by Ember Flint
I fold my arms in front of my chest. “All my stuff is in these boxes, Aston!”
He laughs. “Indeed it is, baby, so?”
I huff, rolling my eyes at him.
Is he really going to pretend this is no big deal?
“So apparently you took it upon yourself to go into my apartment without my permission I might add and practically moved me out of it.”
“You are spot on, my love!” he says with a smirk on his lips as he moves closer to me, his hands reaching for my shoulders.
“You are crazy!” I give him the evil eye and take a step back.
He wraps his arms around me. “I think we have already established that, my sweet, but so are you so this is perfectly okay.”
He utters that silliness so seriously that I can’t help but laugh.
“What am I going to do with you, my love?”
He grins. “Well, I can think of a thing or two…”
“Aston, really! This is lunacy: I can’t deal with moving in together right now…”
He kisses my temple drawing me closer to him. “You won’t have to, my love.”
I shake my head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’ll be dealing with it in two weeks when we get back,” he tells me matter-of-factly.
I can see he is enjoying his little game so I take the bait. “And where are we going to come back from exactly?”
“A holiday. We are going away this afternoon and coming back in two weeks, by then I’m sure you’ll be on board with us moving in together. I just thought it would be better to have your stuff already moved in here beforehand so we won’t have to deal with it when we are jet-lagged.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you!” I cry, more than a hint of sarcasm in my voice.
He chuckles. “My pleasure…”
“And you’re so cocky about the whole thing, you have already decided the answer I will give to a question you have not even asked yet?”
“Exactly… and I’m not cocky about this particular thing, you know? I’m cocky about everything, that’s why you love me.”
I laugh. “You are driving me insane, Aston and even if I wanted to, I can’t up and leave, love, I have a job!”
“I know… I took care of it. I spoke to your boss yesterday. Charming old lady, she was more than happy to give you two weeks off. It turns out, you’re quite the workaholic, baby: you have not taken more than two or three days off in two years.”
I want to be at least a little mad at him, but I can’t. I feel the corners of my mouth twitch up. “You are unbelievable…”
“Maybe,” he shrugs.
I shake my head. “It’s too fast.”
He curves down a little to look me in the eye, one of his big hands cupping my cheek.
“It is, yes, but what’s wrong with that? We both know how we feel, we both know where we want to go from here and that we want to get there together. What use is waiting?”
I huff, throwing my hands up. “Fine. I yield to your supreme logic.”
“I always knew you were a smart girl, my sweet,” he says in a chuckle and leans down to kiss me softly.
I break our embrace and look up into his beautiful, dark, eyes. The eyes that hold my future and my happiness.
“And where are we going, if I may ask?”
He kisses the top of my head. “That, my love, is for you to decide. Think about a place as you pack and my jet will get us there.”
I laugh. “You really are crazy, you know?”
He nods. “Yes, but so are you.”
I stand on my tippy-toes to kiss him on the lips.
“You’re right: so am I and I love you so much!”
Aston beams down at me. “I love you too and I love being crazy and fast and risky as long as I’m all of those things with you.”
I smile. He is crazy. We are crazy!
But oh… how I love him!
Epilogue
ASTON
Two years later…
The sun forces my eyes open and the first thing I see is Lara’s beautiful face as she looks up at me, her dark eyes focused on my own, a little smile playing on her full, soft, lips.
She is a vision bathed in white light, right in the middle of the very crumpled, cream-colored sheets on our giant bed.
I could call her an angel, except she is too bloody sexy to be one.
Devastatingly desirable, that’s was she is and I love her so damn much it almost hurts.
“Good morning, sweetie,” she mumbles in a yawn, hugging me to her as much as her big, round belly permits and I breathe her unique scent in.
Lavender, Lara and a lingering trace of lust.
There’s nothing better than that.
My arms automatically go around her hips just as they do every day upon waking; my hands caressing up and down, feeling her warm, silky skin.
“Good morning, love. Being awake for long?” I ask, my voice slightly gruff from sleep.
“A little…” she yawns again and kisses me.
I let our lips and tongues play for a while but then I pull away.
I have a pressing conversation to engage in and that cannot wait.
I slide down her body, stopping when my mouth reaches her belly, just above her navel, and she starts to giggle in anticipation.
I feel our baby’s restless kicks against my chin and mouth.
“It’s very active this morning,” I say looking up at her.
Lara laughs. “Maybe it will be a soccer player.”
“Or a kickboxer…”
I kiss the spot where I felt the last kick, I can’t believe I will be a dad in less than two months!
“Or a ballerina, you never know!” she says.
We’ve decided to not find out the gender of our baby.
We will be equally happy as long as our child is okay and we really liked the idea of the whole thing being a surprise.
That, however, doesn’t mean we don’t spend a lot of our time trying to guess.
“Hello, little one, it’s daddy,” I say to my unborn baby, stroking its mommy’s stomach.
“What are you up to today? I’ve been told you kept mommy up for most of the night… almost as much as I did. That’s not very nice, you know? No more of those cherries you seem to like so much, if you keep this up. Understood?”
My wife giggles as her hand burrows in my curls.
My wife! I still can’t believe it is true sometimes.
How can I be so lucky? So blessed?
But here it is: my family in my arms proving me that yes, it is true. It really happened: a little over a year ago, the day of our first anniversary, Lara made me the happiest of men, becoming, my partner, my lover and my best friend for the world to see.
Mine to love, respect, cherish and protect. My wife.
Two years ago I met the love of my life and everything immediately just clicked into place, we have never been more than twelve hours away from each other and everything is as it should be.
Sometimes we are absolutely in sync, sometime we squabble, but we always love and that’s what keeps us strong.
“We have to get going, love…”
I frown at her. “Where do we have to go on a Saturday, at nine in the morning, my sweet?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t tell me you forgot! Charles and Jessica… Cora and Sterling? The—”
“Barbecue! The Barbecue… see? I didn’t forget, love. I was just in the middle of my routine baby one-to-one and it escaped me for a sec.”
She shakes her head, laughing. “Liar!”
I smile up at her. “Lover,” I whisper softly and the next thing I know, she is straddling me in all her rounded glory, a wicked smile on her lips.
I sigh contentedly. “I love you, baby.”
She leans forward to kiss me, her dark waves all around us. “I love you too.”
“I guess we can be a little late
, right?”
She slips her tongue in my mouth. “Sure…”
Epilogue 2
LARA
“Good morning Mr. Henley, Mrs. Henley. Where to?”
“Good morning, Lucas. The Spades’ residence, please.”
My husband flashes me one of his smiles —the kind that I can feel in all my special places—, opens the limo’s door for me and helps me in.
“Thank you, honey,” I say as I try to get comfy on the back seat.
Thanks God this car is huge, otherwise I doubt I could fit in it.
I feel like I have been pregnant forever.
I look down at my ginormous belly, stroking it to make my baby feel my love for it and I smile to myself.
“What are you smiling at, love?” Aston asks as his strong arm goes around me.
“I was just thinking that I had no idea pregnancy could make me this big, but I guess that will teach me…”
“Teach you what exactly, my love?”
Aston's grin gets even bigger and I catch a glimpse of his dimples: he loves when I tease him.
“Not to get knocked-up by a giant, all along believing I won’t make whales look anorexic in comparison.”
He laughs as he kisses my temple.
I love so many things about him that sometimes I lose count, I even love the things that irk me, especially when he has to go away for business —even though, admittedly, he always comes home at night or takes me with him if a trip requires an overnight-stay—, but his laugh is definitely the thing I love the most.
It’s one of the things it took me the longest to bring to the surface in all its grandeur as Aston was very serious and not exactly carefree and happy-go-lucky when I met him.
I like to think that our love made him find a part of him that was always hidden, a part that he considered too risky to let out on his own. The part of him that can truly laugh, enjoy life and love.
This doesn’t mean he is not the intense, always in control guy I fell in love with two years ago, but now he has learned to let his guard down sometimes.
As for me, I learned so much it is impossible to put it into words.
I learned that I was worthy of being loved and that happiness is possible if you give it a chance.
“Oh, baby… look at this!” the dismayed tone of Aston's voice makes me raise my head from his chest and I see he is holding a crumpled sheet of paper in his hand.
I shake my head. “Oh…”
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be… it was totally worth it.”
He laughs. “I couldn’t agree more, but still… it was a lovely piece, my sweet.”
I take the drawing from him and try to smooth the creases away. It must have slipped out of my album yesterday after I showed him my latest projects on our way home.
As always, when Aston and I find ourselves alone things tend to get pretty intense pretty quick and yesterday was no exception.
“Don’t worry about it, baby. I think I have a copy in my studio and if I don’t, I can still use this: I will just need to iron it.”
“Iron it? I don’t think it’ll be enough. We messed it up pretty badly. It’s a pity: I really liked this one, love… more on yourself then for selling it, though.”
I giggle, my eyes studying the lace and silk royal purple teddy I sketched yesterday morning.
“I hardly think I could find enough material to wrap one up for my very pregnant-self right now, sweetie…”
Aston chuckles. “Don’t worry about that, love. I like you better completely naked anyway, no bloody layers keeping you from me.”
“God, how I love you!” I kiss his laugh away, thinking of all the ways in which his care, his passion, his affection, his… everything has made my life better.
The moment I met him, I went from alone, sad and confused to happy, complete and in love so fast that it was months before my head stopped spinning.
Falling in love, moving in together, starting my own lingerie line, getting married. One moment I had nothing and the next I had everything.
That’s the difference love can make.
Things were fast between us, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t move in the right way and at the right speed for us.
Talking about fast.
We are headed to my sister and Charles place right now to celebrate another very special anniversary. Their second one already.
If we were fast about our love, Charles and Jess were Speedy Gonzales about theirs. They were married exactly a month after the day they met.
If this was a speed-contest though, the four of us would certainty lose to Chuck’s sister and her husband —those two really had our heads spinning: they were married in a matter of days and are now already expecting their third child.
But when you know, you know, after all. Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.
You just have to be as lucky as they all were —as we were and still are—, the rest will easily fall into place, because where there is love, there’s care and need and trust and nothing else matters.
Now I’m strong, I’m loved, I’m happy, that’s what love can do.
With Aston I found myself.
With his love, his patience, his guidance, his advice and his support —but not his money, never his money. Not that he did not offer, but I wanted to do it myself and even more important: I did not want to be one of those people that are always after him for his wealth— I made all of my dreams come true and I did not stop at that: I came up with new dreams. Bigger dreams. Dreams for us.
Our story was a whirlwind, literally, but I always trusted him and I always will.
I always trusted our love no matter what and that made everything perfect and helped us fix everything that needed to have work done on.
Sometimes, I still have to pinch myself.
I am here. A woman, a sister, a friend and a wife about to be a mother, so full of joy, hope and love I feel I can’t contain it all and I owe it to us.
I feel his lips on my cheek as his hand squeezes mine. “Lara, baby? Are you okay?”
I nod, smiling up at him.
“Come on, let’s get out of the car.”
I frown. “We are at Chucks and Jessie already?”
He laughs. “Yes. I could see you were thinking about something. Where did you go?”
I reach for his face, his sexy as hell day-old stubble tickling my fingertips.
“Where do I always go?”
He smiles. “To us…”
“To us.”
Our lips meet gently, but soon enough the kiss gets out of hand and as always our love for each other devastates us.
We are devastatingly happy and there’s nothing like it.
THE END
There's still a devastating pull between Aston & Lara and there always will be, come and see in the free Extended Epilogue! Get it here!
Impetuously Irresistible
By EMBER FLINT
Jessica Mason is a spirited and feisty twenty-five-year-old woman who is slowly, but steadily realizing that her existence has turned into a very hot mess.
Since her boss started to make unwanted advances on her person, her once-beloved job as office co-admin has morphed into a never-ending awkward nightmare and she really needs to get out of it ASAP.
On top of everything else, her love-life is non-existent. She has completely sworn off men, tired of having meaningless strings of first dates and to never feel a connection with any of them.
Her heart has never been touched and she is very much ready to meet The One.
The only problem is she is sick of waiting for this real man.
Couldn’t he get on with it, show up on his white stallion and save the day or something?
Apparently no.
She is alone and it sucks.
Charles Spade is a debonair and handsome, successful Manhattan billionaire with a very positive outlook on life, but h
e is feeling pretty low right now and nothing seems to be able to pull him out from this slump.
One would think he has it all: money, power, friends and a very active dating-record. He should be happy behind his ever-present smile, but he is not.
He is tired of girlfriends only interested in his wealth.
He doesn’t want a bed-warmer, he doesn’t want something brain-deprived, pretty and shiny hanging from his arm at parties.
He wants a real woman. He wants the real thing. He wants love.
Once he crosses paths with Jessica, there’s no stopping him from making her his, not that she would resist him, anyway: it wouldn’t be possible.
There’s a lure between them that they can’t escape, an invisible energy that makes them irresistibly attracted to each other.
One kiss it’s all it takes and all of a sudden nothing can stand between these two and around them, the world slips off and fades away into nothingness.
Dear Reader:
Ops, I did it again! *wink*
Here we have true love happening in literally five seconds, so don’t say I didn’t warn you!
In this standalone, filthy-sweet novella with no cheating and a guaranteed HEA, insta-love runs amok, passion flares, our happy couple is practically allergic to clothes and reality and rationality fly out of a very steamy window —a window you’ll need to open so you don’t faint while reading this shameless piece of smut.
Just like his friend from Devastatingly Desirable, Charles is a huge-all-over, muscular, sexy and over-the-top alpha hero that sees his woman, claims her and just never lets her go; plus, he is really charming and he totally knows it, what else could you possibly want?!
If you’re looking for something fast, ridiculous and ridiculously hot you are in the right place, so welcome aboard: this is just the thing for you, honey!
*Please note that Impetuously Irresistible is part of the ‘In love in a New York Minute’ series, each one of the stories focuses only on one couple and there are no cliffhangers so the books can be read in any order and also as standalones.
