Page 68 of Ox

After we’d both floated back down to earth, Ox soaped me up all over again. Once clean, he dressed me in a plush, white bathrobe and carried me back to bed.

As we lay there, thoroughly content, Ox turned to me and said, “I don’t want to overwhelm you after everything that’s happened, Kayla, but I need to tell you something.”

My heart came to a stand-still in my chest as I glanced up at his serious expression. “You can tell me anything, Ox.”

Dropping his forehead against mine, he took a deep breath and said, “I love you. I think I’ve loved you since the moment we met. And I want you to be my Old Lady.”

My heart hurt now for an entirely different reason than it did a few seconds ago. “I love you, too, Ox. And I’d like nothing better than to call you my Old Man.” My voice hitched on the last part as I spoke. “I was afraid to tell you, because I didn’t want to scare you away.”

“You could never do that,” he promised, pulling me into his strong embrace. “After these last few days without you, I realized I don’t ever want us to be apart again.”

“I don’t either,” I whispered back, tears of joy running down my cheeks.

Tilting my chin upward, he looked directly into my eyes. “Whatever we’ve got to do to make this work, I’m willing to do it.”

“Me too,” I agreed, joy that bordered on ecstasy, coursing through me like the world’s most powerful drug. “I want that, too.”

Picking up his phone, Ox began to make a call. Shocked by this, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Calling the front desk,” he said, his mouth working into a satisfied grin. “I’m letting them know we’re staying here for a few more days and not to disturb us for the next twenty-four hours.”

Laughing, I teased him by slowly getting naked as he talked to the receptionist about our extended stay. Once he saw what I was doing, Ox hung up the phone and rolled me beneath his impressively large frame. “You like to play games, pretty girl. If so, I’ve got something you might want to play with next.”

My last thought, before he claimed my mouth, was that we should have told the front desk forty-eight hours instead of twenty-four. But, as his hands traveled between my spread legs and slipped back inside of my wet center, I forgot everything but this beautiful man in my arms and the love that coursed unchecked between us.

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