Too hot to handle: A curvy girl romance

by River Laurent

  “I love you too,” I breathed. “And, yes. Of course, I will.”

  There was a spontaneous burst of applause from inside the restaurant as he slipped the ring over my finger and grabbed me and kissed me. I held on to him tight, never wanting to let go, my fingers digging into his flesh like I wanted to leave an impression on his skin. When he pulled back, he had the biggest smile on his face, and I grinned back. Happier than I had ever been in my whole life.

  “I think you can give us a little privacy now, guys.” He glanced over to his dancers, all of whom quickly filed out to leave us by ourselves once more. Some of them gave him a slap on the back, or offered up congratulations of some kind before they went. Then before I knew it, I was alone again with my fiancé.

  My fiancé. I couldn’t stop running the word around in my head, trying to make it stick.

  I glanced at the restaurant, where a bunch of people were still watching us and smiling. A couple were even recording the whole thing. No doubt it will be on YouTube by tomorrow.

  Chad sat down opposite me. “I think that should do to keep any women away, right?” he remarked dryly.

  I laughed. All my worries felt like a million miles away now, and I was struggling to remember why I’d been so hung up on it in the first place. Chad was mine, and he wanted the whole world to know. I couldn’t think of anything more romantic than that.

  “I think it should,” I agreed, then took a deep breath. He had surprised me, and now it was time for me to do the same to him. Now that I knew he actually wanted to be with me, there was no reason to hold back on giving him the good news.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” I admitted, leaning in close; his brow furrowed.

  “You really want to do this, right?” he asked, suddenly nervous.

  “More than anything,” I assured him, nodding vigorously. “It’s just…there’s something else, too.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I stared at him, into the eyes of the man I loved, and tried to commit this moment to memory, the last moment before everything would change forever.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  The words hung in the air between us for a moment as he simply gazed at me, his mouth slightly agape with shock. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I prayed that this wasn’t going to scare him off. Sure, he had proposed, but this baby was a whole other step forward, one that he hadn’t accounted for yet. Oh God! Maybe he wasn’t ready for this…

  “You’re serious?” he whispered.

  I could feel myself drop from the high I had been feeling. What was I going to do if he didn’t want the baby? I was keeping it no matter what. “Yes,” I whispered back.

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “This is incredible.”

  “I plan to keep it,” I croaked.

  Suddenly, he leaned over and kissed me. When he pulled back, he actually let out a whoop of excitement. “You plan to keep it. What the hell? It’s ours, not just yours.”

  I was too overcome with relief. He wanted the baby!

  “When did you find out?” he demanded, the smile practically cracking his face in two.

  “Yesterday,” I admitted, the words pouring out of me, like I had unstopped a cork. I was just so glad to finally be telling him the truth about all of it, after keeping it from him from what felt like a lifetime. “I wanted to keep it, but I wasn’t sure if you did…”

  “Of course, I want to have it. How could you even think anything else?” He kissed me again, and then laughed loudly. “This is perfect. Just perfect.”

  “Yeah, it really is,” I beamed across the table at him. It was odd to think that only a half-hour ago I had been sure this evening would end with me splitting up with him, and now I was sitting here, a ring glimmering on my finger, his baby inside me, and knowing that he wanted nothing more than to stick this out with me. “But I am a bit scared.”

  He frowned. “Scared?”

  “Our future. What happens now?” I asked.

  Chad took my hand and brought me right back down to earth with a smile. “We have an amazing dinner together,” he began, tracing his fingers over my knuckles. “Then we go home and … celebrate, properly. Without an audience.”

  I grinned. “Okay…”

  “Don’t worry. I’m here all the way to the finish line. We’ll make plans. We’ll take a day at a time and no matter what happens we’ll have each other, but for now, let’s just enjoy our dinner.”

  “Perfect,” I beamed at him, and I meant it. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more in the world than spend the rest of the evening with him, my future husband, the father of my child, the most important man in the world to me.

  Epilogue

  Madison

  “How’s Nathan?” Chad asked as I made my way back out to the beach. I took up my place on the golden sand next to him, and tipped my head back to let the sun soak into my face.

  “Sleeping,” I replied, letting out a long sigh of relief. “At last.” I looked out over the glittering water beyond us, and once again had to remind myself that this was real life. This was really my home, in Miami, with Chad. In a lovely house a little outside the city so that we could raise our son away from the hustle and bustle of the urban life.

  He had surprised me with it when we had come back from our honeymoon. I still had no idea how he’d found the time to build something like this behind my back, but he had taken in every single one of my comments and ideas about the kind of place I wanted to live in, and turned them into our reality. A reality with a stretch of private beach and plenty of guest rooms so that my family could come over and visit whenever they wanted.

  “He always goes down right away when I’m the one putting him to sleep,” he teased. “He must like me better.”

  “Uh, uh, no way, he’s going to be a total Mommy’s boy,” I shot back, as I reached for the mojito Chad had made up for me.

  “Yeah? We’ll see about that. I’m not having no son of mine hanging onto your skirts. I’m the only one who‘ll be doing that,” he mocked, reaching over to skim his fingers up my bare arm.

  “I was referring to how much control each of us has,” I replied primly. “As far as I can see Nathan walks all over you.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does. You won’t tell him off for anything.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  I settled myself more comfortably on the sand. “We’ll have Sasha judge when she comes over next month.”

  “That’s doesn’t sound very fair. She’s your sister.”

  “Yeah, but she’s basically made it clear that she likes you more than me,” I reminded. “You remember the wedding?”

  “In all fairness, she had had a couple of drinks by then.

  “And I’ve seen her drunk plenty of times, and she never got up and gave a speech about how much she loved any of my boyfriends,” I told him. “Trust me, she likes you.”

  “Well, I can’t help it if I’m charming.”” Flashing his most charming smile, he rolled over to give me that look.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Stop it.”

  He cocked his head at me. “What?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on. You know what.”

  “I’m not allowed to think about how hot my wife looks in a bikini?” he asked, playing innocent.

  “I think the only reason you got the private beach on this place was so you could ogle me in bikinis every chance you got,” I faux-scolded him. “I thought you would have gotten your fill last night.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, and he went to touch me again, but I pulled away from him playfully. He grinned again. “What’s this now?” he asked, his voice dropping to a low growl, letting me know that he was up for whatever game that I wanted to play.

  I took another sip of my drink, letting the cool, minty freshness spread over my tongue. A year ago, I might have needed the alcohol to have the confidence to do what I was about to do, but right
now, all I needed was the way he was looking at me. I got to my feet, turned away from him, and slowly swayed my hips back and forth as I reached up to undo the tie that held up my bikini top. I had to go up a size in everything above the waist after the pregnancy, and my boobs still hadn’t gone down, but I certainly wasn’t complaining. And by the look in his eyes, neither was he.

  His eyes never left me as I slowly peeled off my top, and then sensuously hooked my fingers under the hips of my bikini bottoms. I slipped the scrap of cloth down slowly, stepping out of them one at a time. Then I turned around and stretched my arms up over my head, as though I was oh-so-casually stripping down and I didn’t even know he was there.

  I smiled inwardly when I heard a growl escape his mouth.

  Suddenly he was behind me, sliding his hands around my middle and pulling me against him. His body had softened slightly in the few months he’d been away from dancing, but I was pretty sure I preferred it this way. It reminded me that he was mine now, all mine, that he had committed his life to me and that he didn’t spend evenings grinding up on other women. I mean, yeah, sometimes I still got him to put on a show for me, but that was the extent of his dancing days.

  He kissed my neck softly, and I closed my eyes.

  “I want to make another baby with you,” he purred into my ear.

  I felt my knees begin to buckle a little out from beneath me. It was the sexiest thing he could have come out with right then. Ever since Nathan had come along three months ago, I hadn’t been able to stop talking about having another kid. I adored our son so much, and the house had so much sprawling space that all I wanted to do was fill it with dozens of little Chads and Madisons.

  “Mmm, don’t tempt me,” I replied, turning and wrapping my arms around him. He kissed me on the mouth, a sweet, tender smooch that made my heart race. I couldn’t believe that this man was my husband. Before him, I had always imagined the word depicting some rotund man sitting in front of the TV, drinking beer.

  But Chad was nothing like that.

  He was intimately involved in Nathan’s upbringing, focused on getting his dance studio off the ground, and flatteringly committed to me. Nothing seemed to slow him down; in fact, retiring from dancing only seemed to give him more motivation to do everything else he had always wanted to with his life.

  He guided me down to the sand, pulling me on top of him. I ran my hands over his chest and down his stomach, undoing the tie of his trunks and pulling them down his body in one motion. He was already rock hard, and I wrapped my fingers around his length and stroked him a couple of times. Watching me he ran his fingers over my thighs and sighed with pleasure. I swayed back and forth a little, knowing that he liked the way my body moved when I was on top of him like this.

  “I need to be inside you, like, right now,” he ordered, reaching up to trace his thumb over my bottom lip. I shifted forward, needing no more encouragement, and lowered myself down on his cock.

  “Fuck,” he groaned, loudly enough that I instinctively shot a look up at the house. Once a mother always a mother, but there was really no need. Nathan slept like a dream, and wouldn’t have even heard us if we’d both been screaming the place down. Which I had to admit, I had done in the past.

  I began to move slowly, back and forth, planting my hands on his chest for support, and I thought about what he’d said before – how he wanted to make another baby with me, wanted to expand this family of ours. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back, the intense intimacy of those statements flooding my body with need for him, need that he was only too happy to fulfill. He thrust up into me, holding my hips steady, moving hard and deep. He knew never to hold back when it came to us; I had fucked him dozens of times like this, and every time it felt as though he moved a little deeper, a little rougher. I liked it.

  The sound of our fevered breath mingled with the sound of the ocean behind us. Time seemed to drop away as I rocked back and forth on top of him. I needed this. Even though we fucked practically every day, I still craved him with a hunger that I wasn’t sure would ever drop away.

  When I had first laid eyes on him, on that stage more than a year ago, I never could have imagined what I had felt was so true. That the connection would never really be severed, or even decrease in intensity with time. He stroked my clit, and my head tipped back. I was so close. So close. Suddenly he sat up, ran his tongue over my throat and plunged himself as far inside me as he could manage. The shock of the sensation was enough to make me come all at once, my body trembling as the bubble of pleasure ballooned inside me and burst out of my mouth.

  “Ah!” I cried, the sound whipped away by the soft breeze coming off the water.

  He came moments later, holding me close and steady as he exploded inside me. God, I would never get over how good it felt to have him fuck me without a condom, the closeness was incomparable to anything I’d experienced before.

  We pulled apart and he kissed me long and sweet, taking my breath away. I would have been happy staying there for the rest of the day, but unfortunately, I had things to do.

  “I have a meeting with a client in twenty minutes,” I reminded, reluctantly pulling away. I never want our time together to end

  “Yeah, I remember,” he said with a sigh.

  I slid off of him and went to grab my bikini. I was meeting with a potential new client about stepping in for their engagement photos; not a huge gig, but it was a start, since I had let my photography take a back seat in the midst of the wedding planning and having Nathan.

  “I’ll come in and keep an eye on Nathan,” he said, getting to his feet and following me as I made my way into the house to get dressed.

  “He’s sleeping,” I reminded him. “So please don’t wake him up.”

  “I won’t,” he promised, as he slipped an arm around me and kissed me again. Like he couldn’t resist me. He was still naked, and when I pulled back, it took everything I had not to drag him into our bedroom right there and then.

  “You’re intent on distracting me today, aren’t you?” I scolded playfully.

  “Just want you to walk into your meeting with a smile on your face,” he replied with a cocky grin.

  “That you have definitely done.” I kissed him on the corner of his mouth and went to pull on some clothes from the generous walk-in wardrobe he’d built especially for me.

  “Later,” He called over his shoulder as he went to tend to Nathan.

  There was a big smile on my face as I turned to watch my husband’s tight butt as he walked away to take care of our son. I could never have imagined this life for myself, but now that I was here, it seemed utterly, perfectly obvious that I was living in paradise.

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  A big, big thank you to…

  Leanore Elliott & Brittany Urbaniak & Peggy Schnurr

  Single Dad

  Copyright © 2018 by River Laurent

  The right of River Laurent to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patent act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-911608-14-1

  Author Note

  Hello!

  Single Dad is a full-length standalone novel. It ends before 100% on your kindle file because: awesome extra content. :) And…as promised, the full story of Sweet Revenge in right here. It’s hot and you don’t want to miss it!

  Happy reading.

  xoxo

  Lincoln

  “For the love of God, tell me something I don’t already know
!” I rage, slamming my open palms down on the conference room table. The water glasses tremble almost as hard as my management team. I don’t care that I’m scaring the shit out of them. They deserve a lot fucking worse.

  “We’re going back through the logs right now.” Ryland holds up his phone.

  I see messages pouring in as the tech staff scramble to find the rat in our organization. “Yeah, too little, too late,” I mutter. That sick, sweaty feeling is starting to work its paralyzing poison into every cell in my body. In two weeks, we’re supposed to showcase our latest innovation in drone technology. Everything is ready, the press, the industry experts, the buyers, the government agencies, but my arch rival, Vince fucking Weissman stole our design and passed it off as his brainchild last night.

  I loosen my tie. Hell, I can’t even think straight. I take a deep breath and try to calm myself. This must be how people react when they find out all their years of slaving away have come to nothing. Jesus, everything we’ve worked for in the last three years—gone.

  Millions of dollars’ worth of research—flushed down the toilet.

  My stomach twists with raw hate when I remember Weissman’s smug smile, as he passed me in the hotel lobby last night. I was dying to wipe that grin off his arrogant face, but there was not a thing I could do to him. I had to nod politely, as if I wouldn’t love to see him burn in hell, and move on.

  “I’m sure they’ll find something,” Ryland soothes.

  My head jerks up and I glare at him. “I hire the most talented people I can find, make them jump through about as many security hoops as candidates for the CIA do, get them to sign watertight contracts, and all for what?”

  “Look, as soon as we know who stole the plans—”

  “We already know who stole them,” I snarl, and pushing myself out of my chair, I start walking away. There’s a real danger I might launch myself across the table and strangle him. He’s my best friend and we go a long way back, but fuck him for being so calm and reasonable while my whole life is falling apart.