel the same way. I can’t imagine not waking up with you every morning. This last year with you was the best and the worst year of my life. And I want that. I want all the good parts, and all the bad parts, as long we’re together while we’re going through them. I have never felt so safe with anyone, or as sure about anything as I am with you.”

  “So…this is a yes?” he asked with an arched brow, and I realized I hadn’t given him a definitive answer. “I want to make sure, in case I need to take this back to the jeweler.”

  I laughed and raised my head up to kiss him. “Yes. Absolutely.”

  He laced his fingers with mine as he pushed my hands back on the pillows. “I like the sound of that. ‘Yes.’ I wonder how many times I can make you say that word tonight.”

  With a lift of my hips, I rubbed myself shamelessly against him. “Do you mean ‘yes, Sir,’ or just ‘yes?’”

  “I’ll take either.” His grip tightened on my hands, and he sank his teeth into my neck.

  My squeal of laughter drew out into a long moan as he nibbled and sucked at the hyper-sensitive spot behind my ear.

  “I think I’m going to spend a very long time with my head between your legs tonight,” he murmured against my jaw.

  “Oh, fuck yes,” I gasped. We’d been together a year, and he could still drive me crazy with just a few well-spoken dirty words.

  “That’s two.”

  He slid down my body, his big hands bracketing my ribs and working my silky nightgown up. He kneaded my breasts through the slippery fabric.

  Before I’d gotten together with Neil, I’d been convinced that I just wasn’t made for long-term relationships. I’d dated guys casually and gotten bored of them within months. Now, I was in the longest relationship of my life, and I couldn’t get enough of my boyfriend.

  Fiancé. Holy fuck was that amazing. Just thinking about it gave me a heartgasm.

  His chin scraped over my belly—okay, there was like, one good thing about the beard—and he circled my navel with his tongue. “Look at you, writhing like you’re in heat. I bet you’re already wet, aren’t you?”

  I moaned as his fingers skimmed up my inner thigh. “A minute ago it was ‘I can’t live without you,’ and now I’m ‘in heat?’”

  He slipped his fingers beneath my panties and skimmed between my labia. He was right, of course; I was hot and wet and ready for him.

  “You’re suggesting that it’s a bad thing,” he murmured against my hip. “You know I love the way you want me.”

  I grinned at him as he pulled my panties slowly down my thighs. “Ego, thy name is Neil.”

  He growled and jerked my panties down the rest of the way, then his mouth descended on me. I gasped and curled up when I remembered what our plans had been only moments before. “Wait! What about the fireworks?”

  With a last, sucking kiss, he lifted his head. “You’re right. You don’t want to miss those.”

  He got up and gave me his hand to lead me down the stairs to the living room. With a flick of a switch, he cut the lights, leaving the house in total darkness but for the gentle illumination of the city lights curving around the bay. He led me carefully around the furniture, to the tall windows that stretched from the second floor to the third.

  “It’s almost midnight,” Neil said, stepping up behind me. One hand closed around a chunk of my hair, the other gripped my upper arm as he nuzzled behind my ear. “Would you like to do something a bit frightening?”

  My breath caught in my throat as he walked me forward, one slow step at a time, until my toes touched the edge of the very short windowsill. My knees bumped the windowpane, and I gave a startled “eep!” as he pushed my body flush against the glass. It wasn’t a terribly far drop below, but that wasn’t what I was worried about. I was worried about the lighted path that ran along the waterfront past Neil’s house.

  “Someone might see,” I whimpered, but I knew I wasn’t going to hold out for long. The hand at my arm
fell to my hip, kneading through the silk.

  “That’s half the fun, darling.” His hand worked between my breast and the glass. His thumb stroked over my hard nipple through the lace applique.

  Slowly, he slid his hands down and followed them, kneeling on the floor behind me. Pushing up the silk, he bared my backside to the cool room. With a palm splayed across my mound, he canted my hips back. To keep my balance, I braced my chest and forearms against the window, and I gasped.

  He kissed over the curve of one buttock, his fingers slipping into the cleft between and sliding down. One fingertip caught the top of my opening and gently stilled there. “Now…where were we?”

  The naughty thrill of doing something truly wicked overrode the part of my brain telling me that being eaten out in front of a giant window in the capitol city of a small European country on a night when everyone else was going to be looking out their windows was a dumb, dumb idea.

  But they would all be looking at the fireworks, right?

  His nose bumped against me, and his tongue snaked between my folds to circle my clit, and I dropped my head back with a moan. His rough jaw scraped my inner thighs, and my legs shook.

  “Steady,” he murmured against me, his big hands grasping my hips to hold me in place. I rose up on my toes as his tongue swirled over me again.

  How was it that he needed only put his hands on me, and I became willing and compliant? One touch and all I wanted was to please him. Probably because while I was striving to please him, he was striving to please me. We got off on each other’s pleasure, and it just happened to work out that we fulfilled each other’s needs.

  His tongue burrowed into my cunt, and I clenched around him involuntarily, a high-pitched “ooh” of pleasure tearing past my lips. He held me still against his mouth, rasping with his chin, fucking me with his tongue, until it was just too much. I pushed back on him as the tension in me wound tighter and tighter, and with a cry I let go, my thighs quivering around his face.

  I panted to get my breath, both palms splayed on the glass. Neil got to his feet behind me, still holding my nightgown at my waist with one hand. His fingers skimmed over my buttocks, then dipped down to the wet, puffy flesh he’d just so expertly tended. He traced his fingertips around the outside of my thigh and settled his big, warm hand between my legs. The position pulled my nightie up in front, exposing my bare vulva to the window and anyone who might happen to see in.

  “Is this mine?” he asked, hooking his two center fingers inside me, until I writhed under the pressure and could only gasp a desperate, “Yes!”

  “And would you like to come again?” He pumped slowly, putting exquisite pressure on my g-spot. The bottoms of my feet tickled, and I moaned. I wanted to come again, wanted it desperately, and I rocked my hips against his hand.

  “I want you to fuck me,” I panted. Across the city, the first burst of a shimmering green firework filled the night sky. Then another, and another, more illuminations than I’d ever seen before, even on July Fourth back home. Flashes of pink, purple and gold all clashed beautifully in their garishness, the cold, clean air making them more brilliant as they exploded.

  I reached for the hem of my nightgown and whipped the fabric over my head before I could think too much about it. But in for a penny, in for a pound, as Neil would say. Or, as I would say it, go hard or go home. If we were going to have possibly public, possibly exhibitionist sex, I wasn’t going to hide my light under a damn bushel.

  He laughed, not the dark chuckle of my dominating Sir, but the surprised bark that always told me when I’d caught him off guard. “Sophie, you’re absolutely filthy.”

  I wriggled on his hand, his two fingers still buried in me. “You love it.”

  “That I do.” His thick length pressed against my backside, and he mumbled into my hair, “I will even brave stand-up sex for you.”

  He slipped off his boxers and bent his knees to align us. He rubbed the head of his cock up and down my slit, then found his mark. Our height difference made the position a bit awkward, but when Neil was finally inside me, I didn’t care at all.

  He stroked my clit and my eyelids fluttered closed, but I forced them open again so I could see the glittering explosions across the bay. I couldn’t believe my good luck. I was with a man who cherished and appreciated me as a friend and a lover. A man who had loved me from the first time we’d met, and who’d proposed to me because he wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. A man who created splendid new memories for me every day, and this day would be no exception.

  I rocked with him, watching the celebrations beyond the glass through a sheen of over-joyed tears. The slap of our flesh as Neil slowly withdrew, then rammed deep again set a cadence in time with our panting breaths. Under his fingers, my clit throbbed and tingled, and I was close, so goddamned close that I pushed his hand out of the way to race that last mile on my own. He chuckled into my hair and fastened his mouth to the back of my neck, sinking his teeth in. I shouted and slapped my palm against the glass as I clutched around him.

  I’d barely come down when he pulled out and wrapped my hair around his fist, gently tugging me away from the window and over to the sofa. The sofa I hadn’t even sat on yet, but he was sure going to fuck me on it. I snickered at the thought, and he pulled me down to straddle his lap as he sat.

  “What’s so funny?” he growled beside my ear. The tip of him brushed against my wet, wanting opening, and I rolled my hips, inviting just a little inside.

  “The fact that this is the first interaction between this couch and myself. I feel like I should have at least watched some reality television on it before going all the way.” I slid down, and a strangled moan caught in my throat. He still took me by surprise sometimes. I rose up a little and bounced on my knees, testing the cushions.

  He slapped my ass hard. His fingers dug into my backside as he moved me on him. “Well, better make it memorable, shall we?”

  I leaned down to kiss him, with just the head of him stretching my opening. “Believe me, baby. I am never going to forget tonight.”

  He pushed my hips down, and I exhaled shakily as I took him in. He was so hard and so thick, the pressure against my pelvic bone was actually painful. I squirmed as he held me, and he grabbed my wrists and pinned them against the small of my back with one hand.

  “I don’t need my hands to make you come,” I murmured against his cheek. I squeezed on him in rapid flutters, then long, delicious tugs, and he dropped his head back. “May I make you come?” I wheedled softly, gently rolling my hips. “Please, Sir?”

  “Oh fuck yes, I wish you would,” he groaned, his grip tightening on my wrists. With my shoulders back, my posture was forced up straight, my breasts thrust into his face. He sucked one tight, hard nipple into his mouth, teasing with the edges of his teeth as I worked my body in an undulating wave against his. The depth and stretch inside me brought gooseflesh to my exposed skin, and his hot, wet mouth reminded me too keenly of where it had been only minutes before. My clit was swollen and hypersensitive, and with every forward sway of my hips, it raked over his pubic hair and the wide base of his shaft. I strove toward the same peak, was almost there when he released my wrists to grip my hips and surge upward. I gasped, “I’m coming,” and he growled, “Don’t you dare stop until you do,” and then he broke, shouting and digging his fingers into my ass hard as I frantically pumped against him. The hot throb of his twitching cock inside me brought me over, and I ground on him, riding every last wave of pleasure as he muffled pained groans.

  Finally, he stopped me, panting comically and holding my hips in place and begging through clenched teeth, “Don’t move, don’t—”

  “I shouldn’t get off of you?” I asked, rising up a little, and his sharp inhalation strangled on the way in. The point of my tongue slid from one canine tooth to the other as I regarded him maliciously and dropped suddenly back down. “Turnabout is fair play. You do this to me all the time. Torturing my poor, sensitive body right af
ter I’ve orgasmed. You deserve to know what it feels like.”

  Neil grimaced and held his breath until it appeared there would be no further torture. “Careful, you might inspire me to empathy. And then I’d have to stop doing that to you all the time.”

  I leaned my head on his shoulder and breathed in the smell of his sweat and his skin. I nuzzled against him and sighed contentedly. “I didn’t think you’d ever top Paris.”

  “Well, in the absence of sex toys, I find a marriage proposal often does the trick.” He chuckled sleepily. I never felt so protected and sure of my place in the world as when I was in his arms.

  My eyes slid closed, and I almost fell asleep right there in his lap, but something stirred in my brain. I sat up, and he slipped from my body with a little sigh of relief. I took his face in my hands. “I have an idea.”

  “I fear I am finished for the night, darling,” he said wryly. “I am still recovering from a very traumatic transplant.”

  I snorted. “No, you pervert. I think we should stay here a few more days.”

  We were supposed to leave the evening of the second, and I knew Neil was already panicking about the thought of missing that first day he could go back to work. I saw the sharp spike of fear in his eyes, like I’d just told him I was considering canceling his birthday.

  “Think about it,” I went on quickly. “We can leave Sunday night, you can be back on Monday. Do you really want your first day back in the office to be on a Friday? You’d be so frustrated.”

  “That’s true,” he said cautiously. “But I feel like the longer I delay…”

  “Your company will still be around when you get back. Porteras and Auto Watch will still be around. Let’s just spend a few extra days together.” I chewed my bottom lip as I watched him consider. “We just got engaged. Let’s enjoy the moment, before we have to go back to reality. Please. For me.”

  He sighed, and I knew from the sound of it that I had won. “I can’t say no to a damned thing you truly want, do you know that?”

  “I do.” I leaned my cheek against his neck. “And you know it’s the same for me.”