“Keep still, Sloane,” he said when I tried to angle the lower half of my body closer to him. “Next question. Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Oh, God, Tackle,” I moaned when I felt his fingers back between my legs.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I love you so much.”
“Enough to know that you want to spend the rest of your life with me?”
“Tackle…”
He moved away so no part of his body was touching mine. “Answer me, Sloane.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I love you enough to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“You’ve been very honest. That means the world to me.” His tongue was back on my clit in an instant, bringing me to yet another orgasm.
As my breathing slowed, I waited for his next question. Instead, I felt the shift of the bed when he stood. “Tackle?”
“I’m right here.” I heard the rustling of clothes and then his hands removed the silk covering my eyes. “With this, you have a choice,” he said, kneeling at the side of the bed.
He took my left hand in his and slid a ring on my finger. “Sloane, will you marry me?”
My eyes filled with tears, and I nodded.
“I need to hear the words.”
“I will marry you, Tackle.”
He stood, walked around the bed, and lay naked beside me. I turned my body toward his, and we kissed.
“I love you, Sloane.”
“I love you, Landry.”
He raised a brow.
“It is your name.”
He laughed. “As long as you love me, I don’t really care what you call me.”
There were many things I was tempted to say, but he’d just proposed and I’d accepted. I didn’t want to make a joke of something I’d dreamed about my entire life.
I leaned forward and kissed him as tears ran down my cheeks. He pulled back and looked into my eyes. “I want you to be my wife, Sloane. I want it so much, it hurts, and that’s the part I want you to know. I understand we need to wait, since you’re on bed rest, but know that if I could, I’d marry you today.”
“What about Thursday?”
“Thursday?”
“There’s a three-day waiting period to get the marriage license in Massachusetts.”
“Is that right?”
“I doubt the justice of the peace would be busy on a weekday.”
Tackle smiled. “Unlikely.”
“You’d probably want to call just to make sure.”
“You’ve thought about this?”
“No, Tackle, I’ve dreamed about this—my whole life.”
Epilogue
Tackle
On the twentieth day of August, Landry Carolina Alice Sorenson made her debut. Sloane and I decided we didn’t want anyone in the delivery room with us other than the doctors and nurses, much to both our mothers’ dismay.
Three hours after her water broke, Sloane grasped my hand with hers as we watched our baby girl take her first breaths.
I cried unashamedly when the doctor placed Landry on Sloane’s chest, and she looked first at her mother and then at me.
“She looks like you,” said Sloane.
I shook my head. “She looks like you, and she’s perfect.”
A little less than two years later, Landry’s baby brother joined our family. Sloane told me that since she’d chosen the name for our precocious and precious little girl, she wanted me to choose the name for our boy.
He was two weeks old when I came to Sloane with the name I’d finally decided on. It hadn’t been hard to come up with, only the order was.
“Bodhi Nils Benjamin Sorenson.”
“I love it,” said Sloane, kissing our baby boy’s head, Landry’s cheek, and then my lips.
Want more?
How about a free book?
Sign up for my newsletter and receive a free book!
CLICK HERE!
______________
Keep reading for a sneak peek
at the next book in the
K19 Security Solutions Series,
Onyx
Onyx
I couldn’t remember the last time I spent Thanksgiving with my entire family. With five brothers and three sisters, all of whom were married with kids, my parents’ place, while large enough to raise us all in, was still a madhouse.
Fortunately, it was warm enough today in Paso Robles, located just inland on the Central Coast of California, that we could spend the day outdoors.
“What can I get you?” my sister Erlinda asked, coming over to where I sat chatting with my oldest brother, Carlos. “Would you like another glass of wine?”
I looked at my half-full glass. “I’m good.”
When she walked away, Carlos cleared his throat. “Ahem.”
“You can get your own,” Erlinda said over her shoulder.
I watched the kids—none of whom I recognized—as they ran around the large lawn on the side of the house. When we were their age, there didn’t seem to be much time for playing. Even on holidays, there was work to do in the vineyards that sat on our parents’ property but were leased by my cousins, the Avilas, for their Los Caballeros Winery.
“How was the harvest this year?” I asked Carlos, more to be polite than because I cared. I’d never had any interest in growing grapes or making wine.
From the time I was a small boy, all I’d wanted to do was become a pilot. I followed a path from the Navy’s ROTC program, into college, active duty, Officer Candidate School, and finally into pilot training. Along with flying F/A-18 Hornets, I cross-trained in intelligence.
That’s what led me to go work for K19 Security Solutions, a firm founded by four of the CIA’s best operatives and agents. Hell, they were the world’s best.
It was my job with K19 that took me to South America that fateful day when my life irrevocably changed. I’d come as close to dying as any man ever had when I was shot at point-blank range while flying an aircraft that subsequently crashed.
Sure, everyone said it was a miracle I was alive, but I wasn’t, not fully. I’d lost two parts of myself the minute the shot was fired.
First, my career as a pilot came to an end. The injuries I suffered would never heal enough for me to fly again.
Second, the organ responsible for pumping blood throughout my body
