“Does it feel different?”I asked, my lips on the back of Emme’s neck and my hand splayed across her belly as I moved in her from behind. “Now that the world knows we’re married?”
She groaned something into the pillow as morning sunlight streamed into the room and I kept up our slow, lazy rhythm. I loved this. I loved waking up beside her, loved pulling her sleepybody into mine, loved her soft hands reaching for me, asking for me without saying a word.
I loved that she wasminein all the ways I’d ever wanted her to belong to me—and now that the handful of photos Ines snapped at our secret wedding were splashed all over the internet, everyone else knew it too.
“That’s what I thought,” I replied, thrusting deep and holding myself there as her inner walls pulsed around me. I dug my fingertips into the round flare of her hip as a blast of heat shot down my spine. My entire body drew tight before a growl snapped out of me and I lashed my arms around her torso. “I fucking love you.”
I felt her head bob against my chest. “Mmm.”
She was breathing hard when I rolled her to her side and held her close. I knew she’d scamper away in a second to use the bathroom like she always did and I just wanted to soak up as much of this as I could. I wanted to remember this morning. I wanted to remember all of our mornings but it felt like the energy around us was shifting. It was heavy, but I had to think it was positive. Things were happening. It was real now. Even more than it’d always been.
I leaned to the other side of the bed and grabbed the small box I’d hidden there last night. The plan had been to wake Emme up with this gift, but I wasn’t mad about this turn of events.
“Since we’re getting married twice,” I said, taking her hand, “I decided you need two rings.” I slipped the halo-shaped diamond bands on either side of her engagement ring. “Perfect.”
Still bleary-eyed and breathless, she twisted in my hold and pressed her lips to mine. “I love them.”
“Good, because I want to be married to you,” I said. “I want us. Together. For as long as you’ll have me. If there are kids or pets or…Ines, it doesn’t matter. You’re all I need.”
She studied me for a long moment and I’d never heard seconds tick by so slowly. But then she said, “I picked out something for you too. Stay right here.”
I folded my arms behind my head as she strolled away wearing nothing but the diamonds I’d put on her. There was no finer sight.
When she returned a few minutes later with a small box in hand, she climbed on top of me, her thighs bracketing my hips and the heat between her legs almost exactly where I needed it. A few quick moves and we could see how well she carried this conversation while I was buried inside her.
“Not yet,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “I know what that face means.”
“What face?”
“TheI’m thinking about fucking youface. Stop it. I’m doing something and you’re not going to interfere.”
“Muggsy, you can do anything you want to me and I’ll sit here, happy as a fuckin’ clam.” I cupped her breasts, my thumbs sweeping over her nipples. I needed to spend more time with those beauties. “But you should know I’m never not thinking about fucking you.”
Laughing, she held up the box. I grabbed for it and she responded by shooting me a withering glare and holding it over her head. Adorable. As if I couldn’t reach that. “Let me do this.”
I motioned for her to continue. “Go right ahead, my love.”
She inhaled like she needed a breath to steady herself and drummed her fingertips on my chest. “I know you can’t wear this on the field or when you’re working out, and that’s pretty much all the time, but I liked it and thought you would too. Seemed like your style.” She opened the box to reveal a platinum band with a simple milgrain detail around the edges. She snared her bottom lip between her teeth and put it on my finger. “I won’t be upset if you don’t wear it.”
“Enough of that.” It could’ve been actual barbed wire and I would’ve treasured it. “Of course I’m going to wear it.”
“It’s okay if you don’t.” Tracing a finger over the ink on my shoulders, she said, “I was thinking you might want something a little more permanent.”
It took everything inside me to keep from laughing.
If she only knew how permanent she’d always been to me.
But I’d explain it all later. That story was a series of confessions, and though I’d imagined telling her so many times, I still didn’t know where to start.
I’d get it right soon enough. On our honeymoon, maybe. I’d have plenty of time to unravel our history and how I’d fallen in love with her over the years. How I’d waited and how I’d wanted her, and how everything in my life seemed to propel me toward her now—when it was time to make good on our pact.
I swallowed down those emotions, that tension. The lurking panic that it would change things for us. “What did you have in mind, wife?”
“I don’t know,” she mused, her fingers still stroking my skin. “Something that fits with your other pieces.”
She had no idea how well it would fit. “I’m sure it will.”
Smiling, she asked, “Will you tell me what we’re doing today? Or is that another one of your secrets?”
