It’s taking every ounce of patience I have. I want to thrust into her. I want to fill her, to pound her. I want to show her how much I’ve held back and how much I want. But I just give her another inch, and another, while she tries to lift her hips and press me deeper.
She’s so tight. So hot. She’s a vise around my cock, and the sensation is just as intense around my balls, around the base of my spine.
Eden squeezes her inner muscles, and I try. I try so hard. But she’s kneading me and begging with words and sounds, and I’mnotsuperhuman. I’m just not.
I thrust, hard, all the way home, seating myself in her, and we groan together, because it’s?—
“So good,” she moans.
“So fucking good,” I agree. “You feel so good.”
And it’s true, the sensation of it is practically overwhelming, but that’s not what matters right now—it’s the way she’s looking at me, her face so open and needy, so full of…
“I should have said this before,” she says. “This is a terrible time to say it. You just have to know that I’ve been thinking it for weeks. Since you said you were staying. I love you.”
“I don’t think it’s a terrible time,” I say. It’s a lot, though. So much. My chest full of her words and my cock full to bursting for her, my whole body on the edge of detonation, hot and wild and uncontrolled. “I love you, too,” I say. “I have for a long time. I will forever.”
I dip my head, find a nipple, still thrusting, looking for the angle and the depth that will make her lose her mind, and then I find it. I know because of the way she gets suddenly wetter, because she starts murmuring my name brokenly, and then I add a hitch of my hips up over hers, tugging her taut, grinding into her mound, and she comes apart under me, crying and whining and moaning, her muscles clenching and unclenching, her arms wrapped tight, her cheek pressed to mine, and I can’t do anything except follow her over, to wherever we’re going next.
54
Eden
Rhys gets up to get rid of the condom. I lie in bed, wrapped in bliss, my whole body bathed in warmth.
“Eden,” he calls from the hallway.
I don’t think I’d call his tonealarmedexactly, but it’s…something. Alert. It gets me out of bed and into the hallway, where I can see what he sees: Cressie and Milo lying side by side on the couch, tucked tight against each other, Cressie’s snout resting on Milo’s.
“Are they…always like this?” Rhys asks.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, grinning. “It’s definitely true love. They’re completely inseparable. I have to keep them both on the same side of my body when I walk them. And Milo won’t let me put Cressie in her own crate at night. He barks until I let her in with him.”
I can’t read the expression on Rhys’s face. It looks like he’s been smacked in the gut, but not entirely in a bad way.
“Eden,” he says slowly. “I know how we’re going to fix things with the will.”
“What do you mean?” I ask warily.
“I mean,” he says, a smile creeping over his face, lovely and mischievous, “Cressie and Milo are getting married.”
Late the next morning,around the conference table in Weggers’s office, Matias, Rhys, Hanna, and I present Weggers with the plan.
“Look,” Matias says. “The will doesn’t say the bride and groom have to be human. It doesn’t say the bride and groom have to be the same bride and groom as the original plans call for. It just says that the plannedceremonyhas to occur. The planned ceremonywilloccur.”
Weggers sniffs. “You know that’s not thespiritin which this was intended.”
“True,” Matias says. “I also know that you like to be true to theletterof the law. Plus, it will save us both so much time and trouble if I don’t file the contest.”
Weggers eyes him warily.
I wouldn’t want to go up against Matias in a court of law, and apparently Weggers is thinking the same thing, because he straightens himself up like a cat trying to preserve its dignity and says, “It’s true that I have a fondness for the letter of the law…”
He says it like it’s a good thing, when I think the whole idea of the letter and spirit of the law is the opposite? Spirit is good, letter is bad? But obviously no one points that out.
Once the meeting with Weggers is done, Hanna confirms the vendors are all still available, and I reach out to as many local guests as I can to convince them to attend Cressie and Milo’s wedding. It’s not a tough sell because I include a small album of the hundreds of photos I’ve taken of them since Cressie came home. Everyone agrees that they’re the perfect couple.
We know we won’t get quite as many guests to RSVP as Paul and I had originally, but—Matias points out—the will doesn’t say that the ceremony must be attended by any particular number of guests.
