It was the most beautiful look on her, and I smiled as I kissed her shoulder.
“Bryan, please,” she said, panting.
“Tell me you’re beautiful,” I said. “Just say it. Preach your truth.”
“I-I’m beautiful,” she said.
“Say it again.”
“I’m beautiful.”
“One more time.”
“Damn it, Bryan. I’m beautiful. I’m gorgeous. I’m—oh.”
I slid into her deeply, pressing my fingers into her clit. I kept a steady pace, timing my circling with my thrusts. Her legs were quaking, and her chest was panting. Her skin was flushed a beautiful pink hue that contrasted the purple streaked across her stomach. I held her close, sucking love bites on her shoulder as my thickness grew against her walls. She was massaging me so perfectly, her ass cradling me as her hands curled into the locks of my hair.
“Please. I’m so close.”
I pulled out and slammed into her one last time before she leaped over the edge. Her body pulled me deep into its warmth, massaging my girth as my legs tensed. She was shaking against me, her toes curling as her nails raked against my scalp. I could feel myself spilling into her, marking her as mine as I moaned her name into her skin. I could hear my name dripping from Hailey’s lips as her pleasure coursed through her system.
“I love you,” I said. “I love you so much.”
Our bodies came down from our highs as I stayed sheathed between her legs. She was panting, her back expanding against my tired chest. I brought my fingers to my lips, tasting her as I moaned relentlessly in her ear.
“You’re insane,” she said breathlessly.
“Insane for you,” I said.
She pushed herself back into me as I raised the covers up over our bodies. She felt warm and inviting, like a weighted blanket or a child’s favorite stuffed animal. I nuzzled into her as the blanket settled over our bodies, my arms pulling her as close as I could get her. Hailey was my world, the reason I got up in the mornings. She kept me going during the hard times and was worth every battle we had encountered up to this point. No matter what I had done and no matter what she felt she had done to me, the only thing that mattered was that we’d ended up here together, married, in love, and expecting our first child.
“Goodnight, beautiful,” I said into her ear.
“Mmmm, night.”
Chapter 6
Hailey
The bell above my gallery door rang, and I peered up from the cash register. There was a man walking in, and he didn’t look friendly. He had ghostly pale skin and an uneven scruff on his face. His brown hair was disheveled, even matted in some places. His clothes were dirty, and his teeth were yellow, and he practically snarled at me as he approached the register. He was tall, looming over me as I took a step back from him. His presence made me nervous, and I stuck my hand in my pocket and hovered it over the emergency call button.
He didn’t seem like the kind of man who was interested in art, but I didn’t want to prejudge him. Everyone was welcome in here until they proved they didn’t deserve to be here. I looked into his eyes. His bright, hazel eyes. They were full of malice and contempt like someone had angered him and he was about to let them know it.
There was something familiar about his eyes.
But, once he got halfway across the gallery room, his eyes diverted from me. They locked onto the paintings on the wall, and I relaxed a little. He was walking around the room, taking everything in as he tracked in dirt. I tried to push my preconceived notions of him to the back of my mind. For now, he seemed genuinely interested in the art on the wall, so I sat down on a small stool in the corner and watched him.
“Who painted these?” the man asked.
He was pointing to the pair of John’s paintings I kept loaning out to places for display.
“His name was John McBride.”
“Lot of pain in these paintings,” he said.
“Mr. McBride dealt with a lot of pain. Loss. Substance abuse. He climbed out of a very deep, dark hole. You’re the first person who’s ever looked at these and latched onto the pain behind them. I’m impressed.”
“Substance abuse, huh?” the man asked. “You know what kind?”