I rise up and down again. He hisses in delight, a satiated smile transforming his face. “Yes. More of that,” he says. I give him more now that I’ve acclimated to his girth. I ride his glorious cock while admiring his muscles painted with tattoos and his fucking hot face, all the while bringing myself closer to an orgasm. Cody uses my hips now. He brings me up and down, using only his biceps at a pace that drives me wild. Too slow, yet not fast enough to send me over the edge. The steam from the shower causes the perfect amount of friction between our bodies. A little bit slippery, but not too wet.
“I’m going to come,” he says.
“Where do you want to come?” I ask, licking his neck.
“In your fucking mouth. I’m going to come in your mouth.” I ride his dick, rocking my hips several more strokes until Cody pulls me up and off him. I replace my pussy with my mouth. He grabs a fistful of my hair and pushes my head down over his cock until it’s down my throat. He comes in hot waves as he groans and growls, jutting his hips up with each hot burst of semen.
“You were always good at swallowing my dick,” he says, out of breath. “But never that good.”
I raise myself up, wipe my bottom lip with my thumb and pointer finger, and look him square in the eyes. “I need more. I was about to come,” I admit. He smiles, grabs me by the waist, turns me around so I’m facing away from him, and fucks me doggy style so hard that I’m sure the neighbors heard my orgasm. Cody comes again, deep inside me, saying my name like a prayer.
****
“So much for old-fashioned,” I murmur. We’re wrapped up in his sheets in his large bed.
“Doggy style is so old-fashioned, Lane. I mean, animals do it like that. I bet the first humans that had sex fucked doggy style. There’s your old-fashioned.”
I stroke his muscles, tracing his tattoos, my head against his chest. “It’s hard to go slow with you. We paused for over three years. That was our slow period. Don’t you feel like we should be making up for lost time? Even though I’m the one who did most of the wasting of time. You’re right about doggy style, though. Very old-fashioned.” He laughs and with my ear pressed against his skin I feel the rumble of his laughter all the way to my toes.
His chest has stilled and his breathing has evened. Content is how I feel in this moment, at ease with my choices and full of forgiveness and willingness to grant second and third chances. Not just because no one else can rock my world like Cody, but because I know this feeling inside of me is only sparked by him. I lied to myself with Dax. Our love was real, but it was different. It was tame and safe. The work it took to come to this realization should have been my first tip off that something wasn’t quite right. Love with Cody isn’t work. It took me six long months to develop the right mindset to be okay with that. It’s okay to be stupidly in love with someone, to want to sacrifice everything else because of said love. Maybe it’s not like that for some people, but it’s like that for us and I’m okay with it. Volatile, passionate love that shakes us to our core only comes along once in a lifetime. During my time away, I soul-searched. Is this what I want? Will I ever truly be what he wants? Can he see past our rocky, and frankly, murderous decisions from days past? I’ll always be that woman, but now I’m more, I’m the woman free from my chains. No one will control me again nor use my love to destroy me. I’ll never wait with trepidation wondering when the other shoe will drop. I’ll never wait. Cody waited for me. More than just the six months, I realize. He’s waited for me for years.
“I never told you, but thank you for always waiting for me, Cody,” I whisper.
He strokes my hair. “It wasn’t too hard, Fast Lane. Especially because I was waiting for my forever.” I swallow down the lump of emotion in my throat, and perhaps a touch of guilt for the time I spent figuring this out. He drags his thumb across my bottom lip. “I hoped it would turn out like this. I wasn’t sure. After everything I’ve been through, waiting for you was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. No more pause button or lost time. This is it. I’m calling it. No referee needed.”
“Calling what?” I ask, as a tear sneaks out of the corner of my eye and falls onto his tanned, warm skin.
I glance up and his gaze flicks down to meet mine. “I’m calling this our time and space. Right here. Right now.”
“It is, you’re right. Guess it took a little while to get it right,” I say, laughing and crying at the same time. He sits up in the bed, bringing me with him.
He clears his throat and says, “And because I’m not wasting another second, I have something I want to give you.” My hand on his chest senses his heart hammering away, pumping overtime. Cody’s eyes are wide and questioning when I look at him. “It’s our time, Lane,” he says again. The emotion pouring from his gaze is enough to kill a woman not as strong as me. Still, it renders me speechless. I can only nod my head, like a small child.
He hops out of bed, buck naked, with his dick still semi-hard, I might add, and bounds into the bathroom. When he comes back he has something clasped in the palm of his hand. Tucking the sheet around me, I move from the bed to stand in front of it. “A present for me?” I ask, innocently, batting my eyes and cocking my head to the side coquettishly.
“I thought he was fucking crazy. He romanticizes love to the point of fictionalization, but he’s right, God damn it. He’s right about this,” Cody says, making no sense.
I quirk one brow. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He hits one knee, still naked, and says, “This was supposed to be your wedding band. I designed it myself. I won’t ask you to marry me because that time for us has passed. Keeping in tune of our time and space, I’m just asking you outright to be my wife. Right now.” He extends a small, diamond encrusted band to me. I swallow, wipe away a tear, and walk toward him.
“Am I wife material?” I ask, smiling.
“It doesn’t matter to anyone except me and you’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to be my wife. There will never, not even in my wildest dreams, be another woman I want to be linked to for all of eternity. I stake my life on this claim.”
“Then yes. I am your wife,” I say, extending my left hand to him so he can slip the band on my finger. The morning light hits it just so, and it sparkles brilliantly, like a million rainbows finally showing their faces upon people who desperately need happiness. “That was the best non-proposal ever. It was hard to keep my eyes off your dick, though. I might like that better than bling,” I say, kneeling in front of him and wrapping my hands around his neck.
“I love you so much, Cody. I’ll be the best woman for you I can possibly be.” I press my lips against his.
He shakes his head. “All I want is you. Be you, Lainey, and I’ll be the happiest man on the planet.” Flaws and all, this man loves me without reservation. Cody deepens the kiss, using his tongue and tilting my head back with his hands.
“Get dressed, Cody. We need to finish this deal as soon as possible and if you don’t put on pants I’m liable to glue your dick inside my pussy and keep it there for sixty-two hours straight,” I reply.
He shakes his head. “How did I get so lucky? I found the only woman on the planet who talks about gluing my manhood inside of herself and it doesn’t turn me off, it gives me wood so hard I could cut steel.”
I chuckle. “I’ll be here all day, but seriously. We should go. I’ve lost you once and I’m not doing it again. Time is of the essence.” I pull on my outfit from yesterday and throw him a pair of jeans that I find hanging over a chair in his room. The huge plate glass window is a one-sided mirror. We can look over the crazy beautiful city, but no one can see in. It’s an ideal feature when your ass is pressed against the glass while you’re being screwed to perfection, if you ask me. I scroll on my cell phone, looking for the information I need, and quickly find it. “Good. They’re open.”
Cody pulls on his pants and leaves them unbuttoned in that fantastic way that super buff guys do. So nonchalant and effortless, but it drives women batshit crazy.
He ruffles his hands through his hair. “If I’m not even showering, you’ll have to humor me and tell me where we’re going.” He’s right. I need to at least wash my face. I rush into the bathroom and tell him it’s a secret. He walks up behind me while my eyes are closed and my face covered in soap that smells like him. “I have one more thing for you,” Cody says, twining his hands around my waist and pulling me back against him.
“This is hardly fair. I’m blind right now,” I exclaim, trying and failing to rinse my face without splashing water all over the exquisite countertop.
“Finish here. I’ll go get it.”
I look in the huge mirror above his sink and find myself barefaced and…happy. So happy, that I want to scream it to the world. This is how I’m supposed to feel. In Cody’s world, wrapped in his sheets and arms for the rest of time.
When I exit the bathroom Cody’s entering the bedroom with something behind his back. He’s dressed, his blond hair is coifed with water, and he tells me to close my damn eyes again. “Hurry, hurry!” I say, closing my eyes and stomping one heeled foot. “We need to go!”
He says, “Open them.”
I do and I come face to face with the dog. The same one he gave me on our first Valentine’s Day together. The same one I soaked with tears when he died. The very same one I buried in his coffin when they couldn’t find his body. It’s a trivial, cheap, black dog that he picked up from a toy store on his way home from work that cold night in February. I, of course, loved it because even as an adult, getting a soft fuzzy animal lights you from the inside. “Dog,” I say, taking the mangy thing from his hands. His moniker is very original. I look up at Cody’s face. “Where did you get him?” I ask.
“They gave me my things back that were in my coffin. It was like the time capsules we buried in elementary school. When I saw Dog I knew I should keep him. I can’t believe you put him in there. How did he breathe?” Cody asks, chuckling. “The whole business of dying but not really is exhausting.”
How odd must that have been for him. To be able to look at the things given to a dead man. “I loved that dog. It was the one thing tangible that reminded me of you most. I figured if I couldn’t bury your body, this would have to do. Lame, I know.” Saying it out loud is embarrassing. I love you and I’m burying a stuffed animal in your place. Jesus save my horrid soul.
He cradles my face in his hand and brushes my hair behind both of my ears. Tilting my face up to his, he says, “It’s not lame at all. The memory stick of code you threw in there? Bought Dances like the Wind,” he says, ushering me out of the apartment and down the hall to the elevator. I never thought much about putting that in there. It was his. What would I do with it? I don’t even know how to read code. Or open the encrypted data. To me it was just another memento that represented a facet of his personality.
“No shit?” I ask when we get on the elevator. “So basically my lack of knowledge about what was on that stick afforded the mansion in the Hamptons?” Cody nods, laughs at my expression, and tucks me to his side. I do a little dance in the lobby as we head out the door and into the cool morning. I know exactly where we need to go, so I hail a cab, raising one hand in the air.
Cody just smiles when he hears me give the cabbie the address. Shaking his head, he says, “You really couldn’t have told me before we left the house?” He motions down to his jeans and long-sleeved tee.
“What? You’re hot. No way. It’s better this way. They open at nine a.m. and we need to be there before it gets too busy.”
The yellow cab pulls in front of the huge, columned building and lets us out at the steps. “The courthouse. You want the husband and wife to be official. Right now? You’re ready for that?” I haven’t been more ready for anything in my life.
I hold out my hands, palms up. “I’m not shaking, my palms aren’t sweaty. Go ahead, touch them,” I say. He smirks, but humors me. “I’m already wearing your wedding band. Let’s do this, Cody. Finish what we started before life got in the way.”
Holding my hands on the steps of the beautiful, old courthouse, to a passerby it looks like we’re saying our vows. “It’s our time, right?” I ask.
Cody kisses me as a response. Wrapping his arms around my body, he pulls me to him and then up off the ground. His lips are warm against mine and they’re curled in a smile. “This is the best decision you’ve ever made.”
“Better than all the furniture I picked out? I’m mollified, Cody Ridge.”
“Let’s do this, Fast Lane. I love you.”
So we do. We fill out paperwork until we’re blue in the face and also a waiver, because you can’t get married in NYC the same day as the marriage license is granted without one, and we get married. It’s held in a small room with tacky plastic flowers hanging on the walls and carpet that looks like it has seen a billion pairs of feet. The woman marrying us is a twin. Her sister is our witness, and she smiles as we seal our lives together for the rest of time. Cody kisses me chastely when she pronounces us husband and wife and they both clap overzealously. It makes us laugh, kiss again, and clutch each other tightly. Cody picks me up around my bottom and spins me around in a circle. Everything else fades away.
“You’re my wife,” he says, his grip tight, sure.
“And you’re my husband,” I reply, feeling adrenaline swirl around my body. Sheer happiness is the best rush. The look in his eyes, now that I’m officially his, is one of pure rapture.
He lowers me down until we’re eye to eye, nose to nose. “Forever,” he whispers, before his lips find mine.
The twins clap some more, and I get lost in his kiss, his love for me, knowing that when he says forever, he means it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Cody
Two years later
The things that happen when you’re busy making plans are what form your life. If you wait for the next weekend, or a time when you’re less busy, or perhaps ‘next time’, you’re squirreling away precious moments that could be better spent by just saying ‘yes’. Because of our sordid, nefarious past, I try to always say yes to Lainey. It makes the positivity rain. And when it rains positivity I’m likely to get whatever I want as well. We live in Dances like the Wind, because she loves the house and I can’t deny her anything she loves. Our two years of marriage have been bliss. For me, this time with her has been better than any expectations I had for marriage. She tells me she feels the same way. It’s easy to love a person when you’ve lost them before. You appreciate them more, you embrace and cherish every millisecond you get. Lainey Ridge is my biggest blessing that started off as my biggest curse.
Our past rarely comes up. Her spy work comes up only if there’s a funny anecdote she wants to tell, or if I ask her specific questions. She’s an open book. Lainey wanted to talk about my time in captivity. It was a conversation we had only once. I spoke for over an hour about my life and several things that happened to me while I was there, and it ended with her clinging to me like a koala and soaking my shirt with guilty tears. Believe it or not, I don’t blame her for my kidnapping. Sure, Vadim’s reason for taking me was to spite Lainey, but I’m a fucking Navy SEAL. It’s my fault they took me. My unpreparedness caused it. She doesn’t blame herself like she used to. I think that’s the main reason she stayed away from me for those limbo inducing six months. She was giving herself permission to forgive, forget, and move on.
Since our wedding we’ve discovered things about each other. Every day, and every year, it’s something new. Sometimes it’s good, like the fact that Lainey knows how to plunge a toilet in the middle of the night better than me, and sometimes it’s bad news, like when the doctor told us that I’m unable to have children. Vadim stole something else from me with the endless hours of torture. I was mad at first, because it was something Lainey wanted and I couldn’t give it to her. When I got my head out of my ass and actually started listening to her, and the word ‘adoption’ that she kept saying, I realized not all hope was lost.
It’s been a lon
g, drawn-out process to come to this day—the day when we’ll be able to call this little boy, Evan, our real son. He will belong to us legally as much as he’s already captured our hearts. Evan is one of the children I rescued from the dingy room in Mexico. His huge sad eyes that were too big for his face and held more sadness than a child had any right to have, stayed with me. When we decided to adopt, I knew who I wanted, and it just so happened that he wanted me, too. Molly was able to dig up the information we needed, and so it started. We entered the system as his foster parents. For a tiny child of barely three, his eyes told a different story. A couple of years later, and he’s just like any other child, maybe even a little too doted on.
“Do you think we have enough balloons and cake? Evan loves cake. Maybe he would like to have two? Can you move that stack of presents into the other room before he comes down for breakfast, honey?” Lainey asks. I sigh and do her bidding, returning just in time to see Evan at the top of the stairs about to descend the banister on his arse.
“Your mommy will have a fit if she sees you. You could get hurt,” I explain. Evan’s eyes light up when he sees me. Cuppie, his gray raggy blanket, goes down the banister and he bounds down the stairs into my arms.
The gray rag is a steadfast in our world, but he needs it less and less. He leaves it at the bottom of the stairs. I carry him into the kitchen, his warm body, fresh from his covers, pressed against my chest. It’s the second best feeling in the world. He hops down and crosses the kitchen in several small bounds when he sees Lainey, and I have to smile because this boy is so enamored with her that he could be her biological child.
“Sweet boy!” she exclaims as he runs into her arms. She picks him up even though he’s getting too big for that and peppers his face with kisses. “How did you sleep?”
Evan hops down and climbs up a stool to sit at the breakfast bar. “I slept good, Mommy. I get to have the party today?” he asks.
Time and Space Page 24
