"I mean, sure?" I had no reason not to, but also, it was such an odd request from him and it had me off kilter.
He pulled the car into the lot nearest to the park, and then, with all the elegance of zero elegance at all, I unclicked my buckle, fished out the ring, and put it on the dash in front of him.
"I had some big, whole romantic thing not at all planned out, but I wanted to have it planned out. But here it is for you. Will you marry me?" Yes, it came out as a big blob of word salad. But I'd expected him to be happy and give me an immediate yes.
Instead, he gave me the ring back and said, "Put that away."
"What?"
He closed his eyes and took in three big breaths before saying, "I love that you gave this to me, but I'm first." He twisted around, and his eyes found mine. "I never told you this, but your mother helped me plan a proposal. It's going to be happening in about five minutes. There will be a flash mob. I can't be wearing your ring when we go there. Your mom's going to think I went behind her back, and I finally got her approval."
"You were going to flash-mob propose to me?"
He nodded.
I broke out laughing. "Here I am thrusting a ring at you, and you planned a whole flash mob, with my mother of all people. All right, so what's the drill? I have to pretend to be shocked and then say yes?"
"Something like that." He grabbed the back of his neck.
"Done. But afterward, I want you to wear your ring, the one I got you. And don't worry about making my mom mad. If you allowed her to plan her dream flash mob, trust me, there's nothing you could do to make her mad. Remind me to tell you how many times she's tried to convince me to organize a flash mob. Something is seriously wrong with that woman."
His shoulders visibly relaxed.
"Okay, let's go get this thing over with,” I said as he unclicked his seatbelt. “Because when we're done, you're taking me home, and you're going to give the equivalent of a wedding ring to me right here." I traced along my neck and down my shoulder where he would mark me, "preferably while your knot is inside me."
I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. I never knew that place on a body could be so sexy.
"You’re amazing," he kissed me as his phone went off. "That's the timer saying we need to hurry up. And at some point, I'm going to make a silly excuse to come back to the car, but I'm not really coming back to the car. So just, like, don't turn and face me so you don't see me sneaking off to join the flash mob."
"I've got you, mate. I will make this look like the most successful flash mob in history."
And the funny thing was, even though I knew it was coming, seeing him try to pull off dancing, choreographed with all of those other people I didn't even know from where, before getting down on one knee... it did surprise me. The tears that fell were tears of real joy. Because it was one thing for me to want to bind us together in the human way as well as his shifter way, but for him to want to give that to me, to think of that on his own, and then to work alongside my mother to make that happen was everything.
Fate really looked favorably upon me when they sent me Lincoln. There was no way I deserved him. But I was calling no take-backsies. I was going to keep him, deserving of him or not.
15
LINCOLN
Had I ever driven this fast and this recklessly, with sex being the reward for getting home faster than the speed of light? Maybe the day I met Bronson? Nah, I’d been in a daze back then.
But I did have another near miss with the mailbox as I swung the car into the driveway. We both had our seatbelts off before the car stopped, and we raced to the front door and fell into the living room.
I pulled Bronson close so his arousal was rubbing against mine, and I kicked the door shut with one foot.
“Here?” he mumbled into my mouth as my tongue curled between his lips.
“Anywhere you want.” I was panting, seemingly unable to get enough oxygen in my lungs.
Bronson yanked his pants down and his hard cock bounded out.
“What? No underwear? I proposed to a guy going commando?”
“You got a problem with that?” He undid my zipper and shoved his fingers into my briefs and wrapped them around my stiff dick.
“Nope,” I squeaked. My head fell forward onto his shoulder.
“Good, because I don’t plan on wearing them anytime soon.”
