“Baby,” he groaned against my ear as his hips thrust against me, shooting me toward heaven as his cock stretched me to full capacity. “I love you so fucking much. Stop torturing me, stop making me chase you. Give me everything.”
My nails bit into his ass, holding him deeper for a second longer with each pump of his hip. “I love you too,” I panted. “You have all of me. You know you do.”
“Then stop fighting me,” he begged, his voice wobbling ever so slightly, but it was enough to catch my attention and force my chin up to meet his eyes.
“Raider…” I began, but the look on his face stopped whatever I was about to say.
“I’m at your mercy,” he confessed, swallowing hard. His hips pushed me back into the sink, but then they stopped moving. “Everything I have is yours. Every part of my heart belongs to you. I know this is the least romantic pl
ace to do this, to ask it, but I can’t wait anymore. I can’t give you more time to get used to me, not when I’m scared with each passing day that something will come between us again. I love you. I love this baby I put in your belly. I want forever with you. Marry me.”
My breath hitched, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was balls deep inside me, my insides melting around him a little more with each passing second.
Holy hell. I hadn’t expected this, never imagined this day would come. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from this relationship, but marriage hadn’t entered my mind. If I were being honest, I would have admitted that I thought Raider was allergic to the idea of marriage. Yet there he was, asking me of all people to marry him.
It was a given that this was the least likely place for a proposal, but my heart became a puddle of goo as it dissolved with love for him. We would never share this with our baby; there was no way I wanted to tell our child exactly how their father asked me to marry him.
But I would tell them just how full my heart was and how much it broke when Raider’s eyes widened at my hesitation, tears springing to those green depths as he pressed his forehead to mine. “Please, Quinn. I love you. I fucking need you. Don’t say no. Please…don’t say no.”
I cupped each side of his face, forcing him to lean back and so I could look at him. “Okay,” I whispered, stroking my thumbs over his kiss-swollen lips.
“Really?”
A happy, stupid grin broke across my lips as I looked up at him. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Goddamn it, baby. I love you so fucking much.” His lips crashed down on mine again, rough and imploring. His hips started moving in earnest, as if they had a mind of their own, and the euphoric feeling at agreeing to be Raider’s wife was overshadowed for a moment by the pure ecstasy his body drowned my own in.
Chapter 19
Kelli
“Mrs. Murdock’s funeral has already been paid for, sir.”
I barely heard the voice of the funeral home director as he spoke to Colt, but I felt Colt’s tension as if he were physically a part of me. “How? She just died yesterday.”
“It was a private donation from an anonymous benefactor. Everything has already been attended to, and Mrs. Murdock’s body is even now being cremated.”
“Wait…” For the first time all day, I found my voice, pulling me from the darkest depths of my black soul and straight into the hell that was reality. “What did you say? Cremated?” The man nodded, his eyes sympathetic. “No way! My mother never would have wanted to be cremated. She was terrified of fire.”
A small burn on her wrist as a child had given Mom a phobia of fire. Years ago, when one of her friends had passed away, she had told me that, no matter what, she didn’t want to be cremated. That it was up to me to make sure she had a proper burial.
“I’m sorry, Miss Murdock, but the process has already begun. I was told that Mrs. Murdock was without family and that this was her last wish.” He grimaced as if in pain. “The benefactor had all the paperwork. I apologize for any upset, but I had no choice but to comply with his wishes.”
“Fucking Calvin,” I raged, turning away from the funeral director as fury, pure and white-hot, boiled inside me.
Behind me, I could hear Colt talking to the man, but I didn’t hear a single word spoken between them. The bastard hadn’t been happy just taking my mother from me; he had to stick his nose in this as well? He couldn’t just let his ex-lover rest in peace. He had to do the one thing he must have known she never wanted.
He wanted his revenge on me, thought I would just accept it and walk away?
He was crazy.
Taking my mother away was the last thing he ever should have done. She had been the final wall of defense between us, and now that he was going to war on me, it was time to reciprocate. Every hateful feeling I’d ever experienced in my heart for the man who’d aided my mother in giving me life burned brighter than the pain of her death. The last traces of love and wishes for acceptance, small though they were, evaporated into the air.
He wasn’t going to get away with this. I refused to let him hurt me again.
It was past fucking time he understood what it felt like to have everything he held dear taken away from him. Maybe Kevin’s death had hurt him, but it was nothing to how destroyed he was going to be when I took away his career.
If Calvin wanted a war, I would give him his fucking war.