After I unbuckle the harness and drop it on the sheet with the other dongs, I pull her in for a kiss. “Please have all that cleaned up and safely stowed somewhere Owen won’t stumble across it by tomorrow evening.”
Her eyes twinkle in the dim light. “Yes, Sir.”
“You didn’t even think about safewording, did you?”
Her grin widens. “No, Sir.”
“Why not?”
She shrugs. “You used tape on my wrists and not on my head. If you’d been a bad guy, you wouldn’t have cared. Plus, a bad guy would have just raped me here.” She nuzzles her nose against mine. “And I doubt someone would break in to my house and park in my garage just to take me somewhere else. Plus, my door has this weird little creak it makes when it’s nearly all the way up. I keep meaning to have them come out and check it. I heard it both times.”
Goddammit.
She’s brilliant, and smart, and fucking ballsy.
And she’smine.
This creates a weird mix of feelings within me, both good and…ambivalent.
All I need to do now is convince myself this is the right thing to do for Owen, and for me.
Because once I marry her, it’s for life. But I have to be sure she’s got Owen’s best interests at heart and can do right bymyboy.
Chapter Three
Now
I join my pets at the hotel window and drape my arms around their shoulders. We won’t have much time to savor tonight’s victory because we still have work to do in our state.
Alotof work.
Maybe it only reinforces my bastard rep, but I take great comfort knowing that there’s no way Owen will ever leave us now. Not willingly, and not if he’s still breathing.
The new life within Susa is all the guarantee I need of that. It brings me comfort on a number of levels, soothes my soul.
My dreams can finally come true via my boy’s love for us both.Hisdreams can come true, too.
Now all we have to do is spend the next four years working toward getting Susa elected, and the hat trick is complete.
Doctors say our son appears healthy and is developing normally, according to schedule despite the ordeal he and Susa endured. Susa’s face still looks a little more gaunt than I’d like to see, and she’s still about ten pounds under her weight at the time of the plane crash, but doctors have assured me she’s doing well.
A very large part of me wishes Owen and I had begged her to pull out of the campaign, coerced a promise from her in the hospital, pleaded with her to return to private life so we could just…be.
Be a family.
Behappy.
I am not a crier, especially in front of others, but I unabashedly wept tears of joy when I was reunited with her, put eyes and hands on her, confirmed without a doubt it absolutely was her and not a cruel mistake.
Until I saw her lying on that stretcher, part of me was still convinced, despite seeing a crappy picture sent by the ship’s crew, that it wouldn’t be her.
Don’t get me wrong—no matter my plans, my scheming, my bastardly ways, I do deeply love this woman. I wouldn’t have married her if I didn’t love her. I wouldn’t have done that to her or Owen.
Except there are many kinds of love. Mine has deepened and grown for her in unexpected ways since that afternoon in Las Vegas. She’s my pet, and I take that responsibility seriously. She’s my friend, and I never wanted to betray that friendship. She’s my wife, my partner in crime, my sounding board, my political muse.
All these complicated pieces fit together perfectly within my heart in ways I never anticipated. I don’t want to contemplate what would have happened to me if it hadn’t been her that was rescued.
I honestly don’t know if I would have had the strength to keep going. She has become a vital part of my soul, moving through my body with every beat of my heart, in different ways than Owen has, but every bit as important to me.
