Flesh: Part Seventeen (The Flesh Series Book 17) Page 3

  He gazes down at me. “You know what, it was easy for me. And do you want to know why? Because he had a gun to your head, Amy. You seem to be forgetting that part. He could have killed you, and I wasn't just going to lie there and watch it.”

  “You don't know that he was going to pull the trigger.”

  He averts his eyes, feeling the heat from the conversation. “You're mad at me for shooting him.”

  “No one had to die tonight, Lucian.” I sit up, realizing that sleep isn't going to happen. “You could have just held him down until the police got there.”

  “Do I look like a fucking mind reader to you?” He points to himself. “It could have been another hour until the police arrived. What if he would have gotten away from me somehow? The guy was tweaked out and pretty strong for a skinny guy. If he had gotten loose from me, he probably would have killed all of us. I made the call that I thought was right.”

  “You had the gun, Lucian. If he had gotten loose, you could have shot him then. He was subdued beneath you. Helpless.”

  Lucian lets out an exasperated sigh before grabbing his pillow. “I'll go sleep on the sofa.”

  “No.” I clutch at his arm before he has a chance to stand up.

  Suddenly, I feel guilty. We both had a tough night. I shouldn't be busting his balls over doing what he thought was right.

  “I don't understand what you want from me.” He throws his pillow back in place and lays down with his back to me. It hurts more than I thought it would. We definitely shouldn't be arguing right now, not after everything that happened.

  “I just...” I reach out to touch him, my fingertips gently sliding up his arm to his shoulder before recoiling. “I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm saying. I've just never seen anything like that before. It traumatized me.”

  He rolls over abruptly, and I cower away, fearing his anger. “Well, you know what would have traumatized me? Seeing you dead. I would kill him a thousand times over again to ensure that didn't happen.” His voice is full of passion, his eyes blazing even in the darkness.

  A small smile curves my lips, and I caress his face. “I know. I'm sorry. Really, I am.”

  “Don't be sorry. Be grateful.” He jerks his face away from me, causing my heart to throb with pain.

  “Lucian, I'm sorry. I can't say it enough.” I avert my eyes, wishing I'd never brought it up in the first place. “I just can't help but think, what if he had a family.”

  “I don't know if he had a family.” Lucian shrugs. “But do you know who I do know had a family? The people in front of you in line. That mother and child. If I hadn't done something and he would have shot them, it would have been like watching what happened to me all over again. And knowing I could have done something about it, I never would have been able to live with myself.”

  So he did think of them. He did think about his family at that moment. Now it makes a lot more sense. In some way, shooting that robber was probably revenge for him.

  “One missed opportunity can change a person's life forever, Amy,” Lucian continues.

  “And what if he would have shot you? How do you think that would have made me feel?” Tears come to my eyes unbidden. We definitely should have waited to have this conversation. It's too much for me right now.

  “Then maybe you would have ended up just as damaged as me. I don't know.” He inhales deeply, rolling onto his back to look up at the ceiling.

  “I'm just glad we're both alright.” I scoot closer to him, cuddling his side.

  “Me too.” He kisses me on top of the head. “Things like this make me think about life a lot.”

  “Yeah.” I rub my cheek against his chest.

  I could be dead right now. We both could be dead. There's so much in life that I've wanted to see and do. The thought that all of that could have been ripped away from me is surreal.

  Lucian's fingers press beneath my chin, tilting my face up. His gaze has softened, the anger dissipated. I pucker up receptively, welcoming his kiss, thankful that we're able to share these precious minutes together. Thankful that neither one of us had to come home to the reality that we'd never feel each other's touch again.

  His hand cups my cheek, and the kiss becomes more urgent. I match him, tears streaming down my face. It annoys me that I can't seem to stop crying, but I know that I need to surrender to the fact that it might be like this for a while. It will take some time for my mind and body to process everything. Days probably.

  I allow Lucian to slip from beneath me, his mouth never leaving mine as he leans me back on the bed. His hand moves from my face down to my right breast. His fingers knead into the flesh there, and I close my eyes and moan softly, intoxicated by his touch. His lips place a tender kiss over my heart before moving down my body.

  “I thought you were tired,” I muse as my fingers thread into his hair while he circles his lips around my nipple, his tongue lazily dancing over the small bud and making it perk.

  “I suddenly feel less tired,” he mumbles against my skin.

  His cock thickens against my thigh, and I can't help but smirk at how quickly he becomes aroused. I lick my lips, enjoying the sensation of his mouth lavishing affection upon my chest. His fingers press between my folds, beckoning for me to spread my legs. I part my thighs ever so slightly for him, allowing him better access. He dips a finger into me, and my central pleasure system turns on, heating up for things to come.

  “You're not going to sleep tonight,” I note. If we're going to have sex, then there's no point. He'll just have to get up in an hour anyway.

  “Just don't tell my patient that.” He kisses a path to my other breast, giving it equal attention while he pushes his finger in and out of me slowly.

  “Your secret is safe with me.” I drop my head to the side, caught somewhere between pleasure and sleep. If I didn't need his touch so badly right now, I'd probably be pushing him off of me.

  He sucks my nipple a bit too hard, causing me to wince. The tiny bite of pain does well to wake me up a bit. I watch him move. His eyes are closed, and he looks absolutely dreamy kissing and pleasuring me. It still amazes me at times that I managed to land such a sexy man.

  He pulls his finger out of me and presses it to my lips. I wrinkle my nose but open my mouth, sucking my juices from his skin. I feel far too lazy to play this game, but I go along with it anyway, working his finger in my mouth as if it was his cock. He stares at me with a lusty expression, probing my mouth for a few seconds before pulling his finger out and crawling between my legs.

  I scoot toward the middle of the bed to give him more room. The moment that I'm settled, he parts my thighs and grabs his dick to line it up for entry. I hold my breath as his glans finds my pussy, then gasp as he forces his way inside. The initial intrusion is always the best, the way that he fills me. I'll probably never fully adjust to his girth. He's big, and I like it.

  “Mmm,” I moan, curling my hands around his shoulders.

  He kisses my neck, moving slowly, his dick rhythmically thrusting into me. It's one of those love making nights, the kind where he's gentle. I'm glad for it, way too exhausted to handle the rough and tumble that comes when he's feeling especially randy. I like that part of him too though. The part that takes me into his dungeon and shows me new pleasures that I never imagined before, then brings me back into the bedroom and fucks me so hard that I can barely walk the next day. Our sex life is the perfect balance of kinky and loving.

  My breathing picks up as I feel the slow build of an orgasm. He angles his hips so that his pubic bone grinds against my clit on occasion, though he's sparing with it, timing everything perfectly so that we come as close together as possible. He's gotten incredibly good at reading my body, and he knows how to control my orgasms. It's kind of frustrating at times, especially when he's in a teasing mood.

  That won't happen tonight though. It rarely happens on love making nights. Nights like this are all about us finding that special place together. No seduction, just immersion.


  I hold onto him, my eyes rolling to the back of my head, my mouth opening in an O as he amps up the intensity.

  “Don't stop,” I whisper, even though I know he wouldn't stop anyway. I can hear his heavy breathing, that he's almost at his peak.

  We ride the wave of sexual bliss together, our bodies crumbling against each other. I buck my hips up to feel his body crushing my clit into submission, and he swells as he spurts into me. It's intoxicating when we climax together—feels like everything that brought us to this point was so totally worth it.

  “That was good.” I stroke the nape of his neck as he rests on top of me.

  “Just good?” he breathes into my ear though I can tell he's not really offended.

  “It's always amazing, love.” I kiss his temple.

  “I always want it to be amazing. And I always want it to be with you.”

  “I would certainly hope so.” I smile at him as he raises his body.

  His eyes are still hooded, though more with affection than lust. “I don't want to think of another second of my life without you.”

  My heart floods with warmth from his words. He said once before that he wasn't good at romance, but he's such a liar. Ever since I moved in with him, he's been doing so much to prove otherwise. Buying me flowers. Taking me out on sweet dates. Making me special dinners. I've even come home to a nice hot bath drawn for me.

  I caress his cheek, trying to return his appreciative gaze. “I don't want to think of another second of my life without you either.”

  “Then marry me.”

  My mouth falls agape, and it feels like my heart has burned a hole through my back and the bed and dropped to the floor. Did I just hear him right? Did he really just propose in the afterglow of an orgasm?

  “What?” I choke on the word.

  “Marry me,” he repeats, then looks away a bit embarrassed. “I know this probably isn't how you pictured getting proposed to, but I don't want to wait. When I was lying there on the floor in the gas station, I thought so many things...especially about my regrets if things came to the worst. One of them was that I never asked you to marry me. So I'm not going to wait. I'm not going to wait another month, another day, another second. Marry me.”

  Crap. I had just stopped crying, and now my face faucets have turned back on again. I'm so excited and overwhelmed that I'm shaking.

  No, this isn't how I pictured being proposed to, but I can't imagine someone ever saying something more romantic to me. While I was standing in that robber's arms fearing for my life, he was thinking about how he wanted to marry me?

  “Yes,” I half sob, half respond, nodding fervently.

  “Yes?” he parrots back as if he didn't hear me.

  “Yes,” I repeat, throwing my arms around him and practically strangling him against me in a too-tight embrace.

  He laughs, and as soon as I loosen my grip on him, he kisses me all over the face. It's the happiest moment of my entire life, and one that I honestly never thought I'd actually get to experience with him.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Ugh! Nothing ever goes right when it comes to Lucian and me.

  I stand at the entrance to the church with my father, looking like a white whale in my Versace wedding dress. The fabric is straining against my stomach, and I feel far less pretty than I ever imagined I would on my wedding day. I already had to have the dress altered three times to match my ever-growing tummy, and I think it could have used one last go before the wedding.

  “This is not how I pictured getting married,” I grumble, my hand cradling my belly.

  Five months pregnant. Apparently my birth control was no match for Lucian's virility. He gave me the option of postponing the wedding, but like an idiot, I said no, too excited to be married to him to want to wait.

  “You look gorgeous.” Janice messes with my hair, making sure that my ringlets are perfect.

  I scowl at her. She looks absolutely stunning as normal. A total attention stealer. Hopefully, Lucian doesn't look at her more than me. You'd think that with as long as we've been together, I'd be over my jealousy issues by now, but I'm not.

  “I look pregnant.” I poke at the bundle in my stomach.

  “You are pregnant,” Derrick reminds me. He looks dashing in a tuxedo.

  The wedding is traditional all the way, which kind of surprised me. I always thought I'd want some huge lavish wedding, but Lucian and I eventually agreed to keep things small. With me being pregnant, he was worried about the stress that it would cause for me and the baby. And besides, it's not like we have a huge guest list.

  Small wedding, big honeymoon, he told me. After the wedding, we'll be taking a one-month tour of Europe. I'm so excited, but almost more excited to get out of this strangling dress.

  “Are you nervous?” my father asks me as the wedding music starts to play and the doors open so that the rest of the wedding party can go out before us. His eyes are glimmering with tears, which makes me want to start crying.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I'm not nervous because I made the right choice.”

  I catch a glimpse of Lucian standing at the alter and my heart flutters. He looks too good to be true, devastatingly handsome in his tuxedo. His posture is perfect, his face freshly shaven, his hair meticulously slicked over. The thought that I'm going to get to unwrap him later already has me horny, which is shamefully embarrassing considering that I'm standing next to my father and am about to walk into a room full of people.

  I suppose it's a good thing though. It's been over a year and we're still very much in love. Things could not be going better.

  When I found out I was pregnant, I thought Lucian would freak out, but he took it in stride. Heck, he'd even welcomed the news more than I had. We had planned to start working on getting pregnant six months after the wedding, but apparently my damn body couldn't wait. Oh well, just talking about having a family with him gave me baby fever.

  The legalities involving Lucian shooting the robber took almost a full year to come to a close. It also took that long for me to come to peace with the thought that he had made the right choice. The robber had a criminal record a mile long that included drug dealing and rape. He had recently gotten out of prison and didn't have a family. That last part made me feel loads better about it. Everyone came to Lucian's defense, and, of course, large amounts of money helped to make the issue go away with little publicity.

  Janice and I mended our relationship. That too took a while. For the longest time, she held resentment against Lucian. I'd even go as far as to say she hated him for seducing her, but she eventually got over it. Now we can all hang out together with limited awkwardness though Janice and I have admittedly been drifting apart since we don't live together anymore. It's sad, but I suppose that's what happens when your life progresses in two different directions.

  While Lucian stopped working at Flesh, he still remains fairly active in the BDSM community. We go to munches together and take classes on BDSM, and I've gotten to know some of his lifestyle friends, which I was kind of surprised to find are just normal everyday people.

  Life is good. I do what I can to keep him happy, and we've opened a pretty stable line of communication where we both feel comfortable expressing what we need. I honestly think that's probably the main reason our relationship has worked. We don't avoid each other anymore when we tick each other off, which does still happen on occasion. But boy the makeup sex is explosive.

  Even though I had desperately hoped we'd someday get to this point, I never thought it would really happen. It's not the perfect rainbows and butterflies relationship I had seen in my future before I met Lucian. It's something so much better, complex and three-dimensional and never boring. Full of romance and hot sex and dark nights tied up in the dungeon begging for him to let me come. And even though I still hate to admit it, it's all thanks to Flesh.

  THE END.

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