“What page?”
He pulled a ring out of his slacks’ pocket. No box around it. Just a big, beautiful teardrop diamond set on a band with three diamonds on either side. He held it out in front of me. “I was going to try to get every color in your eyes on the gemstones, but it would have been impossible. So instead, seven diamonds to get us to heaven, Lamb. You know I’m not letting you go. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy, and I’ll rip apart anyone who makes you sad. Literally. I got a taste of losing you, and I know I should let you go so you can have a normal life, but I want to try for a future with you. It’s what we both deserve.”
“Dante, no one expects you or me to—”
“We’re crushing people’s expectations, Lilah. It’s not about them. It’s about you and me. What’s going to make you happy?”
“I …” There was a large part of me that was scared to say yes. Scared of what could happen. Scared I couldn’t see the future, couldn’t predict the pain or the failures. But none of that mattered as much. “I just want you.”
“You got me, baby. For the rest of your life. Say yes. Marry me.”
“We’re going to have to be engaged a long time. Until we figure out the new family dynamic, Dante.”
He nodded like he was willing to say yes to anything in that moment.
I took a breath.
“Don’t make me count to seven with you right now.”
“Yes,” I blurted, smiling as tears streamed down my face.
“Thank fuck,” he grumbled and slowly slid the ring onto my finger. We both admired how it fit snugly, perfectly, like he’d measured it exactly right.
His attention to details in regards to me always had been perfect.
He stood and, instead of kissing me, backed up to the stall door and shut it. It latched in place with a loud click.
The breeze blew from the fan above us, but my heartbeat escalated, my palms started to sweat, my breath hitched as my vision tunneled straight to Dante, staring at his eyes that hungrily roamed over my body.
He growled, and this time he really did circle me, once, twice, and then he kneeled before me.
“What are you doing?” I asked. He’d already proposed. And now his slacks were in the dirt for a second time.
His piercing green gaze held mine as he grumbled out low and rough, grinding into all the right places of my mind, “I’m about to grovel, Lamb. I need you to forgive me.”
I was about to ask for what, but my question was lost when he removed both my shorts and panties in one swift movement, then closed his mouth around my clit so fast that I didn’t have time.
I fell forward, catching myself on his shoulders as I dug my nails in and gasped. I’d missed his touch on me, and my body practically bucked on his face right away, so wound up and ready for him that I knew the tears in my eyes would overflow.
Part of the emotion was from getting what I wanted. Dante was it. And I was jumping into what could be heaven or hell on earth, but I wanted to believe in love. It might not have added up most of the time, and it might not have been an easy study, but it was full of hope, and I could rely on that.
His hands were on my ass, kneading and caressing it to the same rhythm as his tongue. I clawed at his hair, trying to get closer to him, trying to have him consume me. I had this man’s ring on my finger, and my body wanted the same symbolism acted out between us.
“Dante, oh my God, you’re forgiven. Can we please go somewhere so I can have you? I need you in me. I need you. I need you. I need you.” I whimpered it as if it would come true if I said it over and over.
He slid his thumb inside me and then pulled an ass cheek taut enough that his middle finger could graze my asshole. “Baby, I have to get you good and ready for me first.”
“No, I’m ready,” I cried. “I’m so ready.”
He chuckled and grabbed my thigh to put it over his shoulder. He looked up at me then and commanded, “Show me how ready. Hop up, baby. Ride my face like the good girl you are.”
“You’re so crude sometimes,” I said. Yet, I was already crawling up him and rearranging myself so both my legs were on his shoulders, and he turned me around so that my back was against the stall’s gate.
“Ride, baby,” he said, and I rolled my hips into his face as his tongue went to my pussy. With his finger probing my asshole and his thumb pumping me between my folds, I knew I wasn’t going to last. I’d been without him for days, and I got off from just his touch alone.