My eyes and nose burned with a whole new level of emotion desperate to break free.
“Give me you. Give me every tear. Give me every breath. Give me every fear. Give me every touch. Give me every smile. Give me every day.”
He dipped his head and kissed a trail down my leg and over my knee to where it ended. He kissed every inch of skin until I swear to God I could feel the rest of my leg, until I could feel all ten toes touching the ground.
“Lake…” another kiss “Ivy…” another kiss “…Jones…” his eyes came back to mine “give meforever. Give me theonething I cannot live without…” grabbing my backside, he scooted me closer to the edge of the bed and pressed his lips to my chest over my heart “…give me you.”
I startedby giving him my body while my mind played catch-up. The only fear I had at that moment was the possibility that he’d try to make love to me with patient, calculated moves. That’s not what I needed. I needed our physical love to be all-consuming. I needed it to feel as painful as my emotions. His touch—I wanted it to feel branded into my skin, into my soul.
He took every part of me and he took it unapologetically. I felt needed, possessed, and yes,completely consumed. The love? It decimated the pain and doubt that life had allowed to creep into my mind. His touch? It owned me and as if he knew exactly what I needed, he didn’t wait for me to give him anything… he took it. He took every single piece of me.
“Yes,” I whispered into his neck, my sweaty, completely-spent body a rag doll on top of his.
“When?” he mumbled, like exhaustion had paralyzed his ability to speak.
“I’ll marry you yesterday.” My lips curled into a grin against his skin.
His hands cupped my ass.
“Perfect.”
“My ass?”
He chuckled. “Everything.”
“In case you’re wondering, ‘sure’ was not a proposal.This… what you said to me, the oh-my-god-that-was-sex-from-another-dimension thing that just happened, was the world’s best proposal. I was right in China to worry about you fumbling, Monaghan. Textbook rookie mistake. But you redeemed yourself with the best game-winning Hail Mary of all time. Congratulations.”
His grip on my ass turned into a bruising one. “Are you congratulating me on the sex or the proposal? If it’s the sex, then I’m going to be pissed. Name one time I’ve fumbled with the sex? Name one time you’ve faked an orgasm with me. Name one time you haven’t screamed my name so loud?—”
“Down boy.” I giggled. “You’ve never fumbled the sex.”
He eased his grip. “I’m sorry… so very sorry. I let the stress consume me. I was so afraid to give you a second of my time because I knew it would never be enough. I can’t find the balance. I’m an addict with you. I can’t just take one sip, one hit. It’s never enough and that need consumes me.”
“Well, in your all-or-nothing world, I can’t be the nothing. However, I couldn’t live with myself if you made me the everything right now. You have other people counting on you, and I want to see you do this just as much as they do. So don’t make me the reason you hate it, make me the reason you love it. You can have both. Stop making it a choice.”
Cage ghosted his fingers up my back and threaded them through my hair, lifting my head up to look at him. “But just to be perfectly clear on this: I asked you to marry me and you said yes. Correct?”
My grin gave him the answer first. “Yes. I’ll marry you.”
“Because at one point you said if I asked you, you’d say no. So technically you can’t blame a guy for easing into it with a comment like ‘sure.’ No one likes to get rejected.”
“I was confused that we even had that conversation. You’d already told me you were going to marry me even if you had to ‘drag me to the altar and fuck a yes out of me.’”
His chest vibrated with laughter as he bent an arm back behind his head, tipping his chin down toward me. “And you were OK with that being my official proposal.”
“Well…” I shrugged “…yeah. It was hot and spontaneous and a little caveman-like.”
“You want me to be a caveman with you?”
“I could think of worse things, and I bet you’d look good in animal skin, carrying a stick or wooden bat-looking thingy to protect your woman.”
“I… um… sorry, no. The Neanderthal role doesn’t work for me.”
“Oh, so we’re role-playing. Well then, I’m sure the football player/cheerleading thing is your area of expertise. Have you ever had sex with a cheerleader?”
Cage shook his head. “I’m not doing this. No way. I’m not doing the ‘how many girls have you slept with?’ You like to say what is and isnotus. Well, this is not us. If you can think back to what has happened in the past hour, then you know what we have is a storm… an explosive phenomena larger than life… something so far beyond any comparison.”
My breath caught in my chest. We were still falling. Fuck gravity. My love for that man was so beyond healthy, I should have been committed. I scooted up and kissed him, and then rubbing my nose along his, I smiled. “But seriously, how many women have you slept with?”
