She shakes her head sadly. “Look at everything I’ve been given. Every advantage. Tutors. The best schools.” Her eyes shine with unshed tears. “Everything is given to me without question. I wanted to stand on my own two feet. I didn’t want to be a burden.”
The man appears dumbstruck. “All these things I give you, daughter…they’re because I love you. You’ll never be a burden.”
“Thank you.” She slides her hand into mine, squaring her shoulders and I’ve never been prouder of anyone in my life. “But I still want to stand on my own. For a long time, I’ve wanted that. I don’t need the fancy trappings and money and Princeton. I want to make my own decisions and tackle the world as I am. Not what I’ve been built up to be. Father, I need to make my own decisions. And my first decision is choosing love. Choosing Ezra.”
There’s no way to keep the happiness off my face. Not when she looks up at me with love shining in her eyes. “Ophelia,” I breathe, brushing her hair back. “My princess.”
“I love Ezra,” she murmurs. “And I’ll leave this all behind in a heartbeat to be with him.”
“You don’t have to do that,” her father says, sighing. “Not entirely.”
I glance over at him in puzzlement.
He stands once more. “I owe you a great debt, Ezra. It’s bad enough that my business partner stooped so low. If he’d actually been able to carry through on his threats…” He closes his eyes and shivers. “We’ll put Princeton on hold for now. You’re young, daughter. If you’re still happy in four years’ time and Ezra has followed through on his promise to provide for you, then we’ll celebrate. If not…” He eyeballs me carefully. “Your trust fund will be waiting.”
In other words, I have four years to prove myself.
Little does he know, I have enough motivation—and startup capital—to do it in half that time. And I will. There’s no mountain I wouldn’t climb for the girl standing beside me. She might have fallen in love with an ex-con, but I’m going to do her proud.
Starting now.
I heft my princess up into my arms and carry her from the office, whispering in her ear how much I love her, how I would die for her, that I’m going to marry her as soon as possible.
And I do.
EPILOGUE
Ophelia
Five Years Later
I climb into my Bentley and let out a long breath, leaning my head back against the leather headrest. A smile curves my mouth. The reasons for my happy exhaustion—my twin daughters—wave at me from the upstairs window of the house, Leeza standing behind them with her hands on her granddaughters’ shoulders. I signal my mother-in-law, who lives in the guest house half a mile away on our property, to let her know I’ll be back soon. Then I start the car, pulling around the twinkling stone fountain that sits in our driveway and starting the journey down the tree-lined path to the main road.
Memories reach out to me from all sides. The first time Ezra brought me here two years ago, carrying me over the threshold like a bride, even though we’d already been married three years by then. I can see him chasing our daughters through the orchard, pretending to be a monster, sunlight flickering around their shadows. In a few months, Christmas lights will hang from these trees, making our home look like a winter wonderland.
Life is beautiful.
I’m married to the most hard-working, loving, passionate man on earth and I’m headed to see him right now. My thighs tingle with anticipation as I make a turn onto the road that will take me to the manufacturing plant. The one Ezra built from the ground up and turned into a multi-million-dollar operation in just five years.
Really, he accomplished what he set out to do much sooner than that. In those early days when we moved to Michigan, Ezra found us a small one-bedroom apartment. It was filled with sunshine and it had a small fireplace. Most importantly, it had a bed. Ezra made love to me so many times in that tiny, happy apartment, I lost count. And nothing has changed since we moved to the fourteen-bedroom mansion on Lake Erie.
No, my husband is as starved for my body as ever. More so. His lunch break begins in eight minutes and he made it clear over the phone that I’m on the menu.
My nipples tighten to points inside my dress and I press down a little more on the accelerator, my breath quickening. He took me against the shower wall this morning. So hard that I screamed and drew blood on his back. But we’re insatiable. Most nights he’s barely in the door from work before he’s barking at his mother to take the twins outside to play.
I let out a long exhale and command myself to focus on the road. Crashing wouldn’t be ideal, would it?
The four-year deadline set by my father came and went without us even noticing. My trust fund? I don’t need it.
Ezra had been working on new ideas while in prison and he used them to shake up the automotive industry. His company uses different, sustainable materials to create sleeker parts at lower cost and his empire grew into a behemoth almost overnight. In other words, when we occasionally meet my father for dinner in Manhattan, Ezra picks up the check.
Still he doesn’t fit in with the elite world in which I was raised.
No, he’s self-made. He’s fierce. He’s better than all of them.
And he’s all mine.
I flex my fingers on the wheel and the diamond on my finger catches the light. Do I like having all the luxuries he’s given me? Sure, who wouldn’t? I rest easy at night knowing our children will never want for anything.
Would I give it all up and follow Ezra anywhere? Would I go back to living in a one-bedroom apartment in the city? In a heartbeat. I’ll live any life as long as he lives it with me.
I had the idea for my very own business inside the four walls of that first, little apartment. Ezra was so driven to succeed that I was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug myself. We had a nice nest egg to start off, thanks to Ezra’s colleagues’ debt of gratitude, but most of it went toward getting the car parts business off the ground. Still, when I told Ezra I wanted to start my own dark chocolate brand, he made sure to set aside the capital.
Years later, Ophelia’s Chocolate is beginning to expand. I have several orders to fulfill for major food retailers and interest grows daily. Ezra’s need to keep me safe and close to home led to him building an industrial kitchen and packaging room on our property, so I can leave my employees to their work and spend time with our children with ease.
I’m so grateful for every single moment of this life. It’s almost too perfect to be real.
Minutes later, I walk into my husband’s office and close the door without a sound, leaning back against it and just looking at him. His huge shoulders fill out the button-down dress shirt completely, testing the seams. His dark blond hair is pulled back in a small bun at the base of his neck and that beard—the one that leaves chafe marks on the insides of my thighs—is close cut and sprinkled with gray.
When Ezra spots me, he stops mid-sentence and hangs up the phone call he’s on, standing slowly behind his desk. Behind him, the wall of windows overlooks the acres of land on which his business sits. Workers rush between buildings and trucks, loading parts for delivery. But I only notice them out of my periphery, because I can’t take my eyes off Ezra. He rakes a hand over his open mouth and looks me over, the same way he looked at me when he’d just gotten out of prison. “That a new dress, little girl?” He reaches down and adjusts his manhood. “Come over here and let me take a closer look.”
I set down my purse and cross the room, sidling between my husband’s big body and the desk’s edge. He crowds me until I’m forced to slide my butt up onto the ledge—and honestly, I would be more than happy for him to rip my panties off, plow his
thick shaft into me and take me hard. But my husband seems intent on savoring me. His fingers undo the buttons of my new, cream-colored dress slowly, until he can push it aside and palm my bare breasts.
“How do you get more beautiful every time I see you?” Ezra breathes, dipping his head to suck my nipples, one by one. “It’s a mystery how I’ve managed to build this business when I sit here thinking of you every goddamn second of the day.”
“I think of you, too. Every second—” I murmur, but I’m cut off by his ravenous mouth.
He shoves the hem of my dress up to my waist, pulling me closer to the edge of the desk and I spread my legs open, how he likes. His rough hands mold my breasts and I whimper into his mouth, begging him without words to make love to me. When he merely sucks in oxygen and dives back into another kiss, I whine in my throat and unzip his pants, sliding my hand inside to stroke his cock.
“Ah, fuck, that’s so good,” he bites off, pumping his hips toward my touch. “I don’t feel like I’m alive without your hands on me. If I had my way, you’d be chained to this desk, you know that? Where I could sit you in my lap and keep you there all day. Where you belong.”
“Mmmm.” I tip my head back and let him suck a red mark onto my neck. “I think we can arrange that for your birthday this year.”
He lifts his head and I watch his pupils expand. “Yeah?”
I slide my hand out of his pants and play with my nipples, twisting my body side to side in a tease. “What else would I get the man who has everything?”
Ezra moans, his eyes fastened to my breasts. “God knows that’s true. I’ve got everything.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I got everything I need the second you chose me.” His lips jump at one end. “But I’m not turning down having you chained to my desk.”
“No. I don’t suggest you do.”