Page 193 of Devil Mine

“Yay!” Dagny whisper-yells so as to not wake my daughter. “See you out there.”

“Outwhere?” I ask as she walks by me. She simply winks. All of our friends file through the doors and disappear outside, leaving Thiago and I alone.

His gaze is heated and possessive on me. Clearly he likes the pale pink dress Cassie instructed me to wear tonight.

“Is it finally time for you to tell me why you flew us and all of our closest friends out here?” I ask.

We’re in Colombia, in Playa Blanca on the Barú peninsula. We’ve been here as a family for the past week and yesterday our friends started appearing, couple by couple, taking me by surprise. When I looked over at him, Thiago had a cocky smirk on his face as he took in my overjoyed reaction, and I knew that he’d organized all of this.

No matter how much I begged and tried to blackmail the girls, they wouldn’t tell me what was going on.

Thiago’s always been very romantic, he’s shown that time and time again over the seven years we’ve been together, but whatever this is, it’s next level, even for him.

He closes the distance between us and grabs my hands softly in his. “I was going to do this years ago, but I was busy after everything that happened with Marco…”

The fallout from Marco’s attempted mutiny was significant. I barely saw Thiago in the months after I came home from the hospital. He tried to be there as much as possible during my recovery and early pregnancy, but I understood that he had a cancer to root out and a cartel to get back under control.

He and the few men he trusted waged a civil war from the inside out. They found all of those who’d been involved in the betrayal and hadn’t been unmasked yet, and they made examples of them. They tortured them, then killed their families. I couldn’t find it in me to have any compassion after all the hurt they’d caused. And now that I was pregnant, my priority was keeping my family safe.

To ensure that any organizations that thought they could prey on the cartel’s seeming moment of weakness, and to make sure that the remaining cartel members understood what would happen to traitors, Thiago sent them all a message.

Marco’s body was found hanging from Tower Bridge. His hands nailed to the railing, his feet dangling beneath him, his cock shorn off his body. ‘Traitor’ was carved into his naked chest.

The problems had been mostly under control since then, although we’d hit a few necessary speed bumps along the way.

“... and then I kept getting you pregnant,” Thiago finishes with a smug smirk.

I laugh. “You could at leastpretendto sound sorry about that.”

“I’m not,” he answers with a smile.

I peck him on the lips. “Me neither.”

There’s something about watching this man do the dad walk out of the hospital, carrying our newborn in a carrier at his side, that makes me want to get immediately knocked back up just so I can watch him do it all over again.

Thiago intertwines his fingers with mine and pulls me after him as he heads for the double doors that lead out onto the beach.

“Have you ever regretted marrying me?” he asks softly.

I frown, shaking my head emphatically. “No. Why would you ask that?”

“How about our wedding? Have you ever regretted that?”

I smile as I think back to the shotgun wedding in the back of the Rolls. To the terrified priest who’d run out of there at the first opportunity. To the way Thiago had ripped that first orgasm out of me, then brutally fucked my mouth.

“It was unconventional for sure,” I say with a conspiratorial grin. “But also no.”

“Me neither.” He stops in the doorway. The linen curtains billow in the wind, obscuring the view through the doors. “I needed to make you mine that very moment.Needed, not wanted. I could have been declared mentally insane for how mad with need I was for you after finally catching you.” He brushes his fingers tenderly across my cheek. “But I’ve always thought that you deserved better than what I gave you.”

Thiago catches the curtain, finally revealing what awaits us on the other side.

Two rows of white chairs on the beach, every seat occupied by our smiling best friends and children who turn towards the doors to stare at us. The chairs face an altar decorated by hundreds of blood red roses. Behind it, the waves lap at the sandy beach. Beneath it, Dagny stands beaming, holding a paper in her hands.

“Get your ass down that aisle, Tessie,” she calls excitedly, hand cupped around her mouth. “I got certified for this!”

My hand flies to my mouth in shock. I turn towards Thiago with tears in my eyes.

“What is this?”

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