I yanked his shirt over his head. He unzipped my dress in one smooth motion, he'd been thinking about that zipper all evening. It pooled at my feet, and he stepped back just enough to look at me.
"You planned this." His gaze tracking down my body. "This is not just-a-walk underwear."
"I'm an investigative journalist. I investigate."
His laugh was low and warm, and then his hands were on me, and the laughter turned into something else. Something that started in my stomach and spread outward like a lit match.
We fell onto the bed without grace. Elbows and knees and his shin catching the bedframe. I pulled him closer instead of letting him apologize, wrapping my legs around him.
The solid weight of him settling against me.
"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi." He brushed the hair from my face. Grinned down at me, that rare, unguarded grin that cracked his whole serious face wide open. "Fiancée."
The word sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the air on my skin.
"Say it again."
"Fiancée." He kissed my jaw. "Fiancée." My collarbone. "Fiancée." Lower.
I arched into him. My fingers raked through his hair, and the sound he made against my skin— low, rough, undone—dissolved whatever was left of my composure.
No careful choreography. No slow mapping of territory. We knew each other's geography by now, the shortcuts and the scenic routes, and tonight we took both.
Fast when the want overtook us. Slow when one of us wanted to savor.
His mouth finding the spot below my ear that made my breath hitch. My teeth grazing his shoulder where the scar was, the place I'd learned made him grip the sheets.
At one point I started laughing again and he lifted his head.
"You're laughing."
"I'm happy."
Something shifted in his face. Softened.
"Yeah." Rough. Quiet. "Me too."
Then his hips moved, and the laughter caught in my throat and became something else entirely.
We lay there in the dark. My back against his chest. His arm heavy across my waist.
I lifted my left hand. The ring catching moonlight through the window. Three stones.
Still there. Still real.
"I can't believe you kept this a secret. You're the worst liar I've ever met."
"I had help. Brian came with me to the jeweler."
"Brian?"
"He knew a place in Astoria. Same woman who upgraded his ring for Ava." Garrett grinned against my hair. "She's the one who suggested the three stones. Said every ring has a story, and ours deserved to be told."
"Remind me to thank her."
"You can. She wants us to come back after we're married. She likes to see her rings on the people they belong to."
