Page 156 of The Perfect Mistake

“Always,” I murmur. I bend my legs, bracing my feet on the bed while he aligns himself, and then he’s pushing in, so slow that both of us hiss out a breath. He’s on his knees, and it gives him the perfect leverage to go hard, with slow, heavy thrusts that make my world narrow into nothing but sensations.

“Tell me,” he says.

I lift my legs, stretching them up past my head. His eyes flare, and his hips piston faster. There’s a special kind of turn-on, being like this. Bent over in half, with both watching, and feeling him lose himself. It usually brings me right to the edge with him.

“I like the sound of that,” I say. It’s hard to breathe right. “I love you, and I love the thought of being with you forever… and getting married one day…”

He groans and lowers to his elbows, his hips snapping against mine. A lock of hair falls over his forehead, and I brush it back. His skin is hot to the touch.

“You’re mine,” he says. His lips hover just over my own, and his hand strokes my hair. My body is dancing along the crest of an orgasm. Just barely, but it’s there, the snap of his hips propelling me on. “Tell me you’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” I say and wrap my arms around his shoulders. He groans against my neck and erupts inside me. I feel the force of it, and the sharp jerk of his pelvis against mine sends me barrelling over the edge along with him.

His breathing is fast. So is mine, and we just breathe together, our foreheads touching. I don’t know where I end and he begins.

“And are you mine?” I whisper.

He smiles. “Always, sweetheart. Always.”

It takes us longer than it should to get into the shower. To get cleaned up and pull ourselves together in order to do what we had planned. The whole reason Connie and Gabriel are babysitting in the first place.

I sit on top of the counter in the master bathroom and watch him do up the buttons of his shirt. His hair is still damp from the shower we shared. I haven’t even tried to dry mine. It’s wrapped in a tight knot at the back of my neck.

“If we get there fast,” Alec says, “we can leave just as quickly.”

“That ashamed to go with me?” I ask with a wide smile.

He sends me a dark look. “Please. If anything, I want more time with you, and less with that crowd.”

“We’ll get in, make a donation, and get out,” I say.

He does up the last button. “Yes. You look fantastic, Isabel.”

My smile widens. I’m just in a black slip dress, ballet flats, and minimal makeup. But I feel beautiful, my cheeks still flushed from the warm water and something else, something cozy, a feeling in my chest that hasn’t gone away for weeks.

“Thank you.”

He puts a hand on my knee, his thumb rubbing a circle. His eyes are warm. “My pretty girl.”

“You look good, too.” I run my hand over the collar of his shirt, fixing the collar. It doesn’t get old. Getting to touch him like this—intimately, proprietorially. This man is mine. “You always do. Handsome, intriguing, eye-catching…”

Alec’s eyebrows lift. “Eye-catching?”

“Yes. Everyone notices when you walk into a room.”

“I think you’re talking about you, Isa.”

I run my fingers through his hair to brush it back. “No. I’m talking about you. That’s how I felt for years, from the first time Connie introduced us. Do you remember when we first met? It was in the hallway outside her apartment. You were arriving, and I was leaving.”

Alec’s eyes soften. “I remember. That was five years ago.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I must have looked haggard,” he says. “Must have been only months after… I had little to no sleep that first year, with Sam.”

“You did look tired,” I admit. “A bit rough around the edges, maybe. But you stole all the air out of that hallway. We shook hands. Do you remember?”

He steps between my legs. “I do.”

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