“How can I say no to you?” Rylee smiles down at our daughter, then pins me with a stare, one that searches my body with those eyes, knowing full well why I want her to come.
What can I say?
I’m a slave to all things her.
Rylee's fingers entwine with mine a week later as we walk through the center of town. We’re on the search for ice cream. Tomorrow, Rylee is going back to work, and she is almost completely healed. I study her and can’t help but love every inch of her, from the scowl she wears as she stares into the ice cream shop because they don’t have the flavor she wants, to the smile that touches her lips when she turns and sees me staring.
“What’s going through your head?” she asks as people walk past and pay us no mind. Winter is with Beckham, as he demanded to have a day with her. And us, well, we are on the hunt for ice cream, and in doing that, we had to head into the city to find the best parlor.
“Just how I missed so much,” I tell her honestly. “And how I can’t wait to see you naked very soon.” My lip twitches and she rolls her eyes with a smile on her face.
“Well, I didn’t get married, so you didn’t miss much.” Rylee turns and looks back to the shop, trying to hide the sadness and disappointment that I know will be emanating from her eyes for me. I step up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist.
Kissing her neck, I murmur, “It wasn’t Jacinta I wanted to marry. It was you. It’s always been you.”
“You can’t say things like that,” she whispers.
“Why not? It’s true.”
Rylee shakes her head. “No, because you left me. You. Left. Me. And you married someone else.” She turns in my arms, so she’s facing me. It’s hard not to push her against the glass and have her right here and now, take her, bend her to my will. I have a feeling she would be incapable of stopping me, but I won’t. Not in public.
“Do you want to get married? If that’s what you want, I will do it. Would that make you happy?”
Rylee pushes at my chest, and I know I’ve said the wrong thing instantly. “I’m not like her. You can’t make a deal with me, or just say ‘hey, let’s get married.’ That doesn’t appeal to me, and it shouldn’t appeal to you either, that is if you love me.”
I step back and scrub my hands over my face. When I look back at her, her arms are crossed over her chest.
“Rich girl.”
She shakes her head, exasperated. “Do not ‘rich girl’ me.”
Stepping to her, I cage Rylee in with my arms so she can’t escape and lean down to whisper in her ear, “When I marry you … because I will … you will have my last name. I will not ask you in any other manner than which you deserve. I was sampling asking now to ease the discomfort you seem to have with the thought that I married someone else.” Before she can say another word, my lips cover hers and press hard. She opens her mouth, giving me access, and her hands slide beneath my shirt, her cold fingers splaying on my bare skin.
Someone coughs behind us.
Pulling back, I rest my forehead on hers. “I plan to marry you. I plan to have more babies with you if that’s what you want to do, and if not, that’s fine as well. I plan to live with you. Fuck, my whole life I have planned around you. And before you, I never had plans. I lived every day as it came. I didn’t have a choice. I was destined for one place and one place only. It’s because I found you that I never went back. So, rich girl, every other path would have led me back to you. I just happened to get sidetracked along the way.”
“August,” she says, pulling me in with those wicked, dark eyes.
“Hmmm?”
“I don’t want ice cream anymore.”
“And what do you want?” I ask.
“You.”
“That’s something I can easily arrange.”
“I hope so,” she says, ducking out from under my arm and going back to the car. I follow behind her, and she climbs in the back seat instead of the front. She motions with her finger for me to get in, and I do just that. The minute I close the door behind me, she climbs onto my lap and reaches for my jeans, unbuttons them, and slides her hand in until she has a firm hold on my cock. She slides her hand up and down, all the while staring at me.
“I don’t need a ring or marriage,” she tells me. “Just you.” Rylee pulls up her dress and positions herself over me while she moves her panties to the side. She then slides down on my cock, and when she does, both hands come up and latch on to my shoulders and dig in as she starts to move.