“Josie?”
“Yeah. I want to teach her how to fish. How to build things. How to fix stuff and not just break it.”
My throat tightens.
He keeps going. “I want to show her how a real man stands up for what’s his. What to look for when she starts dating. Not some perfect version of a man. Just a good one. One who shows up. Who stays.”
Tears well up in my eyes. “Jack?—”
He brushes one away with his thumb. “Don’t cry yet. I’m not finished.”
I choke on a laugh.
“You carved out space in me, Hol,” he says, voice rough. “You and our girl. And I’m never letting go. Not ever.”
I can’t speak.
I just throw myself at him, burying my face in his neck, breathing him in like air.
His arms crush me close. His mouth finds mine again.
And just like that, we begin again.
Not just as lovers.
But as something more.
A family.
I’m helpless against his touch. I crave his lips. I love his words. I love so much about him. I can’t even believe the demanding, controlling things he says in the bedroom about owning me and being his, but if this is what being owned means, sign me up.
For the first time in my life I let someone else have control over my body. I’ve spent years holding the reins, my grasp of control unshakable, my focus and determination unlimited; it has to be. I’m a mom with a career, a life that’s maybe a little boring, a sex life that’s non-existent—until him.
Until Jack Rivers banged his way into my life.
My life was under construction before him, and now he fills all the missing parts. I look forward to waking up in the morning, and I look forward to going home at night so I can see him. What will we do tonight? What will he say? I can’t wait to find out.
Jack peels himself out of bed then, pulling his jeans up his thighs and then grunting something about needing coffee. I smile, yawn, then push out of bed.
I pick up a few dirty clothes around the room, a T-shirt of his thrown on the floor in a frenzy of passion last night. I push the cotton to my nose, inhaling his heady natural scent, then toss it into the pile with the rest of my laundry. Maybe that is the beginning of us. When our clothes come together in the laundry, it feels like a melding of our lives.
A slow smile creeps up my face at that thought.
I wrap a silky robe around my body and move out to the kitchen and straight into his arms. I smile, running my fingertips down the chiseled, washboard muscles of his torso. He is a work of art. Never in my life have I seen a man so defined, so drop-dead sexy.
His hand curls around my neck, his tongue probing past my lips as I feel his cock nudging between my thighs. “Miss being inside you already.”
“Mm.” I sigh in agreement, pushing his worn jeans past his hips so I can grip his firm ass cheeks in my palms. “Josie could walk out at any time–”
“She’s sound asleep, I already checked on her.” Jack’s hand slips under the robe and finds my damp sex. “Soaked for me again, sweet girl?”
He runs two cool fingers through my pussy, sending arousal shuddering through my veins. “Yesss.”
“Good girl.” He sinks two fingers inside me, fucking me with his hand for a few strokes before his fingers are replaced by his gorgeously thick cock.
“Oh God…” I gasp as he slides into me, my hands clutching the breadth of his back while his thrusts stay slow and steady, angled with precision, even as he sucks at my nipple in torturous strokes. Then one soft smack lands on my ass cheek.
Another. And then another.
