“What are you doing, angel?”
“Giving you what I should have weeks ago—my body, my trust, and my heart.”
“What are you saying?” Beck bent to cup her chin and lift her gaze to him.
“I love you.” She felt so relieved to finally be confessing the feelings she’d secreted in her heart for weeks.
Her fierce surgeon looked as if she could knock him over with a feather. “You’re sure?”
His croaked words, thick with emotion, touched her. “Yes.” She took Seth’s hand. “I love you, too. So much. I wanted to say the words sooner, but Raine made me promise to wait until I was certain I wanted to stay.”
“Angel…” Seth’s voice shook as he gripped her hand. “Does this mean… Are you committing to us?”
She nodded. “I don’t belong anywhere except with you—forever.”
“What about all your adventure and seeing the world?” Beck asked. “I don’t want you to regret us later.”
“First, you two have proven that you can show me plenty of adventure, both in and out of the bedroom.” She blushed. “And second, this really awesome surgeon I sleep with just proved to me tonight all the reasons I need to forge my own path in life. With you two—in every way—is where I want to be.”
Together, they hauled her to her feet and crushed her in their embrace. She wrapped her arm around Seth’s lean waist, feeling him press kisses to her crown as she rested her cheek against Beck’s chest to hear his beating heart. Gravity and reverence compelled the moment to silence. In that instant, they didn’t need words, just one another. Tears filled her eyes.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say those words,” Beck whispered as he tipped her chin up and dipped his head to capture her lips with the fervor of a man whose patience had been tested again and again. “I love you so much, little girl.”
The instant Beck lifted his head, Seth wrapped his fingers in her hair and turned her face to his, swooping down to seize her mouth in a furious kiss. Her hand crept up his arm, over his shoulder, then cupped his nape as his onslaught of passion continued until she felt dizzy and achy and needy. She whimpered.
“After everything I went through in New York,” he said as he gripped her, emotions contorting his strong features, “I love you more than I thought I was capable of loving anyone, angel. I can’t let you go.”
She didn’t understand exactly what Seth meant—his father’s death? The unexpected drifting apart from his family? His mother’s upcoming remarriage?—but she gave him a tight squeeze, hoping to soothe and reassure him with her touch. She’d be sure to ask him later, but right now she had something else to say. “Please don’t. I appreciate all your sacrifice and patience more than words can say. I’m in this with you two for the rest of our lives. All in. And I want to prove it.”
Heavenly opened her purse on the nightstand and withdrew a slip of paper—the note they’d written her in which they promised her a plane ticket and fifty thousand dollars to help her start a future without them. Her safety net, they’d called it.
She held it up so they could see exactly what she gripped. The sight of it seemed to punch them in the gut. They looked as if they tried to brace.
Instead of cashing in, she tore the slip of paper in half. Then in half again. Then one more time for good measure. Finally, she made her way to the trash can in the corner of the room and turned to meet their riveted stares before she tossed the little pieces inside. “I’m with you forever—and ready for everything that comes with commitment. You’re my family now, and I don’t want anything between us anymore. Make love to me.”
* * *
Beck’s jaw fell open.His head spun.
I’m with you forever. Heavenly’s words rang so sweetly in his ears.
Fuck yes. Forever starts right now.
He tried to temper himself, but it was a losing battle. “This is a big decision, little girl. Are you sure?”
“You want to be ours for the rest of your life? Think carefully.” Seth clenched his hands into fists as if he was barely restraining his urge to put them on Heavenly. “Once you say yes, I will fight to keep you until the end of time.”
“You already have, and I love you for it.” The solemn conviction on her face took Beck’s breath away. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life. I belong with you two.”
That was all he needed to hear.
He started working the buttons on his shirt, wondering how fucking fast he could get naked. Beside him, Seth wrestled out of his suit coat in a blur. When Beck blinked, the guy was suddenly bare from the waist up. Then Seth shucked his pants, carelessly kicking them across the floor in his haste to reach Heavenly.
She bent to retrieve his coat. The usually fastidious Seth flung the pinstripe out of her grasp.
“Later,” he growled, lifting her like a rag doll and laying on her back, across the bed, before tumbling on top of her. “Spread.”
At his monosyllabic command, Heavenly parted her trembling thighs and wrapped her small hand around Seth’s nape. She stared into his eyes as he aligned the tip of his cock to her opening, looking like a man fighting a temptation too compelling to resist.