For once, I let his words wash over me and didn’t immediately try to push them away. Didn’t try to brush them off as nothing or counteract them with the negative words that I’d grown used to. Instead, I let them sink inside me, settling deep in my bones.
For once, I let them build me up instead of knocking them aside so I could tear myself down.
He rested his hand on my lower stomach, his thumb slipping down to strum my clit. “Come all over me, wife. Show me whose pussy this is. Show me what’s mine and claim what’s yours.”
His thrusts grew shallower as he dragged his piercing over that spot inside me, and I gasped. Even though he’d wanted me to keep my hands over my head, I couldn’t. I needed to feel him against me. Needed to tug him down and have him as close as possible. Chest to chest, mouth to mouth, heart to heart.
He didn’t hesitate when I tugged him down, resting his forehead against mine as he ground his cock into me and my body tightened around him. “There it is, kitten. There you go. Fuck, you feel so good. You’re gonna make me come. Gonna make me fill up this perfect little cunt.”
“Ford.” My body arched into his, my mouth open in a silent scream as his thrusts tipped me over the edge and my second orgasm crashed over me.
Ford captured my lips with his, groaning into my mouth as he thrust twice more before settling deep and spilling himself inside me.
After we’d both caught our breath, he slipped from me before padding to the bathroom. He came back with a warm washcloth he used to clean me off and then scooped me up and settled into bed next to me.
With my head resting on his bare chest, his fingers playing in my hair, I asked something I’d been wondering for a while. “Did you really agree to this marriage just because of Chelsea’s wedding?”
He shrugged under me. “That was part of it.”
“And the other part?”
“Besides getting to marry the woman I jacked it to during my teenage years, you mean?”
I snorted. “Stop.”
“You think I’m lying? Ask Beck how infatuated I was.”
I shifted to sit up, pushing against his chest so I could see his face. As I stared at him, I recalled what Mabel had told me earlier today—that Ford had had a crush on me in high school, but I hadn’t believed her… “Wait…seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. Especially when you used to wear that yellow sundress. You remember the one? I’m pretty sure that’s where my obsession with you in them came from.” He closed his eyes and groaned. “Christ, I’d rub one out three times after school on those days.”
I breathed out a laugh. “You’re lying.”
He grabbed me by the hips and pulled me over to straddle him, allowing me to feel exactly what the memory did to him, even though he’d just come inside me less than ten minutes before.
With wide eyes, I said, “Oh my God, you’re actually serious.”
“Yep.”
“Why were you such an ass all the time?”
He smirked up at me, that playful glint in his eyes I loved so much. “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t trying to be? I was a teenage idiot. And it was pretty much the only way you’d talk to me.”
“I’d yell at you, Ford. Oh my God, I was so mean to you.”
“Probably why you scowling at me now only gets my dick hard.”
I breathed out a laugh and shook my head. “We sure took a roundabout way to get where we are.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t change it.” He rested his hands on my hips and stared up at me, earnestness in his gaze, all teasing gone. “All of it, including valedictorian…”
My breath caught, worried whatever he said was only going to dredge up old memories…the grudge I’d held for so long. “Why is that?”
“I want to say I’d go back in time and do it differently because of how much it meant to you back then.” He swept his thumbs over the bare skin of my hips, his eyes locked with mine. “But I’d be lying. If I could do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same because it’s the reason you moved back to Starlight Cove. It’s the reason you came back to me. And I wouldn’t change that for anything.”
Tears brimmed in my eyes once again, and I realized he was right. If things hadn’t happened how they did…if my life hadn’t been altered in that way…we might not be here right now. I might never have known what it felt like to be his.
I leaned over him, lowering my face until I could press my lips against his. “I love you.”
