He dipped his head, running his tongue along my collarbone and up to my ear. "But it doesn't hurt to practice baby making, does it?"
I pushed at him until he rolled and I was able to straddle him. "You know what they say? Practice makes perfect."
He levered up his lips, wrapping around my nipple and sucking before releasing it and bringing his mouth up to mine in a searing kiss.
"You are perfect. Our lives are perfect."
No truer words were ever said. As we let our bodies communicate all the love we had for each other, I felt so grateful to have found this man. Through him, I'd found my voice. I had found myself. I’d found my life. Oh, how I was looking forward to the next three hundred and sixty-five days and the rest of our lives.
EPILOGUE ||
Vivie
I was a terrible friend. Every time Reyna told me how I was her best friend in the world, like she did just before walking down the aisle to re-marry James today, I felt even worse. There was so much of my life over the last six weeks that I hadn't told her, even though she knew something was up. It wasn’t that I was ashamed or felt the need to keep secrets. Mostly, I just found my life difficult to talk about. And while there might not be shame, there was embarrassment. I should have known better. If only I'd stuck to my guns and stayed away from Bobby, my life wouldn't be so small today. And I wouldn't have to lug around Dax Sheppard.
It was bad enough that my brothers, Max and Sam, forced Dax into my life. For the last week, I couldn't go anywhere or do anything where Dax wasn't lurking about. But when Dax insisted that he had to be my plus-one at this wedding, I knew that I had lost all control of my life.
Of course, Dax was the recipient of my anger at what my life had become, but it wasn't his fault. He wasn't the one who was threatening or stalking me.
"Do you want something to drink?"
I turned around to find Dax standing behind me. Of course, he was.
"What I want is my life back. Seriously, how long are we going to have to do this?"
He shrugged like it was no big deal. "That's not for me to decide."
I didn’t know why it hurt so much to know that I was only a job for him. He wasn't following me around because he cared about what happened to me. He was following me around because my brothers were paying him to keep Bobby from doing something crazy.
I poked him in the chest. "Are you an automaton? Do you have any feelings?"
His eyes narrowed. "I'm on the job."
I threw my hands up, exasperated. "So, the answer is yes. You are an automaton."
I started to whirl away, but his hand wrapped around my wrist, preventing me from leaving.
I flinched, not because he hurt me or scared me. I flinched because Bobby had hurt me and scared me, and it had become a natural reaction to anyone doing anything that my subconscious could construe as threatening.
He immediately let go but stepped closer. "Maybe we should dance."
I rolled my eyes and was about to say no, but I didn't want to ruin Reyna's wedding by making a scene, so I agreed.
Dax led me to the dance floor, and the song changed from up-tempo to slow. God, just my luck. He slipped his arm around me, tugging me closer.
Only my brothers knew Dax's purpose for being in my life. I imagined their wives did too. Reyna didn't seem to know, which meant my sister-in-law, Amelia, didn't know or didn't tell her. Regardless, I had to pretend that Dax was my date and not my bodyguard. So, I allowed him to pull me closer. My annoyance grew as he moved me around the dance floor. But my annoyance wasn't at his aloofness and emotional detachment. It wasn't because of his singular focus on the job. It was because every time I got close to him, it felt like my body was zapped by a live wire. Something was seriously wrong with me and the men I gravitated toward.
Dax was a handsome man. He had to be at least ten years older than me, which still only put him in his mid-thirties. But there was something about him that made him seem older. Not in how he looked but in how he moved through the world. He acted like a guy who had already lived a lifetime. As a former mercenary, I suppose he had. I remembered when he first became my bodyguard, I asked him if he could kill somebody with his pinky finger.
"If I had to, yes."
Initially, I found him fascinating. Here he’d lived a life of travel, adventure, and danger, but the man was a closed book and I was interested in reading him. Surely, there'd been more to his life than the security business, but he never shared anything. Nothing about his childhood or where he grew up. Nothing about his personal life.
At first, I took his closed off life as a challenge to poke at him and see what I could learn. But Dax was not a man who could be goaded. The walls he erected around himself were stronger than Fort Knox.
Eventually, I gave up. More recently, I grew annoyed. I hated that he knew so much about me, but I knew nothing about him. Especially at times like now, when my body would grow warm at his nearness. Looking up into his eyes, it was clear that he felt nothing.
I tugged away from him. "I need a minute. I'm going to the bathroom. You can’t follow me there."