Rosemary’s mouth formed an O as he talked and she processed the information.
“I know it’s crazy fast, and traditionally we would date first. But I don’t want to date you. I just want to spend every minute with you. The thought of us going through the motions of courtship when I already know you’re it for me…it’s enraging, to be honest. It’s just … just the way it is with my kind of people. We make quick decisions.” What he didn’t say was his kind of people become completely, obsessively fixated once they meet their mates.
Her eyes wide, Rosemary nodded as if she understood even if she looked a little shocked.
“So here it is. Take me and my whole mess or leave me. I’m not talking about dating, I’m talking marriage. Now’s your chance. I’m done finding out who’s right for me. I have an instinct about you, Rosemary. Marry me or cut and run. It’s your choice. It won’t hurt me if you run.” Yes, it would, but she didn’t need to know that.
Rosemary looked surprised, pleased, and a little scared all at once. He waited for her to say something. He desperately wanted to know what she was thinking.
“All right, Ash, let’s do this. And I mean now. I want a short engagement.”
Even better. “Anything you want.”
“One other thing. I hope this isn’t a dealbreaker, but I’m a virgin. I know we did a lot of messing around, but I’d like to save that one thing for the wedding night. Can you handle that?” She stared into his eyes and rained that velvet voice all over him, giving him eyes that were so bedroom he felt like he was already there.
“I can handle it. What I can’t handle is not having your lips on me for another second longer.”
* * *
Ash’s shirt was off, and he was leaning up against the cold marble inside a crumbling old mausoleum. Interesting how that can happen on a simple stroll around the grounds of a cemetery. Rosemary was saying, “I think we ought to get to know each other better if we’re going to be married.” Then she inched down and pressed her soft lips against his pectorals. “What’s your favorite color?”
“That part of the sky at sunrise where you can’t tell if it’s pink or if it’s orange. It’s like, rose gold or something, but better. It’s what I imagine your skin will look like on our wedding night after I’m finished with you. What about yours?”
“Icy grayish blue, like your eyes,” she said, kissing his other pectoral.
“Where did you go to school?”
He answered, running his fingers through her hair, “Jefferson High School, then Tulane for a year. Couldn’t make it. Left and went to Europe for a while. Came back and went to work for Daddy at JB’s. Now I’m writing copy for an ad firm. I’m kind of a savant in the business. The JB Chicken jingle? I did that.”
She suddenly stopped kissing and licking his abs and met his eyes. “Are you kidding me? JB Stands for Just the Best? That was you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I love that jingle!”
Ash looked up at the sky in the open-air mausoleum as if he needed rescuing from above. “That’s it, I’m leaving.” He pretended to try to get out of her embrace, but she shoved him back with an impressively strong hand.
“I’m not kidding. I’ve driven my parents crazy with that ear-worm ever since those commercials started a couple of years back! I thank you for that, sir! I’m in the presence of a genius! Don’t you get it? We were meant to be together!”
Ash did believe in fate. He was happy to see that Rosemary did too. But was he any closer to telling her the whole story about who he was? Maybe later.
“And what about you, sweetheart? Where did ol' Lionel send his princess to school?”
Rosemary’s mouth had been traveling lower and lower, planting kisses down his stomach to the pleasure trail, rubbing her hands through his chest hair. She gave a quick tug that sent a blast of pain through his chest. “Ow!”
She stood upright and smirked. “That was for the princess comment. Parochial prep school, then finishing school,” she said, tracing kisses along his shoulders from one side to the other as she spoke. “Then I went to an Ivy League school up north for a while, got bored stiff. Nobody likes to have any fun up there, and also it was too cold. So against my parents’ wishes, I finished up at state school. I got my degree in elementary education and now I teach kindergarten.”
“A teacher,” he said. “That’s hot.”
“Is it?”
He winked. “Sure is. I can see some serious role playing with a ‘Hot for Teacher’ scenario in our future.”
She smiled and licked his earlobe. “Glasses, bun, miniskirt?”
“Nah, pencil skirt.”
“Ooh, a man who knows what a pencil skirt is, now that is hot,” Rosemary said, raking her teeth over his nipple.
He sucked in his breath and then laughed. “Shut up. I got five sisters plus a best friend who’s a girl. Gimme a break.”
“Ash, you didn’t tell me your family was also Catholic.”
He grinned. “Nah. We’re just…rambunctious folk. Real…uhm…frisky.”
That was the closest he got to telling her about the beast, but he soon got distracted with some seriously hot petting. He opened her coat and squeezed her delightful little breasts through her top. His hands explored her ass, her legs, and her core through her jeans. He was drawn so hard to her pussy. Her scent told him she was soaking her panties the more he squeezed her with her clothes on. Ash massaged her between her thighs until she moaned.
“Oh Ash, unzip my pants, please.”
“Here? Baby, we’re nearly bumping uglies in public.”
“Oblige me, darlin’.”
Well, he would be ungentlemanly if he did not. Ash unfastened her jeans and slipped his hands down
