it.
He released a loud moan and his hips bucked. Then he was tugging on my shoulders and pulling me off him. Jaxon’s eyes were wild, his breathing ragged. “Condom?”
“I don’t have any.”
He froze. “Neither do I.”
“I’m still on birth control,” I said. “Have you been with anyone else?”
“Fuck no.” He sounded almost offended before a pained expression contorted his face. “You?”
“Hell no.”
His answering grin was as relieved as it was damn hot. He rose over me, resting the bulk of his weight on his elbows.
As I lay underneath him, the feeling of his bare skin against mine was exquisite. He fit himself to me, took my mouth in a kiss that made my toes curl, and pushed in slowly. Rocking against me, his fingers wrapped around my thighs and he set a rhythm that soon started building that familiar pressure again.
He wound the tension tighter, stroked into me in a way that pushed me higher with every thrust. Our slick skin was plastered together, our hips moving fast as we climbed to our respective peaks. When he moaned my name and tensed against me, his whole body shuddered and mine erupted with pleasure at the same time.
Long waves of it rocked through me while Jaxon buried his face in my neck, his hot breath ghosting across my skin. Bringing his head up when our moans had eventually quieted, he pushed my hair off my damp forehead and smiled softly. “I love you, Lindsay.”
“You can’t leave me again,” I whispered against his lips. I would never tire of hearing him tell me that he loved me or telling him how much I loved him, but it’d been a long day and I was too afraid sleep would pull me under.
Having made the mistake of keeping quiet once about what was going on in my head before we fell asleep, I needed to get the words out right now. “I’m serious, Jaxon. I can’t go through that again. If I wake up tomorrow and you’re not here, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You don’t have to worry about it, love. Maybe Big Mac was right, and some weird stars did align, but they’re aligned now. I’ll be here tomorrow morning and every morning after that until you kick me out.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and scooted up to kiss him, pouring every gushy emotion I never thought I’d feel into him. His arms circled around my waist, and without breaking the kiss, he rolled us over so he was hovering above me, his eyes burning with intensity as they locked on mine.
“I’m staying right here,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere. Go to sleep, snookums. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
My nose wrinkled. “Snookums? Really? We’re doing the nicknames thing again?”
“We are. I’m really looking forward to seeing how creative we’re going to have gotten by the time we celebrate our ten-year anniversary back in Fiji.”
My heart galloped as I kissed the tip of his nose. “Okay, buttercup. Challenge accepted, but you’re not allowed to complain about a single one.”
“I won’t,” he said as I cuddled into his side, his chest rumbling with laughter. “I told you already. I’m yours to do with what you want. Do your worst. As long as I get to be here to hear each and every one of them.”
With those words and the sound of his laughter in my ears, I finally closed my eyes and slept peacefully. When I woke up the next morning, he’d kept his promise. He was still there, still holding me, still loving me.
It didn’t mean everything was fine between us or that I trusted him with all my heart and soul, but it was one step closer. Everything else would come with time, and at least this time, we had it. There was no clock counting down to the end of our relationship, and what we made of it was up to us.
Epilogue
LINDSAY
ONE YEAR LATER
Every little girl grew up dreaming about her wedding day. I might not have counted myself among those little girls before, but I’d sure as hell made up for all the dreaming I’d missed, ever since Jaxon had walked back into my life.
As he’d promised that night when we’d made up exactly one year ago today, he hadn’t asked me to marry him yet. Even though I knew now that he loved me with every fiber of his being and that he would never hurt me again.
It didn’t matter, though, because I really