Buyer’s Market(54)

“I love you,” Ethan says, kissing the top of my head and squeezing me tight in his arms. “You belong to me,” he says, soft as a prayer, keeping me tight against him.

“I’m yours,” I say before I fade into sleep, so perfectly exhausted.





Ethan





Five Years Later



Emmaline strolls into my office, in some ways like she did in the past, and in others, well, in the most delightful way imaginable. She’s all legs, the heat still thick in the air, and my fingers are itching to get on her skin.

I’m back at the university, as I have been asked by several times. I only agreed to come back if I was allowed to still have my wife. Emmaline Wesley, now, thank you very much. That’s a much prouder accomplishment for me than even the book I wrote on Mary Shelley and her life among her contemporary crew of writers and visionaries.

“I think I’m really done!” Emmaline says with a squeal, and she closes the door behind her.

“Well, is the next step there being two doctors of English in our house?” I ask her, making my eyes wide as if I’m shocked by this idea. I started to see what Emmaline really wanted before she was able to accept it for herself, and though we both love academia, I fully support her decision. I think it is kind of romantic, really.

Emmaline hands me her thesis and I’m immediately engrossed. My woman has always been so damn smart, reading her writing turns me on just about as much as touching her perfect body. She sits on my desk and spreads her legs apart, slowly.

I bite my lip and slide my chair between those legs, placing the thesis on her lap. “I’m finishing this, and then I’m starting on you,” I say. I grab my pen and Emmaline’s eyes widen. “You did bring me this copy to mark up, yes?”

Emmaline narrows her eyes. “We’ll see. I think it is finally perfect,” she says, bringing a fist to her heart.

“Impressive, I took so much longer to finish mine,” I say with a laugh. Of course, Emmaline is getting her masters in a year’s time, so it is no surprise that her thesis also happened at an accelerated rate. She’s incredibly gifted. I’m so lucky to have her in my life.

I read though, my hand cupping her thigh the whole time, and I find that my pen has no home. Her thesis is an incredible piece, and completely ready to turn in. It isn’t till I get to the very end that I see two sticky notes. One pink, and one blue.

She can’t mean?

“Twins,” Emmaline says. “We’re going to have twins!” she says, circling her arms around my neck.

Holy fuck! I toss her paper to the side and pull her up on my lap. Burying my face in her neck, I kiss her hard and fast, desperate to devour the woman I love.

The woman who is the mother of my children.

“Emmaline,” I growl against her neck. “You’ve already given me more than I could ever imagine, after all this time together, and you never cease to amaze me. I have no doubt that romance novel writing will lend very well to being barefoot and pregnant.” I say, running my hands up and down her back.

“Is it wrong that I want to name them Peter and Mary?” I ask her. “I mean, I did name my dog Victor for Victor Frankenstein, but surely we can name our children for Mr. and Mrs. Shelley and that’s not too weird, right?”

Emmaline leans way to the side and picks up her paper. “The sticky notes,” she says, and I realize what she’s done. I lift them both and see ‘Mary?’ under the pink note and ‘Peter?’ under the blue one. “We’re having a boy and a girl, I think we should. I think it is perfect,” Emmaline says, and this time she pulls the paper from my hands and kisses me.

I am really fucking lucky. I have absolutely everything I could ever want. I thought my violent tendencies, my temper, my obsessive, possessive personality would never lend itself to a relationship. I thought I’d never find someone as passionate me, or that cared as much about the things I do as I do. It can be lonely even as a wealthy scholar…but then the student became the teacher. Cliche, I know, but Emmaline and I have grown together, challenging each other every day to go after everything we want.

Lately, that’s been quiet the illustrious sexcapades, and I’m certainly not complaining. Emmaline tried her hand at fiction last year, and she wrote so many novels last year that she’s actually talking about how she wants to write one a month. She asked me to be her editor, and for Emmaline, I’d happy take on that duty as well as the inspiration department.

She calls it blocking. After I left the English department, she spent a lot of time in theatre, and that’s where she picked that up. See, Emmaline writes this virgin romances, and she wants to make sure that the Byronic, dark and twisty heroes that she writes about know what they’re doing in the bedroom, and she insists we try out any sex act that she writes about.