AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirty-Four
As Donovan was just about to ring Ella’s doorbell, he felt strong and happy. He was clear and focused. For the first time in years, he knew exactly what he was doing, and that he was doing it for the right reasons.
Now all he needed to do was tell Ella.
He was picking her up for the alumni reunion, but he was as jittery as a high school kid ringing his prom date’s doorbell, getting ready to face down her father before whisking her off to that all-important high school dance.
He glanced down at his hands, which held a plastic clamshell container with flowers inside. Hell, he’d even bought her a wrist corsage. He’d taken that prom theme and run with it.
He was about to have a conversation that would change his whole life. The gravity of it suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks. What if she was freaked out by things getting too real? What if she looked at this as just a fling? What if she thought there was too much baggage between them to sustain a serious thing?
Just then, just as he was about to work himself up into a maelstrom of doubt, a butterfly—one of the largest and most colorful he’d ever seen—flew right up to him and landed on the plastic container that held the wrist corsage.
A wide grin broke out across his face. Damn. If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know what was. “Thanks, Mom,” he said quietly. “Glad to know you approve.” Then he reached out and pressed the doorbell, and just as suddenly as it had arrived, the butterfly lifted off and flew away.
The door swung open and Donovan’s eyes widened. God, she was beautiful. Every time he saw her, it was like a gut punch of awesome. “You look amazing,” he rasped.
She flushed and stepped into his arms. “Your words are nice to hear, but it’s that sandpaper in your voice that shows me how much you mean them,” she purred.
He kissed her long and hard, putting all of his heart behind it. Making it count. This would be the last kiss before he laid it all on the line, and so if it was going to be the last kiss ever, he damn well wanted it to be a good one.
She drew back, breathing hard. “Damn, Donovan. That was some kiss.”
He grasped her hands in his and looked into her eyes. “Yeah. It was.”
Wariness crept into her eyes. “You haven’t kissed me like that before. It was different.”
He nodded. “It was. Because I’m different.”
She swallowed hard. “Tell me what that means. Don’t dance around it. Rip off the Band-Aid.”
Fuck, she obviously thought he was about to break things off. That was the last thing he wanted. He’d had a whole speech planned. He’d practiced it in front of the mirror and everything. But, in the interest of “ripping off the Band-Aid” he cut right to the chase.
“Ella, I love you. I want to be with you. I see everything so damn clearly now. I’ve been chasing all the wrong things. I pursued my career because it was what I thought I should want, but now I realize that everything I want is right here in front of me. In Valentine Bay. In my arms right now, as a matter of fact. So, if you’ll have me, I want us to be together. Really together.”
Tears filled her eyes and one slipped down her cheek. “Are you saying that you’re staying here?”
He nodded. “I called Agent Flowers, the investigator in charge of my security clearance investigation, and explained the whole story. The drunken wedding at eighteen under what we thought were false identities, the clerical mix up that must’ve resulted in the data entry snafu, and the fact that even though I haven’t known that you’ve been my wife on paper all this time, the truth was, you were always my wife in my heart.”
“Oh, Donovan… This is…God, you have no idea how happy this makes me,” she whispered.
Ella grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him through the front door, a look of hunger in her eyes. He was immediately hard at that glimpse of intensity in her face. There was nothing quite so erotic as turning her on, and the fact that it happened so quickly… Damn. It was powerful.
He crushed his mouth to hers, parting her lips with his demanding tongue. He explored the depths of her, his tongue pressing against hers in a sexy tango as his hands moved up and down her body with wild desperation.
She pulled back, breathless. “I don’t… I mean I’m all dressed up for the reunion. I don’t want to ruin my hair and makeup. Not to mention my dress.”
He gave her the sexiest, most seductive half smile he could manage and trailed his fingertips down her bare arm. “How about this,” he said in a low and husky voice, “I’ll take you out of your dress very carefully. We can hang it up so it doesn’t get wrinkled. Then I will take you upstairs, strip you naked, and touch and kiss every inch of you. Aside from your face and hair. I’ll make a definite point of steering clear of those.”
He felt goose flesh rise on her arm as he spoke these words, and her eyes flared. Her lips parted a little further with each syllable, and her breath came a little bit faster. By the time he finished that little speech, she was nodding furiously. “Oh my God, yes. That sounds amazing. Damn, you’re a good problem solver.”
He laughed, and then grabbed her by the upper arms and spun her around, turned on by the sharp and surprised intake of breath at his motion. He took a step closer to her and then leaned forward so that she could feel his hot breath on her neck as he slowly, ever so slowly, pulled on the long zipper that ran down the back of her gown.
When he had entirely unzipped her, he placed his hands on her hips and rested them there for a moment, letting her feel the heavy power that they contained.
He loved this part. The buildup. Every movement, every word, every breath—all carefully designed to create more and more arousal in her, to let the pressure inside her become more and more intense until she was just about ready to explode. Only then would he make the moves that would release that pressure, give her sweet relief, send her crashing over the edge of ecstasy.
He was in control. He set the pace, he led the encounter. But he wasn’t selfish in taking his own pleasure and giving her none in return. Just the opposite, in fact. Everything he did was for her pleasure—that’s how he derived his own. He got more out of giving than getting, when it came to Ella.
