My stepfather chooses that moment to answer the door. “Mase?” He rears back when he sees me, my fingers threaded through those of his brother. “Uh. Ripley?”
A muscle flexes in Mase’s jaw, but he looks my stepfather right in the eye, unflinchingly, and a silent communication passes between them. “Can we come in?”
“Oh, Jesus.” My stepfather steps back, raking a hand through his hair. “Her mother is going to kill me. She saw the way you looked at Ripley. Warned me not to let you around her.”
“Yeah? She was probably right,” Mase drawls, tugging me inside, past my gaping stepfather. “It’s too late for that now, though.”
My mother breezes out of the kitchen with a glass of white wine in her hand. “Honey, who is it?” She grinds to a halt. “Ripley?” Her throat bobs. “Mase?”
“Mom, can we sit down?” I say, trying to sound soothing.
She spies Mase’s hand holding mine tightly and knocks back her entire glass of wine. “I think I’ll stand.”
Mase and I trade a wry look. His eyes tell me he’s worried about this confrontation and how it will affect my relationship with my parents. I’ve reassured him a million times that I’m all in. That I’m with him no matter what happens. No regrets. I smile at him now to remind him of those promises I made, mostly while he was inside me.
“Mom, Dad. Mase and I went to the courthouse today and got married.” I step into his side and lift my face for a kiss, which he delivers slowly, his eyes turbulent with love. “It’s always been him. It’ll always be him.”
“It’s always been her,” Mase repeats gruffly. “It’ll be her until the day I die.”
Though it’s hard, I tear my eyes off of my husband and split a look between my mother and stepfather. “I hope you can be okay with this in time. I know it’s probably a shock.”
Mase presses his lips to my forehead and slowly smooths a hand down the front of my belly, though there’s no bump to speak of just yet. “I’m going to take very good care of them.”
My mom squeaks, dropping down onto an ottoman sideways. “I’m going to need more wine.”
I giggle and my husband smiles at the sound. How many times did I stand in this room with him, marveling over his masculine features, the power he radiates, wishing he was mine? Now he is. And I don’t think I can wait until later to show him how much. To make up for all those times I pined for him in this very house, my heart lodged in my throat.
“I forgot a few things in my room. That I, um…need. For college.” I pull Mase toward the stairs and he prowls after me, shaking his head, because he knows exactly what I’m up to. Not that he could ever deny me. Not anymore. Now that we’ve experienced the magic we make together, we wield it every chance we get.
Disguising myself in the brothel is one plan that definitely paid off for this troublemaker.
Mase is already unzipping his pants when we walk into my room, sitting down on the edge of the bed and stretching his long legs in front of him. I drag my panties down my legs slowly, twirling them from a finger before casting them aside. “I think we scandalized them.”
“Do you?” Mase pumps his freed shaft in his right hand, his eyes in that predatory swirl they turn into when we’re about to make love. His chest expands on shallow breaths, rampant hunger etched into his expression. “It sounded like they saw it coming. I guess I didn’t hide my feelings as well as I thought.” His gaze burns into mine. “Maybe it’s not possible to hide obsession.”
“Thank God,” I whisper, sliding down on his shaft and beginning to rock while he growls against my lips, my childhood bed groaning beneath us, loud enough to be heard in every part of the house. “I dreamed of this day while lying in this bed. The day you’d be my husband.”
I’m flipped over onto my back and as Mase pumps, the headboard rams into the wall in quicker and quicker successions. “Thank God it’s not a dream, Ripley. Thank God you’re mine.”
Mase
Five Years Later
The socket wrench sits forgotten in my hand as I watch my wife work the pottery wheel across the studio, sunlight spilling in through the skylight and casting her in a glow. She’s humming to herself, lost in her own world, unaware that my heart is going four hundred miles an hour. Oh, Ripley knows how deep my infatuation with her runs, but she thinks I can compartmentalize it or that maybe my obsession with her has lost its sharpest edges since I made her my wife. But she’s wrong.