“Because you want to. Because you’re happy with her. And… and we are, too.”
My throat closes. Shit. “She doesn’t want this, Miles.”
“Yes, she does. She told me so.” He pushes off the counter and stalks away.
“She did? When? Why were you talking about this?” I frown as he walks out of the kitchen. “Miles!”
And then I stop, frozen. She wants to marry me? Holy shit! Holy fucking shit, she wants to marry me.
So of course I pump my fist in the air. “Yessss.”
Like a three-year-old. Don’t judge.
I need to start planning.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tessa
A phone starts ringing in the middle of the night. I groan, twisting on the bed, reaching for my phone. I always leave it on the nightstand so I can hit the snooze button easily in the morning after the alarm goes off.
But my phone is dark and silent.
Dylan sighs and sits up, bringing his phone to his ear, the faint light illuminating the lines of his face. “’ello? Who is it?”
I sit up, clutching the covers to my chest. We fell asleep naked last night, our limbs intertwined, and now a shiver wracks me—as much from the cold as from the stillness in Dylan’s expression.
“Z-man, are you sure about this? Yesterday you said you didn’t recognize—” Dylan rubs at his eyes and falls back on his pillow. “Yeah, okay. Tomorrow? Oh right. Yeah, we’ll do that. Now go get some rest.”
He lets the phone drop on his chest and groans.
“What happened?” I turn on the bedside lamp.
“Zane says he thinks the bearded guy I showed him is the one.” He rolls his head toward me. “He says he’s pretty sure, but now I’m not. He said it wasn’t him yesterday, and now when he doesn’t even have the picture in front of him, he thinks…” Dylan closes his eyes. “He probably had a nightmare and got fucking confused.”
“Or he remembered the guy’s face.”
He opens his eyes again, reaches for me. “You believe that?”
I let him pull me against his side and wrap an arm over his muscular middle. “It’s possible. We remember things in our sleep that escape us when we’re awake.”
He’s staring at my mouth, and it makes it hard to concentrate. Hard is also a good word to describe a certain part of his anatomy that’s rising to say hello.
Oh for heaven’s sake. I’m rattled by the phone call, and tired, and I have this absurd urge to laugh by the fact he’s horny right now, only nothing about his hard-on is funny. It’s a pretty impressive, serious-looking specimen, and his eyes do that heavy-lidded thing that turns need into a knot in my belly.
“Dyl…”
“I’m listening,” he whispers, his voice hoarse, and then he’s kissing me and dragging me on top of him. “But better still, let’s talk tomorrow, when we’re fully awake and can deal with that shit. Tonight ride me, baby.”
And I do, biting the inside of my cheek not to moan out loud as he guides himself inside me, and we rock together in the dark.
***
We’re standing on the sidewalk outside a low house with a gently sloping roof, two tall trees in the front lawn and an empty driveway.
“Well, the area fits,” Asher says. “It’s not all that far from that Walmart Supercenter. Or Woodland Park where Zane ended up. In fact it’s roughly between the two.”
“But the sedan isn’t here.” Dylan stalks toward the house, peers through a curtained window. “Can’t see anyone, either.”