Page 46 of Accidentally Fudging the Beast
I expel a sharp breath. "That's awfully fast," I say, but my voice is shaking a little.
He pulls me closer, his palm flat against my lower back. "I don't care. I've wasted enough time in my life chasing my career because I thought it was the only thing I needed. I know better now. I need you. And I need you in my bed and in my life, every damn day. That won't ever change. I love you."
His honesty has my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. I want to say yes. God, I want to say yes so badly it almost hurts.
So I do.
"Yes," I whisper, the word barely audible. "Yes, I'll marry you."
He grins, bright and blinding. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," I say, and suddenly I'm laughing, because this is nuts, but also the sanest, happiest thing I've ever done.
He wraps his arms around me, crushing me to his chest. "Good," he murmurs, his lips against my hair. "We'll pick out your ring together so it's exactly what you want. You're stuck with me now, baby."
"Sounds perfect."
He presses his lips to my shoulder again, and then I feel his hand sliding down my hip. I groan when he hauls me beneath him, covering my body with his.
His lips come down on mine in a deep kiss as his hand slips between my legs, lighting me up.
By the time he slides inside me, I'm already on the edge, moaning his name. It doesn't take him long at all to send me careening over the side into an earth-shattering orgasm.
I fall with his name on my lips.
He falls with words of love on his, sheltering me in his arms.
We stay like that for a long time, our bodies tangled and our heartspounding in sync.
The world outside is cold and chaotic, always waiting to knock me off balance. But in here, in his arms, everything is clear. Everything makes sense.
This is what I want.
This is where I belong.
This is home.
Epilogue
Trent
Five Years Later
"Shit," I groan, sitting upright in bed when I hear our four-year-old giggling from the kitchen. It's five in the morning on Christmas…not a great start to the day, frankly.
My wife's side of the bed is empty, the sheets cold.
As soon as I realize she's missing, my first thought is worry for my survival. My second is that whatever is happening down there is probably going to cost me a fortune to fix.
I groan and peel myself out of bed. My back twinges and my knees creak in protest, but I've got another full week off before I'm due back on the campus where I coach, and nothing to do except be a husband, a dad, and—if I playmy cards right—a consumer of at least four cinnamon rolls before noon.
It's a damn good life, even if I never did learn to sleep past six.
I drag on a pair of sweatpants, step over the Legos scattered like booby traps in the hallway, and nearly get impaled by a rogue rainbow unicorn horn Alisha left on the stairs. At the bottom, I'm immediately blinded by the Christmas tree, which blinks with approximately eight thousand watts of sparkling LEDs.
Dani went all in on Christmas this year. She's got the tree covered in hockey ornaments, a train that circles the base, and tinsel on every flat surface. She even dressed up the thermostat as Santa.
I grin, because the only thing more over-the-top than our living room is the sound of our daughter cackling at whatever ungodly science experiment is happening in the kitchen.
