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He’s holding a small velvet box.
My heart flatlines. If a paramedic were present, they’d have the paddles out.
“I was going to wait,” Lukas explains. “Turns out I’m terrible at waiting.”
“You’re terrible at a lot of things,” I croak in a feeble attempt at defusing my fluttering anxiety. “Asking permission, for example. Personal boundaries.”
“Almost certainly.” His mouth twitches. “But I’m not terrible at this.”
He sets me on my feet, sinks to his knee, and opens up the box.
The ring is simple and extraordinary. It’s a single stone, deep and clear and brilliant, set in a band of weathered platinum that looks old and patient, like it’s been waiting somewhere for a very long time.
“Marry me, Rae Everett.” He’s not blinking. I, meanwhile, am blinking enough for both of us in a battle against tears that I am going to lose badly any second now. “Let me spend the rest of my life choosing you.”
I stare at the ring. As I do, I think about the girl I was two months ago—dressed in drab Target slacks, eating stale sandwiches at her desk, drowning in debt, so lonely she’d forgotten what it felt like to be touched. That girl didn’t know how much was ahead of her. How much terror and how much tenderness. How many unforgivable things and unspeakable ones.
But she’d make it through all of them. That girl wouldmake it.To here.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Obviously, yes. A thousand times yes.”
Lukas slides the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly.
Of course it does. The man already knew my measurements.
Then he rises and pulls me against the kitchen counter, one hand fisting in my hair while the other grips my hip hard enough to bruise. He kisses me like the ring gave him permission to stop being careful. His tongue pushes past my lips and makes no apologies for it. I emit a sound against his mouth that I’d be embarrassed about if I had any dignity left, but we both know that dignity packed its bags and left this brownstone a long time ago.
The kiss falls apart. Lukas’s pupils are blown so wide his gray eyes look black, and the hand in my hair tightens just enough to tilt my head back.
“I need you,” he growls against my mouth. “Right now.”
The ring on my finger catches the January light as I grip the front of his henley. The stone throws a tiny prism across his jaw, and something about that—my ring, his skin, the way the two look together—makes my whole body clench.
“You just proposed to me thirty seconds ago,” I say. “Most people celebrate with champagne.”
His teeth graze my earlobe. “I’m not most people.”
No. No, he is decidedly not.
Thank God for that.
He lifts me onto the counter and crowds into me. The cold marble bites into the backs of my thighs and I gasp, but the sound gets swallowed by his mouth as he kisses me again.
He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my pajama shorts and works them down my legs, then tosses them carelessly aside. His palms slide back up the outsides of my thighs, pushing the stolen T-shirt up to my waist as he goes.
He stops and looks down. His thumbs press into the creases of my hips, and I watch his jaw tighten.
“No underwear,” he observes with a smirk. “Were you hoping for this, sweetheart?”
My cheeks ignite. I prepare myself to deliver some devastatingly witty comeback about laundry day constraints and the constitutionally-enshrined human right to go commando in one’s own home, but nothing comes out except a shaky exhale.
He chuckles. “Mm. That’s what I thought.”
His hands slide inward, teasing, hovering, and then he’s there, two fingers pressing into me with a steady certainty that makes my spine arc off the counter.
I’m already soaked. I know it. He knows it. The sound his fingers make as they sink in is wet and undeniable in the quiet kitchen, and the groan that tears out of him vibrates through my sternum.
“So ready for me,” he murmurs, curling his fingers up toward my belly button. He works me almost lazily—in, curl, drag, out—while his free hand pins my hip to the marble so I can’t squirm away.
