We got into her car, and she insisted on driving. Her window was non-existent after the shooting, and as we drove, her hair flew in the wind, making her look wild and free. Her face was scrunched with concentration and worry, though, as if she was already trying to solve everything before we got to the hospital. But even that was beautiful. Everything about her was beautiful, and this face of hers was just another part of her that I’d come to love.
I leaned on the passenger door and watched the city slip by as we drove to the hospital. It was still the same place, and yet everything looked different. It was hard to think that…after something so monumental had happened and nothing on the outside had changed. It felt like the world had to be a different place because of everything that had shifted inside of me, shifted in my own world.
But that was how life was, wasn’t it? No matter what happened, even if it had the ability to shatter you, the world stayed the same. It had happened when my mom had died. It had happened when my dad had left. It had happened when Ruby and I had broken up. It had happened when Taylor nearly died.
I glanced at Emily again. She was the same, too. But that was something I didn’t regret. She was a kind of stability I’d never expected to find, and I liked her that way. Emily was the pivotal point in my life now, the thing that everything else rotated around. And it made me want to change everything.
I reached over and put my hand on her thigh. She let go of the steering wheel with her hand closest to me and put it on top of my hand, squeezing slightly. Her lips curled with a ghost of a smile, her feelings for me filtering through, even the medical worry that was carved out in lines on her face.
When we stopped at the hospital, she led me to her office. She greeted nurses and doctors on her way in. Even though she wasn’t dressed for work and her shift was hours later, they didn’t seem surprised she was here. Maybe this happened more often than not. I could imagine she would be here more than she would be anywhere else. I knew what it meant when your job was your life.
When she closed the office door, I looked around.
“You know, I’ve never been in here,” I said. The office was small and crisp white from top to bottom, with a beige plastic desk, an examination bed in the corner, and a shelf with leather bound books that looked old and important. There was nothing personal in here, no photos of loved ones, no paintings, nothing that wasn’t work-related.
She looked around and shrugged.
“It’s not much. A place to exist when I’m here and not busy mopping up someone’s blood.” She turned to me, her face concerned again.
“Tell me where it hurts,” she said.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t hurt,” I said.
She frowned. “Why did you ask to come here?”
“Because I wanted to be alone with you. Nothing hurts anymore. Not my past or my life. And it’s all because of you.”
She was still frowning, and she looked a little like I’d taken the wind out of her sails, bringing her here and not offering her a medical emergency. It was what she did best—taking care of people. If only she knew how much she’d taken care of—and healed—me.
I took both her hands in both of mine.
“Marry me,” I said. The words shocked her. I had to admit that it surprised the hell out of me, too.
“What?”
I took a deep breath and realized that I meant exactly what I’d said.
“Marry me,” I said again. I went down on one knee even though it made me feel like an idiot. The look on her face was confusion. I got up again because I felt like an ass and I hadn’t even gotten her a ring yet, anyway.
“Daniel …” she started.
I shook my head. I was going to make my case before she said no.
“I want you in my life. Forever. And not just as a fling or a temporary girlfriend or whatever. I want you to be my wife so that I can wake up to you every morning. The last couple of days with you and Sarah… waking up to you has been magic. And at the inn? I realized that I love you.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but I put my fingers lightly on her lips.
“I’m not finished,” I said. She laughed and pushed my hand away.
“You’re asking me to marry you, and then you don’t give me a chance to answer?”
“Just hear me out,” I said and took a deep breath. This was important, and I knew I had the whole thing backwards, but it was sincere. “I don’t know how to be the conventional guy. Hell, this proves it. But I know what I want, and that’s you. And I don’t want to have you live this life, either. I’m going to hand the club over to the boys to do what they need with it. Ben has a better handle on it than I’ve ever had, anyway. I’m going to figure out what business I want on my land, and I’m going to do that, far away from all this madness and all these things that were just a distraction all the time. I want a better life for you. For me. For us. And I want to start changing things so that we can have it all.”
I took a deep breath, finally done with my speech. I looked at her and fought the urge to shuffle on my feet, fiddle with my hands, and chew on my lip. I was suddenly scared she was going to say no. After all of that, what if she didn’t want me?
What if I’d misread everything she’d said? What if marriage was too big a step, too quick? I was beating myself up. Maybe I should have waited. But this was all me, jumping in headfirst. Typical.
“Okay,” she said.
“What?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. I didn’t want to misinterpret it. Better to know for sure.
“Okay,” she said again. “I’ll marry you.”
Her words rang in my ears, and my brain couldn’t process it at first. I’d been preparing myself for rejection. She smiled at me and her face was radiant. Radiant and beautiful. I couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, my god,” I said. I took her face between my hands and kissed her. She was mine, and she was always going to be mine. And I was going to fix up my life, because I wasn’t going to let a woman like this slip out of my hands. Never.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Emily
He’d just asked me to marry him. Everything had happened so fast. My life had turned from a stable going-nowhere train into a whirlwind whipping everything up into a frenzy. And I liked it. I liked the thrill and the not-knowing and breaking away from my usual mold, where, to be frank, things had been starting to get stale.
And everything with Chrissy? Well, I can’t say I’d exactly forgiven myself. Not yet. But it was a lot better than it used to be before. Daniel somehow understood, and when he’d told me it wasn’t my fault back in the parking lot with all those criminals around me, it had sunk in.
It hadn’t been my fault. Sure, we’d been young and stupid, and we’d had to bear the consequences for that. Chrissy more than me. But at the end of it, I hadn’t forced her to take the drugs. No one would have known that her body would react like that. In a way, we were all just victims.
Would it take me time to get over it? Probably. It wasn’t just going to go away. You didn’t just dump emotional baggage you’d been dragging with you for a decade. But it would start to clear now. Slowly, and with Daniel at my side—as my husband, imagine that—I could start facing it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Daniel said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m just about ready to go home and show you how much you mean to me. In the horizontal, non-talking way.”
I smiled.
“You have a way with words, don’t you?”
His confidence, now that I’d said yes, was stellar. I had the feeling that he hadn’t been sure I would say yes. When I’d agreed, he’d looked like he was going to pass out. Good thing we were in the hospital where I would have been able to tend to him properly.
“You know what,” I said, stepping closer to him. “You haven’t seen this office before. It hasn’t been christened.”
I said it very casually, but when Daniel smiled at me, it held promise. I walked toward the doo
r and turned the lock. No one would be bothering us because I wasn’t on duty. As long as we could keep it down we could do whatever we wanted.
When I turned to Daniel, there was hunger on his face. He looked me up and down, eyes sliding over my body as if he was already touching me. I didn’t think I would ever get over the way he looked at me, as if he could just eat me.
He was the one that closed the distance between us. He stepped into me, wrapping his arms around my body and kissing me. His mouth came down hard on mine. His lips were like velvet, and he didn’t waste time. He parted them, slid his tongue over my lips and then into my mouth, and drew circles around it, tasting me, testing me.
Heat washed through my body. No matter where we were, whenever Daniel handled me like that, claiming me as his own, I got hot for him. The sensation was a fire that burned beneath my skin and it wanted out. I needed Daniel to let it out.
Daniel drove me back until I was against the wall. He pressed the length of his body into mine, trapping me. I felt the length of his cock pushing against my hip, and he was as hard and ready as ever. I gasped. The lust was so thick around us it made my breath catch in my throat.
I found the hem of Daniel’s shirt and pushed my hands underneath, feeling his smooth skin. I ran my hands up his sides, and he shivered. He was so strong, big and muscular, a colossal hero against my slight form. And still it fit. We fit.
Daniel returned the favor by putting his hand on my ribs. His palm burned next to my breast through the material, and I was aware of my breasts, pushing against his body as if they were straining to get out of their confines.
Daniel slipped his thumb between our bodies and onto my nipple. I gasped. This was where I wanted him. Well, one of the places. My nipple tightened as he rubbed me, and I tipped my head back, closing my eyes, getting lost in the hunger he was stirring up inside of me. Daniel took the opportunity to move down to my neck when I tipped my head back and he nibbled and sucked the skin down the side of my neck.
I moaned and my hips undulated against his, the sensations causing my body to roll beneath his. I wanted him. I could feel the heat and the wetness in my panties, and it was all for him.
I pushed the shirt up, and he stopped, lifting his arms so that I could get it over his head. I dropped the warm material on the floor and his hands moved back to me. He cupped both breasts through my shirt, pushing them up, massaging them. His eyes were on mine, electric blue and wanting, with pupils dilated so far it ate up the color.
He didn’t spend a lot of time on my breasts before he moved his hands down and found the bottom of the shirt. He pulled it up, and I did the same thing he had, lifting my arms so he could take it off.
When the shirt was off, the cool air in the office brushed along my skin, and I got goose bumps. It tightened my nipples even more, and they pushed against the satin material of my bra. My bra wasn’t padded, and when Daniel’s eyes trailed down to my breasts, I knew that he could see how aroused I was.
His eyes reluctantly returned to mine, and his hands moved up. I thought he would go from my breasts again, but instead he wrapped his hands around my waist and moved me. He guided me to the desk, carefully enough so that I didn’t trip but rough enough so that I went where he wanted me to be. He pushed all the papers off my desk. They landed in a whoosh on the floor, and then the top was clear.
He lifted me up and laid me out across it.
“I’ve never used this desk for something that’s not work related,” I said.
Daniel chuckled. He didn’t say anything. I opened my legs to make space for him, and he took it, bending over me so that his cock pressed against my core. I moved my hips against him, and he groaned, but he was headed for my breasts again. He flipped the satin cups down on both sides, and with one hand on the breast that was going to be neglected, he honed in on the other nipple. He sucked it into his mouth, and alternated between softly grating against it with his teeth, drawing circles around it with his tongue, and taking it into his mouth and suckling on.
Daniel was coaxing the flame inside of me into a fire. I arched my back, pressing my breasts up into his face and hand, pushing my body against his. I wanted him. God, I wanted him badly.
He knew it, too. And he deliberately kept things slow, as if he knew he was driving me absolutely wild.
I was the one who sat up and undid my bra. He was quite happy carrying on, but I wanted to be naked for him. I wanted to be on display for his viewing—and tasting—pleasure.
When I dropped my bra on the floor, he looked at me. His eyes were hungry, and he stared like he hadn’t seen breasts before. His lips were slightly parted and his cock twitched against me. I smiled and sat up. I pressed my upper body against his, skin on skin. His skin was hot. I ran my hands down his back and headed for his ass. He was still wearing his jeans, but I grabbed his ass cheeks with both hands, digging my nails through the thick material as best I could, and pulled him against me so that his erection pressed against me. We both gasped.
Something had shifted last night at the inn. I’d taken charge in our sex life for the first time. After being okay with who I was after Chrissy had died, I didn’t feel the urge to lose control the way I used to. The combination made me just as serious in bed as Daniel was, and I was going to give it to him in every way that he could take it and dish back. Which meant that sex was going to be a power play—which was hot as hell—and rougher than usual. I couldn’t wait. The idea made me want him inside of me right now.
I moved my hands around to the front and unbuckled his jeans. I undid the button and the fly and worked it over his ass, taking all layers with me until he stood in front of me, naked. His erection punched into the air, the tip glistening. His jeans were still around his ankles. He couldn’t kick it off without taking off his shoes, but I wasn’t going to give him time to do that. I wanted him.
I got off the table, and he turned. I knelt in front of him and took his head into my mouth. The moment I started sucking, he groaned. He tasted salty and delicious. I felt my body grow even hotter, and if the melted, slick feeling in my panties were anything to go by, I was more than ready for him.
I sucked him off, meeting my lips with my fist around the base of his cock, and with the other hand I squeezed his balls. He had his hands in my hair, guiding my face towards his body, pushing himself deeper into my mouth.
I stopped when his breathing became ragged. I didn’t want him to finish, not yet.
When I got up, he looked at me with greed. He found the top of my own pants and pulled them down without ceremony. Crouching in front of me, he looked up at me. He wrapped his arms around my legs and pulled me closer to him. He pressed his lips against me through the underwear and blew until hot air filled my crotch area. I moaned. He moved his lips against me, and the sensation just made me crave him that much more. He pulled down the panties, ran a finger through my slit, and when I shuddered, he followed with his tongue. He only licked once, slipping over my clit, and my body jerked.
He stood up and pushed me gently so that I got on the table again. He let me lie back. I let my legs fall open, ready for him to do whatever he wanted. His eyes slid over my naked body like he was drinking me in. I knew when he looked at my sex because he groaned. His fingers found the slit again, and he moved them up and down in the wetness before he pushed them into me.
I moaned when he did. He took the opportunity to kneel down and put his mouth over me. Pumping his fingers slowly in and out of me, he licked and sucked on my clit. Everything fell away. My whole world was reduced to his mouth on my clit, and his fingers inside of me. The heat in my body expanded and intensified until I felt like I was a ball of light. I was on the edge, but Daniel kept me there, not letting me topple over until he said so. The control was arousing. The feeling on my sex and in my body was orgasmic. I gasped and moaned, struggling to keep a lid on it.
Then he let me have my release, and it shattered through me, ripping my insides open like a whirlwind. I curled on the table,
hips bucking against my hand. I was vaguely aware of papers falling to the floor, and I didn’t care. The orgasm, what Daniel was doing to my body, was all I could think about—and I rode it out.
When it finally subsided Daniel was right there, pushing into me. My body—just tightened from the orgasm—was stretched to its limit as his thick, hard member pushed into me. I moaned louder than I should have. He held onto my legs, using it as a point of leverage to get as deep as he could. Then he leaned over me, looked me in the eye, and started fucking me.
It was the best sex. Every time we did it, it was so much better than I remembered it to be, and I always remembered it to be mind-blowing. Daniel held onto my hips to keep me in place as he pounded against me. The desk moved across the floor, inch by inch, as he banged it out of place, pushing into me. His length moved in and out of me, and I gasped and moaned.
PREGNANT AT THE ALTAR: Immortal Souls MC Page 49
