Page 23 of Haden

Haden

* * *

The day is busy. It takes longer than expected to get the office situated and leveled. Even with five of us out there and the men who brought the building, it was still a process.

By the time we came in for lunch, the women had all dispersed. I’ve learned that Ryder’s wife has become the unofficial matron of the mansion. She earned that spot by virtue of being the first to marry a Wilde. She’s taken the job on with grace. Tiago’s wife, Reagan, owns an adventure company, so she’s often out leading tours or at her office in town. Dallas’s wife, Arianna, is the town librarian, so she’s usually at the library. Brody’s wife, Melody, is a semi-famous author. No one knows her pen name, and she’s usually upstairs in her home office writing during the day.

Everyone’s busy. Now that I’ve claimed Emilia as my personal assistant, she will be busy, too. Since she arrived several weeks ago, I think she’s been filling in wherever someone needed help. From what I deduced yesterday when she took me on the afternoon tour, she was feeling rather aimless.

It’s late in the afternoon before I make it back to the RV. I need a shower first and foremost, and then I will go hunt down my girl before dinner.

Naturally, I make record time, and I’m taking the stairs two at a time to get to her room. I assume that’s where she’ll be.

Feeling like a teenager on a date, I knock on her door. This is not going to be a habit, but I haven’t made anything official between us yet. I owe her some level of privacy until then.

“Come in,” she calls out.

I open the door to find her leaning against the window. She’s smiling. “It took you long enough to get up here. I think it was six seconds from when you stepped out of the RV,” she jokes before giggling.

Ah, so she was watching.

Shutting the door behind me, I take in all of her. She has changed. I never saw her after I ordered her to put on jeans and a T-shirt. I assume she did, but before she managed to come back out and find me, Dallas told her to stay in the mansion. It wasn’t safe for her to be out roaming around where the office was being unloaded.

She leans against the windowsill, her hands gripping it at her sides. She’s wearing another dress, a hot-pink one, but this time she has on a bra. Her hair is down and recently brushed. Though it always looks like she just styled it. I assume it must have that silky look without much help on her part. It’s one of my favorite things about her.

“Does my outfit meet your standards, Sir?” she sasses.

I chuckle as I approach. Even though we crossed ten lines both yesterday and this morning, this moment feels important. We’re about to cross a lot more lines. Most of them.

When I reach her, I grab her around the waist and yank her into my arms. “You’re stunning, jitterbug. Sassy, but gorgeous.” I hold her tight against me with one arm around her and lift her chin with my other hand. “I think it’s past time for me to kiss you. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

I hold her gaze while I slowly lower my lips to hers. It nearly kills me to go slow. I’m not usually a slow kind of man. I prefer to ravish my dates. But not Emilia. She’s not a date. Not a one-night stand. Not even a girlfriend. She’s my future. My everything. My soulmate.

I might be a bossy bastard, but I will rein in my desire to rush to the finish line with Emilia because she deserves respect. There’s no hurry. We have our whole lives to learn every single detail about each other.

For several seconds, I nibble on her lips, tasting her, listening to the little noises she makes, inhaling her. When I finally tip my head to the side to deepen the kiss, she leans into me, pliant, purring, willing.

Sweetest woman I’ve ever held in my arms.

Emilia may be nothing like the picture I had in my head of who I would spend my life with, but she’s the one. She’s perfection. I can’t wait to make her mine in every way and erase any and all previous experiences she’s had.

That’s not going to happen tonight. It’s not going to happen tomorrow either. The most interesting thing I learned today, while taking a ribbing from her brothers and cousins, is that all four men made their wives wait to have sex until their wedding night.

Those men are intense. They wasted no time getting their wives knocked up. Even Melody is pregnant, and they got married two weeks ago. I’m kind of glad because after my encounter with Emilia last night, my biological clock started ticking. I’m not sure that’s a real thing for men, but it has happened.

To find out that the feeling is the norm in this house is a relief. By the time Emilia came outside this morning with that coffee in her hand, I knew I needed to nip that habit in the bud. It was instinctive and barbaric, but I couldn’t resist ordering her to stop drinking caffeine.

If she’d balked or been taken aback, things might have progressed differently. But she did not. She squeezed her thighs together and licked her lips. It wasn’t the first time my demands turned her on, but it was an important subject.

By the time I release her mouth so we can both take a breath, I’m ten times more enamored with her. I set my forehead against hers while we pant.

“You’re mine,” I reiterate.

She smiles. “Is that so?”

“Yeah.”