I know the name of every single partner I’ve ever fucked. They’ve never been just a body to me, not just a good time. I made sure I got their name so I could grunt it… except for one.
Except for the mystery woman I called ‘love’ and haven’t been able to forget in months.
Her hair is pulled up and out of her face, pinned back in a fancy twist instead of the waves spilling down her back. She’s wearing a simple white dress that hits her knees. A white sweater is hiding her shoulders. For fuck’s sake, she’s wearing pumps.
Pumps.
White pumps that will look amazing dangling off her feet as she wraps those long legs around my waist…
Cool it, Bas. She’s not here to get laid.
She’s here to getmarried.
Why? I think back to what Dallas said. How the elder Crawford daughter went through plenty of Claiming ceremonies without finding a husband until she was forced to go on the hunt as though that was her only chance to survive in Harmony Heights.
It could be. It might even explain why an Offering was willing to let a stranger in a leather jacket rail her in a seedy bar bathroom.
Unless… unless she didn’t grab that Plan B, after all. Unless she has a bun in the oven and she needs a daddy.
I glance at her, taking her in again. Three months… she would be showing now, right?
How the fuck would I know?
Does it matter? Well, yeah, if she’s pregnant with my kid, it matters. I never wanted kids, I never wanted them to have to grow up a Reynolds like I did. A wife, I can handle, so long as we’re on the same page. But if one night of me being a reckless idiot means she’s in trouble…
Well, if she is, I’m here. I walked out to break up a Bait looking to hook an Owed, but if that’s why she’s really here? She’s already done the job.
One thing for sure: she’s not an Offering, is she? She’s not a Used, either. She’s something else, and whatever it is, Iwantit.
I push through the crowd, not caring who I shove. I watch as she speaks earnestly to some recent recruit, barely nineteen. What would a kid like that do with a woman like her? That dress doesn’t fool me. The fancy hairdo… nope. And those pumps… hell. A woman wearing fuck-me shoes like that needs a man to answer her call.
She needsme.
I tap the kid’s shoulder. He turns, glancing up at me. I jerk my thumb over my shoulder, the universal sign for scram.
It takes a second for his pissed-off expression to switch to one that’s a clear ‘oh shit’. Yeah. I get that a lot. I smile, but that doesn’t seem to put him at ease. Without even an excuse to the lady he was talking to, he vamooses.
She tilts her head up to look at me.
My smile widens.
So do her eyes.
I instantly recognized her. It takes her a second to place my face, but I know the second that she does. She swallows roughly, her cheeks heating up, though she doesn’t scatter like the kid did.
Instead, with a royal shake of her head, she says, “Will you marry me?”
I blink. Okay. Not what I was expecting. I don’t lose my grin, though, as I say, “Hello again to you, too.”
I wait for her to react to the ‘again’ part of my comment. She doesn’t.
Good.
“I heard there was someone going around the Court, looking for a husband. Couldn’t believe it… definitely didn’t expect it to be you, love.”
She doesn’t react to the same name I called her in that bathroom, either.
Interesting.
