Fate (Steel Brothers Saga #13) - Helen Hardt Page 0,74

it didn’t hurt.”

“It won’t hurt this time either. God, baby, I want to go slow, but—”

She lay down on my bed. “It’s okay. Take what you need.”

I groaned as I lay down next to her and spread her legs. I stroked her soft folds to make sure she was ready.

Oh, yes. She was ready.

I rolled on top of her, bracing my arms on the bed to hold my weight, and slid gently into her heat.

“Ah…” I groaned. She was the perfect glove for me. Without a condom, I felt every ridge, every crevice, inside her. Sensation coiled in me. Each slide of my cock rippled through my whole body.

I was seventeen again, this time losing my virginity to the girl who was my future.

Nothing had ever felt like this—being inside Daphne. Being inside the woman I loved with no barriers to my pleasure.

I pulled out and thrust back in, savoring her welcoming warmth again. Again. Again.

I wouldn’t last long. I knew this, but it didn’t matter. This was the first of many times I’d make love to the mother of my child.

The first of many.

The first of so damned many.

“Baby, I’m sorry. I have to come.”

“No, wait. I’m… I feel something… Oh!”

The walls of her pussy clamped around me, and that was the end for me. I thrust hard, and my cock released into her. Each pulse brought me closer to her, and her own climax sent me through the roof.

We rode the stars together, our bodies slick with sweat, and when I finally came down, I rolled off her, turned my head, and gazed at her flushed body.

So fucking beautiful.

Emotion lay thick between us, and before I knew it, words popped out of my mouth.

“Marry me, Daphne. Marry me, please.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

Daphne

Marry me.

The words I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear came tumbling from Brad’s lips.

Who would want me? I was a mess. I’d spent a year hospitalized, for God’s sake. I still had nightmares of things I couldn’t remember when I woke up.

Sometimes, I felt I’d never be whole.

But lying here in Brad’s arms, I was. I was whole. Did love make a person whole?

My therapist always said healing must come from within oneself.

I believed that. Truly I did, and I rose each morning looking for the best and brightest things each day had to offer.

One of those best and brightest things was the man whose arms I now snuggled in.

But…married at eighteen?

That wasn’t me. That was never me.

I smiled and kissed his moist cheek. “Yes. I’d love to marry you, Brad. I want to give our baby a proper home with a mother and a father who adore him.”

Brad smiled and pressed his lips to mine. “We’ll do it at the ranch. Next weekend.”

I jerked upward. “Next weekend?”

“Well…yeah. It’s perfect. You can move in here with me and finish the first semester. Maybe the second, too, if you’re up to it. What’s the due date?”

What’s the due date? Yeah, Kathleen had told me.

“May third.”

“That’s perfect. We’ll arrange for you to take your second semester finals early, and…”

His words stopped making sense. They swirled around me, like blurred images made of sound waves.

I’m getting married. I’m moving in with my boyfriend. I’m having his baby.

Married. Moving. Baby.

“Daphne!”

Brad gripped my shoulders.

I met his dark gaze. His eyes. His gorgeous brown eyes. They steadied me. Brought me back into focus.

“Are you listening to me?”

I nodded. “It’s a lot to think about.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know.”

“There’s one other thing.”

“What?”

I gulped. “I have to tell my parents.”

“I know. I’ll go with you.”

“We can’t get married next weekend, Brad. I have to go home. Tell them.”

“You’re right. I should meet them.”

“This is crazy. They’re going to think we’re both crazy.”

“It is a little crazy, but you didn’t get pregnant on purpose. We used protection. It just happened.”

It just happened. That was what I’d tell my parents. It just happened.

After all they’d been through with me, how could I say something just happened?

“What if they won’t let me marry you?”

“Daphne, you’re eighteen years old. You don’t need their permission.”

He was right. I knew he was right. But eighteen wasn’t that much different from seventeen. I didn’t feel like an adult a lot of the time.

You were adult enough to have sex.

The words in my mind made me chuckle out loud.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“I was just thinking how I don’t feel eighteen. I don’t feel like an adult at all sometimes, but I felt ready to have sex with you. That’s pretty adult.”

“I suppose. Although a lot