Dream Maker

by Kristen Ashley

  “Why aren’t you wearing your sling?” I asked.

  “It’s annoying,” he answered.

  “It’s my understanding you have another week with it on.”

  “Yeah, but for now it’s off.”

  All right.

  I’d said my piece.

  So I let that go.

  “Good night?” Mag asked.

  “It’s over and I have a wad of cash in my bag, so it is now.”

  He smiled down at me.

  “Ryn and Boone had a thing tonight,” I shared.

  “A thing?”

  “A thing after she gave a lap dance.”

  His chin lifted slightly with understanding, and his expression turned thoughtful before he muttered, “Yeah. Not surprised. He’s into her and he’s a certain kind of guy. One who wouldn’t be down with some of that even if she’s not yet his. I don’t think he should be on you at Smithie’s anymore. I should have known it was bound to fuck with his head.”

  I wondered what he meant by “a certain kind of guy.”

  Did he know Boone was a Dom?

  Did the boys share that much?

  I didn’t ask, because if Boone didn’t share, it wasn’t my place to do it.

  Instead, I said softly, “You guys know each other really well.”

  His hand at my chest moved up so he could stroke my throat as he replied, “Honest to Christ, if I hadn’t found them, I don’t know where I’d be.”

  “Then I’m glad you found them,” I replied.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “And Boone and I talked it out and he’s of the same mind. If Ryn’s onstage, he’s not on Smithie’s duty.”

  “Hopefully soon, this’ll be all over, so it won’t matter.”

  That was the hope.

  Though, since not a thing was happening, dangerous or otherwise, it seemed this was going to drag on forever.

  “Shower then bed?” he asked.

  I smiled at him and nodded.

  He started to push away as I was making my own preparations to get up with him, and in doing so, turned my head and saw his laptop open on the coffee table.

  There were Zillow listings on it.

  Weird.

  “Moving?” I joked after he was on his feet and he’d grabbed my hand to pull me to mine.

  “I can rent this pad easy, make a whack,” he told me. “And I got some money saved up. I’m not a stock portfolio type of guy. So…” He trailed off.

  So…

  Although I had utterly no experience with this, he meant, if you have money—and apparently, he had some money—invest in real estate.

  But I looked down again at the laptop and saw he wasn’t looking for a property that might offer future income as a rental, like another condo or a townhouse.

  He was looking at homes.

  It was then, something I didn’t understand at the time, and forgot about it until then, came to mind.

  Something that Nikki had said about Mag’s place being temporary and not even his.

  Thus, even though he’d begun to move us toward his room, I tugged on his hand to stop him.

  He looked at me.

  “Are you, you know, restless?” I asked.

  His mouth cocked up at one side.

  “Is that code for ‘do I want an orgasm?’” he returned, but before I could answer, he continued, “And just to say, the answer to that will never be no.”

  I swayed closer to him and his head was coming down in that way I loved.

  Still…

  “What I mean is, are you wanting to move on from this place?” I clarified.

  His head stopped its downward descent and he shook it. “Just moving up.”

  “Not moving on?”

  Now his whole head cocked. “What are you really asking, baby?”

  “It’s just that Nikki said this place was temporary and it sounded like that was a thing with you. It was also around the time when she thought she might be able to get back in with you.”

  Mag shifted how he was standing in order to position himself fully in front of me, and as he already had one of my hands in his, he took up the other, so he was holding both.

  “Okay, yeah, after I got out of the military, I moved around a lot,” he shared. “Crashing on couches. Having a roommate, getting fed up with that roommate, finding somewhere else to be. I met Nikki when I was doin’ that and we dated, but we didn’t get serious because, I see it, looking back, I was restless. It wasn’t good. I also see now that, without the Marines, I’d lost my purpose. I didn’t know who I was. I needed some grounding. That was when I applied for the job with Hawk, got it, found the guys.” He shrugged and carried on, “And I had my place again. I learned who I was and what I needed to be doing. And I got a job doing it.”

  “The commando calling.”

  I said it like it was a tease, and he grinned, but we both knew it was no joke.

  “Yeah, I gotta be challenged in that way. I gotta belong to a team. I gotta feel like I’m doin’ something with a purpose. A lot of vets have this same issue. When they’re serving, their job has meaning. They got into it because of that. And then they’re out and it’s hard to find that again.”

  “So, your job has more meaning than just the fact you know what you’re doing, you’re good at it and it provides a challenge?”

  His hands gave mine a squeeze. “Yeah, honey. I can’t say a lot more, but Hawk doesn’t do business with assholes.” He started to study me intently before he said carefully, “Though that doesn’t mean we don’t run into our fair share of them. They’re just not paying Hawk’s invoices.”

  I nodded when he quit talking, deciding to ignore the scary part of what he just said, and when I didn’t speak, he started again.

  “That was when things settled with Nikki. After I got onboard with Hawk’s team. That said, looking back, we never settled.” He squeezed my hands again. “Now, with it being over, seeing it for how it was between her and me, what she wanted from an us, which was not for me to be a part of that, but the person she wanted me to be, I didn’t fit. I love my job. I love my brothers. I respect the fuck outta Hawk. But at home, none of that mattered. So yeah, with her, that manifested itself in a lot of temporary. Finding someplace to be, and it was never right. Then we moved in together, and I gotta admit, we’d break leases, move and we’d do it a lot. And then where we moved wouldn’t be right. So, repeat. But this,” he tipped his chin to the laptop on his coffee table, “isn’t that.”

  “Okay then, what is it?”

  “Bungalows and a couple Denver squares that, if we go the distance, you can boho the fuck out of and they got big garages so I can have some space for my man cave to get away from the macramé.”

  I blinked up at him.

  “You want kids?” he asked.

  I bobbed my head mutely.

  “Two? Three?” he went on.

  I shook my head.

  His brows went up. “Four?”

  “No,” I said softly. “I don’t know. Two. Maybe three, because, if the first two are the same gender, I’d want to try it again so I could have both.”

  He smiled down at me and shifted closer, holding tight to my hands.

  “Mo’s old room would be crowded for all that,” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” I pushed out.

  “Babe, relax,” he said on another hand squeeze. “This isn’t pressure. And this isn’t restlessness. This is me being a thirty-four-year-old guy who’s got a wad of cash in the bank who lives in a condo, shotgunning beers, and he’s beginning to wonder what fertilizers will make the greenest lawn. It’s growing up, honey, bein’ smart with my money. And I just happened to meet this girl I like a fuckuva lot, so why not?”

  Oh man.

  He was on the road to leave behind the frat boy and become a full-blown Hawk.

  I felt a highly pleasant internal quiver at that thought and choked out, “Yeah. Why not?”

  “And just so you know, that’s not gonna
be the forever home. I’ll always be working to give more to my woman, more to my kids, until the kids are off and it’s time to downsize.” He got even closer. “What I’m sayin’ is, don’t let Nikki put shit into your head that that’s an issue. It wasn’t right with her and I didn’t read it, but my behavior stated it clear. We settled but we never settled in and definitely didn’t settle down because, if I did that with her, it would be settling, and that wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “I don’t want that for you either, Danny.”

  “You know anything about fertilizers?” he asked.

  “No clue,” I answered, and offered, “I could do some research for you, though.”

  “That’d take the fun out of it,” he muttered.

  “It’s a lot of change for you in a short period of time, a long-term relationship being over, buying Mo’s place and his stuff, meeting me, my issues, then looking at houses.”

  “So Nikki’s shit already got into your head.”

  “I actually didn’t remember it until just now, but maybe, yeah,” I admitted.

  “Want honesty?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “All right,” he began. “Your apartment is a disaster. You gotta start almost from scratch. I want you off the stage at Smithie’s because that isn’t where you wanna be and I want you in a classroom and on the way to the life you should be leading, something you want too. It’d be a lie if I said that wasn’t part of a number of reasons I decided to have a look around a real estate website. And I’d be a dick, I was with a woman I was into, she knows how into her I am, and I looked into buying a property without taking into account that her ass might be livin’ in it with me. If I get serious about this, we’ll go look at places together. Do I think it’s time for us to make what we got now official in that way? I don’t know. It feels right. I love spending time with you. But where we’re at isn’t normal. I’d want some normal in before we go down that road. That said, you gotta know, you’re definitely a consideration and a major one.”

  I stared up at him.

  This lasted some time.

  “That freak you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why aren’t you talking?”

  “I’m trying to decide how I’m going to give you an orgasm.”

  His expression changed, it was a lovely change, then he moved Mag Fast, the TV was off and he was pulling me to his bedroom.

  Mag no longer put his sling on to sleep.

  Which was good.

  Because in the end, I gave him two orgasms (to him giving me three), and as such, we both passed out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Miracle

  Evie

  I woke up on my stomach, leg hitched, eyes aimed over the edge of the bed.

  It was quiet and dawn was on the room.

  It was also Sunday.

  Sunday.

  The best day of the week.

  And I thought that even though I had to strip at the end of it.

  It was also a week after I came home from Smithie’s to find Mag looking for new homes on Zillow.

  With me definitely a consideration.

  And it’d been a good week. No kidnappings or shootings, and except for Rob texting me in a restrained way I knew he was holding himself back from begging so he could see I was okay (but more, since he mostly knew I was okay, he wanted to meet Mag and decide if he approved), no family drama.

  Best of all, Lottie and Mo set a date for their wedding.

  And the day we both found out, Mag asked me to be his date.

  They weren’t messing around and as such, their engagement wasn’t going to be a long one.

  But it was still months away, and he was so sure of us, I was so sure of us, I was going to be Mag’s date.

  And he was going to be mine.

  I smiled to myself and turned carefully, just in case he was still sleeping.

  What assailed my eyes was that he was still sleeping. On his back, the covers down to his waist, his injured arm cocked, his hand resting between his pecs, his hair messy and falling on his forehead, eyes closed, those curly lashes resting on his cheeks.

  I’d never seen him asleep, he was usually awake before me.

  And it shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow it did, how he seemed a new brand of beautiful while he was sleeping.

  It was on that thought, it hit me.

  He was mine.

  This man sleeping beside me was mine.

  My boyfriend.

  My lover.

  My friend.

  That beautiful sleeping man was mine.

  And on these thoughts, I moved into him and pressed my lips against his pectoral.

  I felt him stir.

  But that didn’t stop me.

  Oh no.

  That was what I wanted.

  I slid my lips up to his throat.

  “Baby,” he murmured, low and sleepy, and I felt wet hit between my legs at that word coming from him like that, aimed at me.

  I ran my lips over his rough jaw, pushing my body even further up.

  He pressed his arm under me, curled it around, his fingers drifting along my spine and into my hair.

  I headed for his lips, but I didn’t kiss him.

  I looked into his sleepy, beautiful eyes and whispered, “You’re handsome when you sleep.”

  “Yeah?” he whispered back.

  “Yeah,” I confirmed.

  He moved his hand through my hair, around to my face, where he stroked my jaw with the tips of his fingers.

  He was like that, Mag was.

  He touched.

  Affectionate.

  Loving.

  Not just during sex. Not just when he was trying to butter me up.

  He was a guy who held hands.

  He was a guy who cuddled.

  He was those two things.

  Affectionate.

  Loving.

  “I need to go talk to my brother again,” I announced, and his brows shot together with annoyance.

  “Evie.”

  “I have to thank him.” I slid my hand up to his face and rubbed my thumb along the stubble at his cheek. “If he wasn’t a douche canoe, on our first date, you probably would have thought I was just some klutzy nerd that lectured you on environmental issues within minutes of meeting her and then counted down the minutes until you could be shot of her.”

  His brows relaxed and his mouth softened.

  “Babe, I was into you the second I laid eyes on you.”

  He was?

  Nice.

  “Then I demonstrated I was a klutz, this I did spectacularly, after, of course, I lectured you on environmental issues,” I reminded him.

  “A cute one.”

  I grinned at him.

  “Nothin’ wrong with havin’ fire and an opinion, Evie,” he said. “I know you got a bent to talk yourself down, think things about you aren’t as awesome as they are. But just so you know, I was into you the second I laid eyes on you, and I was only more interested in you when you started lecturing me and seriously into you when you smacked your head into the counter.”

  My mind wanted to distort that.

  Make it negative.

  Find some reason not to believe.

  But I couldn’t. There was no evidence to support it.

  He was into me from the beginning and he didn’t hide it.

  “I was into you the second I laid eyes on you too,” I shared.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Both his arms went around me, and in a great Mag Surge, he rolled me to my back, so he was on top.

  After he got me in position, his hands went into my cami, sliding up my sides, skin on skin.

  I shivered under him.

  “Sunday,” I whispered.

  “Sunday,” he whispered back, and the way he said that word made me know he felt the same way about lazy Sundays as me.

  I loved that.

  And then he kissed me.

&n
bsp; It was soft and slow and sweet.

  I loved that too.

  After a long time of kissing, it wasn’t soft or slow or sweet and he wasn’t only kissing my mouth.

  I wasn’t only kissing his either.

  Then, after a long time of rediscovering one another (even if we hadn’t really lost touch, considering we’d had sex last night before going to sleep), Mag rolled on a condom, hooked my legs at the backs of the knees with his hands, lifted them and lowered his body down on mine.

  I pressed my legs tight to his sides…

  And then, slowly, his tongue tracing my lips, his eyes holding mine, he slid inside.

  God.

  Yeah.

  Heck yeah.

  Totally would beg for Mag to be on top.

  We then made love and it was making love.

  I’d never done it before, and I was an instant devotee.

  Or maybe I was just a devotee of Mag.

  It was steady and familiar and profound and beautiful.

  And my orgasm wasn’t earth-shattering.

  It was gentle and quiet and consuming.

  And when Mag purred into my neck with his, I sensed his was the same.

  He didn’t slide out until he had to, and he didn’t stop touching me, kissing me, until he felt the need to.

  And I knew he felt the need, that need being driven by hunger, coupled with his drive to look after his woman, and move onto the next phase of our Sunday, when he looked into my eyes and asked quietly, “Breakfast?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  We kissed again.

  And when we were done, together, we rolled out of bed.

  I sat at a stool at Mag’s island, watching him make pancakes (bonus, we had fresh blueberries so they were blueberry pancakes, and side note: I was trying not to slide into a happiness coma that I could say “we had fresh blueberries” seeing as we went grocery shopping together the day before, again, and Mag made even shopping for groceries fun).

  I was also thinking I kinda missed our breakfast game.

  We’d settled into a routine.

  Mag made breakfast.

  I made dinner.

  Even before I had to head out to Smithie’s, I made dinner. We just ate early, something we could do since Mag was still on “light duty,” so he got home around 5:30.