“Says the woman who jumped in front of a bullet.”
“To save your life!”
“And nearly gave me a heart attack in the process.” He rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. His hands settled on her hips, thumbs stroking the sensitive skin there. “But that’s why we work. I keep you alive, you keep me living.”
She nuzzled against him. That thought sent a warm flutter through her chest, settling somewhere between her ribs and her heart. She traced lazy circles on his chest with her fingertip, marveling at how right this felt—not just the sex, though that had been incredible, but this easy intimacy afterward. The way he held her like she was precious but not fragile. The way he looked at her like she hung the moon but still challenged her when she was being ridiculous.
“So,” she said, propping her chin on his sternum to look at him. “When do you want to do this? Get married for real, I mean.”
His hand stilled in her hair. “You’re serious about this. You really want to marry me.”
The wonder in his voice made her chest tighten. Had she really been so guarded, so resistant, that he still couldn’t quite believe she meant it?
“Elliot Wilde,” she said firmly, “I have never been more serious about anything in my life. I want to marry you. I want to wake up next to you every morning and fall asleep in your arms every night. I want to fight with you about your obsessive need to fold everything and laugh when you inevitably win me over with your logic. I want to plan adventures together and drive youcrazy with my impulsiveness and let you take care of me when I inevitably get hurt doing something stupid.”
She paused, suddenly feeling shy. “I want to have babies with you. Little Wildes who inherit your strategic mind and hopefully my sense of adventure.”
His eyes went wide, and she felt his sharp intake of breath beneath her. “Babies?”
“Eventually,” she said, suddenly nervous about his reaction. “I mean, if you want them. I know we haven’t really talked about?—”
He silenced her with a kiss that was soft and reverent, so different from the hungry passion they’d shared moments before. When he pulled back, his eyes were suspiciously bright.
“I want everything with you,” he said quietly. “Adventure, marriage, babies, growing old together—all of it.”
Relief flooded through her, warm and sweet. “Good. Because I’m pretty sure I’d be a disaster trying to raise little humans without your organizational skills.”
He laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest. “Are you kidding? You’d teach them to rappel before they could walk. They’d be the most fearless kids on the planet.”
“And you’d make sure they wore helmets and had backup safety equipment,” she countered. “They’d be fearless but not stupid.”
“The perfect combination.” His hands slid up her back, fingers tracing the ridge of her spine. “Though I reserve the right to have a complete nervous breakdown the first time one of them wants to climb Everest.”
She grinned. “Deal.”
thirty-eight
Dom hated meetings.They were right up there with cruel and unusual torture in his mind, and today’s had been the worst, telling Dad and the uncles about Cade’s betrayal.
Uncle Cam had denied it vehemently, unwilling to admit he might be losing yet another son—he’d never recovered from losing Brennan a few years ago.
Hell, none of them had really recovered from that. Dom, himself, still missed his cousin like a limb. Some mornings, he’d wake up and forget Brennan was gone, reaching for his phone to text him about some joke or memory before reality crashed back in.
Uncle Vaughn had tried to soothe his twin, but Vaughn wasn’t really the touchy-feely type and just made things worse.
The meeting devolved fast after that, with half the family accusing Davey of exiling Cade, leaving him no choice but to take the job with Praetorian, and the other half defending Davey’s choice to fire Cade.
What a shitshow.
But at least now Dom was officially off-duty, and his plan was to drink away the bitter taste at the back of his throat and find a willing body to lose himself in for the night.
The club’s bass hammered through his skull like artillery fire, and he couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than the silence waiting for him back at the brownstone. He knocked back his whiskey—the cheapest stuff the bar had—and signaled the bartender for another. She was a brunette with impressive cleavage and a flirtatious smile that she unleashed as she slid the fresh glass across the polished surface.
“Rough night?” she asked, leaning forward just enough to make sure he noticed what she was offering.
Dom barely glanced at her. Any other night, he’d have been all over that invitation. The brunette was exactly his type—curves in all the right places, eyes that promised she knew how to have a good time, and the kind of confidence that came from knowing men wanted her. But tonight, even the prospect of meaningless sex felt hollow.
“Something like that,” he muttered, downing half the whiskey in one burning gulp.
