“You want a third?” His big hand closed around her wrist, his fingertips teasing lightly at her pulse point.
“I do.”
A delighted grin spread slowly across his face, radiant with happiness. “When do you wanna start? I don’t think there’s anybody in the barn.”
If not for the wine, she might have shaken her head. Instead, she reached for his other hand, and let him lead her out into the night.
~*~
Maggie let her head fall sideways onto Ghost’s shoulder. “You know what?”
Neither Sam nor Aidan was any kind of dancer, but they’d been coerced out onto the floor and were doing a middle school slow dance number.
Ghost watched them. “What?”
“We’ve got good kids.”
He made a half-satisfied, half-amused sound in his throat. “For the most part.”
She slapped his arm and he broke into a real laugh. When he settled, his voice grew doubtful, strained. “He turned out alright, didn’t he?” Like he was seeking her approval.
If only his men knew, Maggie thought, how much he doubted and wondered. If they could see the nights she’d held his head in her lap, and assured him it would all be okay. Her stubborn, brave, asshole man. As fragile as all the rest, but putting up a good front.
“I never doubted for a second,” she assured, finding his rough hand and sliding her own inside it.
“No?”
“No.”
He turned his head toward her, bristles on his jaw scraping at her forehead. “I love you,” he said, quietly, just for her.
“I know, baby. I love you too.”
Forty-Three
“Aidan…oh…God.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and put pressure at the back of his head, her hips seeming to levitate off the mattress.
He was between her legs with his mouth, his broad shoulders pushing her thighs apart, and he showed her no mercy.
The orgasm crashed over her, a wave of sensation, tinged briefly with regret. She’d wanted them to be together, their first time on their wedding night. She felt selfish…but satiated, hot with bliss as the pulses rippled through her and she stared up at the ceiling.
At their reflection on the ceiling.
This motel was a disturbingly out-of-the-way place just off the interstate, a place she would never have ventured on her own. But Aidan had gripped her hand outside their door, turned shining eyes on her and said, “There’s a surprise inside.”
The surprise had been the mirror affixed to the canopy of the bed, and she got to watch him go down on her in it.
Through lowered lids, she watched herself arch, gasp, claw gently at his scalp. Saw the ivory sheen of her damp skin, the shiny wetness on her nipples from his mouth, the flexing tattooed expanse of his back as his tongue slid up her sex one last time.
She could come again just watching, the harshly erotic novelty of it almost overwhelming.
“Aidan,” she repeated, and he slid up her body, blocking her view with his smiling face.
“What, baby?”
Her ring caught the lamplight, flaring as she brushed the damp curls off his forehead. She could have stared at his excited expression all night. But instead she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and said, “Can I be your wife now?”
He kissed her in answer, his tongue flicking between her teeth to stroke against her tongue.
