Page 144 of The Promise Of You

“Babe,” she says, and that’s all I need. I slide up her magnificent body and lodge my cock where it belongs. She wraps her legs around my waist and sucks me in, body and soul, and we both find our release, sweat and grunts and tangled limbs.

Once I’m on my back and she’s tucked against my chest and our breaths are slowing, I ask, “What was that all about?”

“What?” she asks with her sleepy voice.

“The new bra, the lobster risotto.”

She lifts her head. “You don’t like the new bra?”

I fist her hair and nudge her back on my chest. “I love the new bra.”

She stays silent.

“Clover, you didn’t answer.”

“You liked it,” she whispers, and it nearly kills me.

“Of course I liked it, and your lobster risotto could be on the menu at Per Se, but my question is, why?”

“I knew you’d like it,” she whispers, and I feel her smile against my heart, my skin tingling where her lips move.

I flip us so she’s lying on her back and I’m above her. “I love you, Chloe.”

“I love you too,” she says in a small voice.

“To me, that means you’re everything to me. You and only you. You get me?”

She nods.

“So that shit about going shopping and cooking for hours when you’ve had the most difficult days of your life, most of it because of me, it stops now. You take care of you. Yeah?”

She makes a little pouty mouth.

She went all out tonight because she knows I’m having a shit time and she wants to make my life better. And god I love her for that. Part of me wouldn’t want it any other way. But the better part of me knows she’s in as much shit as I am, if not more. And I want her to take care of herself too.

“I’ll take care of us,” she corrects me, her tone solemn, accepting no argument.

God I love this woman. She has no idea.

forty-three

Chloe

Isound way more confident than I feel, telling Justin I’ll take care of us. But what else can I do, in this moment? I can’t possibly tell him how I feel.

Scared.

Threatened.

Like this could be the end of us.

Justin never wanted a relationship.

Now he’s going to have a child.

Gisele will be in his life, forever.

As she should.

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