to the bottom floor.
“Someone shoot me,” Ethan pleaded.
“Then you’d miss out on the juicy consummation sex,” Max murmured into his ear.
Ethan’s cock inflated in his underwear. “Drive fast, Max.”
“I hadn’t intended to dawdle, believe me.”
Fate was on their side, or else the god of love was, because they hit every green light on the way home. In no time they were stumbling into their condo, hands frantic to strip the other of their wedding finery.
After they’d tumbled into bed, though, Ethan placed his hand on Max’s chest to catch his attention.
“Would it be corny of me to say I want it slow?” he whispered.
Max stroked his cheek. “I intend to make love to my new husband. You couldn’t stop me from taking my time.”
He was true to his word. Max worshipped him, from head to toe. His mouth was a heated butterfly. His fingertips were dandelion heads caressing Ethan’s skin until he shivered. Ethan was familiar with dominant, controlling Max, but this Max was a tender, generous lover. Through the magic of his touch he awakened Ethan’s nerves. He set them tingling with delight and then burning with need. Tiny tremors turned into shivers, and sighs turned into moans. Before Ethan knew it, he was writhing in their bed, fingers clutching at Max’s back with a desire that demanded to be appeased.
“Max,” he breathed as he closed his legs around Max’s hips and tugged him down and against him. He nibbled on the shell of Max’s ear. “I want you, husband.”
Max stopped moving and a shudder rippled along the long, strong line of his body.
“I want you,” Ethan whispered before dipping his tongue into the whorl of his ear. “Mr. Winter-Poole. Make me yours.”
With a low groan, Max slowly guided himself inside. Ethan stroked his cheeks, his chest and shoulders, his clenched abs—everything he could reach. Everything that belonged to him.
“Say it again,” Max demanded, his eyes burning bright.
“Mr. Winter-Poole,” Ethan whispered. “Mr. Winter-Poole, I’m so proud to be your husband.”
Max took ownership of him gently, to a breathless chant of “Husband.”
~~~~~
The wedding ceremony in Indiana was everything the one in the White Chapel of Dreams had not been. If the Vegas one was a comedy, the one in Indiana was a romance.
Maxmillian wasn’t a fan of ostentatious sentimentality, but even he felt a tickle at the corners of his eyes as he promised his love and his life to Ethan beneath a cloudless blue sky in front of their friends and family. Plenty of tears were wept around him—including by both mothers. The fact that the wedding wasn’t official had no apparent impact upon how meaningful it was to those in attendance. It was real in the ways that mattered to them.
As he watched his mother and father navigate a dirt field and share food with Ethan’s parents inside a barn, all without protest or complaint, Max hoped he never forgot the feelings he experienced this day. The Pooles and Winters made for an odd-looking family, but he had every confidence—something he couldn’t have said before—that in time they would become very close.
When he led Ethan onto the dance floor for their first dance, Max’s heart was a fluttery thing behind his breastbone. Finding a husband had never been his intention, but what a fool he had been for not believing something so wonderful could be his. Ethan was a handsome, kind angel who brought nothing but joy into Max’s life. No matter what came, Max was never letting him go.
Except he did eventually, when Ethan requested to dance with Marcela. But the tradeoff was worth losing him: Max escorted Jeannie to the dance floor, too. They danced while the sun set and the stars peeked curiously through the windows and doors of the barn. The final toast of the party was made outside, beneath a crescent moon and a velvet blanket of diamonds that stretched across the horizon.
With an arm around Ethan’s shoulders, Max toasted. “To our families, who were there when we needed them.”
“To the future,” his father toasted back, no doubt thinking of his collaboration with Max, and maybe of family, too.
Dale raised a hand, smiling. “To everything we have right now. It’s pretty darn great.”
Ethan, warm against Max’s side, murmured, “To Lady Luck, who was always on our side.”
Read more from Tricia Owens at
http://www.triciaowensbooks.com
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Sin City series
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Exchange of Power
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