Page 13 of Now & Forever
“Aw, but you’d still love me if I like… lost my cock, right?”
“James Merange,” Gwen said with a sigh, before she turned over in his embrace and lightly slapped his cheek. “You are the only man I have ever met who could say that with a straight face.”
“My face ain’t straight.”
“Not much about you is.”
He hooked his hand on his hip. “Still talking about my cock, are we?”
She felt him up within his loose-fitting sweatpants. “Uh huh.”
“Woo boy, you woke him up now.” James wasn’t kidding, either. It had been mind over matter before now. He’d be lucky to make it another few minutes without throwing himself on Gwen. “What are you going to do about that?”
“Would you come out and say you want to fuck me?”
“I’mtryingto be suave. It’s been a while, okay? I’m rusty.”
“You better not be rusty with this thing.”
“Is that… is that the go ahead I’ve been waiting for all this time?” James rolled onto his back again, arms spread wide and mouth agape in wonder. “I can’t believe it. Finally. The moment I’ve been praying for. Just ask my priest.”
“I’m not asking priests anything about you.”
With a smile that announced his impure intentions, James flung himself onto his partner, grunting in glee as she yelped in giggly surprise.
If there was one thing he could say about their relationship, it was that it had always feltright.When James walked into Gwen’s bar that first night, tired from work and questioning the direction his life was heading, he beheld a warm light that invited him into quirky conversations and brought with it the knowledge that he had found The One he had been searching for.
Because, unlike what some people liked to spout about James Merange’s college years, he had always been a big ol’ romantic at heart.
If there was anything he wanted to impart to Gwen that night, it was the sense of longing he still harbored in his heart. She was the only woman who had ever seen him for who he really was. While James may have been the only heir to a vast fortune, he was also an easy-going guy who would rather have fun with real people in a dingy dive bar than spend his evenings in gentlemen’s clubs, networking and greasing wheels. He also enjoyed the finer things, as his upbringing dictated. He needed a woman who understood an emotionally simpler life while also not batting her pretty eyelashes at hopping a plane to Kenya at the last minute. Gwen had become that woman in such a short amount of time. Every day James considered himself the luckiest man in the world.
Which was why he was determined to keep her. Forever.
I know you’re thinking about leaving me.James was more in tune with her thoughts and feelings than she may have ever thought. It was what kept their relationship fresh – up until the baby made things a littletoofresh.I don’t want you to ever leave me. I would understand if you did, but… I can’t allow it.James had an arduous task before him. Either convince Gwen that it was always worth staying with him…
Or cut his losses. Now.
That was impossible, though. Gwen was too precious to ever cut off.
She probably wanted a nice, hot quickie to sate whatever needs had been building up within her body for the past few weeks. Both of their moods were amicable to having sex like they used to. But James knew that a hit it and quit it on a Monday night wouldn’t be enough to give Gwen endless thoughts of how much he loved her – and why she should stay.
“Do you know how much I love you?” James wrapped his arms tightly around her torso, holding Gwen’s limbs to her side and making her ass wiggle against his pelvis. “I love you so much that I’m never going to let you go. Especially not tonight.”
James was a guy who liked to workout. That was one of the best ways to socialize with some of his closest friends. What guy didn’t like hitting the gym or the track with one of his best friends to spot him and shoot the breeze? The guys he went with changed with the breezes, but one thing always remained the same: James’s physique. He didn’t have rippling muscles or washboard abs, but he was fit, tough, andstrong.Gwen hit the gym on the regular basis too, and God knew she could uppercut an attacker in the jaw, but she was no match for James when he wanted to make a point in the bedroom. Feeling her wiggle like that, as she assessed whether she could make a game of trying to free herself from her gasp, was half the fun of making love.
They had a safe word as old as their relationship.Vermillion. The name of the bar where we met.If Gwen really didn’t want to deal with his games, she would utter it in a heartbeat. She had done it before. That ruthless color had killed more than a few moods over the years, and James held his breath that it wouldn’t happen tonight.Want me, Gwen. Still want me.
Her body stiffened in his grasp. His cock strained against his sweatpants, eager to have some fun and score some relief. Yet James would never in a million years push her to do something she didn’t want.
“Good,” she whispered, inviting him to wrap his whole body around hers and to nestle his lips against her ear. “Maybe I don’t want to be let go.”
That was the thing about Gwen. She was a tough girl who knew how to take punches and hurl them right back. It was what made her so resilient to the shit she put up with in her partner’s world, a world she never knew existed until they met. Gwen was no wilting flower. She was a strong, unbending tree that swayed with the winds and bloomed even when her branches were tangled by the seasonal storms. That was the kind of woman James needed in his life. He wasn’t about to let her go.
Not when she kept him so steadfastly in the moment. Like now, when she gasped to have him touch her beneath her shirt and search for her wetness. He momentarily feared that she wouldn’t want him after all. He had blessedly been wrong.
Sometimes, when he made love to the love of his life, he wondered what it would be like to wantmore.More than this. More than what people saw when James Merange and Gwen Mitchell walked into a room, hand-in-hand. More than the silly rumors about the kinky sex life they now rarely indulged.
“You want this, don’t you?” James rocked into her from behind. It was easy enough to talk when his words voiced everything going through his head, from how soft she felt to his touch, to how beautiful her moans were. “Tell me how much you want it.”
