Claiming His Labor Day: A Romance Holiday Novella

by Lulu Pratt

  His hand was moving faster. I felt an orgasm fighting to overwhelm me. I was panting. He fingered me faster until I exploded. A wave of pleasure wafted through me, jerking my body until he let me go. He scooped me up and carried me to the side of the pool.

  I wondered briefly if anyone on the ground could see what we were doing. As soon as his mouth was on mine again, those thoughts vanished. I didn’t care. I wanted him so bad I would have done anything.

  Devlin picked me up and sat me on the side of the pool before pulling himself out next to me. Water dripped off him and pooled next before running back into the pool. He offered me his hand and helped me up, leading me to an outside futon on the deck close to the pool.

  Stopping him just before he got to it, I lowered myself in front of him. Looking up at him, I pulled his shorts down his legs, his cock protruding forward like a strong soldier standing at attention.

  I stared, my heart beating rapidly. I wrapped my hand around his cock and stroked him slowly. He swallowed hard and tilted his head back, allowing me access to do what I pleased. And what I wanted to do was to please him.

  I teased him with my tongue and milked him with my hand. Taking it into my mouth was easier than I had anticipated. I had only done it a few times before, but it didn’t go well. I’d felt clumsy and unattractive. This time, it felt natural, I liked the way it felt against my tongue, and I wanted more of him when I got into a pattern to push him to the same orgasm he allowed me.

  Devlin moved his hips back and forth and gasped as I pushed him in deeper. His breathing caught, and he stepped back quickly. He scooped me up and put me on the futon, straddling over me. He pulled off my bikini and pushed my legs apart. There was no hesitation as he pushed himself into me. He filled me and froze there, feeling my muscles tighten around him.

  His arms encircled my head as he held himself above me, his hips moving back and forth. He made love to me, leaving small kisses between lifting his face up and gazing at me.

  “You have made me the happiest ex-drifter in the world,” he groaned.

  I giggled as my arousal stole my breath. I inhaled deep and fed my legs around him. I moved with him until he slammed into me, his body jerking before slowly sliding in and out again. I felt my orgasm return and build as his mouth feasted on mine. His tongue pushed into my mouth, and he fucked me until I came again. I wrapped my entire being around him and allowed my body to surrender to him. He waited, moving until I was satiated and rolled to the side of me. He glided his fingers up and down my body as he soaked me into his senses. I watched his face, a smile forming on his lips.

  EPILOGUE

  Naomi

  New Year’s Eve

  THE NEXT FEW months couldn’t have been more perfect. I was at Devlin’s place more than I was at mine and everything we did just clicked. He took me to work at the school on the back of his bike every morning and picked me up afterward. We spent our evenings riding to different venues for dinner and entertainment and spent our nights in his oversized bed between the sheets. Any doubt I had about him leaving was diminished, and I was falling even more in love with him.

  As my belly grew, his attention did for me as well. He took my hand on New Year’s Eve before we settled into his bed and led me to the balcony.

  I smiled and followed him out the glass doors into the cool night air. We’d been invited to a number of parties that night, but as I was entering my third trimester I was feeling a little tired and wanted a quiet night after a hectic Christmas with visits to my mom and Devlin’s mom in Alaska. Mia and Camilla had been over and were delighted that their “little bit of bad” had resulted in a lot of good. Camilla had started dating Jamie from the Labor Day party and Mia was seeing a woman who she’d met recently, while Bones was now dating Lindsey.

  “I have something for you,” he smiled.

  Devlin cupped my face and kissed me. He then sat me in a lounge chair and disappeared into the house. It wasn’t long before he reappeared holding a large white box in his hands. It was wrapped with a dark blue bow.

  “What is this?” I took it with both hands and set it on my lap.

  “Just a little something for you. I’ve wanted to give it to you for some time now, but I didn’t want to rush things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see. Open it.”

  I pulled the bow, and it unraveled from around the sides of the box. I pulled the top off and pushed the tissue paper out of the way. I gasped, putting my fingers inside the small straps of the white garment and lifting it out of the box. A long elegant white satin dress revealed itself to me as I raised my hands into the air. Small crystals lined the plunging neckline and twinkled with the light from the balcony lights above.

  I looked at him, not knowing what to say. It was too fancy to be lingerie or a casual dress.

  “Devlin? Is this—?”

  “There’s more,” he said kneeling at my side.

  I moved the rest of the material from the box and saw a smaller box in the middle of the tissue paper. I picked it up, and my mouth dropped open. My stomach tingled. “What’s this?”

  He took the small box and opened it facing me. Inside was a blue diamond set on a platinum ring so beautiful I couldn’t stop staring at it.

  I covered my mouth with a shaky hand as I forced my next breath.

  “Marry me, Naomi. Be my wife,” Devlin said. “I love you, and I want to start this family the right way. I know you’ve had doubts on whether I would stay or just take off like I am known to do. I want to prove to you that I’m dedicated to you. You’ve changed my life. I have no reason to run anymore. Be my wife. Make me the happiest man in the world.”

  My tears hit my cheeks and traveled down as I looked back at the ring. I nodded slowly, a smile spreading across my face. “Yes,” I whispered. “I’m so in love with you.”

  Devlin pulled me up off the chair and picked me up, twirling me around. He yelled into the night air. “She said yes!”

  ***

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  Claiming His Firecracker

  Sparks fly for one night, but I want more.

  And what I want, I get.

  Fiona has always been a firecracker.

  Her red hair and fiery spunk have haunted my dreams since I enlisted.

  She’s my sister’s best friend and now in charge of the Fourth of July alumni football game.

  Guess I’d better get myself in the game.

  Fireworks explode between us and my desire is set alight.

  Problem is my sister hates me and Fiona is loyal.

  That won’t stop me when I claim her.

  She’s mine.

  *** A steamy STANDALONE contemporary romance with a smoking hot hero. No cliffhanger, no cheating and a guaranteed happily-ever-after.***

  Chapter 1

  FIONA

  THE SCENT OF freshly clipped grass filled my nose, a cloying and familiar scent. It smelled like summer, and hot dogs, and new love. It smelled like home.

  Our maintenance team had recently striped the field with new white lines. The powder still hovering atop the blades of grass, not yet sunk in.

  Perfect.

  “Everything checks out!” I called to Noah, the high school’s head of maintenance. “You did a great job on the field. Couldn’t look nicer.”

  From the 50-yard line, Noah, a spritely seventy-year-old man who had worked at Mountain View High School since the late ’80s, grinned back.

  “Anything for you, Ms. Geffen,” he hollered over the din of the ball bo
ys setting up benches.

  I winked and turned away, satisfied that the field was up to my standards. With the big game tomorrow, I couldn’t allow even a stray blade of grass to be out of place.

  Because tomorrow afternoon, Mountain View would host its yearly alumni football game, with players culled from the class that was having its fifth-year reunion. I think the theory went that five years was long enough to have missed Mountain View High School, but not so long that they wouldn’t be able to throw the damn ball.

  The alumni football game was a beloved Fourth of July tradition — when your town is only about thirty-thousand people, as Little Lane, Wisconsin was, traditions take on a new meaning. It’s like one big family reunion. There are the drunk uncles, the cheek-pinching aunts, the old flames. Or, err, I guess there aren’t old flames at family reunions. That would be, like, so wrong. But you know what I mean.

  Anyhow, this year, I was in charge of planning the game, and I couldn’t be more excited. Only the most beloved townspeople got to plan the alumni game, folks like Kyle, Mrs. Wall, Old Dougie, Poppa John. To follow in their footsteps… it was an honor I couldn’t even imagine.

  Out of nowhere, I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders jolt me forward. I startled, clutching at my chest as it filled with adrenaline.

  “Gotcha!” Jolie crowed, bouncing back on her arched heels. “God, you’re such a chicken.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, how dare I be frightened of someone attacking me.”

  “Don’t be such a baby. That little push? It wouldn’t have even scared your kindergarten class.”

  Well, that was probably true, but only because they were so desensitized to stimuli. In my class alone, I knew there were several kids whose parents let them play violent video games. Oh, the challenges of being a teacher today.

  “So, ready for the big game tomorrow?” Jolie asked, her brown locks lobbed into what she called ‘the mom haircut’ tousled by the gentle summer wind.

  I took a deep breath. “I think so. It’s a lot of pressure, obviously, but I’m feeling pretty good about it. The field’s done, the guys have all been notified on the list host, I have a ref, an announcer—”

  “I wasn’t asking for the play-by-play,” Jolie gently joked. “Knowing you and your type-A tendencies, I have no doubt, not even a shred, that it’s organized to the hilt. While I, meanwhile, am floundering under food duties. What I meant was, how are you feeling about it?”

  “Oh.” She raised an eyebrow, and I sighed. “I’m just… nervous, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Girl, how are you so out of touch with your feelings?”

  Well, it was a fair question. I spent most of my day trying to teach kindergarteners how to access their emotions, and deal with them in healthy ways that made for a positive classroom environment. Meanwhile, I was so busy helping them process that there was no emotional bandwidth leftover for me.

  I shook my head, ignoring Jolie’s fair point, and diverted the conversation. “What’s going on with food handling?”

  She knew I was sidestepping, but went along anyway. We’d had the talk about me and my personal reticence way too often to rehash it in the middle of a field.

  “It’s miserable,” she wailed. “I only signed up because Travis said his friends’ moms were all doing it and if I didn’t, I’d be ‘lame.’ That was his word. Not mine.”

  Travis, Jolie’s three-year-old son, was a fan favorite amongst my teacher crew — he was funny, hard-working and just a little bit mature for his age. When I fell asleep at night and dreamed of having babies someday, Travis was the kind of kid I pictured.

  Jolie continued, “All the moms, though, have turned against one another, and we’re all competing for who can bring the best dish to the potluck. Mac n’ cheese with bacon, french fries, big puddings. And it’s like, do I have to be a star chef on top of being a mother every single damn day? I didn’t know a baby came with a Michelin star.”

  I mustered the most sympathetic look I could, quietly congratulating myself on dodging the food committee. As a teacher at Mountain View Elementary School, I was responsible for working at least one Fourth of July committee, and because of my popularity at the school, I’d been a shoo-in for the alumni football game. The food committee, on the other hand, was notorious for its vicious in-fighting that made Game of Thrones look mild-mannered. I could’ve warned Jolie about the error of her ways, but by the time she alerted me to her decision, it was too late. Now, all there was to do was smile and nod and coo.

  “I’m just ready to have all the hard work pay off,” she finished. “Aren’t you? I know it’ll be satisfying when it’s all done.”

  “Yeah, it feels like we’ve been planning this for, what, a year?”

  “Try ten years. At this point, I should have gotten a doctorate in committee coordinating.”

  * * *

  Thank you for reading the preview of Claiming His Firecracker. Want more? Go to Amazon.com to read the full novella. Thank you!

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  Lulu Pratt’s Books

  All available from Amazon

  Quickies: A Romance Novella Collection

  Relentless Pursuit

  Long and Hard

  Going Down

  In Deep

  Best Jerk

  Billionaire Neighbor

  Baby’s First Christmas

  Fake Marriage Act

  Recharged

  Rough and Ready

  Claiming His Valentine

  Claimed: A Bad Boy Romance