“Fuck me,” I panted back, and he lifted me off him easily and reached for a condom. His cock was swollen and ready, and I shifted so that I was nearly straddling him, watching as he tore open the condom and slipped it onto his cock.
“I love you like this,” he remarked, as he took hold of my hips and guided me down on top of him. And the way he was looking at me, I believed it—I really believed he wanted me that badly. The look in his eyes was dark and heavy, and, as I took him into me for the first time, relief passed across his expression as though this was all he had been waiting for.
“Mmm,” he groaned, tipping his head back and closing his eyes, and I planted my hands on his chest, so I could feel the beat of his heart as I started to ride him.
He felt so fucking good inside of me. The feelings that I had for him that ran deeper than anything I’d felt for anyone before, it would have been hard for me to give up the sex. He just seemed to fit into me so perfectly, so neatly, as though the two of us were always meant to come together in this way.
He let me ride him for a while, opening his eyes and watching me, his gaze traversing over my body, and then he pushed me back an inch or two, so he could watch himself inside me. His mouth parted as though he could hardly comprehend how hot we looked together, and I knew how he felt. This was impossibly good, our bodies working in perfect harmony as he began to thrust shallowly back up to meet me. He took my hand and guided it to my clit, and I began to play with myself—I had been so focused on him and his reactions and how he was taking this that I had almost forgotten how good this felt for me, and I let my eyes drift shut as the pleasure took control once more.
He moved up, wrapping an arm around my waist so he could hold me steady as he pushed back up into me; I circled my hips down against his cock and took him in deep, and he sank his teeth into my shoulder, forcing me to swallow a cry of pain to keep quiet. But the pain mellowed to pleasure in my nervous system, and soon I was getting close again, close, closer, closer until I felt as though my entire body was focused on one goal and one goal alone, every single part of me working in unison to draw me to—”
“Fuck,” he growled, and I felt his cock twitch inside of me as he came and knowing that I had been enough to push him over the edge got me there too. My pussy clenched tight around him, sending shockwaves throughout my system. I buried my face into his shoulder and tried my best to keep myself quiet, letting his body absorb the pleasure the way mine was absorbing his. It was intense, more intense than anything we’d shared before, maybe because I knew, for once, that this wasn’t the end—this was the start, the beginning of what we had to share together in the future. And I couldn’t have been happier.
We sat like that for a long while, eyes closed, and heads tilted down into each other until our breath fell in step and he finally pulled back from me. He swiftly disposed of the condom as I collapsed onto the bed, a big-ass smile on my face.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed as he lay down next to me, smiling, brushing the hair back from my face. His own hair was messy, and it looked cute—it suited him. And as I looked into his eyes, I knew that I had to say it. I knew there was no choice but to come out with it, once and for all. There was no coming back from it, but I had to say it to him. I had to have him hear the words leave my mouth. There was no single doubt in my mind at that moment, even though I might have tried to talk myself out of it before. I owed him that much.
“I love you,” I breathed, and for a split second, I was sure that I had overstepped the line and that he wasn’t going to return it—and then his face softened, and he kissed my forehead.
“I love you too,” he replied, and the words hung in the air between us for a long moment. I couldn’t believe they were out there. I had never said it to someone so quickly before in my life, but I knew it was wrong to keep it in. I needed him to hear it, and now that he had said it back to me, I felt so at peace, so comfortable, so happy. I knew I meant it, for the first time in my life—for certain, for real. For him, and for Erin, and for all of us together.
He wrapped me tightly in his arms, and I knew there was nothing more I needed to say to him tonight. Sure, I would have happily stayed up all night talking to him if I could, but the exhaustion of the day was setting in, and I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and to wake up tomorrow morning in his arms and spend the day with him. He planted a kiss on the back of my neck, just like he had when I had been doing the washing up, but this time there was no carnal intent; it was just him and me, safe and happy together. And I closed my eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I found myself drifting into a deep, restful sleep.
Epilogue
Logan
“When is Ant meant to be getting here again?” Nina asked as she scurried around the apartment, a couple of Erin’s books tucked under her arm.
“An hour,” I reminded her. “So you don’t need to be running around in such a panic.”
“Yeah, alright, sure.” She rolled her eyes at me playfully. “I’m going to let this be anything other than perfect.”
“It’s going to be perfect no matter what,” I told her. “Because we’re all together. Right, Erin?”
“Right!” Erin called out, from where she was enthusiastically icing Christmas cookies at the dining table. Nina closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and finally came to a halt for what felt like the very first time that day.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, pulling a face. “It’s just the first Christmas we’ve spent together as a family. I want this all to be perfect.”
“I totally understand,” I assured her, and I went and gave her a big hug. She let out a long sigh against my chest, one that felt as though it had been held in since she got up this morning.
“But you have nothing to worry about,” I murmured. “It’s all going to be fine. You just have to sit there and look beautiful, remember?”
“And get some of my studying done before she gets here,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to fall behind.”
“Why don’t you take it over to Erin?” I suggested. “You can keep each other company.”
“I can quiz you if you want,” Erin piped in, and Nina smiled and pulled back from me.
“Actually, that sounds pretty good,” she conceded. “I’ll go get my books.”
I smiled as she headed to the bedroom to grab her stuff, running her hand through her hair and pushing it back into a ponytail. Her ring glinted in the light as went, and I found my mind drifting back to the day I had given it to her.
It had been about three months before when I had taken her out to celebrate her getting her into college—she had been so excited that day she almost seemed giddy, as though she was going to burst out laughing at any second. She had suggested the three of us going out together as a family, but I knew I wanted her all to myself for that evening. I had picked out the ring—with Ant’s help, of course—a few weeks before, courtesy of my promotion, and I knew she was going to love it. It was a yellow diamond fixed in a platinum band, a classic piece, and it would look so perfect on her. If she accepted it, of course.
I took her to this small restaurant that one of the guys at work had recommended to me. When I mentioned to him what I planned to do, he called ahead and let the owner know, and they had a special table for us ready on the roof. Nina had gasped and clutched my arm, coming to a dead halt as she saw the view we were being treated to.
“This place,” she breathed like she was having trouble catching her breath. “It’s incredible.”
“Only the best for you,” I told her, squeezing her hand and leading her to the table. Maybe it was a little cheesy, proposing to her on a rooftop like this, but I had never really wanted to do romance before I met her, and I was going to indulge that side of me as much as I could.
She took her seat opposite me and clasped her hands in her lap as I poured her a glass of champagne from the bottle I had picked out for us when I booked the table.
She lifted her glass and tapped it to mine. “To us,” she
announced firmly, her eyes shining happily.
The way she was looking at me, the atmosphere, the way the city was laid out below us like it had been made for us—I knew I had to ask her. Now. Before I could back down. I pulled the ring box from my pocket, popped it open, and looked at the woman I loved.
Her jaw dropped. I had never actually seen it happen so literally before, but there was no other way to describe the look on her face. She clapped her hand across her mouth.
“Nina,” I began. “Will you—”
“Yes!” she shrieked, so loud I was sure that the whole city below could hear us. “Yes, of course, I will!”
I laughed, and she laughed, and she held her hand out, so I could slip the ring over her finger; she held it up to the light, and just like I had imagined, it matched her eyes so beautifully it nearly hurt. I stared at her, unable to drag my eyes away, and wondered how in the name of God I had managed to land someone this utterly perfect, this wonderful.
“Oh my God, Logan,” she murmured when she seemed to have come back down to earth. “This is …”
“This is what you deserve,” I told her, catching her hands and holding them tight. “I love you so much, baby.”
“I love you too,” she replied, and she leaned across the table, caught my head in her hands, and planted a kiss on my lips. These were the lips I was going to be kissing for the rest of my life, and I couldn’t have been happier. The woman I was always meant to be with.
Nina started planning the wedding almost as soon as that ring was on her finger, and Ant had stepped in as maid of honor to help her get it right; the two of them would spend long evenings just sitting at the dining table together, seriously discussing the option of white roses versus red, a pastel blue dress instead of a pastel pink one. I offered to help where I could, but they pretty much told me to keep my nose out and that it would be perfect on the day. I trusted them. My girls.
Erin couldn’t have been more excited when she found out we were getting married. She leaped off the couch, raising her little fists into the air, and doing a small dance around the living room. Nina caught her hands and danced with her.
“Does this mean I get to be a bridesmaid?” Erin asked breathlessly, and Nina nodded.
“If you’re ready to take on that responsibility,” she replied, furrowing her brow with play-seriousness.
“Of course I am,” Erin replied firmly, and then a big smile cracked out over her face once more. “You’re going to be my mommy! For real!”
Nina shot me a look as Erin wrapped her arms around her waist, and I could tell that hearing those words come out of her mouth meant the world to her. Nina had all but moved in with us not long after we officially got together, and she had been acting as a mother to Erin all that time. But Erin was right—this would be it, once and for all. The three of us would be a real family.
Samantha, thank goodness, was firmly out of the picture, and she would be staying there as long as I had my way. I filed a restraining order against her, deciding against the charges for attempting to abduct Erin, and she had sat there in court getting chewed out by the judge and looking as though she wanted to vanish deep inside herself. I didn’t feel even the remotest scrap of sympathy for her. She had been the one to bring this on herself, and she had proved that she was no kind of mother to Erin. She had never been, and now she never would be. Which worked fine for me as Nina had embraced Erin into her life as though she was her flesh and blood. Erin had done likewise. In fact, Erin had actually come out of her shell quite a bit in the year that Nina had been living with us; she was more expressive now, chattier, and even brought home more friends from school, a little gaggle of girls her age who came in and out of the house and demanded my pancakes in the process. I was always happy to oblige; I had only ever wanted my daughter to be happy and as loved by those around her as she was by her family, and now I had that.
I think it took Nina by surprise, how much she enjoyed being a mother to Erin. Sometimes she would sit there on the couch and watch her playing or reading or working on her homework, and I could see that look of pure and utter shock running through her, as though she could barely believe that this was the way her life had turned out. I knew how she felt.
One evening, about six months in, Nina and I were cuddling on the couch after Erin had gone to bed when Nina lifted her head from my chest and looked me in the eye.
“Uh oh,” I teased. “You look like you’ve had an idea.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” she admitted. “In the last few weeks. My contract at work is coming to an end soon and I just … I don’t want to end up at another dead-end job, you know?”
“Oh?” I prompted her, sitting up so I could look at her properly. “And what exactly were you thinking of?”
“I’ve actually been looking at doing some early childcare courses,” she admitted, as though she was dropping this enormous bombshell. I raised my eyebrows.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, brow furrowed. “I never thought it would be something I was interested in, but after everything that happened with Erin … I just want to make sure that other kids in her situation get the best care they can, you know?”
“That’s amazing,” I said with a nod of my head. “You think you’re going to start studying for a degree?”
“Hey, I have to apply to college first.” She held her hands up. “And I have no idea whether I’m actually going to like it or not. But I thought … I want to do something useful with my life, you know? Not just wait tables till the end of time. And now that I have some spare money, I figure now is the best time to start.”
“That sounds incredible.” I planted a kiss on her temple. “I’m so proud of you, Neen.”
“I can’t believe how much I thought I didn’t like kids before I met you guys.” She shook her head and snuggled into me again. “I guess I had just never really spent time around any before Erin.”
“She really is that good,” I joked, and Nina giggled and slid her hand under my shirt, resting comfortably against me.
And, like anything Nina set her mind to, it wasn’t long before she got into college and started studying. She worked her ass off, and soon enough she had started planning for her degree. She was going to do an amazing job, I could tell. The way she was with Erin, that kindness and wonder with which she treated her, would translate so well to the work that she wanted to take on. Any kid would be lucky to have her around. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too long before we started thinking about having another of our own, a little sibling for Erin, but that would be after the wedding.
A few months before, I might have balked at the thought of paying for a whole wedding, but since what had happened at work, I knew that I would be able to afford anything we wanted. I had been up for a promotion at work—going from chef to kitchen manager, with a sideline in putting menus together when they were needed. It had been Oliver and I fighting it out for the top spot, and I just knew there was something off about the campaign that he had been waging against me. I figured out what that was when I strolled into the locker room one evening to grab my phone from my bag to check in on Nina and Erin.
“Oliver?”
He stopped dead where he was; he was standing next to the coat rack, and the only jacket hanging there was mine. He couldn’t have mistaken it. No way. He had to know what he was doing. He turned around slowly, a look of sheer, panicked horror on his face, and I saw what was in his hand. A note. A small note that he had been about to slip into my pocket.
“What the fuck?” I strode forward and snatched it off him. When I unfolded it, I found myself met with the same lettering that had been on those notes I had been so sure Samantha had been sending to me. And just like that, it clicked into place.
Oliver had known about the potential promotion before I had and was hoping to oust me from my position long before it came to actually going for it. Samantha had never been the one sneaking into my work and dropping off those notes,
it had been him all along. I reported him to Elijah, and he was promptly fired, and soon enough I stepped up to the kitchen manager role. It was harder than I’d imagined it would be, but since I had Nina splitting the childcare, I could pull it off.
And so it fell into place. For so long, I felt as though I had been struggling to keep my head above water. I had been lacking a family after my parents had been so cruelly taken from us when I was so young. But now, I was starting to believe that I wasn’t doomed to go without a family for the rest of my life. This little one suited me just fine.
“How are you girls getting along?” I asked as Nina returned with some of her books for studying.
She shrugged. “Not looking forward to getting through all this work,” she told me. “But looking forward to Christmas dinner.”
“Me too,” Erin piped up and hopped across to join Nina at the counter. “What do you want me to quiz you on?”
“You’re such a harsh quizmaster,” Nina joked. “You never let me get away with anything.”
“That’s better, though,” Erin told her authoritatively. “Then you learn more.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed, and I shot a wink in her direction that she fired right back. I grinned. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face these days.
“Oh, Ant just texted,” Nina told me, pulling out her phone and squinting at the screen. “Says she’s going to be over early.”
“Guess you’ll have to leave your studying till later then,” I remarked, and she closed her book and got to her feet. She came over to join me and planted a kiss on my cheek.
“Guess so,” she agreed softly, and I kissed her on the mouth, just once, gently.
“Yuck!” Erin exclaimed from across the table, and both of us laughed.
“Sorry, we’ll keep the PDA to ourselves,” Nina apologized, and playfully squeezed my butt out of sight of Erin as she moved away.
“That’s better,” Erin nodded firmly, and Nina ruffled her hair and gathered her books to take them back through to the bedroom, out of sight for the rest of the day. It would be good for her to catch a break—she worked so hard, she could probably use it.
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