Work In Progress (Red Lipstick Coalition #3) - Staci Hart Page 0,118

chin as I stood, carrying her to the bathroom. I set her down next to the tub and turned it on, testing the water.

“A bath?” she asked sleepily.

I smiled down at her. “Thought it might be nice. Want a fizzy thing?”

She nodded, her cheeks high, the color bright and alive. Her arms had moved to her chest in unintentional modesty, though not quite covering her. She looked so small, so vulnerable, though her smiling lips told me of one of the many ways she trusted me.

I pressed a brief kiss to her temple before grabbing the basket and picking a pink one with a soap flower in the top that smelled like lavender. “How’s this one?”

Her smile tilted. “That one’s called a sex bomb.”

I glanced at it, turning it over in my hands. “It’s not going to give you an orgasm, is it? Because I’ve decided that’s my job.”

She stepped into me, still smiling as she laid her hands on my chest. “Well, we wouldn’t want to put you out of work, would we?”

I grabbed her hip, lowering my lips on a track for hers. “No, especially considering how good I am at it.”

She laughed just before I kissed her, reveling in the feeling of her hands on my skin and her body against mine. A moment later, I had her by the hand as I stepped into the gigantic tub, helping her in after me. And as the water climbed higher, I sat at the back of the tub with Amelia nestled between my legs, her head resting in the dip of my chest.

I gathered her hair, combing my hands through it as she sighed. Her arms rested on my knees, fingertips skating the rising waterline.

“How do you feel?” I asked, twisting her hair up into a bun with the help of a hair tie on my wrist.

I waited while she considered my question, seeming to put her thoughts in order.

“My body feels okay. No,” she amended, “better than okay. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be.”

I chuckled, lips together. “Maybe I should take back my claims of skill.”

She sat, turning around between my legs. Amelia was beaming, the light within her radiating, shining its warmth and love on me like sunshine after a long, cold winter. “Oh, don’t take it back,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist, bringing her breasts to my torso. “You are everything.” The words were reverent, her eyes open and bright. “You’re everything I could ever want, all I could hope for. Thank you for loving me, Tommy.”

“How could I not, Melia? Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” I said simply, brushing my knuckles across her cheek before opening my hand, cupping the curve with my palm.

And when I kissed her, it was with hope I’d never known for the girl who owned me completely.

For The Record

Amelia

My chin rested on my hand, which rested on Tommy’s cavernous chest. Slowly, I rose and fell with his breath, the long, deep inhale and exhale of perfect sleep.

His big hand cupped my shoulder, his arm holding me to him like a vise, even in the dead of sleep. The room was painted in violety-reds and crimson-oranges, the sun only just setting the city on fire with its light as we spun around it, just like we always had.

But my world spun around the man under my palm, powered by the heart drumming against my hand.

The quiet ache between my thighs was nothing like I’d thought it’d be. I’d thought the entire ordeal would be horribly painful, impossibly awful, that I’d be split in half by the imposing member residing in his pants. But I was right to trust Tommy. He showed all the tenderness and care he had in him, which was a lot. So much that it only hurt for the few seconds it took him to fit himself inside me.

As shocking as the pain was, it had faded, replaced by pleasure. But all feeling came in a chain of bursts, flashes of sensation each equal in their intensity. It had been so much to experience that all I could do was hold on to him, urge him on, ease the fear behind his eyes.

I was changed, rearranged, and every piece of me had Tommy’s name on it.

The last thing I wanted to do that morning was answer the summons to Janessa’s office. Tommy and I were leaving that afternoon for a quick trip to Chicago for a