Page 79 of Reluctant Bride

“I got distracted. By deciding what to make you for dinner.” Not a full lie. Half a truth wearing the other half’s jacket. I’ve spent all day deciding two things at once, what goes in the pan and who’s lying to her family, and I’m not ready to hand her the second one until I’ve got more than a clean file that reads too clean to trust.

“That’s the answer you give when there’s something else underneath it.” She lets it go, which is worse. “Feed me first. Then you tell me what you were actually doing today.”

“Guilty on both counts.” I head outside to fire up the grill before she can dig the rest of it out of me standing in my own kitchen, because she’s not wrong and I’m not fool enough to fight her on it tonight.

I grill the ribeyes over hardwood coals, Sullivan beef, the cut I pulled from our own family’s locker this morning and roast the vegetables from the garden box Maren keeps forgetting is technically mine now that I live here full time. No cream sauce, no butter drowning the plate, just olive oil and rosemary and the kind of restraint I bring to everything except her. I pour two glasses of the Cabernet I’ve been saving since the wedding and don’t let myself think too hard about the fact that I bought it planning for a night like this one before I had any real reason to believe I’d get it.

Sage sits on the counter instead of a stool, bare feet swinging, watching me plate like she’s grading a competition she has no intention of scoring fairly.

“You’re a very good cook for a man who slits men open as a hobby. This seems to be a better use of the knife.”

“Multiple skill sets. Protecting you is not a hobby; it’s critical.” I turn to her and run my unshaven face down her cheek, then lean in and plant a kiss under her jaw. She tastes like salt and fresh air. “And I like knowing exactly what’s going into my body. Cooking it myself is the only way I trust that.”

“You say that like it’s a virtue instead of a control issue.”

“It’s both.”

She steals a piece of asparagus off the pan before I’ve even got the plates finished, and I catch her wrist, not hard, just enough to make her look up at me over it. Her hair’s come loose from the ponytail she had it in on her run, dark waves falling over sun-browned shoulders. The thin white tank top she’s wearing does nothing to hide what the evening air’s doing to her, her nipples pressing hard against the cotton in a way my mouth has already decided is a personal invitation. Every plan I had for dinner rearranges itself into something considerably less patient.

“You’re staring,” she says.

“I’m allowed to stare at my wife.”

“Ten days of marriage and you still can’t get enough?” She arches an eyebrow. “You’d think you’d have had your fill by now.”

“I’ll never get my fill of you, Sage. You haven’t changed a bit, and yet you’re a completely different person. I’m still working out how the two of you fit into one woman.” I let go of her wrist and drag my fingertips along her jaw instead, softer than the knuckles I used on her in a tack room a lifetime ago, except there’s no restraint left in it now. “My razor’s on your counter. I moved my things into your bedroom this morning. That’s not a guest anymore. That’s a husband.”

My hand drifts lower, cradling one breast through the thin cotton, thumb finding her nipple already peaked and hard, and I step in between her knees where she’s still perched on the counter, close enough that she has to feel what she’s doing to me. “Looks like you’re ready for my mouth instead of this dinner. I’m willing to bypass it and eat you instead.”

“The steak’s resting.” Her hand slides down between us, slow, and closes over me through the running shorts, nothing left to guess at through fabric that thin. “You’re not.”

“The steak can rest longer. I’ve waited enough to last a lifetime. I’m not waiting through a resting period too.”

“That’s quite the offer from a man who just spent half an hour standing over a grill.” Her hand tightens once, testing, and I hiss out a breath through my teeth, both hands leaving her breast to grip her slim waist instead, my legs pressing into hers, holding her steady while I fight for something close to control.

“I can see meals with you are going to be a problem. Keeping you fed or fucking your brains out. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do both.”

“Pace yourself, Sullivan. You’ve got the rest of our lives to figure out the logistics.” She lets go of my balls with one last quick squeeze and reaches past my shoulder to steal another piece of asparagus off the pan like she didn’t just leave me half-wrecked against my own counter. “Feed me first. You can fuck my brains out for dessert.”

I’ve got the speakers going in the living room, something to fill the quiet while I was cooking, and it’s not until we’re both settled at the island that Sage goes still over her fork, head tilting toward the sound drifting in from the other room.

“Is that Lukas Nelson?”

“Might be. I put on a Spotify playlist built around the Marcus King Band and this came on somewhere in the middle of it.” I catch a memory lodged in her eyes. “Nashville. Your roommate dragged you to it the same trip you got the piercing.” She looks satisfied that I remember, and I let her see that I do. I’ve carried that story since the day she handed it to me in the granite pool, every part of it still sitting where she left it, same as everything she’s ever given me, whether she notices I kept it or not.

“Take me next time.”

Her eyes widen, surprised in a way that guts me a little, like she wasn’t expecting the offer to come this easy.

“You want to go to a Lukas Nelson show?”

“I want to go to whatever you love enough to still be talking about it five years later.” I hold her eyes, no joke left in it. “Pick a show. Any city. The second Erin and Ashley and whoever’s still pulling strings behind them stop being a threat, I’m flying you there myself. Just the two of us. No radios, no Holt on the perimeter, no families waiting on either end of the phone.”

“And you claim you weren’t paying attention to the playlist.”

“I pay attention to everything that matters to you, Sage. I’ve just spent most of my life hiding how much. I’m done doing that with you.”

We eat at the island instead of the table. She tells me about coffee with Erin, how easy the woman makes herself to like, how she’d never have caught a single wrong note in her if Tate hadn’t already handed us the reason to look.