Chapter 18
Eighteen
I’m so tired, the bags under my eyes are bigger than my boobs.
—Nettie to Eddy
Nettie
“Come here, wife.”
His words sent shivers down the length of my spine.
I dropped my phone onto the table with a clatter and went to him.
“Yes, sir.”
His lips peeled back in a feral grin, then he was reaching for me, placing his hands around my waist and tugging me the rest of the way to him.
When I was close enough—which was practically merging his skin with mine—he fisted the panties that I was still wearing and…
“Those were my wedding panties, Boone!”
“They’re my wedding panties,” he pointed out. “You wore them for me. So they’re mine to do with as I please.”
He had a point.
But…
“They were sixty-two dollars.”
The fabric fell free of my waist and pooled at my feet.
I stepped out of them just as he lifted me like I weighed nothing and turned around, placing my back against the cold wooden door.
He held me effortlessly, as he always did, and pressed himself against my now spread thighs.
“I’m going to get the front of your jeans wet,” I pointed out, my fingers playing through the beard covering his jaw.
He’d cleaned it up last night in preparation for our wedding today.
I wasn’t sure that I liked it.
I was used to the mountain man look.
This one…
“Badge of pride,” he teased. “Kiss me, wife.”
So I kissed him.
I kissed him with everything I had, my fingers curling into his beard and holding him to me tight.
He chuckled when he went to pull away and I wouldn’t let him, those little lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes.
“Gotta breathe, baby.” He licked my lips.
I reluctantly let him pull away but kept my fingers just where I liked them.
“I like it longer,” I mused as I sifted them through the curly hairs at either side of his jaw.
“It’ll grow back,” he pointed out. “And be just as unkempt as ever in a few days.”
“Do you remember when you couldn’t even grow a mustache?”
“Got the first hair on my jaw the same time you started growing hair on your puss…”
I threw my head back and laughed. “It was no wonder we got pregnant as young as we did.”
“Life would’ve been different,” he said as he reached between us and pulled his cock out of his jeans. “I’m glad that I finally get to call you mine.”
I lifted up so he could place his cock at my entrance. “You could’ve called me yours from the moment we first met.”
He growled and pushed up, filling me with his cock.
I was so wet that it was an easy slide.
“Jesus,” he said. “You’re wet.”
“Getting married to you was a turn-on.” I looped my arms around his neck, once again bringing our mouths close. “Plus, you were wearing that cowboy hat all night. It does things to me.”
Speaking of cowboy hat, it was on the floor behind him, knocked backward in our flurry of kisses earlier.
He winked and pulled away, giving me a show of strength when he bent down to one knee, picked up the hat, and replaced it onto the top of his head.
I moaned. “Boone.”
He stood up and walked backward to the single couch in the room and sat down in it.
When my knees had purchase, I started to undulate on him, making it extra bouncy so my tits gave him an added show.
“Fuck,” he groaned as he leaned his head back.
When his hat started to go, I pulled it off his head and lifted it to mine.
The picture under the brim of the hat caught my eye.
It was us, six years ago, at one of my soccer games.
At the time, I’d thought that he’d come with my sister. Now, I knew that he’d come alone and had found my sister there and sat with her. He’d intended to leave before he was seen, but Eddy wouldn’t let him.
Eddy had taken the photo of the two of us, and I’d been so deliriously happy to see him there that I’d smiled so wide my face hurt.
I placed the hat on my head and caught his gaze.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Wish I could have a picture of this moment to tuck underneath the brim, too.”
A thought occurred to me.
One that included boudoir shots of this hat and nothing else, maybe my big baby belly poking out from between my hair.
That hat covering any vital pieces.
He thrust upward and the hat covered my eyes.
He chuckled and kept the movement, and I reached up and caught the hat with one hand while fake lifting my other hand high. “I think I can last more than eight seconds.”
He groaned. “I can’t.”
He was wrong.
He lasted a full two minutes.
And he only lasted that long because he always wanted to drag at least two orgasms out of me.
Long minutes later, I rested my head against his chest, listening to the furious pace of his heart.
His large hand traveled up and down the length of my back, his calluses scraping against the sensitive skin.
“We should probably go back out there.”
He sighed. “I guess.”
I had made a mess of the front of his jeans.
He didn’t care. He only zipped his pants up after cleaning himself up and helped me into my leggings and sweatshirt.
We’d just made it outside again, him following directly behind me, when there was a loud pop.
Plaster dust sprayed next to our bodies, and before I could make sense of what had just happened, I was thrown onto the ground and covered with a muscular body.
Screams and yells, a commotion somewhere past the door, and then, “You can get up now. She’s detained.”
She?
Boone got me to my feet, but kept his body between mine and the door.
My brother-in-law had been the one to tell us we could get up, and he was standing next to us like a silent sentry.
Eddy was behind him as well, partially covered by a pillar as she looked beyond to where Black and Gentry had…
“Oh, shit,” I said as soon as I saw Felicia spitting mad.
Denver was standing just beyond them holding a silver gun with a silencer on it. His eyes were flaming mad, and he looked like he was ready to strangle Felicia with his bare hand.
The man I now called husband was vibrating with anger, too. I could feel the muscles in his back bunching and relaxing.
“What the fuck happened?” Boone snarled.
“I…” Felicia started.
“She waited for you by the entrance. She said she wanted to talk to you. Congratulate you. But the moment you came out of that room, she pulled a gun from beneath her coat, raised it, and aimed it at you,” Denver said. “Was too far away to react.”
Felicia shifted.
“Did you check her for other guns?” Creed asked, eyes narrowed.
“We did,” Black said. “You’re under arrest for attempted murder.”
Felicia started to shake. “I had to. I had to. I had to.”
“You had to what?” Black scoffed. “You didn’t have to do shit. You chose to.”
“She made me!”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“Who made you?”
“My kidnapper.”
Everyone froze.
“Your kidnapper?”
“Gail.” Felicia sniffled. “She stole me from my mother when I was an infant. I finally found my mother five years ago, and Gail has spent the last five years blackmailing the both of us to get us to stay in line.”
“What the hell?” Eddy whispered.
“I swear. I have proof!” Felicia promised.
“Text messages. Hundreds of them. She made me do it. I’m sorry, Boone.
I’m sorry. But she forced me to. It’s either I kill Nettie, or she kills my mom!
She’s already taken everything from her!
Her livelihood. Her child. Her future. I didn’t know what else to do! ”
This was the first time I’d ever seen Felicia actually passionate about someone other than herself.
It was weird…and convincing.
“You could’ve tried coming to us, Felicia.”
“Not Felicia,” Felicia whispered. “Karen.”
Oh, what the fuck.
I didn’t think that a name could get any worse and fit any better, but then she’d said “Karen.”
“Who the fuck is Karen?”
“Me,” Felicia answered. “That was what my mother named me before Gail stole me.”
Sawyer scrubbed at his face. “You could’ve gone about this a completely different way.”
“You were in on it, if you were about to tell me that I needed to come to you.”
“I wasn’t in on anything,” Sawyer snarled. “I’ve done nothing but support you for your entire life. Yet you’ve treated us all like garbage. I just thought you were just like her. I didn’t know that you weren’t mine until about a year ago.”
Felicia looked gob smacked.
“You’re lying.”
“Time for a talk.” Sawyer looked at Black. “Can I follow you to the station?”
“I’m going to the station?” Felicia looked sick.
“Are you going to the station?” Boone asked, clearly losing it.
Felicia nodded. “I told you why I did it!”
“That’s my wife!” my husband roared.
Husband.
I’d been thinking that word all night, and even saying it a few times, but it hadn’t gotten old yet.
It was the best word in the world, in my opinion. Especially tied to the man that held my heart.
Felicia flinched at Boone’s roared words.
On the outside, Boone always appeared quiet and carefree. Approachable and kind.
But on the inside, there was this raging beast of a man that got mad when you messed with the things that he loved.
And Felicia had just tried to kill the thing he loved most in this world.
“I…I…” Felicia looked terrified.
As she should be.
“You tried to kill my wife, Felicia.”
“Karen…”
“Not right now,” I heard Gentry say. “Come on. You’re going to the station. Y’all can sort it out there.”
Boone didn’t move out from in front of me until Felicia was escorted out in handcuffs.
Denver, Sawyer, Margery, and a few others went with them.
Boone turned to me and surveyed me, taking in every single thing there was to take in of me before he said, “Are you okay?”
I picked a piece of plaster dust out of his hair before saying, “I’m fine. I promise.”
The baby kicked right then, and I reached out and took his hand, placing it on my belly.
His eyes closed, and the sheen of gray lifted slightly from his face.
“What’s all over the front of your pants, man?” Hux called out.
The way his eyes were sparkling, though, I knew that he knew exactly what it was.
“My wife.”
Again with those damn full-body shivers.