by Paige North
Yet, dammit, I want to stay and listen.
No, I think. I just want to stay with him…
He must see that he’s got my attention, and he continues. “My whole life I’ve tried to put everything into order. I’ve tried to keep the demons of my childhood at bay. But, now, for the first time, I’ve realized that it isn’t worth it to be neat and tidy and ordered anymore.” He tilts his head like a tamed beast. “All I want now is you, Juliet. At any cost.”
The words are still swirling around me, waiting for me to grab onto them. Meanwhile, he looks at my brothers and sisters who are hanging onto his every word, just as gape-mouthed as I was when I first showed up at his mansion’s doorstep.
Then he looks back at me. “Most importantly, I want all of the crazy messiness that comes with you, too.”
He can’t mean that he would also accept the kids, because they’re a part of me. I’ll never go anywhere without them again.
I doubt everything he’s saying, because he’s spent so much time pushing me away—and everything that surrounds me.
As I try to catch my breath, finding some sense in all this, I hear little Jazzie whisper to the other kids.
“Jules has a boyfriend!”
“Shut up,” Jake says.
Now, with them so personally involved, I do come to my senses. “Kids, please go in the house.”
Jemma shakes her head. “Not on your life.”
But the young man of the house, Jason, forcefully begins to herd them away while muttering something about adults needing their privacy. Jemma rolls her eyes as Jason gives the flowers back to me.
Owen keeps watching me, and I clutch the bouquet in front of me like it’s my shield.
After the kids get to the house, the screen door shuts behind them, but I know they’re still behind it, listening.
When I look back at Owen, there’s tenderness in his gaze. It’s the same emotion I’ve caught in him a few times when we were together, but it was always gone before I could identify it.
He’s not hiding it now.
“I still don’t know what spurred this visit,” I whisper, “and I’m positive that you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You’d better believe I do.” Now a fiercer emotion fills his dark eyes, but it’s not anger. I think it’s…
Love?
As my head spins he goes on.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve started to walk out my door, ready to come to you. But there were still so many of those demons nattering at me, telling me that I wouldn’t ever be able to get as close as I wanted to be to you, that I didn’t deserve it, and you would only…”
“What? Contaminate you?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking, Juliet. For a long time, I believed that there was no one on earth who would ever understand my situation. Then you showed up, only for me to drive you away. Or should I say that I drove away from you?”
At the mention of the day he left me, I grip the flowers tighter.
His smile is back, but it’s melancholy. “Then, one day, when I turned on the sound system in the music room, a song came blaring on. Music that you evidently would listen to and dance around to when I wasn’t home. At least that’s what Nat told me.” He fists a hand and puts it over his heart. His voice goes jagged. “That’s when I really felt how hollow my life was without you around. It was as if a piece of me was missing, and I had to have you back where you belong.”
“I belong here, with the kids—”
“And they’re no doubt as wild and chaotic as you can be. But I want that, Juliet. I want all of it.”
The sweet scent of the flowers is beginning to lull me. So is the warmth of Owen’s gaze as he lavishes it over my face, taking me in as if he really did miss me.
I’m beginning to believe, second by second, that he did.
My god, he did.
He lowers his voice so just the two of us can hear. “When you came into my life, for the first time I was able to forget about all of my tension and hang-ups and need for order. With you, I wanted to be dirty. Goddammit, so dirty. You brought out a side of me that was always pent up. You could say you unleashed something I’d been struggling to keep inside.”
I think of the beast he always became when it was only the two of us in a room, and my skin flushes.
He reaches out his hand to me, then drops it as if he still doesn’t know what’s going through my mind. “That first night, when I didn’t use a condom… I just didn’t do things like that. Ever. You saw how I acted—the dread, the claustrophobia. It was all so messy, literally and figuratively. So raw. My need for you took me off guard because you didn’t fit in to my well-planned routine like you were supposed to.”
He’s breaking me down. But was there ever much to break? I’ve always been his, even after he hurt me so badly.
He must see this in my teary gaze, because he finally reaches out to brush his fingertips over my cheek. He wipes away those tears.
“The morning after we were first together and you left, I couldn’t let you go even then, Juliet. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I couldn’t stop wanting to be with you, and that’s why I showed up on the jet. That’s why I wanted an extended arrangement.”
“And are you down here to offer me another extension? Is that what this is?”
“No.”
He tucks my hair behind my ear, looking into my eyes as if he’s finally allowed himself to get lost in them, just as I’ve gotten lost in his so many times.
I’m not sure why he’s here if it’s not for another arrangement. I’m afraid to ask, so I say, “What if you run away again when things get tough?”
Now there’s something in his gaze I really haven’t seen before. Peace.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says firmly. “And when I say it, I mean it.”
He gets down to one knee, and as I grip the flowers, he reaches into his jacket and produces a velvet box. He opens it to reveal a shining diamond ring. The thing is enormous.
More tears gather in my eyes, but they’re not even remotely sad or angry. They’re tears of rapture.
I faintly hear the screen door of the house opening as he lifts the box with the ring in it to me.
“Juliet Hope, I love you with all my heart and soul. Marry me. Be with me. Love me as much as I love you.”
All of my fear has flown, and I know what I want. I always did.
I nod mutely, then burst out with my response. “I love you, Owen,” I gasp. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
As I fall down into his arms, he catches me, then sweeps me into a delirious kiss that has my mind filled with cheers.
Heat roars through me in every way—love, adoration, fulfillment. Today is the first of many days with Owen....
Then, gradually, I realize that the cheers aren’t in my head—my brothers and sisters are the ones yelling with glee, running to us like a wild bunch. When I break from the kiss, Owen softly dries the rest of my face with his knuckles, and I look up at my family.
“Told you she has a boyfriend!” Jazzie says.
Then my crazy siblings mob Owen, asking a million questions. They’re hugging me at the same time, shaking me and demanding to know what’s going on, even as they’re laughing because I’m so damned happy.
But Owen keeps holding me tight, keeping me upright, just as he’s always done.
And just as I’m going to continue to do for him.
Chapter 24
Chaos isn’t the word for the celebration that follows Owen’s proposal.
The kids keep on him, asking him even more questions, and I find out that they’d actually started to grill him when he showed up with the flowers and waited for me on the porch.
Where did you meet Juliet? (Um…online. Yeah, that’s the official answer.)
How long have you known her? (Long enough to have helped your sister raise money for the house and lawyers…)
Why do you have on such a fancy suit? (Why not?)
Then, once we get into the house, Jemma recruits Owen to help her in the kitchen with the Swedish meatballs that she knows I love, as well as the cake. The boys then ask Owen more about the sports he likes—especially surfing—as they set the table. Jazzie merely stares at him in rapt fascination while sticking to my side until she gets up enough guts to sit next to him at dinner and ask him all about New York.
When it comes time to sing me Happy Birthday, the glow of the candles lights up all of our faces.
Everything feels so, so right.
After the cake is gone and the table cleared, Owen tells the kids that he’d like to take me out for the rest of the evening. They’re reluctant to let him leave at first, but I tell them this is an actual date, and they let me go, waving at us from the porch as Owen drives us away in the Mercedes Benz that he’s rented.
It doesn’t take very long for him to drive us to the same exclusive South Beach hotel where we stayed in the penthouse the last time.
This time we don’t go out to the private pool.
We don’t even make it past the dining area, where the low lights reveal a birthday cake Owen has ordered for me.
He puts flame to each of the twenty-three candles, one at a time, until the pale room takes on a soft, warm glow.
“I had them deliver this a few moments ago,” he says, then blows out the long match.
“So that’s what you were doing on the phone. I thought it was business.”
“No business tonight, Red,” he says, smiling at me until my pulse skips. “Just you.”
Just me…and him. And as I look at all those candles, plus one to grow on, I close my eyes.
I wish every day going forward would be as perfect as this one is.
When I blow out the candles, there’s still a glow in Owen’s gaze. A fire.
He’s been waiting all day to get me alone.
I see the beast in his eyes—the one who still has some growl to him, even though he’s been tamed.
With my hands trembling from excitement, I cut a piece of the cake, slip it onto a plate, then start to walk toward the bedroom that we never did have the opportunity to share the last time we were here. It feels as if thick, warm syrup is flowing over my skin, inside of me, oozing from my knotted belly to my pussy. I’m bathed with desire for him as I smile, inviting him to come with me.
“Where’re you going?” he asks.
“Someplace where you can have your cake and eat it, too.”
An explosion of lust zings through his gaze just before I disappear.
I’m already aroused, pounding brutally for him, my breath already quickening. The wide, pale bed overlooks a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the ocean where the stars are reflected, twinkling in the dark sky. I kick off my shoes then slide the plate onto the bedcover and get to my knees, already undoing the buttons of my light sweater. The hem of my short skirt plays with the sensitive skin of my thighs, and as Owen appears in the doorway, he’s already got his jacket off. He’s working at his tie.
I glance down at the cake while I strip off my top and throw it away. I begin to unclasp my bra.
“The maid’s gonna wring our necks with the mess we’re about to make,” I say.
“The maid’s going to get a big, fat tip.”
“If memory serves me correctly, I think I’m the one who’s in for a big, fat tip—and more.”
“Damn,” he says, tossing off his shirt to reveal his powerful torso. “You’re just full of double meanings tonight.”
“I’d like to be full of something else—”
He lunges toward me just as I’m about to drop my bra off the bed. When his lips crush mine, I lift my hands, reveling in the sensory overload: heat, dampness, and wicked wishes.
He slowly kisses me, his tongue working lazy miracles as he strokes mine, his hands cupping my breasts as I finally drop the bra. He massages my tits, and I moan a dirty little moan.
“Fuck, I missed you,” he says against my mouth. “So much.”
My answer is to grip his arms as he plays with my breasts, his thumbs worshipping my nipples, stimulating them to aching peaks. My pussy throbs in a wet rhythm for him, because it’s been so long…so damned long…
I already feel a series of pulses circling inside of me, becoming what’s sure to be a rising storm.
“Panties,” he murmurs against my mouth.
I clumsily reach under my skirt and yank my panties down. Already wet. Already needy for him.
Meanwhile, he’s reaching toward the mattress, and it’s not until he smears cake and frosting over my tits that I realize what he’s done.
He really is about to have his cake and eat it, too…
When he finishes painting me with the food, he laughs—god, it’s so good to hear him laugh!—and then eases his palms down my waist, my hips, finally bringing his hands under the bare cheeks of my bottom and hauling me up to him. At the same time, I wrap my arms around his wide shoulders to keep me from falling as he bends to suck one of my breasts into his mouth.
He feasts on the cake.
The sounds he makes—hungry and satiated—turn me on until I’m grinding my sex against the top of his thigh. We’re famished for one another, rapacious and greedy. I can hear my juices slide against his trousers, can hear his mouth working at my nipple, cleaning me off and filling him up.
As he switches his attentions to my other breast, I cradle his dark head, still churning against his thigh, the pressure teasing my slippery clit until my thoughts become one big, sugary blur.
As he strokes between my folds, I lose control, falling back until he catches me in one granite arm, then expertly guides me the rest of the way down to the mattress. His hand is still between my thighs, cupping me there because I’m his and will never be anyone else’s.
“I love you, Juliet,” he whispers.
Then he smiles, the moonlight showing the joy in his dark gaze.
Happiness illuminates me, too, and before I can tell him how much I also love him and have always loved him, he’s rubbing my pussy, flirting his thumb over my clit and driving me insane.
Owen lifts my skirt and goes down on me, he relishes every nip, lick, and bite, lapping me up, voracious and unstoppable.
“Yes,” I whisper as I clutch the bedcover. As the pressure builds inside me, whirring and blending and whining like an overheating motor, I say it again. “Yes…”
I feel him undoing his fly. Blood drums in my head, and I can hear the sound of his zipper coming down, hear the thump, thump, thump of my coming orgasm, hear my cutting breaths pacing his.
He presses his body over mine, his cock skimming through my folds.
I arch up to feel his tip prod me, and I gasp.
“Now,” I whisper. “Now!”
When he slides into me, I blast out with another, “Yes!” right before he speeds up—one stroke, another. Then as he completely stops restraining himself, he begins pounding me with a slapping, erotic force that makes the blood scream through me.
He buries his face in my neck, and I wrap my legs around him then grab his hand in animal passion, not knowing what I’m doing.
With even more urgency, he thrusts into me, hitting a spot inside of me that brings out a wet, forceful, growing cry as a rolling flame expands, flares…
“YES!” I finally scream as the heat torches me, making me come once, twice, drenched blasts that blow my mind, stripping me of all thought.
But as I gradually fall down from my high, I realize that these blasts belonged to Owen, too, because his cum is trickling out of me, hot and slippery, erotic and dirty.
He collapses against me, then embraces me with such fervor that I think we’re about to fuse together, two of us becoming one.
Yes, I think. For the rest of our lives, yes.
Our wild breathing slows, eventually melding with the sound of the near distant waves from the beach. I can’t tell where I end and where he begins as he presses his lips to mine again.
> Sweet.
Delectable.
Us.
“Happy birthday, my love,” he whispers to me.
He doesn’t make a move to clean anything up. Not one move.
As I hold onto him, never wanting to let him go, I realize that I’ll never have a better birthday.
I’ve already gotten so many gifts, and Owen is the best one of all.
Epilogue
What a difference a year makes.
Only twelve months ago, my siblings and I were nearly homeless, but now we’re living in a huge mansion on Miami Beach’s Star Island, rubbing elbows with other moguls and a cluster of celebrities behind the guarded gates.
The kids are utterly charmed by the lazy days on the waterfront dock, the gazebo that overlooks the jewel-blue bay, and the splashing fountains. Inside there are elegant marble floors that somehow complement all the state-of-the-art details, such as a home movie theater, a high-tech kitchen, and everything else that Owen had in New York.
Now he has the kids and me, as well.
He’s due to arrive back home tonight from his main office in Manhattan, which he flies to twice a month so he can continue to run his flourishing business. Otherwise, he’s all ours, too.
And I do mean all of us.
After I’ve finished a few phone calls to the art collectors who have become the clients I now advise, I pop into the kitchen where Jemma is helping Chef Thomas prepare a fancy dinner, as usual. She’s already wearing an oversized NYU shirt in anticipation of starting business school there, now that we have the money.
She and the chef look up at me with smiles, elbow-deep in chopping the ingredients for a ragu, and god, how I wish Mom and Dad were here to see how grown up she is now.
“Don’t you look flushed with excitement,” she says to me as Chef turns back around to continue chopping his parsley, garlic, and onions.
“Four hours and counting,” I say.
Even though Jemma is now too “mature” to get excited herself, I can tell she’s looking forward to Owen’s return home. He’s been guiding her in how to combine her cooking interests with business, and they spend what seems to be hours in entrepreneurial conversation.
