Chapter 39
ALL THE CRAZY, MADDENING, CLIFF JUMPING, FUR LOVING PARTS OF YOU
LILAH
I’m drowning my emotions in bubbly when I feel Briggs’ hot breath on the side of my temple, his arms coming around my middle to pull me into the sturdy wall of his chest.
My whole world feels as though it’s spinning wildly out of control, but here he is sturdy as ever.
“You look tired.” How can a voice be soft and rough at the same time? And why do I love it so much?
“I am.”
“Mom can see everyone out,” he tells me.
I shake my head. “That is inappropriate. I’m fine.”
Briggs presses a quick kiss to my neck before he releases me to move to the stage.
He takes the mic, and my jaw falls open in horror as he says, “It’s been great having you all.
I want to say a big thank you to those of you who came out to celebrate with us.
To those of you who need a ride, I’ve arranged drivers to take you where you need to go.
To those of you who’ve pulled your campers to spend the night, I’m glad you’ve decided to stay.
” His eyes come to me as he finishes, “My beautiful fiancée is exhausted, as you can imagine.” He winks and I turn bright red as the remaining crowd chuckles.
“I can’t get her to bed with me until you all decide to retire for the night, so I’m going to ask that you do that so I can finally get my woman alone. ”
“Oh, my gawd.” I drop my head into my hand. There’s not enough bubbly to drown the humiliation I feel right now. “I’m going to kill him,” I hiss as Dakota comes to stand beside me with Madelyn at his side.
“Told you the guy loves you.”
“He just threw me under the bus!”
“I think it’s sweet.” Madelyn lets her brows jump. “He wants to be alone with you.”
Nash moves in close, and I don’t miss the way his eyes land on Madelyn. They’ve been doing that all night long. She’s been pretending that he doesn’t exist all night long.
“Leave it to Briggs to say what needs to be said.” He winks at me. “But Dakota’s right. He loves you. I knew that when he let you bring the second cat home.”
“It’s a cute cat,” I defend.
“At this rate, his house will soon be a zoo.”
I shrug. “I like zoos.”
Briggs rejoins us after making his way through the crowd, accepting final congratulations on the engagement and goodbyes. Even Jim Santiago made an appearance tonight. It was a short appearance, but it was still an appearance.
I force a smile I’m sure looks like a grimace. “I can’t believe you just kicked everyone out.”
“It’s almost one in the morning anyway.” Briggs pulls me into his side. “I’m too old for this, and so is poor Mrs. Opal. May had absolutely no intention of leaving until the party was done. Now it’s done.”
“May needs gossip for tomorrow’s visit to The Tasty Rise,” Madelyn jokes, though we all know it’s true.
I yawn and Briggs says again, “Thank you all for coming.”
Nash chuckles as he claps a hand on Briggs’ shoulder. “Yeah, we know. Get the fuck out.”
Briggs grins. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
I gasp. “Briggs!”
Madelyn laughs as she leans in for a quick hug. The squeeze she gives me tells me to watch my heart, as though my bludgeoned heart needs another reason to sink into the pit of despair and bubbly it’s found itself in the deep of my belly.
I retired to the room I’ve been sharing with Briggs. He promised to see everyone out and lock up the house, but I’m beyond exhausted and apparently it showed. I should be in bed and asleep, but as soon as I stepped in the shower, I broke down in tears that just would not stop.
My heart hurts.
All of me hurts.
Eventually, I’m going to walk away from Briggs like we agreed. Eventually, it’ll just be me and my brood of fur balls living in a little woodland cottage. I’ll be all alone with the cracked shell in my chest where my heart once lay intact and full.
How I thought I could do this, I’ll never know.
The door cracks open as I’m about to slip between the sheets. Both kittens and Senior are already snuggled up in sleep, the kittens together on the foot of the bed and Senior next to his pup bed on the floor.
His eyes heat as they always do when they land on me. The man is impossibly insatiable, but he says, “I thought you would be asleep.”
“I took a long shower. Then I blow dried my hair.” Again, I don’t know where I found the energy. “Everyone is gone?”
Briggs dips his chin, fingers moving to the buttons of his shirt. “And the house is locked up.”
My aching heart does a quick little flip as his shirt parts to expose the muscles of his chest. His hands, big and veined, shift to his belt. The clink of the buckle is all it takes to warm my body.
It’s insane, my response to him. I never thought my body could be so tuned in to another person that the sound of a belt buckle loosening would send my body into a state of need.
I hate it and I love it.
God, help me.
I settle on my back in the bed, pulling the blankets up high. I’m not sure I can handle being fucked by him tonight. I feel so tender already. So fragile.
I hear him kick off his jeans, then he moves. But he doesn’t move to the bathroom like I expect. He moves to his side of the bed, sliding in beside me. The room is dark, but I don’t need to see him to know his eyes are on me.
“What’s this?” He fingers my nighty. I haven’t been wearing one lately. What’s the point when he just takes it off?
“I thought you’d be out longer.”
“Mmm,” he rumbles, his fingertips drifting over the smooth skin of my belly. A tickle pulses through me and my breath hitches as my belly quivers.
Now that I’ve adjusted to the darkness, I see him smile. “Briggs—” I catch his wrist but release it as he moves his hand up the length of my body. A new flood of warmth surges inside me, and I decide what the hell.
Why not fuck him again? My body obviously craves his. And after everything tonight, I could use the release.
No, I need the release.
“Kiss me,” I beg, and his lips move to mine. Over mine. His tongue sliding against mine.
He kisses me soft and slow, breaking away only as his hands push my nighty up and over my head. My panties go next, and then his body is moving over mine, his mouth working mine until I’m a quivering and needy mess beneath him.
I ache for him inside me, so wet as he strokes me with his hard, hot length.
“Please,” I murmur against his mouth. “I need—I need…”
“Tell me what you need.” His hands roam my body, stoking the flame that just keeps burning hotter for him every day. Every time he has me.
“You.” The sound of his rumbled pleasure, like a dark growl, has yearning spilling in the innermost depths of me. I speak against the pulse that flutters quick under his skin, “I need you.”
“You have me.” His lips drift over mine. He kisses me soft and slow and soul deep.
I spread my legs wider, inviting him inside without words. His hands move from my waist to cradle my face. Finally, he invades. But the invasion is agonizingly slow, not because it doesn’t feel good—but because it feels like a sharp claw closing around the already tender organ that is my heart.
I need him to move faster.
I try to shift my hips, to urge his thrusts deeper, harder, faster.
One hand moves from my face to cradle the back of my head. With his arms around me like this I feel small and safe and…cherished.
He pulls back to thrust slow. I feel every inch of him invade me.
My breaths quicken. I think I’m panicking.
I need him to move faster.
This doesn’t feel like fucking. It doesn’t feel like sex.
This feels like he’s making love to me.
“Briggs…” I plant my hands into his chest, needing space. Needing—I need to remind myself that this isn’t real. I can’t do that with him like this, slow and steady and so fucking… “I can’t—”
He freezes above me, rooted inside me. “Lilah?”
The sound of my name on his lips like that hurts. It’s filled with emotion I have no claim to. Not really. This isn’t real.
I slam my eyes closed against the tears that hover.
“I—” I try to swallow the bubbling emotion that threatens to boil over and fail as a sharp, strangled sob bursts from between my lips. It’s the dam that loosens the floodgate, literally. The first tear falls, and a torrent follows.
“Lilah?” There’s fear in his voice now. “Have I hurt you? Talk to me?”
His worry only makes my tears come faster and harder. I don’t want him to think he’s hurt me. I’m the one who has hurt me. I’m the one who let my heart get involved in a game I knew it didn’t have a hope of winning.
I’m the fool here.
“This isn’t what we do. Slow and soft like this—it’s not—” sob, “what we do.”
“Lilah?”
“We fuck Briggs and this—this feels like love. It feels like everything I’ve began to feel for you even though I know I shouldn’t.
I’ve been trying not to…” Gosh, the tears just won’t stop.
“I don’t know how it happened, but it happened.
I’ve fallen in love with you.” I wail the words into his chest. “I love you. I’m so sorry… ”
“Lilah.” Briggs catches my face between his hands. His body shifts over mine, and I can feel him still hot and hard inside me. Burrowed deep. He forces my eyes to his both with his hands and his command. “Look at me.”
I can’t stop the flow of tears or the tremble that has taken over my body. Even my teeth are clattering now with the force of the tremors. There’s too much emotion inside my body, wreaking havoc. I can’t contain it.
“I never intended to let you leave when our deal was up. I knew from the first time that I kissed you, that I wasn’t ever going to let you go.
That you were mine. That you were meant for me.
But deep down, I think I knew when I watched you jump from that cliff and my heart leapt out of my chest after you, that you were mine.
” He presses a kiss to my forehead, my tear-soaked temple, my cheek and nose and lips. “And I am yours.”
He kisses me through the emotion that leaks from my body in the form of tears and sobs. Happy and confused sobs. Hopeful and heartrending sobs.
“I love you, Lilah.” He begins to move inside me, gentle and slow. His kisses are whispered promises against my lips, my jaw, down my throat. “I’m in love with all the parts of you. All the crazy, maddening, cliff-jumping, fur-loving parts of you.”
I laugh through my sob. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much emotion in my life.
I feel as though I could burst.
Briggs kisses a trail back up my throat, my jaw, to my lips. Then his lips drift to the shell of my ear and he rumbles, “Tell me again, Lilah.”
“I love you, Briggs.”
The rumble of male pleasure as he pulls out and sinks back inside me in time with my words is everything.
He never picks up his pace as he loves me softly and thoroughly.
And when we shatter, it’s a full body shattering of his pieces and mine.
We float down from the ether of our high, the pieces of us blending together in the chaos of a love we never expected, but one that is true and real and raw all the same.
When we finish, he pulls out to tuck me into the warmth of his chest within the safe circle of his arms. He tells me he loves me again and again through kisses to my hair as I fall into a dreamless sleep, finally content, in the arms of the man I’ll marry for real.