He chuckled weakly. “A little bit. Getting out of the bad situation I was in helped me more than the instructors did, though.”
“You realize that if she does agree to meet with you, it’s going to be on our turf, right? If you don’t want to talk to her in a public place, we’re not coming to you. You’re coming to us.”
“I know. And that’s okay. I’m not looking to cause trouble, Brendan. I’m just trying to right some wrongs. But anyway, I’m here to work, not talk. Let’s get moving.”
“Okay. You’d better be able to keep up,” I warned. “I don’t have time to be a babysitter.”
With that, I turned and continued toward our job site, trying to figure out how the hell I was going to tell Darla about this. I knew it was the last thing she needed to be worrying about right now, but for some reason I couldn’t explain, I just had the feeling that we needed to make time for it.
The first thing I noticed when I opened my apartment door was a mouthwatering smell coming from the kitchen. Then I saw Darla curled up on the couch watching TV, dressed in an old pair of yoga pants and the shirt she still hadn’t returned to me – not that I actually wanted it back, because it looked way better on her than it did on me.
My heart skipped a beat as I looked at her lying there, smiling and laughing at something on the screen, just looking like she belonged here.
Because she did belong here. And this was what every day of our lives could be like. What our life together would be like one day. If I had to fight for the next twenty years, I would make sure that we found this kind of peace and happiness eventually.
“Hey,” I chuckled, walking over and sitting down next to her as I brushed a kiss on her forehead. “What smells so good?”
“My mom’s baked spaghetti,” she mumbled. “It’s one of the few things I know how to make from memory.”
“Did I forget something important? Our anniversary is in October, your birthday is in two months, and mine is in a month, so I know it’s none of those things.”
“No. I just felt like making something special. I’m finally done with school and we haven’t heard from my dad since I left. And I sort of promised Kate and Ash I’d give them some privacy tonight because her mom’s not going to be home. So I figured I’d surprise you with dinner.”
“Are you spending the night?” I wondered.
“I didn’t think you’d complain,” she said, turning an adorable shade of pink.
“I’m not,” I chuckled. “I’ll never complain about spending time with you. And soon enough, you’ll be here all the time.”
And God, I could not wait for that day.
“Okay, I love you, but you need to go take a shower. You smell like sweat and sawdust,” she teased. “There’s only ten minutes left on the timer, but it has to cool once I take it out, so you have time. Unless you feel like burning all your taste buds off.”
I leaned over and stole a kiss from her, and her quiet giggle as she opened for me made my heart swell. I loved that sound, and I didn’t get to hear it nearly often enough. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her this happy and carefree in the entire time I’d known her. Even when she was smiling or laughing, she always had a dark cloud of sadness looming over her and the weight of the world on her shoulders. But today, it was like that had all disappeared, and it gave me hope like I’d never had before. Hope that once this was all behind us, this was what our life would be like every single day.
I knew I had to tell her about Ethan being back in town and wanting to talk to her, but it could wait until tomorrow. I didn’t have to ruin her good mood with that heavy news tonight. She needed just one day in her life when nothing was going wrong and she wasn’t afraid of the unknown.
“I love you,” I whispered, brushing my lips over hers again. “I’d ask you to shower with me, but then dinner would probably burn.”
That made her turn the color of a fire engine as she giggled again, and I chuckled and pecked her nose, then made my way to the bathroom.
After quickly showering and throwing on some clothes, I walked back toward the living room and kitchen area. When I saw Darla bent over the oven as she pulled the Pyrex dish and something wrapped in tinfoil out, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I’d been waiting for the quintessential “perfect” moment to give her the ring I’d been holding onto for the better part of a year. I’d wanted to go all out for her and spoil her rotten because she hadn’t gotten that very much in her life. But all she really wanted – all we both wanted – was a quiet, normal life. We both wanted the other person to be the first thing we saw in the morning and the last thing we saw at night. To be able to just enjoy each other’s company every single day.
We wanted to spend the rest of our lives having days exactly like today.
Before she could notice me staring at her, I quietly slipped back into the bedroom and grabbed the small velvet box out of my sock drawer, slipping it into the pocket of my sweatpants. When I walked back into the kitchen, she was cutting the baked spaghetti into portion-sized pieces, so I waited for her to set the knife down in the sink before wrapping my arms around her waist and kissing her shoulder.
“Mm,” she sighed contentedly. “You smell much better now.”
I chuckled. That just proved to me that I was right. This was the perfect moment. I couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever been so lighthearted and carefree that she’d had the presence of mind to tease me about something like smelling like a construction site after I got home from work.
“Do you know how much I love seeing you this happy?” I murmured, kissing her neck.
She turned her head to look at me, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity for a real kiss. Her quiet moan as she slid her tongue out to meet mine made my heart swell, and the slow, unhurried kiss she gave me was complete and utter perfection.
“You make me this happy,” she whispered. “You always have.”
“And I’m going to do my best to keep making you this happy for the rest of our lives,” I told her. “All I want is to be able to give you a life where days like today are the norm, not the exception.”
The blinding smile that spread across her face actually made a lump rise in my throat. Maybe because this was such a monumental moment for us, and she had absolutely no idea yet. I swallowed it down and took a deep breath.
Why was I so nervous all of a sudden? This was just a formality. I already knew her answer. But it didn’t feel like a formality. It felt like my entire future hinged on this moment. Well, I guessed it kind of did.
“I’ve been trying to find the perfect moment to do this for almost a year, and I can’t believe this turned out to be it,” I chuckled awkwardly as I gently turned her to face me.
When I pulled the box out of my pocket and dropped to one knee, Darla’s eyes went wide, and I saw a tear slip down her cheek.
“Darla Jones, will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?” I asked, popping the box open to reveal the thin white gold band with three small diamonds that were so much smaller than she deserved.
She didn’t even answer me. She just bent down and kissed me senseless.
“I take it that was a yes?” I teased when she let me talk.
“Yes, that was a yes,” she giggled. “I love you so much.”
I let go of her and took the ring out of its box, then grabbed her left hand and slid it on her finger, smiling when I saw that it was a perfect fit.
“It’s nowhere close to what you deserve, but—”
“Stop it,” she cut me off, giving me another kiss. “It’s perfect. Just like you.”
I chuckled. “I’m nowhere close to perfect, baby. But I’ll do my best every day to be the perfect man for you.”
“You already are, Brendan,” she said softly. “You always have been.”
I stood up and pulled her with me, then crashed my lips back to hers, holding her as close as I could. Her arms tightened around me as she stood on her toes to reach me easier, and I pulled out
one of the chairs from the crappy little card table that I used as a kitchen table and sat on it. She straddled my legs as her mouth found mine again, and her hands slipped inside the collar of my shirt. The moan that rose in my throat at the simple skin-on-skin contact wasn’t even voluntary. It was automatic. Even the smallest touch between us just held that much power.
I slid the shirt she was wearing up just enough to rest my hands on her waist, and she whimpered softly as she shimmied closer to me, rocking against my quickly stiffening length and making me groan. Like she was trying to torture me, she did it again, this time pressing down more.
“Keep doing that and dinner’s going to get cold,” I whispered against her lips.
“We have a microwave,” she giggled.
Yeah, screw it. Dinner could wait.
Gripping her legs tightly, I stood up, and she giggled again as she wrapped them around my waist. I quickly carried her to the bedroom, setting her back on her feet before relieving her of her shirt. She started to slide mine up, and I did the work for her, tugging it off. But before I could get to her pants, she knelt in front of me, raising her eyes to meet mine.
“Can I?” she asked timidly.
I stifled a groan at the anticipation of how it would feel to have her mouth on me. She’d never done this before, but when I thought about it, I realized that I’d never really given her the chance to. I’d always been focused on her whenever we made love, and just getting to be inside her was more than enough for me, so I’d never even stopped to think that she might actually want to turn the tables and put her focus on me.
“You never have to ask, baby,” I told her. “The answer’s always going to be yes.”
She gave me a small smile as she tugged my sweatpants and boxers down, then timidly wrapped her hand around me, slowly – and maybe a little hesitantly – stroking. My eyes slid closed as sparks of electricity started to radiate through me, and I sucked in a breath.
For a couple of minutes, she built up a slow and steady rhythm with her hand, like she was trying to psych herself up for this. Pressure started to build up way too quickly, and I felt a flutter of anticipation in my stomach. I knew she always loved it when I made love to her with my mouth, but this was a first for me. I had no idea what to expect. Would it feel the same as when I was inside her? Better? Just altogether different?
Why was I so nervous? We’d already made love, many times. But somehow, it felt like the first time all over again. Except that this time, I had no words of wisdom for her. Nothing to tell her to make it easier. And I could tell she needed that right now, because I could hear her shaky breaths as she softly caressed my shaft, and it might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I felt her hand trembling a little as she worked too.
Just as I was about to remind her that I would never want her to do anything she wasn’t completely comfortable with, I felt the wet heat of her mouth sliding down my length, and it was all I could do to stop myself from coming right then and there. My eyes shot open, and I looked down and watched as she took as much of me as she could in her mouth.
“Jesus, Dar,” I hissed.
Her mouth slid further down, then came back up, and her tongue swirled over the head. I groaned quietly and threaded my fingers in her hair, and she let out a quiet moan as she slid back down again, sucking softly this time.
I felt every swipe of her tongue, every movement of her mouth, and the added pressure when she sucked harder down to the very fiber of my being. I’d always thought that there couldn’t be anything more intimate than making love to her, but in a way, I almost felt like I was closer to her right now than I’d ever been before. Maybe it was because, for the first time, there wasn’t a latex barrier separating us while I was connected to her, or maybe it was because this was so new and different. Whatever it was, this was a unique experience all its own, and if it was possible, it made me love her even more knowing that she wasn’t just willing to do this, but that she’d actually asked if she could.
Tingling pressure started to build up inside me, and I knew it wasn’t going to be much longer before I exploded, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish like this. Not tonight. Tonight wasn’t about me. It was about us. So I gently grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up, greedily claiming her lips as I tugged at the waistband of her pants, sliding them and her panties down in one motion.
“Sorry I’m not very good at that,” she mumbled awkwardly, her eyes firmly focused on the floor.
Damn it. I’d never thought she would interpret my not wanting her to see me through to the end as a reflection on her skills. I put a finger under her chin tilted her face up so she’d look at me.
“Baby, if you’d kept that up for much longer, I would have finished in your mouth,” I told her. “And I couldn’t do that. Not tonight.”
She turned bright pink, and I chuckled as I kissed her. It was adorable how easy it was to make her blush. As I kicked my pants the rest of the way off, sat on the bed, and moved backward, she followed me and straddled my legs again while she brought her mouth back to mine. I desperately sought out her tongue, softly sucking it into my mouth, as I slid a hand between her legs, groaning when I felt how soaked she was. I slipped two fingers inside her, and she moaned as she rocked her hips in time with my hand. Reluctantly, I tore my mouth from hers and moved it to her neck, kissing and sucking above her pulse point.
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
God, I’d missed this. It had been way too long since we’d been able to make love without worrying about how much noise we were making. Really, we’d only been able to do that twice, because most of the times we’d ended up in these situations had been in her bedroom at Kate’s house. Her moans and whimpers were music to my ears, and I’d been robbed of hearing them ever since she’d moved in with her friend.
I pressed my thumb down on the small nub at her center, and she cried out for a moment, then buried her face in my shoulder, muffling her moans as I continued to pump my fingers in and out of her.
“Let me hear you, Dar,” I rasped. “It’s just us here.”
Instead of obeying, she kissed me so deeply I saw stars.
Okay, that was even better than hearing her moans. Because now I felt them, just as much as I felt her hips start rocking faster as she chased her high. I added a third finger, and she whimpered as I started to pump a little harder. And less than a minute later, she trembled above me as she unraveled.
“Brendan,” she groaned, collapsing against my shoulder.
I folded my arms around her and kissed the side of her head while I gave her a minute to recover. There was absolutely nothing better than getting to watch her come undone like that. Seeing her completely shed her inhibitions and lose herself to the feelings and emotions that always swirled around us when we were together like this was the most beautiful thing in the world. She didn’t open up to people easily, and letting me be the one that she’d chosen to share this part of herself with was the best gift she could ever have given me.
Darla reached over and opened the top drawer of my nightstand, retrieving a condom from the open box inside and tearing it open, then moved backward just enough that she could roll it down my shaft. Positioning me at her entrance, she slowly sank down until I was completely sheathed inside her. I sucked in a breath as she started to rock over me and the now-familiar jolts of pure ecstasy shot all the way through me. Her eyes slid closed and her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. I pulled her close and peppered kisses along her neck and collarbone, losing myself in the bliss that came with being this intimately connected with her.
“Oh, God,” she breathed. “You feel so good.”
“I love you so much,” I whispered as I backed away just enough to claim her mouth again. “You’re my whole world.”
“I love you,” she answered, curling her arms around my shoulders as she sped up her movements.
This angle let me get so much deeper inside her than I ever had before, and I knew I wasn’t
going to last nearly as long as I wanted to. Dipping my head down to pull one of her nipples into my mouth, I slid my hand between us and started to rub circles on her nerve center. She moaned and dug her fingers into my skin as she increased her pace again, and it was all I could do to keep myself from going over the edge before she did.
I rolled us over so she was under me and lifted one of her legs up onto my shoulder as I started to stroke in and out of her. Her whimpers and moans echoed in my ears, and within another minute, she was crying out my name as she pulsed around me. That was all it took to make me tumble off the cliff with her, straining into her as I detonated like a bomb.
I knew our lives were still a mess and that we had a hell of a lot to figure out, but somehow I just felt that everything would work itself out and days like today would just be the norm for us soon. I had to believe that. I had to believe God wouldn’t have let us suffer so much if there wasn’t a far greater blessing waiting for us on the other side of this.
Chapter 28
Darla
Truce
My phone chimed in my purse as I pulled into Kate’s driveway and hit the button on the garage door opener. As an extra safety precaution, Kate had decided to move her car to the driveway and let me take her spot in the garage so my car wouldn’t be visible from the street.
As soon as I took the key out of the ignition and hit the button to close the garage, I pulled my phone out and checked my text message.
Brendan: Ethan said he’s free tonight after work. Come back to my place?
Before I’d left his apartment this morning, Brendan had told me that Ethan Smith was back in town and that he wanted to talk to me. He’d said that he believed Ethan meant every word of his apology, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about sharing breathing space with the person who had made my life a living hell in my freshman year of high school. I had promised Brendan that I’d hear him out, though, so I couldn’t say no now.
I sighed as I pressed out my response on the number pad. Why couldn’t someone invent a cellphone that actually had a full keyboard on it? Texting like this took forever.
My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss) Page 31
