“I know, and I do. You were the best fake husband ever, so I have no doubts that you’ll make the best real husband ever.”
A low, rumbly chuckle vibrated his chest.
I gaped. “You just laughed. Sort of.”
He nuzzled my neck. “It was a cough.”
“It was not. Don’t worry; I’ll keep it between you and me.”
“That I coughed?”
I play-punched his shoulder. “You laughed. I heard you.” And I was determined to make sure it happened again. He deserved to have a home filled with laughter—not fear and anxiety the way his childhood home had been. I tilted my head as something occurred to me. “Are you going to want a bigger house when we have kids?”
His brow pinched. “Why would we need a bigger house? How many kids are you planning to have?”
“We won’t need a bigger house unless you think you can’t cope sharing your space with noisy little people.”
He shrugged. “I’ll manage. You didn’t answer my question. How many do you want?”
“Two or three.” Or maybe four.
“All right. We’ll get started in a few years. I want to have you all to myself for a while first. I’m not ready to share you yet.” He nibbled my lips with his own. “I’m greedy and selfish when it comes to you.”
“You don’t hear me complaining, do you?”
He skimmed his hand down my neck, over my breast, and down to my waist. “I love this dress on you. Do you remember the little black dress you wore on our first date?”
“I remember.”
“I want you to wear it for me one night. I sat opposite you in the restaurant hard as a steel fucking spike. I kept picturing you bent over with that dress hiked around your waist. You’ve no idea how close you came to getting fucked in the car on the way home.”
I would never have guessed he’d been going through the same sexual struggle as me. “Who says I’d have let you fuck me?”
One side of his mouth hitched up. “You’d have let me. You were just as hot for me as I was for you.”
Totally true. “Oh, I was, was I?”
“Yes, you were. Which made it even harder to keep my hands off you. But I knew that if I touched you like that even once, there’d be no going back. And I was right.”
“That you were.”
“I always am.”
I snorted. “You’re an arrogant ass at times, but you somehow make it work for you. I don’t even know how. It’s like your superpower or something.”
“When I was a kid, I wanted the power to teleport so I could go anywhere in the world. Which reminds me … I have a surprise for you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. We’re going on a trip next weekend.”
I smiled. “We are? Where?”
“Venice. Hanna told me you always wanted to go there. It’ll be our belated honeymoon.”
I hugged him tight. “Thank you. I’m super excited. Wait, what about Blue?”
“She can come with us. We’re not staying in a hotel. We’re staying in my villa.”
“Well of course you have a villa in Venice. Do you own houses anywhere else?”
“A few places. You’d like the lodge in the French Alps.”
“Alps? I would not have pictured you as a skier.”
He shrugged. “I might never have tried it, but … Oliver always wanted to learn to ski.”
And because the little boy had never had that chance, Dane had done it for him. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have to answer, I won’t be upset if you don’t. I just wondered … Does the ‘o’ in o-Verve stand for Oliver?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why ‘Verve?’”
“As a toddler, he couldn’t correctly say ‘Oliver.’ He used to point at himself and say ‘Verver.’ But if people said, ‘Oh, your name is Verver?’ He’d scowl and say ‘no, Verver.’ In his mind, he was pronouncing it correctly.”
A sad smile pulled at one corner of my mouth. “So, you added the ‘O’ and dropped one of the ‘Rs’.” And, in doing so, honored his brother.
“Yes.”
I pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Thank you for telling me that.”
Dane hummed and sipped from my mouth again, tasting and tantalizing me. The kiss soon became hard and deep and wet. “Now I want you naked. Well, mostly naked. The boots can stay.”
“Fine, but I’m not sleeping in them.”
“All right,” he said easily, so sure he’d get his way.
He did, actually.
Epilogue
Eight years later
“I don’t like what this time of year does to you.”