Making It Last (Camelot 4)

She hooked her leg a little higher and kissed his neck. Her damp hair brushed his chin and caught in his stubble.

He was getting hard, which might be affecting his mental calculus, but none of it sounded impossible. None of it felt impossible, either. Back before he built this place, he and Amber and Clark and Ant had all crowded together in that little bungalow on Sunnybrook, and they’d been happy there.

He hadn’t always worked eighty-hour weeks. He didn’t always have to.

Amber got her hand up inside his shirtsleeve and stroked his biceps. She was starting to rock against him. She got squirmy when she was turned on.

Squirmy and distracted.

“What next, bunny?”

“Then TV and more homework and some chaos, because the boys are good at chaos. Then they go to bed. Then we go to bed.”

“Do you get lucky?”

“No.” She whispered it against his neck. “I don’t get lucky.”

He found the tie at the front of her pajama pants and pulled it open. “You sure? It would be a nice way to end your day.”

“I don’t get lucky,” she said, “because I’m already lucky, see? I’m lucky all day long.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth, and he ran his hand over the softest skin of her stomach. Back and forth. He kissed her carefully, wanting to feel the way she moved her mouth against his, to appreciate everything known and unknown about her.

Amber. This familiar stranger who’d put on his ring and worn it every day for more than ten years.

He rolled her over and gazed down at her. As beautiful as ever, with those big eyes and the smile that had always been able to bring him light when he most needed it.

“I’d do it all over again, you know,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Meet you. Marry you. Clark and Ant and Jake. Even the hard parts. All of it. I’d do all of it over again, if you would do it with me.”

“Let’s not do the hard parts over. There were some really hard parts. Like this part, now. Just because we can see where we want to go, that doesn’t mean it’s going to magically be easy.”

“I know. I’m just saying.”

She kissed him. “What are you saying?”

“That you’re the one I want, Amber. Still. Even now. Especially now. And we’re going to make all of this happen.”

“We are.”

“We are. And in a year, when you’re running marathons and I’m working fifty-hour weeks, thinking about whether I can add on to that tiny little house we’re gonna be renting from your brother—”

“—which is bigger than the house where you grew up—”

“—and the apartment where you grew up, too, I know. What I’m saying is that a year from now, and ten years from now, and forty years from now, you’re still going to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed the tip of his nose. “I would say the same for you.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

She was smiling up at him, and he was grinning down at her, stupidly content. Almost jealous of his future self, for being allowed that little house and those awesome kids and this woman.

The lucky bastard.