“Really?”
“Yup.” Dallas gestures toward a path curving its way around the fountain. “I used to take that trail and run whenever I needed to get out, get some air, and be free.” Laying his hand on my shoulder, he shifts me until I’m looking at the fountain. “You were sitting there when you first saw me. Now, I may or may not have been very hot that day so I took off my shirt before I passed the most beautiful blonde I’d ever seen before.” He brushes my shoulder with his thumb. “You may or may not have been so stunned by the sight of my sweaty chest that you took a tumble in the fountain and I had to fish you out.”
My cheeks heat up. “No. Tell me you’re kidding. Tell me that our grand love story didn’t begin with me falling in a fountain.”
Hearing the notes of embarrassment mingled with suppressed laughter in my voice, Dallas’s entire body language changes. He leans into me, kissing the top of my damp head. “Oh, it happened, Luce. And you know what? That’s not even in the top five of my memories when it comes to that fountain. Come on. Let me show you.”
Welp. In for a penny, in for a pound… I accept Dallas’s hand and let him pull me toward the fountain.
Even through the rain, it’s unmistakable. Between the stone basin at the bottom carved with dandelions, and the way the column rises up, the fountain spraying in a design that is reminiscent of the fluffy dandelion seed tattoo on Dallas’s neck, I know exactly what I’m looking at.
A dandelion fountain.
I look over at him. “Is this… is this why you call me Dandelion?”
His eyes light up, catching the glow from the nearby lamp. It’s enough to help us see each other—and to see that, in the middle of an evening storm, there is no one here except for me and my husband.
“Because we met here?”
Dallas doesn’t answer me with words. It’s like he thinks I remember that, that I remember this fountain, that I rememberhimbecause, instead of agreeing, he gives me his answer in the way he suddenly reaches for me. His arms curl around my upper arms, pulling me up against him, pulling me to the tips of my toes so that he can bend his head over me and take my mouth in on hell of a heated kiss.
I’m gasping by the time he breaks it, my fingers clutching the wet material of his t-shirt.
He licks his bottom lip, trying to gather up more of my taste. The rain runs down his face as he does, but that doesn’t stop him from groaning my name: “Lucy…”
My hands slide up his chest before I can stop them. Gripping his shirt where I can, yanking him down toward me. This kiss, when I initiate it, isn’t soft. It’s desperate. I kiss him like he’s the answer to all of the blanks in my memory because, in a way, heis.
He was waiting for this. I can tell in the way his body goes taut, then he moves. All he wanted was some sign that I wanted him, that I chose him… just like that night when I first went to him because I needed him, now he needs me but he refused to let himself have me until I gave him some clue that I would welcome him.
And I will.
I totally will.
Dallas’s arms wrap around me instantly, lifting me slightly, before lowering me to the wet earth. With both of us on our knees, he presses me back against the cool stone edge of the fountain so that I’m trapped between that and him.
The rain continues to fall around us, but the world narrows to the heat of his mouth and the solid strength of his arms and just how much this feelsright.
For a moment, everything feels familiar.
His touch. The way he holds me. The way my body reacts to him like it knows him even if my mind doesn’t. In this moment, Dallas Collinsismy husband, and I’m dying for him to use his body to remind me that I am his wife.
When we finally pull apart again, my breath comes in uneven bursts. Rain drips from my hair. From his jaw. It’s chilled, though it does nothing to cool down my hot blood, and as I look up at Dallas, see the want, the need, thelustin his eyes, I say one word.
The same word he said to me before.
“Please.”
That’s all he needs to hear. He knows what I want because, damn it, he knows me. This is our fountain. This is our park. And when Dallas shoves his hands under my armpits, flipping me over, and positioning on my knees so that I’m facing the fountain, I don’t even question it.
This feels right, too. I mean, I gasp as he grips the waistband of my leggings, pulling them—and my panties—down over my ass, but that’s more because the rain is a startling sensation against my skin than because he’s undressing me out in the open.
At that very moment, if it turned out someone else decided to come for an evening stroll in the rain, I don’t think I would’ve told Dallas to stop. Considering how he’s working quickly to position me just the way he wants—on my knees, bent over the edge of the fountain, moving my knees enough to bare my entire pussy to him from behind—there isn’t a damn thing in this world that would stop my husband from fucking me and showing me that I belong to him.
That’s what this is about, I realize as he kissed my hair and tells me not to move. I doubted him so he brought me to a place that has meaning to us, and now that he has me here, he’s going to claim me the only way he can.
With his?—
Based on how quickly he turned on like that, I have to say that I expected him to get me as naked as necessary, yank out his erection, and bury it deep inside of me with one full thrust. I don’t know… maybe being here is bringing back some of my memories because I… yeah. We’ve done this before. Enough times that my body remembers it even though my mind doesn’t, and as I arch my back so that he can mount me, I squeal when it isn’t his dick that bumps up against my pussy, but hismouth.
