When Micah took me downstairs, I should have let him call me a cab like we planned.
Instead, I whispered, “I want to see your apartment.”
We both knew what I meant.
“Are you sure?” he whispered back, his eyes shadowed with desire.
I nodded.
I barely saw his apartment when he let me into it. We were too busy hurrying toward his bedroom. As soon as the door slammed shut behind us, we became frantic arms and hands trying to undress one another. It was like being stuck in a scorching desert with too many clothes, desperate to feel nothing but air on our bare skin.
Except we were desperate to feel nothing but each other’s skin against skin.
Laughing and stroking and kissing, we eventually ended up on Micah’s bed naked, his body braced above mine. When he slid a hand between my legs, my breath caught.
Micah was touching me.
It was like a beautiful dream.
I lifted my hips, widening my legs, inviting him as he slipped two fingers inside me. My need for him eased his way and Micah’s face was suddenly harsh with lust.
He kissed me, lowering his hips so I could feel his hot erection throbbing against me. Then his lips left my mouth to discover my body. He kissed every inch of me, sucking on my nipples until they were distended and tender, kissing between my legs, his tongue laving at my clit until I came. And then he started all over again.
“Micah, I can’t,” I moaned, my nails biting in his back. “I need you. I need you.”
“It should have been me,” he whispered, suddenly sounding pained.
He raised his head from my breasts and I saw regret mingling with his passion.
I stroked his face. “Micah?”
He leaned into my touch. “I should have been your first, Cupid.”
Yes, that would have been perfect. Instead of with Graham in the back of his parent’s Range Rover. But I wouldn’t go back. Not if it led to this moment. “What does any of it matter as long as you’re my last?”
My words, the promise in them, shattered whatever control Micah had. He leaned over the bed and opened the drawer of his bedside table to remove a foil. His eyes were dark with need as he ripped open the packet with his teeth. The taut desperation low, deep in my womb coiled tighter as I watched him roll the condom up his thick hardness.
Micah’s hands depressed the mattress on either side of my head, his chest lifting off my body. He nudged my knee with his and I opened my legs wider at his silent request.
I gazed into those beautiful gray eyes, letting him see everything I felt.
He stared back at me, his cheeks flushed, nothing but love and tenderness in his gaze. “This is a dream come true, Cupid.” Then he pushed into me and I grabbed onto his waist, holding tight at the pinch of pain. Micah was bigger than I’d expected.
I felt full. Overwhelmingly full and surrounded by him.
He withdrew a little and then pushed back in and the slight pain was eclipsed by pleasure.
“Yes,” I gasped, tilting my hips up to pull him deeper.
He let out an animalistic growl that made me unbelievably hot.
I cried out as he thrust, pushing deep, hitting that perfect place inside me, and gliding slowly out again. I arched my hips, trying to pull him back in.
“Cupid,” Micah grunted and I felt his thrusts pick up speed. Then suddenly his features hardened and he froze over me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What is it?” I breathed hard. “Don’t stop. God, don’t stop, Micah. Please.”
“I’m sorry.” He stared down at me, something like awe in his eyes, his muscles straining in his arms. “I’m just… I’ve fantasized about being inside you a million times and now that I am… fuck, I’m so turned on I’m gonna come too soon, like I’m a fucking kid again.”
He looked boyishly frustrated by this while I gloried in the feel of my feminine power. It made that low, savage, needful part of me pulse with want. “Come then.” I arched into him again. “Just come. I’m not planning to get out of this bed any time soon so we have all night to come as many times as we can.”
Micah groaned with need. Then his thumb was on my clit, the delicious pressure leading me toward climax. My hips lifted against his as I came around him and his suddenly jerked as he shuddered and throbbed through his own release.
I wrapped my arms and legs around him, loving the heavy weight of him.
Not long later, I reluctantly released him so he could go take care of the condom. When he returned, he stood over my body, his hot gaze taking in every inch of me. I’d never been that confident about my body. I was soft around the tummy and thighs. While I had a small waist, I wasn’t trim. Curvy hips, lots of tits and ass.
I’d held sheets to hide myself anytime I was in bed with a guy… but something about Micah’s expression made me feel like the sexiest woman on the planet. I sank into his mattress, bit my lip to stop the moan that wanted to escape from his mere perusal, and I widened my legs in invitation.
Suddenly he was on me again, his enthusiasm making me laugh.
My laughter turned to giggles, then to gasps, followed by sighs and moans.
Then screams of pleasure as he took his time wringing bliss out of my body.
And when were finally semi-sated by the wee hours of the morning, Micah curled me in his arms and whispered, “I love you, Valentine. Always have. Always will.”
For the first time since I was a kid, I felt safe.
I let myself trust him, trust that his love was unconditional. “I love you, too, Micah Green.”
Epilogue
MICAH
AGE 28
* * *
Valentine Fairchild walked toward me in a white dress. Mindy designed it for her.
It was just Valentine’s style.
She was an absolute angel to behold.
But she could have been wearing nothing but a plastic trash bag and I wouldn’t have cared as long as she was walking down that candle lit aisle toward me.
My mom sat in the first pew on my side of the church, watching Val make her way to me with a bouquet of peonies clasped in her hands. Mom dabbed at her eyes, her joy for us genuine. Her boyfriend, a widower called Rick, who actually seemed like a decent guy, sat at her side as her date.
Wells stood at my side as my best man. Cherry sat next to Rick, a big smile on her face. She and Val got along great. But I knew they would.
And on Val’s side was Mindy in her Maid of Honor dress. Her boy Xander in the second pew from the front on the bride’s side.
In the front pew sat Caroline, Jim, and Val’s grandparents.
The relationship between the Fairchilds and their daughter might never be easy, but I was trying to help repair old wounds and it meant something that they were here and that they were happy for us.
I felt them all. Cheering us on. But I only had eyes for her.
This nervous energy had been rushing through me for days. Probably months.
Valentine had talked me into waiting almost a year before we married.
A fucking year.
It was like a lifetime.
Now it was finally here.
And that nervous energy inside me finally relaxed as I held my wife’s hands and the reverend announced, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
I gazed into the warm, kind, beautiful dark eyes of Valentine Fairchild Green and whispered, “You happy, Cupid?”