Page 102

“I love you, Richard,” I said back. “I love you so much.”

He lined himself up and pushed inside me in one continuous motion until he was buried to the hilt. I gasped against his mouth. He filled me completely. The stretch made my eyes sting for a second. He stayed still for a few seconds, his forehead against mine, his breath hot on my lips.

Then he began to move. The first thrusts were deep and passionate. Each one pressed me into the mattress. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him closer. I wanted every part of him against me. He kissed me while he fucked me, slow and thorough, his tongue in my mouth in the same rhythm as his hips. His other hand found my breast and pinched the nipple. The sound of his body meeting mine filled the quiet room. His bare chest pressed warm and smooth against my breasts. I could feel his heartbeat when he leaned down on me.

“You feel so good around me,” he said against my mouth. “I love how you take all of me.”

He kept kissing me between the words. I kissed him back and held onto his shoulders. Grief still sat in my chest, but he gave me something else to hold on to. He stayed. He’d married me when the rest of my life had collapsed. He looked at me like I was the only person in the world he cared about.

He reached down between us and put his thumb on my clit. He rubbed it in tight circles while he thrust. I came with his name in my mouth and my nails in his back. He kissed me through it and didn’t stop moving.

He stayed inside me and lifted my legs, folding them back toward my chest so my knees came up beside my ribs. He held them there with his hands. The new angle made him go deeper. I could see every change in his expression. I could see the muscle in his shoulders working as he drove into me. Those arms kept me open for him. He drove into me with longer, vicious strokes. I felt every inch of him.

“Look at me,” he said. “I’m never letting you go. Do you understand? I love you more than anything in this world.”

I looked up at him and nodded quickly.

He leaned down, kissed me again, and kept fucking me at that deeper angle. His hips snapped forward as he shifted his grip, catching one of my ankles in his hand. He turned his head toward my foot and took my toes into his mouth. He sealed his lips around my toes and sucked hard. The suction on my toes lined up with the deep stroke inside me.

He released my toes and leaned down to kiss me. I came a second time with my legs still held high and his mouth on mine. My body clenched around him in hard pulses. In that moment there was no empty chair and no funeral and no grief. There was only Richard inside me and the sound of his breathing and the words he kept giving me.

He groaned into the kiss and kept going. Sweat had formed on his chest and on my skin. The sheets had pulled loose under us. He shifted his grip so he could keep my legs up on his shoulders. I shook under him.

He eased my legs down from his shoulders and rolled us onto our sides in one careful motion. My back met the solid heat of his chest. One of his arms locked tight around my waist, holding me flush against him. The other slid under my thigh and pulled it higher, opening me so he could drive into me from behind.

He fucked me hard and didn’t slow down. Every deep stroke dragged against places already sensitive from the last two orgasms. I could feel the thick length of him stretching me open again and again.

“One more, Sam,” he said against my ear. “Give me one more. I love watching you come.”

The third orgasm tore through me without warning. Pleasure slammed into me so hard my vision blurred. I cried out into the pillow, my body seizing around him as the waves kept coming.

Only then did he let himself go. He thrust hard one last time and stayed buried to the hilt as he came inside me, his body rigid against my back, a low broken sound leaving his throat. He kept his mouth pressed to the back of my neck while he finished, his hips finally stilling as the last pulses left him.

I reached back and held his face with one hand and kissed whatever part of him I could reach. He stayed inside me while his breathing slowed. After a while he settled more fully against my back without pulling out. His forehead rested against my hair. His hand came up and brushed hair away from my face.

“I love you,” he said again, quieter. “You’re mine forever Samantha.”

“I love you Richard,” I said against his mouth. “Thank you, for everything.”

I closed my eyes and let the words sit there with everything else the day had given me. The signed papers. The ring on my finger. His last name.

But then my hand unconsciously drifted to my stomach. The nausea from this morning, the way my period hadn’t come last week or the week before that.

I knew what it could mean.

But I wasn’t ready to face it.

Not yet.

Chapter 22

Maggie

I’d been living in the beach house for almost a month, and I was already running out of things to do.

At first, doing nothing had been the best part.

The house was all glass and white marble and ocean views that stretched forever, waves crashed against the private stretch of sand. I loved it. The way the sunlight poured in during the mornings, the massive soaking tub that overlooked the water, the king sized bed where Richard would pin me down and fuck me until I forgot my own name.