Page 92 of On the Line

But too soon, she’s pulling away, telling me she promised Morgan she’d be home fifteen minutes from now. I bite my lower lip in frustration, because I spent the last twenty-four hours without her, and I don’t want to be apart another second.

“You want to come home with me?” she asks.

If I do, I might never leave. “Yeah.”

“All right,” she says, and she goes to stand but then turns toward me. “Will you stay?”

“At your house?”

“Yeah. Will you stay overnight?”

“You’re not afraid it’ll confuse the girls?”

She shakes her head. “They adore you. And I think they need to get used to having you around.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I need to hear her say it.

“Because I plan on keeping you.”

* * *

“I seriously thought they’d never go to sleep.” Lauren groans after she tiptoes back to the bedroom. I’m sitting against her headboard, responding to emails and wrapping up a few last things for work so I can pay attention to nothing but her tonight. I set my phone on the nightstand as she approaches. “You can’t get them all riled up like that before bedtime.”

“What did I do?” I know damn well what I did.

“From now on, you’re only allowed to do your Flynn Rider impersonation before dinner. You can’t expect them to laugh that hard, for that long, and then go to sleep.”

Pretending to be Flynn Rider was not a talent I knew I had, but all I have to do is turn my head toward them and give them a big smile, and Iris and Ivy dissolve into giggles.

Their reaction was too cute, so of course I did it every time they asked.

I hold up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I promise.”

“You don’t mean a word of that, do you?” She laughs as she comes to a stop right next to what I’m already thinking of as my side of the bed.

“I intend to mean it, but if they look at me with those big eyes and say ‘pwease’ like they were tonight, I may not be able to hold out.”

“Cuteness is their superpower. You can’t crumble in the face of that. I’m going to need you to back me up on stuff, you don’t get toalwaysbe the fun one.”

I reach over and pull her to the edge of the bed. “I’ll always back you up.” I hear what she’s saying, and all the things she’s not saying. I’ll be there for her like no one ever has been. But I’ll also have fun with her kids, because they deserve that too.

She swings one leg up and over me, settling herself right across my lap. “I missed you,” she says, dragging her lips lightly across my forehead and her palms stroke across my shoulders and land on either side of my neck. “A lot.”

“Did you miss me,” I ask as she grinds herself against me, “or my dick?”

She leans down so her lips graze my ear as she whispers, “Is ‘both’ an acceptable answer?”

“Quite acceptable.” My hands skim from her hips, up along her sides, and to her breasts. “I missed you too. Maybe last night, most of all.” I drag my lips along her collarbone as I say, “I don’t like it when we’re fighting.”

“We weren’t fighting,” she says breathlessly, as she rubs herself along the length of my quickly hardening dick.

“You weren’t speaking to me, which is worse. I wouldn’t mind fighting with you,” I tell her. “I used to live to piss you off at work, if you remember. Ever wonder why that was?”

Beneath my lips, her chest shakes with laughter. “Does making me mad turn you on, Jameson?”

“It did when I was younger, and pissed off that I couldn’t have you. Now though ... now, I think making you happy turns me on.”

“You know what would make mereallyhappy?” she asks, tilting her hips to run her clit along my dick. I shake my head as my own hips thrust up to meet hers. “If you stopped talking and fucked me. Four days is entirely too long to go without you inside me.”

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