For Lucy

I didn’t.

Tatum nodded. “It’s been … a long time since it was just us. Lights on. No hurry. All night to do …”

I smirked. “Whatever we want?” I prowled toward her, loosening my tie.

Her gaze drifted to the floor. “I mean … we usually just slide to the middle of the bed in the dark and do it in less than ten minutes.”

“Well …” I dropped my tie on the floor and started to unbutton my shirt. “I have plans for us that will last longer than ten minutes.”

God … I hoped I would last longer than ten minutes.

She still made me deliriously crazy with need from just one look. I still felt like the thief who got away with the world’s greatest heist—in a bar.

I played it cool. That was my specialty. The manly man who didn’t get butterflies in his stomach.

But I did. For her … I always did.

“Plans, huh?” She peeked up at me through her thick, mascara-covered lashes.

I nearly died. Seriously … I had the most gorgeous wife. How I stole her … well, it was still a mystery.

“Like kissing you here…” leaning down, I lifted her hair and moved it off her shoulder before my lips found that sensitive spot just under her ear “…while I slowly undress you.” My hands moved to the zipper at the back of her dress, inching it down.

When it pooled at the bottom of her feet, I stood straight again to get a good look at her in nothing but a black thong and a sea of flawless skin covered in goose bumps.

“You’re shaking, Mrs. Riley.”

She returned another nervous laugh as her hands covered her bare breasts. “I told you … I’m nervous.”

“Me too.” I lowered to my knees, resting my hands on her hips as my lips ghosted along her abs to the edge of her panties.

“Why are you nervous?”

I grinned at her question, and my tongue teased her navel. “Because you’re out of my league. Always have been. Always will be.” My gaze lifted to hers.

She relaxed a bit, and it was us again—that crazy couple who met by unexpected fate, fucked about until she lost her job, traveled the country in an RV, had sex in public spaces, and got engaged via zip tie after an unplanned pregnancy.

Her hands slid off her breasts and landed on my head. As she laced her fingers through my hair. Her head did that puppy side tilt. “Emmett the Thief. Always stealing my heart. And every time it feels like the first.”

She swallowed hard as I slid down her panties. She was mine. She would always be mine. What could possibly change that?

Only the unimaginable.

Her grip on my hair tightened as I guided her to sit on the bed … to lean back … to relax her knees as I spread them wide.

The tiny hitch in her breath cut through the silent room when my lips pressed to her flesh. Our intimacy felt like the most unbreakable bond. Again, how could I have ever imagined the unimaginable?

My tongue moved. She moaned and her hips lifted from the bed. I felt like a king. A king who could never be dethroned. Not a mere mortal husband who wore work boots and Carhartt clothes to work every day. Not a dad who spent most evenings picking up toys and washing dirty dinner dishes. A king.

“Oh Goddd …” Her back arched so beautifully from the bed, and her knees collapsed against the side of my head. I could hear her heart beat and feel the pounding of her pulse. I’m certain it was as close as a man could get to Heaven on Earth.

We left the lights on … and she undressed me the rest of the way, her hair mussed from my fingers tangling it while kissing her. And although I wanted nothing more than to be inside of her for the rest of the night, she had other plans.

Really really excellent plans.

I sucked in a sharp breath as she straddled my legs and wrapped her mouth around me—the warm, wet pressure. A feeling like no other.

The married-man-with-kids part of me considered protesting, insisting she didn’t need to reciprocate like that. But the man in me—the one who had had maybe three blow jobs in nine years of marriage—he dug his teeth into his lower lip and let it happen for a few more seconds before pulling her up my body, before rolling us over, before sliding inside her.

I’d forgotten what it was like to watch the expression on Tatum’s face as we moved together. Quickies in the dark were more for the endgame and much more tactile than visual.

The drunken lust as her mouth fell open.

The tiny breaths being forced out each time I rocked into her.

Yeah … I still had it.