He presses in, and his thick cock slides up past its intended target, touching me over the most delicate part. He pulls back and lands his tip inside me just enough to let us both know the bases are loaded, and the batter is about to swing.
Carter looks down with the idea of a smile forming on his lips. His lids are low and heavy as he takes me in through slotted eyes.
He pushes into my body determined, pressured yet not rushing to high five my ovaries, and I appreciate that.
“Carter.” His name chokes out of my throat as he threads his way inside. A wild grunt expels from him as he makes me his in every single way. His body tenses as he spears deeper to the nexus of my being. My lungs fill with air, as I gasp and gulp at the intensity of his body buried in mine.
“Aspen.” My name draws from his lips like a car skidding out of control. “Shit.” He leans his head back just a notch and gives a quick grin through his panting. His body slowly moves in me as he takes his time, soaks it in while his muscles tremble from the reservation, his breathing eclipses mine as he struggles to catch his breath.
His steamy flesh glides moist over mine, catching in jags, cooling as he pulls away. A deep moan curls out of him as he pushes in deeper than before, then deeper still until my own moans come to greet him.
Carter loves me with his body in long, even strokes before bidding farewell to those sentimental days and segues into an all out assault. This is saccharine traded for salt, tenderness traded for abandon. The bed loosens beneath us as the headboard starts in on a thunderous wallop. A loud snap ricochets through the room, and he pauses for a moment as we glance overhead to find the window with a hairline crack. Carter shakes out a dull laugh as his mouth dives back over mine with a fury. His tongue, his hammering cock, every part of Carter is taking out its vengeance, claiming me in a way that would make our prehistoric ancestors proud, and a laugh bubbles from me at the thought. England owns Scotland. The conquest is now complete.
Carter is in me. I revel in the idea. Carter is mine, and I am finally his. The headboard gives testimony to this fact, solemn and loud as a twenty-one-gun salute.
“I’m going to come.” He brushes the words into my ear like a warning, like a promise, and that wild pinch returns to my belly as my own excitement ratchets up, winding like a very tight coil, begging to unfurl and explode its tension.
Carter stiffens over me as his body trembles into mine. A heavy groan expels from the both of us in unison, curling out into the night like a love song.
His arms wrap themselves around my waist, and he rolls us both onto our sides, his heavy breathing rioting in my ear.
“I love you.” He gives my ear a loud, explosive kiss. “You’re my wife. I’m never letting go.”
* * *
In the morning, under the duress of a blessedly over-bright day, my lids struggle to open as my face grinds into Carter’s bare chest. The room is alive with the fragrance of last night’s testament to our love, ripe and tangy like fruit from the Garden of Eden.
His hands coil into the back of my hair. “Morning, your majesty.”
A smile drifts to my lips. Only Carter could say that without an ounce of sarcasm.
“Good morning. Does that make you my indentured servant?”
“It makes me your willing servant.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head before brushing the hair from my face.
“Don’t look at me. I look like hell.” I try to wipe the sleep from my makeup-caked eyes as I blink into him.
“You look like an angel”—he pulls back and runs his lips up the side of his cheek—“with very messy hair.” He mousses it up a bit for effect.
“Hey.” I reach up and do the same, yet Carter just manages to look even better. “You’re amazing.” I lean on my elbow inspecting him like this. Carter glows as if he had inadvertently swallowed the sun. His entire person radiates a peachy crimson vibrancy. I want to paint him this way. I’ll call it The Morning After.
“I’m amazing? Because I finally managed to land you in my bed?” That playful look of adulation lingers in his eyes. “I’d say so.”
I want to say you could have had me years ago, but there’s no way I’m dragging Cher into this bed with us.
“You hungry?” He reaches over and outlines my hip with his fingers before dipping his hand between my thighs.
“I see you are.” My brows lift in amusement. I’m not sorry that Carter is insatiable. I’m just thankful his appetite matches mine. I’ve been starved of his affection, and, now, I’m insatiable right there with him. I need Carter in my life, his flesh between my teeth, just to survive.
“Come here.” His arms wrap around my waist. His face fills with worry, but, God almighty, Carter still has my pulse racing with his arrogant good looks. “I didn’t use a condom last night.” He closes his eyes a moment. “And I didn’t pull out. I was greedy. I’m sorry.”
I study him like this. That spasm of grief on his face weighs heavy on me for a moment. I know how Abby was conceived, out of trickery, most likely out of faulty condoms that were designed that way by a girl who believed love was a game and didn’t know how to lose.
“That’s okay,” I whisper, cupping my hand to his cheek, his stubble prickling my palm. “I’m on the pill. I was going to get off next cycle, so I guess you caught me at the right time.” I’m not sure why, but those words almost broke me and brought me to tears. I was hiding my ovaries from Henry’s seed, and for Carter I want to bear him fruit from my womb as a display of my affection.
“Go ahead and do it. Get off the pill.” He pulls me in close until our hips are touching, his dick rousing to life, wagging like a tail as it rises to salute me. “One day, very soon, I want to have kids with you, Aspen. I want babies to fill this house, yours and mine.” He glances down a brief moment, his chest filling with a breath. “And Abby. She’s mine. I’m crazy in love with her, and that will never change.” His thumb spreads wide over my cheek. “Do you think you can love Abby?”
“Are you insane, Cannon?” I give his chest a playful shove. “That little girl had me wrapped around her pigtails the moment you brought her to the studio. I couldn’t love her any more if she were my own.” This time the tears do come. “It’s true. And I’m glad that there’s room in your life for me.”
“There is no life for me without you.” He brings his lips to mine and indulges in one achingly long, hot kiss that erases the past as easy as shaking an Etch A Sketch. Take that Cher. All of your scheming, your baby dreaming, has only expanded my family with Carter. My family. My man. It’s funny how life can backfire on you spectacularly.
He moans into my ear. “Move in with me.”
I pull back; my mouth opens with surprise at his offer.
“Really?” A spurt of excitement rockets through me. Carter and I finally making a home. Then a dark Cher-shaped cloud squats over the bedroom. “Is that going to be okay?” Whether I like it or not, Cher just morphed between us, turning us into a deformed threesome.
“Yes. It’s more than okay,” he says emphatic, pulling my hand forward and kissing it. “Trust me.” His eager eyes bear into mine with a silent desperate plea of their own. “There is no one who is able to protest this. This is your home now as much as it is mine if not more. You’re not a guest, you’re an occupant, an owner.”
Carter pulls me up over him until I’m seated on his hips. He pauses a moment to smile up at me, a silly smile that says I love you, and, more to the point, it says you need to back up an inch so I can impale you properly.
“Marry me.” His eyes, every cell in his body mirrors that smile upon his face.
And just like that he pops the question.
“Is that a proposal?” I giggle out the words as his heated cock warms me from behind.
“It’s a promise.”
“You do realize that one day our children will ask how all this went down, and I’ll be forced to lie. No one wants to hear I was sitting on your naked father after a night of amazing sex.”
“It was amazing.” He pulls my hand to his lips and groans as he presses a kiss into it. “But, not to worry.” He gives my thigh a light tap. “We’ll have the best story ever.” He cups my bare bottom before gliding his hand up my back. “And this version is not what we’ll tell them.”
“Oh? I’m amused. Apprise me.”
“We’ll tell them the truth.” The smile melts from his face as his eyes solidify over mine. “We’ll tell them we were at the Getty doing research for your art final, and I knelt down—”
The world stops for a moment. That day bursts through my mind like a familiar song I set to repeat, never tiring of, memorizing the words, the cadence, until my body, my heart pulsed to the rhythm.
“In front of my favorite piece, Spring by Alma-Tadema.” I cut him off with tears blurring my vision. I’m too ashamed to tell him that the precious ring he gifted me is still locked away in that condo with Henry. That large cushion-cut emerald as green and alive as our love—I wore it to bed the first time Henry hurt me. He shook me like a ragdoll because I wouldn’t leave him alone about a plumbing problem he promised to get to for weeks. Mold was growing, and I was about to call the plumber myself, but Henry jostled me, sent my brain spinning and frightened me. It was Carter’s ring I took comfort in. I should have sliced Henry’s jugular with that emerald and ran like hell.
“Aspen.” Carter presses a kiss to the tip of my knee. “You were stunning, and beautiful, and outshined everything in that entire damn gallery.” He pulls me down until my mouth meets with his. “You said yes.”
“I said hell yes.”
“Are you saying yes again?”
“I’m saying hell yes again.”
“Hell yes,” he hisses the words through clenched teeth as he closes his eyes with relief. “Most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”
“Now fuck me.” I give his ear a hard bite, and he flinches.
A dark laugh rolls through him as he spins me onto my back. Carter looks down at me with those smiling eyes, the insane look of happiness on his face—a perfect reflection of how I feel.
“Second most beautiful words I’ve heard all day.”
Carter finds his way back into my body, my soul, my heart.
And, for a brief moment, I don’t understand what took us so long to get here. Then, one by one, Henry and Cheryl flash through my mind like a seizure.
They wouldn’t, they couldn’t do anything to stop us.
But they have before. Now that’s one piece of history I’m certain will never repeat itself. We’re stronger, older, wiser, far more intimate than ever before.
Carter and I lose ourselves in our lust, our infallible new level of trust. We were restored to one another fully and completely. We’ve come full circle to that blessed day when Carter got down on bended knee.
He spears into my body, hot and thick, so deep my throat chokes out a sound. His gaze seals over mine as if to say we’re finally home.
Come to think of it, this is a much better position.
Carter
Aspen stays. I let my brothers know we’ll be taking the week off. Days melt into one another, sunrises and sunsets all with Aspen locked in my arms. We’ve called in delivery and have successfully managed to blissfully eat and fuck the days away.
“Just living the dream.” I hold up a bottle of champagne and two glasses. “Let’s hit the beach.” I wrap my arm around her, catching her lips with mine.
“I thought we’d never see that cove.” She bats her lashes playfully before taking the glasses from my hand. “What are we celebrating?”
“Us.” I offer a longer, lingering kiss. “The miracle of us.”
She pulls back with her arms tucked against my chest. “We are a miracle. I’ve always believed you were my destiny, Carter.”
A sadness exudes from her as she says those words, and it kills me. Our miracle was slightly derailed by someone else’s joyride. Someone who very much succeeded in hijacking our good time.
“I’ve always known you were mine.” I press my lips to the top of her head as we grab a few blankets and head out the door.
The sun is getting ready to dip into the Pacific and call it a day. The giant salmon orb hangs in perfect suspension in the deep blue air. The salt and the sea spray linger in a subtle haze that holds heavy and warm from an eighty-degree afternoon.
Aspen and I make our way down the walk to the private cove just past the property line. I sneak a kiss under her ear while taking up her hand.
“When the realtor was showing me houses, I saw this cove and knew I was at the right place.
“That’s because you’re a genius. I’m shocked you weren’t locked in a bidding war.”
“I was.” The heated sand greets us as we head toward the waterline. “I won.”
“You always win, Cannon.” She gives a little wink.
“I have you, so it must be true.” I fan out one of the blankets, and we set the champagne and glasses down.
Aspen laughs. “Is that all I am to you?” Her face and hair glow pink as the sun squats over the water. “Some cheap carnival prize?”
“What?” I scoop her up into my arms and charge the shore as a wave crashes over my hips, getting the two of us soaking wet.
“Stop!” She gives a shrill scream before burying her head in my chest. “You’re terrible!” Her fist pounds against me half-heartedly.
“I am terrible. I’m terribly in love with you.” I take a few steps back and sit us down on the damp sand. Aspen settles in my lap crossways as we watch the sun slowly submerge into the waterline.
“I’m terribly in love with you, too, Carter. Why does that sound horrific?”
“Because, unfortunately, I’m no poet.” I tuck the stray, wet strands behind her ear. “How do you like your beach, Aspen?”
“My beach?”
“I called my attorney. I’m having your name added to the title. I want this with you. I want to share everything. What’s mine is yours, in our hearts and on paper.”
“Carter.” She shakes her head in protest. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Consider it an early wedding gift.”
She gives an impish grin. “Thank you.” Aspen rests her head on my shoulder, her fingers trace over my lips on a loop. I bite down playfully and suck on her pinky. A deep groan wrenches from her as if it were the best feeling in the world.
“You get to name the beach.” I tap my finger over her heart.
She lifts her head looking around at the granite wall of boulders to our left, the buffalo grass offering shelter from wandering eyes down the coast.
“Looks like Lover’s Cove to me, but I think we should name it something a little more Abby friendly.” She squints into the dying sun as it kisses her face with its cantaloupe glow. She’s so beautiful my heart aches. “How about Cannon Cove? I think she’d like that.”
“She’d love that.” My entire being lights up like a blaze for this woman. I bury my face in her hair, fighting back tears. “Aspen,” I whisper into her neck. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“I do.” Her voice catches with the wind. Aspen runs her fingers over my cheek, rubbing over a week’s worth of stubble. “I know she’s your entire heart, Carter. I get that. She should be. And I know one day you’ll love our babies the same way. So Cannon Cove it is.” She leans up and takes a bite from my bottom lip. “But don’t let your ego get too overblown. As soon as we tie the knot, I’m taking your name.”
A smile presses from my lips. I try to hold it back, play coy, tease her a little bit, but that burst of joy is too much to hold under.
“Yes.” My mouth falls over hers, her hot tongue moving over mine before my lips wander over her cheek, to her ear. “Take my name, Aspen. You have every other part of me already.” Her legal name strobes through my brain—I want to tell her how it knifed me, how I was drawn and quartered, how my insides were pulled out and shoved down my throat the day she became Mrs. Henry O’Tool.
It fucked me over emotionally. But this—I tighten my arms around her—this is a glorious end to one long, debilitating nightmare.
“Let’s set a date.” I pull her up close. “What are you thinking? Next week? Next summer?”
A laugh gets caught in her throat as her body vibrates over mine. I can hardly believe I’m holding her let alone having this conversation. Maybe this is all a fantasy. Maybe I hit my head at Ford’s wedding, and the rest has been a dream.
“That’s quite a spread. But I’m all for sooner than later.” She points to the sun as it takes its final bow. “Make a wish.”
“It already came true.” I give her ribs a tickle.
“That’s perfectly cliché and astoundingly beautiful. Mine too.” Aspen leans up and devours my mouth for a moment. “But maybe we should make another wish. I’d hate to see it go to waste.”
“Okay, what do you want to wish for?”
“I wish that no matter where the future leads that we’ll be there together. I never want anything to separate us again, Carter.” There’s a sadness in her eyes that says it’s still a possibility.
“That’s an easy wish because nothing ever will. We’re as unbreakable as God.”
“Oh no.” Aspen twists her lips and moans. “You sure you didn’t just curse us?”
A hard laugh barks from me.
“I’m serious.” She swats my arm. “They said the Titanic was unsinkable. And, when asked if that were true someone replied, not even God could sink this ship. I think you know the end.”
“We’re unsinkable.” I run my fingers up and down her ribs until she bucks off me in a giggle fit. “Not even God could pull us apart, Aspen.” I dig in under her arms, and she gives a violet shriek.
“Would you stop?” Aspen struggles to free herself from my tyranny as we roll further down the sand. “You are terrible, Cannon!” Her voice reverberates for miles.
I roll her over in one aggressive move and pin her arms to the sand. “All right, you’re going to have to take that back.”