Earning Her Keep (Price of Love)

I kiss her deeper, and then bend down, scooping her up into my arms. Her legs twine around my body, and she hooks her ankles behind my ass. I sink my hands into the soft flesh of her thighs.

But just as things are heating up, my watch dings out a reminder on my wrist. She groans into the kiss and yanks away from me.

“I hate this thing, you know that?” she asks.

And before I know it, she’s got it off me. She sets her teeth, growls at its face, and then tosses it into the pool.

“Bad girl,” I say, on a laugh. “That deserves a fucking spanking.”

She swats my hand, all devilish and adorable. Then she reaches up and kisses me again. Really kisses me. And with her other hand, slides her palm down past my trunks, taking my cock in hand.

She’s got me and she knows it. Working my length, teasing the tip.

I reach for her pussy, hungry to feel her pregnant wetness and heat. But no sooner have I pushed aside her tiny bikini bottoms than she squeezes my dick. Opens her eyes. Plants her hand on my chest.

And pushes me backwards into the pool.

I hear her giggle echo out under the water line. Then the sunlight above flickers and she cannonballs in beside me.

In the watery light, she is bubbles and happiness and giggles.

She’s a little bit of chaos.

She’s exactly what I need.

CHAPTER 12

Primrose

Epilogue - 22 Years Later

Go With The Flow Yoga is the most popular yoga studio in Chicago and also on the whole island of St. Martin’s. Over the least twenty years, Dane has helped me build the business into something amazing. But the studio is only one slice of amazing in this seemingly endless amazing cake of life.

We have two kids now—though they aren’t really kids anymore. Emily, our first, is just about to graduate college. She wants to be a museum curator; she’s organized and conscientious, just like her dad. Sometimes too much so, though it’s served her well and will in the future. And then there’s Jean-Michel, named after Basquiat and called Mike for short, who just had his eighteenth. He’s more like me. A free spirit, as dyslexic as I am, and secretly, delightfully obsessed with Jane Austen.

None of us is perfect. And that’s perfect for me.

I am so proud. Of myself, of Dane, of our kids. And of this life we carved out for ourselves. Out of this blooming lotus of happiness we have grown in the mud that brought us together in the first place.

But on any given day, I’m never prouder than I am right… about… now. I hear the 9:00am hot yoga teacher bid everybody a chipper, “Namaste!” The class echoes it back, sounding tired and relieved.

Dane walks out of the class, looking sore and tired and sweating like a fish on roller-skates. He comes every Wednesday, though, without fail. He’s got a reminder on his watch and that makes it gospel. I think he secretly hates it, but he knows I love to see him here. And so he never misses a class.

I like to think it’s helped him. Maybe. A little. Though he still keeps a spreadsheet of everything I eat, still checks my blood work and obsesses over every little thing. Still labels the stupid spice jars and all the bins in the garage. But I adore it. I love him with my whole heart and I always will. He’s still the same deliciously rough, controlling, cocky dream of a man I met all those years ago. Maybe even more so now. Because he’s only gotten rougher with age.

He walks out of the studio, surrounded by ladies in yoga pants, giving him flirty eyes. But as ever, he only has eyes for me.

He signals to me with a glance to go to the changing room. Just that glance, just that intensity—it makes me absolutely weak in the knees.

He locks the door behind us and scoops me up in his arms, setting me down on the sink. He kisses me hard, pushing me up against the mirror behind me. I inhale his musky scent—his sweat, his power. His hard-on presses against my clit and I gasp.

“Lucky you didn’t have this in class,” I whisper. “Might’ve turned into an orgy.”