by Angel Payne
“Reece!”
“No, Velvet.”
“Reece, please!”
“Not. Yet.”
“But…I can’t hold on…”
“You will. Repeat it. Tell me you will.”
“I—I—oh!” The last of it erupts on a startled scream as he grips my body brutally enough to change the angle of his lunges—ensuring his length teases along that special ridge of sensitivity along my inner walls. “Oh, God.” At the same time, the bastard turns the two digits in my ass into a full lightsaber duel. Not that I can see any of it, with my eyes squeezed as tightly as my fists—but I sure as hell can feel every enticing degree of the battle, joining his strokes to my G spot to turn me into a puddle of erotic mush.
“Damn.” The awe in his growl makes me want to gloat in glee—if only I wasn’t so obsessed with holding back my orgasm just to please him. “Damn it, Velvet. You’re going to break me in half.”
“Is that a complaint?” I snap. “After this hell you’ve put me through?”
The ass has the nerve to chuckle low, tucking his face deeper into the crook of my neck while working my pussy deeper onto his ruthless iron length. “Then why don’t we turn it into heaven instead?” Before I can summon so much as a gasp of reaction, he bites the base of my ear while pushing his thumbs all the way inside my ass. The sharp pain from one and invasive throb from the other have an instant effect on my pussy, making me clench his cock that much tighter. “Yes,” he snarls. “Fuck yes, Emmalina.”
As my name escapes his lips, his electric seed leaves his slit. At once, my body is an answering lightning storm, washed in the perfect, pounding brilliance of his climax. He groans, lost in the ecstasy of his release, inspiring me to break out a little turnabout-is-fair-play.
“Tell me,” I direct, clamping my inner walls to keep his cock trapped inside me. “Tell me to do it, Mr. Richards. Please.”
He indulges me with half of a protesting growl, but after composing himself with a harsh breath, he grits out, “Come for me, Velvet. Come hard. Now!”
The slice of his voice cuts back the last tendrils of my composure. As the owner of my body, he sets free my passion. As the lover of my soul, he gives flight to my senses. While I’m physically shaking, I’m spiritually recentered. While my sex explodes from lust, my heart is flooded with love. Once again, this man brings me not only to a place of lusty magic but a mountaintop of emotional completion—and empowerment.
It’s going to be all right.
The expression isn’t just a hokey line from a Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani duet. It’s the vow of my heart and the core of my being—because it’s never been my deeper truth. And as I turn around, a move that unseats his body from mine, it’s nevertheless what keeps him close as his gaze stays locked to mine…
Betraying that he’s come to the same conviction.
It’s going to be all right.
We’re going to be all right.
I lift a hand, pressing my palm to his cheek, unable to stop my cheesy sigh when he covers my fingers with the determined spread of his own. We continue gazing at each other, lingering through our last few moments of total honesty and completion with each other. All right, we know the inner connection isn’t going anywhere—it hasn’t even during the times when we’ve been halfway around the world from each other—but for the rest of tonight, our outward truth has to be our version of a New Year’s Eve performance. “Steve” and “Sophie” are on center stage tonight, in all their nerd-tastic glory.
Ready and waiting is the beaded half jacket made to accompany “Sophie’s” sequined tent dress, and hanging from the valet stand across the room are “Steve’s” checked wool trousers, sports coat, sweater vest, and button-down scholar’s shirt. Nearby are his polished loafers—or are those the “sensible” tan things that Reece ordered me to wear in place of the shiny kitten heels I’d already picked out for the ensemble? Doesn’t really matter. My cover identity could be a nun named Gertrude, and I’d still refuse to leave the house in the clodhoppers.
Though at the moment, as my man buttons up his shirt, I get the impression he’d love nothing more than accepting my refusal to leave the house all night. When he maintains the not-so-subtle brood as he strides to the bathroom for his toiletry regime, I follow and stab right into his personal space by hiking one hip to the bathroom counter. I don’t bother using the mirror to look at him, instead using my new vantage point to spear him directly with my challenging glower. “All right, mister. I thought we just went through this.”
He abandons the contact lens prep to swing a puzzled gaze in return. “Through what?”
“Reclassifying this relationship as a no-sulk zone.” I cross my arms with deliberation. “With keeping secrets subject to additional fines. Stiff ones.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to kiss and punch myself for them. On one hand, they encourage the man to straighten and face me, his trademark smirk forming across his lips. On the other hand, that damn smirk.
Ohhhh, I’m in trouble.
“Well, I’m just fine with stiff penalties if you are, little bunny.”
Yep. Trouble.
No, no, no, no.
“An option I’d be thrilled to take you up on, mister”—my breath clutches as he swoops over, hitching me up to the bathroom counter as if Bean and I weigh only five pounds instead of thirty times that much—“just as soon as we get home from the Makras’.”
He slouches his shoulders and twists his lips though doesn’t shift from his looming position over me. With his forehead dropped to mine, he grumbles, “You’re determined to do this thing, aren’t you?”
I fire back an equally determined scowl. “And why are you so determined not to?”
Like this whole situation, the question is fair and unfair at the same time. I know it, and so does he. The conflict storms through his gaze, in which I can see reflections of the same strife across my face. We’re in hiding to escape the cage of Faline’s evil again, but the shelter itself has become a prison. And right now, I need just a little peek outside. An assurance that my life is still actually here and waiting for me to return to it.
I need just a tiny taste of hope.
“I’m sorry, Velvet.” Reece’s grate betrays how he’s already plucked that thought out of my head. “I know that living this way isn’t really living. And I also know that you didn’t sign up for any of this—”
“The hell I didn’t.” I make a V out of one hand and clamp his chin in the resulting vise. “Look at me,” I order. “I signed up for loving you, Mr. Richards. Those weren’t just corny, canned words that I randomly spoke at that altar to you. ‘For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.’” I cock my head and narrow my gaze. “Funny how there’s no mention of an ‘only in cases when I call you Reece instead of Steven’ clause.”
He answers my half grin with another glare, though this time there’s a teasing glint to it. “I love you so much.” He punctuates the murmur with a succinct but tender kiss.
“I know you do.” It’s easy to readjust my hand, tracing up the line of his jaw until my fingertips are burrowed into the dark waves along his nape. “Which is why you already know how truly important this thing is for me. To see that despite everything, up to and including the insanity of the Bolt and Flare traveling adventure show, we’ve managed to keep doing at least one cool thing for the world. This not-so-little thing called Richards Reaches Out.”
Not-so-little. It’s damn near an understatement, and I don’t disguise my elation about that, either. A year and a half ago, we were helping Calvin Neves repair his house, get back into college, and support his little sisters, Tosca and Jina. Now, with international reach and offices in five cities across the globe, we’re helping close to twenty new candidates each month: people like Cal, from all different backgrounds and circumstances, to receive the extra leg up they need to climb the ladders of their dreams. When counting my blessings about becoming Flare—despite the harrowin
g way she was outed to the world—one of the largest is that she’ll help bring new awareness to the vital work that RRO is accomplishing.
“Yeah.” There’s awe in Reece’s interjection, but there’s also the verbal version of a mega perma-pen, soaking the air with his thick conviction. “But it’s just the start, baby.” He emulates my grip, sifting his hands back into my hair. “You do believe that, right? You know that once we deal with Faline for good—”
“If we deal with her.”
“When we deal with her.” His torso muscles stiffen, and his fingers tighten against my scalp. “We’re going to change the whole world, my love.” He dips his head until he can press a fervent kiss on the top curve of my stomach. “And this superstar is going to help us. Every damn step of the way.”
His declaration does more than warm the plane of my belly. The man, truly my Zeus come to life, fills my soul like a thousand lightning bolts striking at once.
Or like destiny confirming how right she’s really been all along.
Despite my bubbling emotions, I manage to quip back, “Oh? And did the superstar tell you that himself?”
Reece raises his head—with an expression committed to pure earnestness. “If I said yes, would you doubt it?”
I retangle a hand into his damp, thick strands. “Not for a second.”
My husband catches his lower lip with his upper teeth. The move, usually my exclusive ploy, looks damn fine on his fresh-shaven features—and bloody hell if the man isn’t distinctly aware of that fact. But he only indulges his adorable insolence for an instant, shoving it away for a fresh dose of gravity. “All right, so we’re going to the damn party,” he concedes. “But baby, this isn’t just a dash up to Gelson’s for soy milk or a quick walk on the beach at sunset. We’re not ‘just running into’ Mel and Maddie in passing. Staying in character is going to require some intense concentration.”
I’m beyond tempted to roll my eyes. Instead, I reply as diplomatically as possible, “I’ve taken Sophie Sarsgard out for a lot of test drives by now, okay? She’s second skin for me.” I bump his thigh with mine, signaling that pin-the-wife-to-the-bathroom-counter time is over. “Which, unbelievably, I’m going to count as a win for now.”
But only for now.
I keep the amendment to myself, knowing he’s just as weary of the identity pretenses as I am, despite how neutral he maintains his expression while helping me off the counter. I actually start wondering about his surreal Zen levels, until he turns and continues prepping his look for the night. After grooming his soul patch with stabbing motions, he scoops up some hair product and works it in so vigorously his cock swings like a banana on a rubber band. “You just need to let me know if things get even a little bumpy or you think your cover’s being blown. You need to fucking promise me, okay?”
Aha. There’s the stressed-out guy I know and love. Subsequently, it comes as an oddly weird reassurance, making my answering quip possible. “Ten-four,” I croon back. “Roger-dodger. Copy and print. Cool beans ‘n’ hot fries.”
“Damn it,” he spits out, spinning back toward me. “I’m serious, Emma.” He’s so adamant, even his penis stops the banana gymnastics. Now it’s just there in its normal capacity as a breath-stealing work of art. “Don’t fuck around. If someone starts to recognize you, no witty one-liner is going to conveniently throw them off. That bullshit only works for people in TV and movies.”
“But real-life superheroes…?” I add a smirk to the challenge.
“Not pregnant ones.”
I revert back to a scowl. To Reece’s credit, he’s genuinely remorseful but stands his ground while spreading his arms.
“You demanded the no-secrets zone, lady. So here we are.” He steps back into the bedroom to slip on a pair of tight black briefs, negating the good-thing bad-thing distraction of his cock. “As much as I wish I could help you carry our baby”—he scowls at my bark of a laugh—“the truth is, I can’t. So you’ll have to deal with the overbearing ox husband instead.”
“Oh, whee.” I slide on another pair of underwear for myself, figuring he can take care of the ruined pair on the floor. “Lucky me.”
“Hey.” He grunts while stepping over and yanking me close again. “That’s my line.”
But fifteen minutes later, as soon as we get to the Makras’ place, I’m damn sure it’s legitimately mine. Even play-acting as a nerd space scientist with a nasal problem, the man has a presence that wallops the air as forcefully as the first night I met him—meaning, of course, that half the crowd wants to run from him, and the other half wants to lick him. As we make our way through the spacious but packed living room, across an atrium that’s outfitted in matching Nantucket décor, and then into the sprawling kitchen where Maddie and Mel are holding court, it doesn’t escape my attention that the majority of the “lick him” contingent are women. Also not getting past me is my own onset of Zen about that. I may really be the size of a small house, but I’m also on the arm of the stud who supplied the cornerstone of that house—as well as its magical, incredible occupant.
But as we enter the kitchen together, I also recognize the huge step my mind is taking at the same time. Accepting its epiphany that my confidence has nothing to do with the baby in my belly, the wedding ring on my finger, or the possessive grip my man maintains around my hand. It has everything to do with us—with the invisible but invincible connection between us, which I now believe in more than the air in this room, the gravity keeping us in it, and the orbital pull of the globe that’s responsible for it all. Why the hell has it taken me until now to recognize that? And why the hell has fate picked here for it to happen?
But most importantly, how have I forgotten that fate doesn’t give a crap about timing?
And that it loves to laugh its ass off when someone’s caught in the crosshairs of that truth?
In moments like right now.
Walking into the kitchen to greet Mel and Maddie with friendly hugs.
And then turning to see the small crowd they’ve been entertaining with stories from their summer trip to France.
A crowd consisting of the entire administrative team from the LA office of Richards Reaches Out.
And the New York office.
And Calvin Neves.
Yes, it’s really all of them. And yes, it’s really Cal, who has always held a special place in my heart as the inaugural RRO grant recipient. Helping him out had provided the seed we germinated into the whole concept for the organization—carried out with such passion and commitment by all twelve of the people now gathered in this space. I take in each of their faces, gulping back fresh tears with each visage I reach. Each name I know by heart. Every special soul who has turned my vision into their guiding goal as well.
It’s so special. So surreal. And nearly too much to handle. Under other circumstances, I’d be flashing a stunned stare up at Reece, positive he’d had a hand in gathering everyone into one place like this as his idea of a unique holiday surprise—and he’d have been right. Every one of these people is a precious entity to me. I know about their backgrounds, their families, all the things that make them a unique treasure for what RRO has accomplished. In return, they all know a lot about me.
Except that right now, it’s not me they’ve all stopped to stare at.
Holy God, I hope not.
You’re Sophie Sarsgard. You’re Sophie Sarsgard. You’re Sophie Sarsgard.
My brain pounds me with the mantra despite how my pulse rate quadruples and my heart begs to burst from raw emotion. Everyone in here has been with RRO since our days as a fledgling nonprofit, working with me to convince the world that we truly wanted to change it.
But you don’t recognize any of them. You can’t recognize them. They’re complete strangers to you right now. That has to be your truth, damn it. They’re just a sea of curious but friendly faces…
“Well, hey-ho! It’s Sophie and Steve-o!” For once, Mel’s dorky humor is a welcome interjection. Despite the fact that I
still have to grit out a smile in return, it’s a grateful one. Nothing like one’s fake name being turned into a lame rhyme to convince everyone how authentic it must really be. So thanks, Mel Baby, for flying that douchebag flag high and proud—and not showing any sign of letting it drop anytime soon either. “Come here, little space strawberry”—the guy thinks his awful nickname for “Sophie” gives him the right to yank me in for a hug that would send most bears into therapy—“and hello to you too, baby berry!” And then to yell at my stomach with the same scary familiarity.
I look up to see I’m pretty accurate with the “scary” label. Though everyone’s good about masking their discomfort, I’m at least able to silently flash them with mine. Their resulting round of laughs is also given discretion. Thank God for Reece, who tosses enough of a gawky flair into his possessive grab to not only rescue me from Mel but increase the authenticity of our cover in front of the gang still stabbing us with their curious gawks.
“That’s Mister Baby Berry to you, Mel,” he drawls, managing to diffuse the awkward moment by giving everyone permission to openly chuckle. No one does so more than our party host, who adds a wry shake of his head while shaking Reece’s free hand.
“Says the cat that got dragged in, eh, man?” he returns. “And maybe I do mean dragged.” He waggles his brows at me. “Did this wanker make you pull him the entire way?”
Reece whips back his hand under the pretense of scratching his grimacing jaw. “Uh, yeah.” He tightens the expression until it borders on a snarl. “Sorry about that. Thought I saw something unusual in the Cetus spiral galaxy, and I lost track of time.”
I tilt my head, angling a gaze up at my husband with no pretense about its admiration. Between all the strategy meetings with the team, including their countless and fruitless searches for Faline’s new hiding spot, he’s been actually opening the books in “Steven’s” vast space creature library. Clearly—and alluringly—it’s been rubbing off.
“And I didn’t have the heart to disturb him.” My murmur coincides with the smoldering lock of our gazes. From his side, there are the memories of how we actually made ourselves late. And from mine, there’s the message that I’d like to create some more—especially with what his space guy talk is doing to my geeky lady loins.
