“I love you, Petal.” I caught her arms above her head, leaning her back into the damp grass as the rain misted down over us. Evergreen boughs, heavy with raindrops, sheltered us from the hardest rain as I trailed my lips along the waistband of her pants, darting the tip of my tongue along the waistband as she arched beneath me.
“I love you so much, Maverick, even when you make me crazy.” She pushed one of her hands into my beard and tugged softly. I growled, catching her lips in another kiss before slipping my hands under her sweater and pushing it over her torso.
Sweet rain covered her soft body, my eyes devouring her like I hadn’t been able to since the first time.
“Petal.” I arched her neck back and planted kisses down her throat and around her ear. “My tongue craves you.” I ran my tongue up the column of her neck. “I can’t live without you.”
She wrapped her arms around me, ran her palms up under my shirt, and clutched at the skin, digging her nails deep and pulling. She writhed as I groaned with pleasure before I clamped down on her bottom lip and tugged softly.
I handled her like a wild man, exposing her skin to the night air and trailing my nose between her breasts as she whimpered while I inhaled her. I ran my nose around the edge of her nipple, watching it harden with desire before I sucked it into my mouth and pulled on it with my teeth.
“I love the feel of you everywhere,” she hissed and it went straight to my throbbing dick. Tingling and burning with the need for release, I tried to keep a handle on the impending orgasm as I staggered my strokes and sank deeper. She hummed with her pleasure, while I became a wild animal, lost my mind a little bit inside of her.
The walls melted away and it was just the two of us. My mind shot into another galaxy when I was buried inside my Petal.
“Say you’ll stay,” I ordered.
“What?” she asked, breathless.
“Stay on the ridge with me, sell your apartment, we’ll move your stuff in this weekend.”
“But the flower shop—”
“We’ll hire someone to take more shifts, or you can keep flowers here and do deliveries, or—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” she giggled.
I tugged on her nipple with my teeth just as waves of pleasure washed over her body, sweat dampened her skin, her heels curved into my hips. With my jeans around my thighs, I slowed slightly to take in the pleasure of her pulsing around me. Filling her, my own release pulsed and exploded. Like molten lava, my blood thickened in my veins as she threaded her fingers in my hair.
I dropped my head into her shoulder and sucked in the sweet smell of our lovemaking on her skin. I nipped at the soft flesh covering her collarbone as I supported her. We were damp and tangled, a wild mess, and I loved it.
This woman filled something in me that I needed to breathe and I hadn’t even known I’d been so starved for the oxygen.
I could never let her go.
“I can’t wait to walk you down the aisle.”
“A wedding? You’re a big-picture thinker, huh?”
I chuckled, kissing her softly. “With you I am.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Poppy
“Bacon—sausage—-pancakes—what’s your pleasure?” Maverick lifted me off my toes, both of us fresh from a morning shower where he ravaged me with his tongue and every hard inch of his muscled body for over an hour.
He was an animal, totally relentless, my beast.
“You are my pleasure.”
He laughed at my joke, his broad chest crushing me to his marbled body, sending a thrill to my toes. Being wrapped in his arms with just a thin towel separating our naked bodies made me salivate.
Maverick wasn’t just big, he was mountain-man big. The cut of his jaw was vicious and taut, my fingers skating across the plains of his stubbled flesh sent fireworks shattering through my veins. Maverick took masculine to a barbaric level, the sharp cut of his eyes and thick beard instilling fear like I imagined a Viking would on distant shores as they pillaged their way through villages.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you—” I gasped into his mouth when his full lips swallowed the rest of my sentence.
He tugged the towel, sitting me bare-bottomed on the granite kitchen island before he pursed his lips away and held my chin. “I’ll never be good enough for you, but until the day I die I’ll never stop tryin’.”
“I’m glad you feel that way—”
“You’re the only thing that chases the darkness away.”
He cut me off with more fevered kisses. I felt him, hot and hard, pressed between us, the urge to get lost in him tingling through my nerves.
My heart hammered with the confession that was locked on my lips. I couldn't let him continue, not now, not after this morning, not after what he’d just said.
“You chased the rain clouds away—” he hummed, kissing down my neck in a hot trail.
“Maverick—I—I love you so much and I’m afraid to tell you this one thing, but I know no matter what you won’t be upset—”
“Upset?” His body went rigid beneath me. Every muscle clenched and bunched, the warmth in his eyes suddenly cut to darkness like he’d seen a ghost.
He’d flipped to a stranger before my eyes.
“Maverick...” I swallowed, cradling his cold palms in my own warm ones and then sliding them against my abdomen. “I’m pregnant.”
Long beats of silence hung between us.
I searched for the familiar warmth and caring I’d become used to.
It was all absent.
“Mav?”
His eyes flinched, pupils growing large before his hands dropped from me and he shoved them both in my hair. He clenched his teeth, anger coursing through his body before a look of devastation rolled like a thunderstorm through his eyes.
“Mav—”
“Don’t call me that, please.” He breathed
