Brody set his bottle on the table and took mine from me. “Baby, I was always on board. There’s nothing I want more than to spend the rest of my life with you as your husband.” His raspy cheek rubbed mine, and I breathed deep of his familiar scent that was as much a part of me as my own. “I love you, Dev.”
“I love you too.” My excitement rising, I pulled the laptop closer. “Feel like taking a trip to California?”
Chapter Thirteen
Brody
Two months later
“So I fly out to LA tonight with Ezra,” Dev said, “and we go to his parents’ house in Beverly Hills. Good thing there’re no storms coming. April can be a killer month here for that.” As he spoke, he packed shorts, T-shirts, and a dark suit with a white linen shirt. I had a matching one ready to pack. “Tomorrow you pick up your mother from the airport and spend the day with her, and the day after, the two of you meet Roe and take a plane to San Diego. Ezra and I will join you there.”
“I feel like we’re on a clandestine mission.” I sat on the edge of the bed, already missing him. “Ezra thinks this is going to work, right?”
Dev shut the carry-on, zipped it up, and put it on the floor. “Of course it will. The judge is a gay man who regularly performs same-sex weddings, and Ezra is positive he knows all about confidential marriages—we wouldn’t be his first. We’ve signed the affidavits, and once you get there, we’ll get the license.” He put his arms round me. “In three days we’ll bemarried. You’ll be stuck with me forever.”
“Hmmm.” I cast my gaze to the ceiling and pretend-sighed. “I guess I have no choice, huh? I mean, we’ve spent all this money and—oof.”
Dev pounced on me. His eyes sparkled, and he took my mouth in a bruising kiss. “All these years. I still remember the first time I saw you in the locker room freshman year and thought to myself,Goddamn, that is one gorgeous man. I wish he was gay and I had the nerve to make a move.Now here we are, ten years later, and I’m still so fucking lucky you love me. I can’t wait to say I do.”
I smoothed his hair off his face. “You know I’m never goin’ anywhere. And I don’t need a piece of paper to prove it.”
More solemn than I’ve ever seen him, Dev’s eyes latched on to mine. “I know. But I want it. So many people fought so hard for this right. I want to show everyone that we deserve everything that straight people do.”
I had a hunch and ran with it. “Everyone? Or your parents?” More than anything I wished Dev could have a relationship with his mother and father. Not that I believed they’d ever be close, but at least they could acknowledge each other’s existence. All these years and barely a word from them left me so angry at them and helpless at what to do about it.
Dev blinked and looked away. “They don’t give a damn about me.”
“C’mon, now,” I protested. “I can’t believe that. They might be disappointed in you, but I refuse to believe they don’t care at all.”
Nothing I could say would sway Dev’s feelings. “That’s because you were raised by someone who valued their child’s emotional well-being and happiness. My parents probably only had me to keep their precious lineage going.” His laughter was bitter. “Surprised them, didn’t I? It ends with me. They don’t know I’m gay. I never told them because they don’t deserve to know the best part of me.” His fingers teased at the waistband of my sweats. “And that’s you. The very best of me.”
The complicated relationship between Dev and his parents couldn’t be solved in the short time we had. But I hoped one day his parents would see what an incredible human being their son was. And if they never did, it was their loss, and I’d be at his side forever.
Right now, he was driving me wild with his touch, and I couldn’t think of anything except how much I needed him. He tugged down my pants and briefs and stripped out of his. Staring at him, I reached out, and we laced our fingers together.
“The next time we sleep together in this bed, we’ll be married.” I rubbed our joined hands on my face.
“Mmm. Husband. That sounds nice.”
I kissed him, my lips lingering on his. “You in me sounds even nicer.”
“I have three hours before the car comes to pick me up.”
I ran my hands over his arms, my fingertips tracing the football tats. He’d only grown more beautiful to me throughout the years. “Better get moving.”
He left no inch of me untouched and unloved, starting with my forehead, my fluttering lashes, and the shell of my ear. That warm tongue licked a path down my neck, tickling the tips of my achy nipples, and into the dip of my navel. My dick thrust up, and I ached to feel Dev’s lips, but he skirted it to mouth the jut of my hip bone, tease along the inside of my thigh, and kiss the skin behind my knees.
“I’m so glad you’ve avoided injury. No one better hurt this beautiful body.”
“Dev.” I sighed. “Is this really happenin’?”
“It is. It finally is.” His soothing voice and gentle hands left me weak and trembling. With a gentleness no one who saw his ferocious tenacity on the field would believe, he pushed his fingers in me, and I lit up like a Christmas tree. No matter how many years we’d had together, the countless times we made love, it was always like the first time when Dev touched me—wild, exciting, freeing. Devlin was the only man who made me come alive.
The slick wide head of his dick teased my rim, his blazing green eyes intent and filled with desire. I raised my knees to my shoulders. “In me. Now.”
He covered my mouth with his as he thrust deep, and I gasped.
“So fucking perfect,” he grunted as he flexed his hips, dragging his shaft out of me, then with a swift punch, driving home. He kept moving, and I grabbed my rigid cock, already wet and sticky from the precome sliding down its length.
