Chapter 44
I try to open my eyes but I can’t. Something’s covering them.
I reach to remove the silk eye mask Dallas must have put on me to help me sleep. And it worked. I slept so deeply. There’s still some soreness but my headache is mostly gone.
It’s very dark. He must have lowered the blackout shades, but I don’t have to wonder where I am. I can feel him, warm and wrapped around me like a big bear.
He feels my movement and nuzzles into my neck, kissing me, licking my skin, pretending to bite me. “Yum. I’ve got a knocked up New Orleans goddess in my bed. Thank you, universe.”
It’s the knocked up that fully wakes me.
It’s really true.
Dallas brought me home after the doctor’s visit and tucked me straight into bed because I could hardly keep my eyes open, so I haven’t had a chance to fully absorb the enormity of it.
A part of me already knew. I can admit that a part of me was trying to make it happen. A part of Dallas—or maybe all of Dallas—was trying to make it happen too.
And I don’t have to be scared anymore. He methodically removed every single one of my fears and replaced them with hopes, plans and an entire future that’s so glitteringly bright it’s hard to even think about how it’s all going to unfold. It’s like trying to contain sunshine inside my mind.
I get to go home.
We’re going to return the hotel to its former glory. We’re going to honor every detail and take it to the next level. We get to choose the colors and the wallpapers and the new light fixtures. We get to fix the roof and paint the balconies.
We won’t just have a hotel, we’ll have a house.
I never even imagined such a thing. We’ll have a home. For our baby.
Little Jack or little Sabine will grow up in the hotel, just like I did. We’ll be a family. My heart feels like it’s overflowing.
“Dally?”
“Mmm?”
“Thank you.”
His eyes open and they’re green even in the darkness. “Thank you, angel girl, for walking into my life and lighting it up.”
“Guess what today is.”
“What?”
“It’s my birthday. I’m twenty-three today.”
He grins at me. A real smile. The one that made me fall in love with him the very first time I saw it, even though I tried not to fall in love with him because it was too fast and too much and too soon. But it happened anyway. “Happy birthday, Amelie Thibodeaux.”
“Thank you.”
His fingers weave through my hair absent-mindedly. “Guess what today also is.”
“What?”
“My birthday. I’m thirty today.”
This makes me smile. “We have the same birthday?”
“So it would seem.”
I love this so much. “Happy birthday, Dallas Wilder.”
“Thank you.”
Dallas kisses me and I can feel his huge hardness against my thigh. I ease my fist around it, sliding along its rigid, silky thickness.
“Ignore it,” he says in a low growl. “You need rest.”
“I have rested.” I tease his thick shaft until he groans, swirling the moisture over the crown, wetting it, guiding it so it presses against my pussy. I use his wetness, and now mine, to guide it just inside me.
“Amelie,” he scolds huskily. “You’re not supposed to—”
“Stop protesting and just give it to me, Wilder. I need it. You can’t tell me no, it’s my birthday.”
“The doctor said nothing too strenuous.”
“I don’t have to be strenuous. You can be strenuous enough for both of us.”
That’s all the convincing it takes. “All right. Shh. Lay back and relax completely.”
I do, and he kisses his way down my body.
There’s a reverence to his obsession that’s always been there but has ramped up several notches.
I’m pregnant with his baby. I’m going to be the mother of his child.
It’s not just a miracle, it’s an irrevocable bond.
And it turns out life and fertility also happen to be a crazy turn on.
He kisses my breasts, suckling my nipples lustily like he’s drinking from me, which gets me so wet I can feel the light trickle of my own desire for him.
He’s kissing his way down my stomach now, murmuring against my skin. “Hey, little baby. Daddy loves you. You have the most beautiful mama. We’re going to give you the most magical life.”
Then he’s there, eating into me softly at first, latching onto my clit and milking it with his hungry mouth. It’s his gentleness that undoes me. The climax builds lushly, tumbling into spasms of pleasure that Dallas plays and prolongs with his tongue.
Before the waves completely calm, he climbs up my body and holds his weight above me with his burly arm, feeding his big cock into my fluttering flesh, stretching me to take all of him as his thickness slides deep inside me, filling me inexorably.
I bend my knees fully, wrapping my arms and legs around him to keep him there. He’s mine.
“Dally?” I whisper, with tears in my eyes, I love him so much.
“Yeah?”
I’m overflowing with true love and wild hope and real trust and perfect happiness and raw pleasure, so much that it’s easy to find the words and to let them spill out of me along with the bliss he’s inspiring deep inside me. “I love you.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it and I can see the emotion in his eyes. “I love you too, baby girl. You’re my whole world. You’re my love. You’re my heart.”
“And your algorithm solution,” I tease him, because if I don’t laugh my heart might burst into love-flames.
His laughter is my favorite sound. “And my perfect algorithm solution, who also happens to be extremely hot for me.”
“Guilty as charged,” I gasp, as he thrusts even deeper.
He lowers himself, kissing me as our bodies worship each other’s and the tidal wave crests and breaks.
We come together and it’s the craziest thing.
I’m full of him in every imaginable way.
My body, my soul, my belly, my heart. I’m having his baby and overflowing with his seed.
I’m holding him as close I can, whispering the words over and over as I kiss him and my body squeezes and adores him tenderly.
It feels in that moment like no love has ever been greater than ours.
We stay that way for a long time, staring into each other’s eyes, as in love as it’s possible to be.
We wake up still wrapped around each other. Dallas kisses me. Then he carefully disengages. He smooths my hair. He brings me a glass of water. “Drink. Then there’s something I want to show you.”
“What thing?”
“It’s not a surprise. Just a room you haven’t seen yet.”
I drink the water as he raises the remote controlled black-out screens and I’m surprised that it’s a sunny day outside. “What time is it?”
He pulls on some jeans and checks his phone. “It’s noon. Boone, Apollo and Sadie are bringing us dinner, I’ve been informed.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“Come on.” He wraps the sheet around me and lifts me into his arms.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He carries me into the living area and down a hallway I haven’t seen.
Then he opens a door.
As soon as we step inside, I gasp.
I can’t believe my eyes.
The room is huge and airy, painted white, with one wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out over New York.
Tables with paints, brushes and palettes have been set up.
There are easels, some with blank canvases …
and some with paintings. Other paintings are hung on the walls like an art gallery display.
My paintings.
All my paintings.
“Dallas.”
He sets me on my feet. I turn around to just take it all in.
It’s all of them. Every single one. The ones I painted in high school.
The ones from my senior exhibition. The ones I painted as a child.
The ones I painted of the hotel, sitting in the middle of Bourbon Street as the tourists walked by, commenting and encouraging me.
It’s one of that series that’s my favorite painting of all.
Which is hanging here now in the middle of all the others. “But … how? How did you find them?”
“I hired a guy to trace everything that was sold in the hotel’s estate sale.
Turns out one art collector bought all of your paintings.
She said she first saw your work when you were written up in the Picayune newspaper after your senior exhibition.
She loved your work and she made a point of following your career.
Her name is Maggie Hayworth and she’s the executive editor of an art magazine called American Artist. She said when she saw that your paintings were for sale in the estate sale, she bought them all and considered the purchase an absolute bargain. ”
It really was. Everything went for bargain basement prices but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it at the time.
“When I emailed her and told her I wanted to buy them and that I was buying them for you, because you never wanted to sell them in the first place, she agreed to it. It took some negotiating but she came around.”
Everyone has their price.
“She made me promise though, that I would ask you if she could do a feature on you for one of their upcoming issues. It’s a national magazine so it would get you a lot of exposure, if you’re planning another exhibition. I told her you were.”
“You did?”
“You don’t have to sell any, but you could still show them.”
“I can’t believe you found them.” I walk over to the paintings, which are displayed thoughtfully in brand new, expensive frames. I run my fingers along them. Each one of these pieces brings back so many memories, both good ones and bad. I don’t even realize I have tears streaming down my face.
Of all the many gifts Dallas has given me, this one might mean the most. These paintings are so much a part of me, when I lost them it felt like I lost big pieces of myself. So many, in fact, that I haven’t been the same person since. And I haven’t been able to paint at all.
“Thank you, Dallas. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. Everything else from the estate sale will be waiting for you at the hotel.”
“Everything?”
“Every last thing.”
As I watch him, this man who somehow stormed into my life and transformed it into my wildest dreams, I marvel all over again at his impressiveness, his outrageous masculine beauty.
I remember appreciating it that very first time I saw him and thinking that, if he offered, I might run away with him that very night.
I wasn’t ready to do that then. But I’m ready now.
He pulls something out of his pocket. And he gets down on one knee.
It’s the ring.
“Amelie Thibodeaux, I love you. I’ve loved you from the minute I saw you behind that bar, fiercely and with everything I have.
Please marry me and let me spend the rest of my life making you happy, keeping you safe and giving you six babies to fill up our quaintest little five-star, Michelin-rated hotel on Bourbon Street. ”
This time it comes easily. He’s everything I want. Forever. Always. “Yes.” I’m still crying but I’m laughing now too because I love him so much.
Dallas slides the ring onto my finger.
He stands, lifting me into his arms and kissing me.
“Once you’ve got the all-clear from the doctor, we’re leaving for Paris.
I’m going to fly Sadie and my brothers over and we’re going to stay in the best hotel in Paris and have our shotgun wedding and exchange our vows right there at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
We’ll have a two-week honeymoon eating good food to feed my baby, seeing the sights and buying more of what we’ll need for the hotel.
Then we’ll head to New Orleans and start making plans to renovate.
How does that work for you, Amelie Thibodeaux? ”
“It works for me just fine, Dallas Wilder.”