Chapter 14
Fourteen
There’s nothing I can’t do. Except reach the top shelf. I can’t do that.
—Nettie to Eddy
Nettie
Shock.
He was staring at me in shock.
I pressed my pointer finger to the middle of his forehead and poked him.
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
“On that note,” Denver drawled. “I’m going to go outside and check on my horses. Let me know when the wedding is.”
Denver hung up.
I placed the phone on the couch cushion and stared at the man in shock underneath me.
“And you were right,” I said. “Her last wish is to see us happy.”
“Are you marrying me because she wants you to?” he wondered.
Kind of.
“No,” I lied. “I’m marrying you because I’ve wanted to be yours since I was sixteen.”
He inhaled swiftly.
“I’m sorry for leaving you.”
He reared back like I socked him in the jaw.
“What?” he croaked. “You didn’t leave me.”
That was a lie and we both knew it.
“I ran out of here like my tail was on fire,” I disagreed. “I was scared and hurt. I didn’t know how to handle your mother. And I didn’t know how to get better knowing that she would be that close. It was either giving you up, or making myself miserable, and I chose to give you up. I’m sorry.”
He caught my face and very seriously said, “You don’t apologize for keeping yourself safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Antoinette. You happy. I don’t care about anything else in this life but that.”
I leaned forward and buried my face into his neck, inhaling his scent.
“I’m stronger now,” I pointed out. “Plus, your grandmother called me a dumbass. I’m not a dumbass, Bart.”
He squeezed me in closer, our torsos smooshed together, as he said, “If you were a dumbass, I was an even bigger dumbass. But we were kids, Net. Those were some adult issues that our brains didn’t have the capacity to navigate yet. We’ll do better.”
“We better.” I snickered as I spoke against his neck, my lips moving against the racing pulse I could feel and see. “We have little Margery Junior on the way, and she’s bound to be tougher than the original.”
Speaking of our little MJ, she chose that moment to start kicking up a storm.
Boone stilled, his body all but melting, and he felt our baby kicking his abdomen.
“This feels unreal,” he admitted. “Every time she kicks now, I feel like a little piece of my heart just flies away, never to be returned again.”
I leaned back and yanked off my shirt.
His eyes went to my breasts, barely being held down with the bra that had once fit like a glove.
Now, the girls spilled over the fabric and you could almost see my nipples over the top of the cups.
He blinked, his mind rerouting to other things.
I smiled and reached for his hand, placing it on my stomach.
I didn’t have a belly yet.
I still looked thick around the middle and that was about it.
“Look,” I pressed.
He did look, his eyes on his hand.
We waited for the kicking to start again.
And it did, but not against his hand. In the small space that was just to the right of his hand.
The tiniest of outward bumps could be seen.
It was so stinkin’ cute.
“Whoa,” he whispered, his eyes enraptured.
Tears filled my eyes, as they were wont to do lately thanks to the hormones that were running rampant through me.
God, I was so stupidly in love with this man.
With his face and his smell. With his too-big heart and never-giving-up attitude.
This man was the entire package.
I threw myself at him, covering his lips with mine.
The hand between us moved automatically to catch me, and when my tongue licked at his, that hand tightened around my hip.
My hands went to his face, and I held it in place, fingers sinking into his beard, as I gave it all I had.
All that I had still wasn’t anywhere close to the power that Boone held, and when he deepened the kiss, I all but lost control of my limbs.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he rasped.
“Such a poet,” I teased as I pulled away, pulling at the bra.
He tried to still my hands, but when the clasp at the middle wouldn’t be defeated, I decided to yank it over my head.
Something snapped, probably the plastic clasp, but I didn’t care enough to find out.
His hands came up and cupped my breasts. “My god.”
“They’re big,” I agreed. “And sensit…”
His lips went in for the kill, sucking my sensitive nipples between them and lapping at them with his tongue.
“Oh, God,” I breathed.
“Not God.” He smiled against my nipple. “Just Boone.”
I caught the pillow next to his hip and whacked him with it.
It knocked him off my nipple with a laugh, and then he was switching our positions, coming on top of me with a practiced ease of years doing just that.
This was, however, one of the first times lately that one or the other of us wasn’t plied with alcohol. That was usually when our worst intentions came out to play.
But anything with Boone could never be a bad thing.
That was why I always came back to him.
Subconsciously, I knew that he would always protect me, even in my most vulnerable state.
His mouth moved down my throat. Down my collarbone. Lower, lower, lower until he was right at my shorts line.
He swirled his tongue around my belly button, then reached for my shorts.
The shorts and underwear were gone within a breath, and then he was licking the seam of my sex.
I loved him.
I loved his tongue.
I loved the way he ate me.
I loved…
“Boone,” I cried out when his face buried itself in my pussy. “God!”
He usually started out slow and steady, teasing and curious.
But this time, he went in for the kill.
His mouth went to work, and before I knew what was happening, he was pumping those fingers into my channel and working that mouth against my clit.
I cried out in surprise and elation, practically on the verge of coming already.
Then he just stopped.
“No!” I shrieked. “Don’t you dare stop eating my pussy!”
“Someone’s here.”
“Fuck them.” I pulled his head back into me. “Please, Boone. Please.”
He laughed.
“The door is locked,” I pointed out.
He went back to work, thank the lord.
Footsteps on the porch had him hesitating again.
But seeing as they weren’t loud and resounding, I knew who it had to be.
Only one other person would come here this late in the day and think she had the right.
“It’s your mother,” I wheezed.
He curled his fingers, and I exploded.
I cried out in surprise, shocked and shaking as my orgasm ripped through me.
Holy hell, I was about to die.
I’d never in my life felt something so explosive.
Boone must’ve thought the same because before I was even down from the orgasm of a lifetime, he was rolling me onto my knees and sinking inside of me.
“Oh,” I cried as he sank deep. “Yes. Please, Boone. Please.”
He fucked me slow and steady. Not hard. Not soft.
Just the way he knew I liked it.
My vagina pulsed around him and his perfect thrusts went jagged.
“Boone, I’m going to come again.”
Pounding at the door.
“Bartholomew Windsor, open this door!”
“Bartholomew Windsor,” I mocked. “Fuck your woman harder.”
His hands on my hips tightened, and he fucked me harder.
He did not, however, open the door.
He growled when I began to tighten around him. “There you are.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and screamed into the pillow.
My orgasm swept through me again, and I was lost.
So. Damn. Lost.
In his scent.
In his touch.
In his protectiveness.
He growled and jerked, and I felt the hot splash of his come filling me full.
He stilled, pressing deep, and I twisted my head to the side to draw a breath.
And saw his mother’s glaring eyes.
I turned away, not willing to lose the moment.
“Sweet Mary.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my shoulder blade. “What have you done to me?”
“What have I done?” I giggled. “What the hell was that? No buildup? Straight to suffocation by pussy?”
“I was hungry.” He chuckled as he picked me up like I weighed nothing—I fucking loved it when he did manly things—and carried me into his bedroom.
Never once losing our connection, might I add.
He didn’t pull out of me until we were in the shower with the hot water streaming across the both of us.
“Fuck, baby,” he said. “What the hell did you do to me today?”
I turned and let the water soak my hair. “You mean the scaring the shit out of you while we watched Ida Bell? Or when I said that I was going to marry you?” I paused. “Should I get down on one knee since it’s me asking this time?”
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “we never got unengaged from the last time.”
He had a point.
On the night that I told him I was pregnant, I’d agreed to marry him.
I’d worn that fifty-dollar Walmart ring ever since.
The only time that I didn’t have it on was when I played a game, and then I tied it in my shorts.
“I lost the ring once when I was playing a game,” I said. “I spent six hours trying to find it with a metal detector.”
He blinked as he caught my hand and stared at the ring.
“We need to get you a new one.”
I was already shaking my head. “Nope. This one is perfect.”
He scowled. “It’s cheap.”
“It’s mine,” I said fiercely.
He sighed. “You’re stubborn.”
“If you say so.”
“I know so.”
The pounding came next from the bathroom window.
Luckily it was frosted, or she’d see more of her son’s bare ass.
“She watched us through the window,” I said as I reached for the soap.
“I know.” He shrugged as he caught the shampoo and started lathering it into his hair.
My shampoo.
God, I loved him.
He always had it in stock.
And when I told him that I changed shampoos once a few years ago, the next time I came to visit he had the new stuff waiting.
What did I do to deserve this man?
The pounding on the window sounded again.
“Call the police,” I said. “Maybe that’ll jump-start her arrest.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe I should make her hit me.”
My grin lit up. “I know how to rile her up…”