AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Markus touches my chin and guides my gaze back to his. “I wasn’t shocked,” he says, staring at me as though the mist-covered ocean and Stone Harbor and Finn and the world and everything, just everything doesn’t matter as long as we have each other. “And now I know, don’t I? I really fucking know.”
“Know what?” I ask.
He smirks. “You’re the full package, Millie. Sexy as fuck and an amazing chef. Now all I’ve got to do is hold onto you.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere… unless you want me to.”
He chuckles deeply. “Never. Never-never-never. I’d die – I’d kill – before I let you slip from my grasp. And that’s not only because I’m pretty goddamn certain I just put our first child inside of you.”
He smooths his hand down my body, touching my belly.
Something must have changed when I gave myself to him because I don’t flinch away from his touch against my bare plus size body.
I don’t even want to.
Instead, I place my hand atop his and sink into the enveloping warmth of the moment.
“I can feel it,” he whispers. “I can feel our future. Our happiness. I can feel …”
“Hope?” I whisper, blinking back tears of pure joy.
He kisses them away, our noses tickling each other.
“You might have just given our first daughter her name, I think,” he says.
Hope.Chapter Twenty-OneMarkusI join Millie in the kitchen, lean down, and stroke Lava behind the ear. The Golden Retriever has taken to following me around ever since we returned from the hotel this morning, his tongue hanging out when we picked him up from the dog daycare. Now his tail wags and he leaps up, placing his forepaws on my thighs.
“You’re a good boy,” I say, ruffling his scruff so that his mouth opens in a wide smile.
I walk over to the table and sit down, inhaling the scent of breakfast, bacon frying, freshly baked bread throwing its scent into the mix.
Millie stands with her back to me, wearing a bathrobe and nothing else, my whole body pulsating at the sight of those sexy-as-fuck curves beneath the pink material. Her hair spills down her back, gorgeous locks of it, calling for my touch, to be caressed and then fisted, guiding her nakedly into bed, claiming, owning.
I shake my head, knowing that I have to tell her.
I just got off the phone with my ex-SEAL contact and he told me who Finn Marston is – what his connection to Millie is – and now my heart is thudding like a goddamn oil derrick about to hit the motherlode.
She hums sweetly as she butters the bread, taking care even with this simple task. The snow has cleared and the morning is unusually bright, everything melting and glistening warmly. Sunlight glows through the window, framing my woman in a silhouette.
I’ll shatter this perfect moment, this perfect morning, when I tell her.
“Millie—”
“Markus,” she says at the exact same moment. She laughs, looking over her shoulder at me. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”
“No, please,” I say.
“Please?” she sasses. “Since when did you get so polite, hmm?”
“Hmm,” I banter, unable to stop myself from grinning like a wild dog …except I’m not wild anymore.
I’ve found a home.
Lava strolls over to Millie, walking in tight circles as his nose puckers at the smell of the bacon, tail completely erect, ready for any stray piece of fallen meat.
I almost laugh at myself.
The weather, Lava, Millie’s gorgeous hair … I’ll focus on anything, it seems, except what I should be focusing on right now, and that’s who the fuck Finn Marston really is.
“I was just thinking about your offer,” Millie goes on, laying out the bacon on plates, and then carries them over.
The top of her bathrobe opens slightly, revealing her voluptuous cleavage, my manhood flooding, and becoming iron hard.
She places the plates down and sits opposite me, folding her legs, tossing her head so that her hair whispers out of her eyes. Everything she does is hyper-real to me, as though she’s the only thing that matters, exists.
She’s everything.
And I don’t have it in me to break her heart.
“My offer?” I murmur, dragging my attention back to my woman.
“The head chef offer,” she says. “I was thinking … I want it. I think I can do it. I know that there are people out there who’d say, Fuck that, I’m pulling myself up by my bootstraps. But wouldn’t that be crazy, turning down the chance of a lifetime for freaking pride?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “And you’re talented. And you’re beautiful. And you’re dedicated. And you’re every goddamn thing I could want in a head chef, a partner, a mother …”
“Hey,” she says quietly, reaching across the table and laying her hand on mine. I’ve begun to shake, the livid rage moving through me like a force of nature, making my body tremble. “What’s wrong? I didn’t misunderstand, did I …”
