“This is just rude. Taking away my eye candy.” I pouted, nipping at his lower lip before sucking it into my mouth. Shep slid his hands up my back, kneading my muscles in a way that felt so damn good I practically sank into him again.
“You forgive me?” he murmured against my mouth between kisses.
“For what?” I lost all train of thought when he touched me, every problem disappearing, any issue dissolving into nothing. There was only Shep, and spending three days apart had only reaffirmed the fact that I couldn’t be without him. It wasn’t even just a want at this point—it was aneed. I needed Shep like I needed air to breathe, and that realization was both scary and exhilarating.
He chuckled against my lips before capturing them again, holding me tight to him.
Nowthiswas right. How had Shep been in front of me for all these years and I’d never seen it? Never even allowed myself to think it. He’d been King’s second-in-command, his ex-partner, a man too in control and stoic to possibly be my type.
That was a laugh. Shep wasn’t just my type—he was the one for me. I knew it in my bones as an absolute fact, one that was as unwavering as the man himself.
I held his face between my hands and drew back to look at him. Those light blue eyes were hypnotizing as they opened to meet mine, his lips flushed and swollen.
He was so fucking handsome it hurt.
“I love you,” I said, brushing my thumb over his lips. “And yeah, I missed you. I hate sleeping without you.”
His arms tightened around me. “Why do you think I’ve got circles under my eyes? I kept waking up when I didn’t feel you beside me.”
I couldn’t even tease him about the dark circles, because I got it. It felt like half of me was missing and I’d only been gone for three days.
Seventy-four and a half hours, to be precise.
Not that I was counting down or anything.
“All I know is that starting from today, if you travel, I travel, and vice versa.”
“Really?” Shep arched a brow. “Is this something we’re going to put into writing?”
“It can be.” I grinned and scooted off his lap, looking around for my laptop, then realized I’d left it out on the coffee table. Since I wasn’t about to leave him sitting on my bed all gorgeous and half dressed, willing to agree to my outlandish demands, I rifled through the front of my carry-on and found a napkin from my private plane with the Monaco royal emblem embossed on it.
Parfait.
I snagged a pen from the same pocket and wrote across the top:
Non-negotiables of Theo & Shep
No traveling without the other (if longer than one night)
No clothes allowed at the Rinaldi residence
“What is that?” Shep asked, moving up off the bed, but I quickly brought the napkin to my chest.
“I’ll show you in a minute. I’m not done yet.”
Shep’s eyes narrowed as he quickly reached for it, but I managed to dodge him, laughing when he growled.
“Theo…”
“What? I’m just writing down a few things I think we need to get cleared up going forward in this relationship.”
No life-or-death secrets
One food fight a month to blow off steam
(food of choice to alternate)
“And I don’t get to see this…list you’re writing?”
