“Beautiful,” he softly says, running his hands up the length of my body to my breasts. “Up,” he instructs, and I raise my arms above my head on the bed.
He bunches my shirt, sliding it up my torso in increments, as his mouth leaves a trail of soft kisses as he goes, but he doesn’t take it off. I can’t see what he does or how he does it, but somehow he binds my wrists together with the fabric.
He touches his forehead to mine and cinches his eyes closed. He doesn’t do or say anything, but I can feel how hard and fast his heart is pounding. One forever second goes by. Then another.
“Fallon?”
“Marry me.”
My breath stutters to a standstill as the words leave his lips. Everything freezes. Time. The room. Us. This moment. The universe contracts to a singular point composed of two words:Marry me.
Like a zoetrope spinning rapidly, an image of our life together flickers and takes shape. I never imagined I would have this kind of love again—the forever kind—not after losing Ryder. But here it is—real and raw and absolutely…terrifyingly…beautiful.
Tears track down my temples as a flood of emotion inundates my senses. Gratitude for the love I had but lost, and a soul-deep happiness for the love I found again.Yes, my heart whispers before my voice can say it. Instead, pure joy tumbles out, the laughter that follows filled with unfiltered happiness.
“You thought you had to tie me up in order to propose?”
The side of his mouth curves up. “I’m unconventional.”
Unconventional. Wonderful. Larger than life. Infuriating. Stubborn. Dangerous. Caring. Protective. He’s all those things.
Somehow able to get my bound wrists out from the impossible knot he tied, my grin is radiant when I wrap my arms around him. “Yes.”
“Yes?” His face sparks with hope, like he’s not sure if he believes it.
“Yes. But there’s one condition.”
“There’s always a condition with you,” he jokingly replies, referring to the demands I made when we began our adventure of Finding Elizabeth.
“I want the wedding to be here withourfamily.”
His gaze turns tender. “Baby, I’ll lay the world at your feet to make sure every wish you’ve ever dreamed comes true.”
“That was absolutely heart-melty and very swoon-worthy,” I tell him.
The smirk I love so much makes an appearance. “I have my moments.”
“One more thing,” I say when his lips start to roam, pressing soft kisses down the curvature of my neck.
“Hush, woman. I’m trying to seduce my fiancée.”
Fiancée.
“I really like the sound of that.”
“Just wait until I call you wife.” My back arches off the bed when he laves my nipple with slow, sensuous licks.
“I want to tell the kids tonight. I’ll call Marcus and make sure he doesn’t work late and?—”
Fallon pushes up onto his forearms. “Can I please make love to you, or are you going to keep talking?”
I giggle. “Shutting up now.”
Continuing his exploration, my eyelids flutter closed on a sigh when he places open-mouthed kisses down my stomach to my pubis, nuzzling his nose in the soft, curly hairs of my mound. With a delicate nudge of his fingers, my thighs eagerly fall open. Fallon wastes no time. Draping my legs over his shoulders, hedrags the flat of his tongue through my folds, then scrapes his teeth over my clit. His pillow-soft lips seal around the tiny nub, sucking with long pulls of his tongue that cause a rush of pleasure to coil tightly in my belly.
I look down at my broody man and am met with a primal intensity that burns within the depths of his sky-blue eyes. He takes my hips to hold me in place—and then Fallon devours me like a man starved. Every muscle clenches taut in ecstasy when he slips two fingers inside me, pulsing them in perfect synchronicity with the rhythm of his tongue.
“There’s this very sensitive spot right here…” he says and scrapes his fingers against my inner walls, then sinks his teeth into my sensitive flesh—and I’m suddenly catapulted into orgasm.
