The Paradise Problem (109)
It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve done this—my married-people sex math checks out, by the way—I still never know where to start. His neck? His chest? His legs? His cock? Liam’s body is a landscape of hard lines and sharp angles, and I climb over his legs, wanting to devour every bit of him. Greedy palms map the thick muscle of his thighs and up to the flat plane of his stomach. Once I decided to wear the ring, I also made a nail appointment, wanting to surprise him. Not only will my nails look great in the 387 braggy engagement pics I plan to take, but they have an added benefit. Liam sucks in a breath when he realizes it, too, and I drag my pink-tipped fingertips over his stomach, not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to leave four tracks of flushed, pink skin behind.
“Fuck.” He hisses. “It’s going to be like that tonight, is it?”
I nod, making my way down his body to take him in my fist and then in my mouth, my hair falling around his hips. He gathers the strands in his fingers, forcing my chin up. “You going to hide that pretty face the whole time?”
I groan around the length of him and look up his body. I could get drunk on those eyes, on the hunger there, his focus torn between my mouth on his cock, and his ring on my finger. I suck and taste, savoring the weight of him against my tongue, not sure if I want to finish him this way or feel him inside.
He decides for me, his voice a gravelly “Come here” when he cups my elbows, dragging me up his body, and settling me over his hips. His mouth finds mine again, his kisses a distraction for us both as he sits up beneath me and pushes his hands into my hair. Each kiss is punctuated with soft sighs and grunts as I slowly rock above him, the length of his cock sliding forward and back. His hands move to my ass, and he moves me over him in long, slippery slides. Aching want settles low in my stomach, between my legs. He lifts me onto my knees, and it changes the angle just enough that the blunt head of him catches me where I’m wet and open and so, so ready. Liam stills me with a hand to my hip before reaching between us, holding himself at the base and guiding me while I sink down, inch by inch, until I’m not sure where he stops and I begin.
“That’s it,” he says, gripping my ass again in both of his palms. “Just like that.” He kneads the muscle there, pulling me open until he’s seated inside me, and I gasp at the sensation of being so full in some places and so empty in others. I ride him like this, losing track of time as he kisses and fucks me, his hands setting off small explosions along my skin. His mouth finds my neck, my nipples. His groans grow louder in my ear. My orgasm flickers just off in the distance, close enough to reach out and grab, and when he flips me over, hooking an arm under my knee and bringing me closer, fucking me harder, it’s finally there, spiraling through me in shimmering lines and sweeping brushstrokes. A work of art, a masterpiece, finally complete.
Wild now, he bends me nearly in half, each thrust sending me into the mattress and farther up the bed until he’s coming, his helpless grunts heavy in my ear.
When he finally stills, I am melted sugar poured across the bed, I am a spent storm cloud slowly drifting apart, I am the quiet decrescendo of a frenzied concerto. With his lips pressed to my neck, Liam pulls out and then collapses at my side, his chest heaving, skin wet with sweat.
“Holy shit,” I say, pulling in a shaky breath. “Honeymoon sex is going to be unreal.”
With an exhausted laugh, he rolls to face me, taking my hand in his and looking at my ring again. “We’re getting married.”
“We are married,” I correct. “We’re just… getting a do-over. Happy anniversary, by the way.”
He kisses me, humming against my mouth. “Happy anniversary.” Considering something, he pulls back to meet my eyes. “Do we start counting from one?”
“No way,” I tell him. “I want credit for all six.”
“Then I have a lot of anniversary presents to catch up on.”
“You do,” I say. “But that’s a lot of pressure. Let’s make a deal.”
He pushes himself up on his elbow, gazing down at me as he twists a curl of my hair around his finger. “What do you want, then? Name your price.”
“What number would make you sweat a little?” I ask, grinning. “What would be just on the border of you saying no, but you’d still say yes? How about loving me for another six years, times ten?”
He does his best to look serious, but the smile never leaves his eyes. “Yes, sixty years is a very long time.”
“Then how about forever?”
“You’re a tough negotiator, Green-Weston.”
“I learned from the best.”
Liam grins, and there in his eyes is adoration and lust and promise and everything else I ever wanted. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
Acknowledgments
WHAT A JOY THIS one was. Hopefully this book felt like it was written happily during a continuous stretch of warm summer days, because it absolutely was. In fact, this book was pure sunshine, an easy draft that took only four weeks to complete.
Just kidding! That’s only if we don’t mention the three other terrible attempts we wrote first because we couldn’t get the idea right. An idea is always perfect; it is shiny and fresh and flawless. It will appear in your head fully formed and, as writers, we know that our only job is to put it down on the page. Easy! Alas, it isn’t always easy to translate that shine into a full manuscript, and sometimes a draft comes out looking like you’ve just thrown a dart at a dictionary 90,000 times. So, for any new or aspiring writers out there, please know this: thirty books in and we sometimes still fumble the ball (that’s a football reference, but we all know that now—thanks, Taylor). The two of us are somehow still learning the lesson to trust our gut and to be fearless: sometimes starting over is painful but correct.