“So you’ll never lie to me?” she whispers, her lips brushing mine as she speaks, the closeness unstoppable.
“Never,” I growl.
But are you lying, Melody?
Are you lying about who you are?
I shut that voice up with a boot to the face, deciding to ignore that thorny issue until later, when we’re back in the city. I don’t want it intruding now, here.
Her smile turns knowing and playful, and I already know what she’s going to ask before she says it. A note of something like pride twangs in my chest. Our children are going to learn to be on their toes quickly around their mother or she’s going to run circles around them.
“So then, Mr. Never Lies, where are we doing?”
“Niagara Falls,” I laugh.
“What?” Her face lights up and her eyes sparkle. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Natalie told me you’d mentioned it was one of your dream destinations. What better place for a second date?”
She blinks away tears. “It’s not just one of my dream destinations,” she whispers. “It’s ... special to me. The only photo I have of my parents was taken at Niagara Falls. I’ve always wanted to go there, Mason. Thank you so much.”
She flings herself at me and catching her feels like the most natural thing in the world.
It always will.
I stand, picking her up at the same time, and then carry her back to my seat and sit her down on my lap.
My manhood surges against my pants, trying to break free and claim its rightful home.
“I still can’t believe you’re a virgin too,” she whispers, her hands smoothing over my hair, tickling alluringly. But not as alluring as the closeness of those milk giving breasts. “It’s just that you seem to know what you’re doing. Especially yesterday, in the office.”
I shrug. “It was the first time I’ve never done that. But that’s the thing, Melody. These days, people forget that we’re animals. They try to treat sex like code, as though if you do A, B, and fucking C you’ll get pleasure as the result. But spending time around you, I’m learning that it’s nothing like that at all. We’re beasts, and the only thing we have to do is give in to our primal urge to claim each other, to truly be together, to devour each other. Everything else is just background noise.”
This time, it’s her who leans in for the kiss. I brace her back and press her up against me, feeling her heartbeat hammering through her breasts, making them quiver gorgeously.
As we soar over the world, I wrap my arms around her and let out a carnal growl, letting all my concerns drop to the earth below.
Later.
There will be time for that note and that bullshit later.
But this day belongs to us.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Melody
The presidential suite of the hotel is like something out of the crazy fantasies I used to have as a kid in the orphanage.
I’d curl up at night and imagine these wide-open rooms, these plush unrealistic – it seemed to me then – havens. With its marble floors covered in thick rugs, its couches and chairs that look straight out of a palace, and huge paintings hanging from the walls, I feel like I’ve floated into a reverie.
I walk to the fireplace, which is as tall as me, staring up at it in wonder.
“How do they even have a fireplace up here?” I gasp.
Mason walks up behind me, moving quietly for a man his massive size. He wraps his arms around me and leans close, lips brushing tantalizingly against my skin. “They must’ve known you were coming and wanted to impress you.”
“Ha ha, mister,” I giggle, but really more warmth smooths through me.
Today has just been absolutely heavenly from start to finish.
When he told me he was a virgin on the private plane – the private freaking plane – I didn’t believe him at first. It just made no sense. I thought he was just telling me to try and make me feel better.
But when I looked into his eyes, I saw the truth there, and I saw something else, too.
He’d never lie to me.
My man will never lie to me.
I want to tell him the truth about who I am, which is in itself easily the closest I’ve come to ever wanting to be open with anybody.
Even with Gertrude, the need has never felt this overwhelming.
And yet there’s also a part of me that wants to enjoy this evening, my body and soul full of glee after the wonder that was the Niagara Falls, standing in the same spot as my parents’ picture and getting snapped with Mason at my side.
“You haven’t seen the bedroom yet,” he says, his voice deep and husky, letting me know that this is it, he can’t hold himself back any longer.
And neither can I.
My mind wants to come clean about who I really am, my past, that evil night with the blood, the violence, and the pain.
But with Mason’s hand on the small of my back, softly and yet determinedly guiding me down the wide hall to the bedroom, the door ajar so that I can make out the hardwood floor and the four poster bed, I find that those concerns drift away.
My body has entirely different concerns.
Later, later.
Because right now my womb is screaming at me to just be in the moment, to forget the pain of the past and drift indulgently into the pleasure of the present.
Mason closes the door behind us, showing the fanciest bedroom I’ve ever stood in. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling, its lights sheathed in glistening diamonds, making the room sparkle magically.
The bed’s sheets are silk and red, inviting, the closed curtains the same color, hanging from a golden rail.
“I feel like a princess,” I whisper, and then curse myself for being the biggest dork ever.
I feel like a princess.
Lame.
But Mason just grabs my shoulders and turns me so that I’m facing him, and there’s nothing in his beast’s expression – his
