He’d found her the perfect house. No, he’d found them the perfect house—and he knew it. But still he’d shown her the respect not to buy it outright, to give her the chance to decide for herself.
She closed the door and hugged herself, feeling so full of love and happiness she thought she might break apart into all her individual molecules.
“What do you think?” Nick’s voice behind her was gruffer than usual, still thick with sleep.
She turned. He was standing across the room, wearing only his boxer briefs. God, he was amazing. And he was hers.
“I think I could be happy living in a cardboard box as long as you were in there with me. But this house is perfect. It’s perfect.”
He grinned at that, looking so pleased and relieved it caught her breath. “I’ll call and get the deal done before we leave. Speaking of which, we should get going. We have a lot to do before our flight tonight.”
She crossed the room and pushed him against the wall behind him. “Not yet.” She kissed his chest, then continued downward, nipping his taut skin as she went. By the time she had her hands in the waistband of his underwear, his cock was hard and huge. She pulled the fabric down slowly, enjoying the bounce and his sharp inhale as he sprang finally free.
“Bella…”
“Hush. Feel.” She grinned up at him, pleased at herself for turning his words of last night back on him. But he wasn’t smiling back. His look was dark and intent, and he brought his hands to her hand and tangled his fingers in her hair.
Kneeling before him, she wrapped her hands around his long, thick, beautiful cock and sucked him deep. She took her time, relishing the way his body began to tremble as he neared his release, the way his balls went hard and his tip swelled against her tongue. When he needed to move, she let him. He was always careful not to go so deep he hurt her. She relaxed her throat and let him thrust, his hands holding her head firmly, his fingers pulling her hair.
He came with a shout and filled her mouth. She swallowed. When he sank boneless to the floor, she turned and settled on his lap.
“I love you, Nick.”
He wrapped her up in his arms and held her like he never wanted to let her go.
~oOo~
Two weeks before Christmas, Bev was alone in their new home, trying to get everything unpacked so that she could decorate for the holidays. She had a house. At Christmas. Even though they weren’t spending the holiday at their house, she wanted to decorate. But she wasn’t going to make it. Besides the time she was spending at the shop, the unpacking at home seemed infinite. Nick kept taking her shopping. More stuff kept getting delivered. More things to arrange. Though they had no need yet of half the rooms in the house, he seemed to want to fill every one of them, and the furniture they’d had hadn’t taken them far in a house this size.
She’d practically had to throw herself bodily between him and the baby store. She’d gone off the Pill a couple of weeks before the wedding, and he’d been making a concerted effort to get her with child. He wanted to make a nursery. Cute as hell as that was, Bev felt like making a nursery before she was even pregnant would jinx something somewhere. That room was staying empty.
Now, she was sitting on the floor in the living room, trying to figure out a layout for family photos she wanted to arrange on the long wall across from the front windows. They were all Nick’s family. Bev didn’t have a family to speak of. Her mom, she guessed. But she hadn’t even come to the wedding. They hadn’t spoken in more than a year. She definitely didn’t want that dyspeptic sneer hanging in her living room.
Betty had given her a box full of photos of the Paganos, though. And she was including pictures from their wedding and honeymoon. She was adding some of hers. Not many. A few photos she had from her childhood, and some of her and Skylar. Some of her and Chris, too.
Someday, the wall would be full of photos of her own family. Hers and Nick’s. Their children. Their life. A happy life full of love.
The brass mail slot in the front door rattled, and a whoosh of letters came through. And then another. Usually, mail was ninety-five-percent junk, but since the wedding, there’d been a lot more, and it was a lot better. Even now, a month since the big day, best wishes cards were coming in. Nick knew a whole lot of people, and they all wanted to wish him well. Even belatedly.
She got up and scooped the pile off the floor, then walked to the kitchen with it. She had a file box on the little kitchen desk for cards and gifts tags, keeping track of thank you notes that needed to be sent.
Flipping through the stack, separating it into piles of junk mail and real mail, Bev paused at an envelope with no return address. She recognized the handwriting. It had been sent to her condo; there was a yellow forwarding address sticker on the bottom.