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  I can’t fucking wait.

  I won’t fucking wait.

  With that resolve, I pull far enough away so I’m not tempted to keep playing with her luscious tits. Christ, her breasts have always been the most entrancing things in my world, but that magic bean in her belly clearly saved some sorcery to enhance them more. From experience, I already know that if I suck them long enough, her nipples will glow for me like iridescent fairies.

  But they’re going to do that for me anyway…

  As soon as I make her come like the horny little bunny she is.

  “Well,” I drawl while sliding my hands under her buttocks and helping her scoot back until she’s leaning against the headboard. “You know what they say about keeping an expectant goddess from her midnight snack for too long.”

  After she settles into place, she flashes me a flirty, dirty smirk. “Oh, what do they say?”

  “No fucking idea.” I shrug, basking in her giggle. “I was hoping my smart-as-hell wife had that answer for me.”

  She waggles her brows. “You’re in luck, mister. Turns out that she does.”

  Bantering with the woman, from blatant porn-worthy lines to these kind of cute back-and-forths, is always as big a turn-on as a twist to the balls, but tonight it means even more. Heals me even deeper. Takes me further away from the darkness of my dream. “Enlighten me, teacher.” My goddess. My deliverance. My miracle. My superheroine.

  Emma doesn’t respond right away. She reaches out and takes command, tugging on me until I’m straddling her upper body. If my cock were flaccid, it’d be dangling directly between her breasts—but I’m positive my dick and flaccid haven’t been acquainted since the day I met this woman. Just knowing she’s in the world—in my world—has injected the thing with a constant charge, ready to zap into action from the second she needs me. Every minute of every day, I’m ready for her. Sometimes, it’s every second.

  Like right now.

  I watch, feeling like a crackhead about to get his best high, as my wife reaches back and grabs the headboard, making her shirt stretch tight across her stiff nipples. When she adds a seductive stare through her dusky lashes, I’m nearly undone. Neither of us misses the milk that oozes from the slit atop my rock-hard length—or the way the whole stalk bobs on the air, my instinct already guiding it closer toward her full, pink mouth.

  All she has to do is open.

  Dear fuck, baby. Please open…

  But she doesn’t.

  Instead, she purses those gorgeous pillows, rivaling any screen sex goddess that Hollywood ever created, and then unfurls a mystical little smile. “So. You really want to know the secret about goddesses and their snacks?”

  The question alone has my dick jerking again, a zealous dog straining at its tether. “That depends,” I growl.

  Her expression turns inquisitive. “On what?”

  “On whether you’re going to make me go down to the kitchen and fetch Funyuns and hummus for you.”

  Her giggle is a musical cadence on the air. “Nope. No Funyuns.” She punctuates it in the best way possible, splaying a hand around my ass and jerking me closer with clear command. “Only this. Only you.” With her other hand now clutching its corresponding ass cheek, she yanks me in closer. I grunt in pleasure, moving close enough to feel her rapid breaths along my throbbing length, and steady my balance by bracing one hand to the top of the headboard. “You see, goddesses don’t like to wait long for their cravings.”

  I chuckle. Okay, try to. “Ah. So that’s the big secret, hmmm?”

  She’s not laughing anymore. She’s intent and focused, her eyes glazed with gorgeous lust, as she homes in on the dark-red bulb before her face, still dripping with the arousal I can’t control any longer. The need I can no longer hide—or restrain. “When a goddess wants something, Zeus, a goddess gets it any way she can.”

  The husk in her voice is enough incentive for a thousand new filaments of lust through my body. On top of that, there’s the heat of her breaths, the fire in her gaze…

  And at last, the opening of her gorgeous lips.

  “Well.” I’m so fixated on her welcoming beauty, I’m stunned I can talk. But I manage to complete my sentence by husking out, “Don’t let it be said that I disappointed my goddess.”

  “Never.” She whispers it while urging me closer by another inch—until she’s able to suckle my shaft. When she closes her eyes, tilts her head back, and swallows my juice with a mewl of wonder, it takes the effort of every muscle in my frame not to push forward and sheath myself to the balls down her throat.

  But I’ve got to release a fraction of my tension—so I do so by indulging in some filthy bedroom talk. “Christ on fucking high. You’re the best goddamned thing that’s ever happened to my cock, woman.”

  She drags her eyes open—at least enough to unleash the mesmerizing power of her blues on me once more. “And you’re the best snack I’ve ever devoured, mister.”

  I grab myself by the base of my shaft. It’s heaven and hell, since I’m now able to squeeze back the searing surge from my balls while guiding myself right toward the target of her waiting orifice. “But you’re not devouring.” I nudge my cockhead back between her soft, sweet lips. “Maybe it’s time to change that.”

  “Mmmmm.” Her moan is also heaven and hell—in all the best ways of both. “Mmmm-hmmm.”

  And then, at fucking last, she’s giving me relief. Sucking me in. Taking me down. Surrounding my bulging, hammering shaft with her cushioning, caressing softness. Moaning around me, just to make it better. All the while gazing up at me, just to make it perfect.

  “Yessssss,” I hiss. “Oh, fuck me…yes, my goddess.”

  She swallows me down deeper. Then a little more. Possessing me with her heat. Branding me with her tongue…

  Healing me with her hold.

  “Goddamnit, Emma. The way you do that…oh fuck, just like that…” And my own long, tortured groan is my interruption as she curls in the tip of her tongue and uses it to trace the veins along the underside of my cock, starting at the heated sack at the base. My cock? There’s the joke that’s thoroughly on me. No way does this thing belong to me anymore. My sex has officially abandoned any control from my mind or instincts, declaring fealty to the goddess who has claimed its every clamoring inch and simmering drop…

  Juice that continues to escape, making me growl and groan, as she swallows and undulates around me. Still, I yearn to be deeper. I lust to be the beast that fucks her throat until she can think of nothing but my cock and can’t breathe without inhaling the dominating essence of my body.

  “More.” I slide my hand from her cheek, delving fingers into her hair, until I can control her angle with the force of my grip. “Take me more, Velvet. Deeper. Harder. Yes. Yes. I’m going to fuck this beautiful mouth until you take every drop from me. Every…damn…oh, holy damn.”

  And I’m my own interruption again, as even the dirty words escape me because of the incredible sight beneath me.

  As my precome works its way through my wife’s beautiful body, she starts glowing. And I mean glowing. Her skin, at first pulsing with a faint amber hue, shines brighter and brighter every time I thrust my aching cock into her gorgeous body. The primal call of giving her my come this way has always been the wildest of turn-ons, but now that I see what it’s doing for her—the way it’s surging her with light from within—I can’t help but pump even deeper into her mouth, letting her take more and more of my flesh with every new lunge…

  Which turns her amber into gold and then her gold into light.

  A thousand points of perfect effulgence, now beaming like the sun itself has taken over every inch of her succulent body.

  As she screams out around my cock.

  And quakes with the magnificent, sparkling spasms of her perfect, consuming orgasm.

  “Ride it out, my love.” I issue the command for her good and for mine. Not only does her carnal pleasure bring me complete joy, but I already know there’s more
of it in store for her. I just want the bridge there to be equally as good for her. No, better than good. I want her to never forget this—because I sure as hell know I never will. “Fuck, Emmalina. You’re so glorious, baby. If you could see yourself…”

  “Mmmm!” I’m not sure exactly what her wet little gurgle is meant to convey, but there’s enough eager energy beneath the sound that I know she’s having fun. A lot of it. And back in the day, I was known as the guy who kept the fun rolling. As much as I look back on my debauched living and want to cringe, there are other times that I’m grateful for all the wicked pro tips I’ve picked up over the years. Like making it okay for a woman to fulfill her own fantasies—by ordering her to do just that.

  “Ride. It. Out, Emmalina.” I get her renewed attention with the strict delivery. “That’s not a suggestion, sweetheart. Do you need to help me out here? Then do it. Your fingers on your pussy, baby. Right now. Rub in that heat. Rub it in good.”

  I release a taut grunt as she complies without a hitch, spreading her thighs so I can see her slender fingers working against her glistening petals. At once, my cock is ten degrees hotter—and as much as I want to stretch out the moment, that means only one thing. I’m going to blow. Hard and hot and fast.

  “Damn,” I rasp out. “Oh, goddamn.”

  My thighs burn. My ass clenches. My balls constrict, clamping down hard on the electrons racing through them.

  Electrons that become heat.

  Heat that shoots up my cock.

  My cock, which bursts into the back of my woman’s welcoming throat.

  “Fuck!” The word falls out of me at least a dozen more times, through every new pump I give her mouth, every new scream she gives in return, and every new wave of fire and fulfillment that takes over us both…

  Until we collapse onto the pillows together, limbs flopping like frayed electric cords.

  Even our fingertips betray similar exhaustion, their tips like dying embers as we thread our hands together atop the sweat-soaked sheets. I don’t allow that space to be a permanent thing, though. I already crave her nearness and show her so by rolling to my side and twining a calf around one of hers. My cock, still covered in electric come, is compressed between our bodies until we can feel the residual rhythm of our joining from it. Though the pulse is gentle and subtle, it resounds in my senses like a spiritual hammer. A reminder, loud and strong and mighty, of the fact that we haven’t just shared bodily fluids.

  We’ve woven our spirits.

  Tangled our passion. Resealed our connection. Reaffirmed our love. Renewed our light.

  And yeah…left behind the nightmares.

  But even that’s not as perfect a gift as the one I get from this dream of a moment—as steady thumps emanate from inside my wife’s belly. Responding, with awestriking coordination, to the energy that still resonates from between our bodies.

  Together, we gasp and then laugh.

  At once, our bean kicks with twice his gusto.

  “Holy shit.” My mutter is answered by Emma’s tinkling giggle and my son’s dancing footsteps. I swear, as I observe the pattern across the stretch of her belly, the little dude is doing a Texas two-step—or a bad grapevine. Hard to tell when I’ve got only my dimming fingertips and the filtered moonlight as illumination.

  “Well.” She chuckles. “Holy something.”

  “I’m not sure whether to be proud and fascinated or stunned and freaked out.”

  Her laughter hitches. “Why freaked?” And then turns into a chiding huff. “What, because the beat our baby’s dancing to is all over your cock and not flowing in your veins?” Since I have no decent answer and she knows it, she charges on. “What’s the difference, really? It’s your life force, no matter how you look at it. The stuff that created him.”

  I follow the path of my hand with a trail of reverent kisses. “But our love brought him to life.” Yeah, her matter-of-fact side always brings out the mush in me—but can I be blamed? The woman’s mind is even more enticing than her breasts and surges me with the most sickening need to compose greeting card lines.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “He was created in love, and he’ll live in a world filled with as much of it that we can give.”

  “Working on it every day, beautiful little bunny.”

  “I know, incredible hunky man.”

  Well, damn. While her voice is coated with sincerity, I’m just as aware of what she’s not conveying aloud. There’s something about the woman—some kind of frequency or vibration—that I alone have always been able to hear, since the night we first shook hands. From that moment on, I knew I wasn’t alone in our magnetic attraction—and right now, that insight is running on its highest setting. Alerting me that everything she speaks isn’t everything she’s saying…

  “Velvet.” I sigh. “Listen. I’m—”

  “Fine?” Her skeptical sneer proves the intuition isn’t always one-sided. “Sure you are. You’re having dreams so violent, I sometimes think you might rip the bed apart.”

  I lean up and then in, sealing the deal with a gavel pound of a kiss. “Just my brain burning off some residual tension, which is completely gone now.” I go gentle with the amendment as well as my kisses, feathering her cheek with tiny circles until I get to the graceful shell of her ear. “So the solution here is simple…”

  Emma snort-chuffs. “A blow job before bed every night?”

  “And you thought I was the mind reader in the relationship.”

  “Husband, a mosquito could’ve pulled that one out of you.”

  “You’re evading the subject.”

  “No, you’re evading the subject.” Her twist on my hair, pulling my sights back around to her, is a Little League bunt compared to the line drive of her voice. “Zeus. Talk to me.” She curls the fingertips of her other hand into the stubble along my jaw. “You were threatening Faline in ways I’ve never heard before.”

  I scowl through a grunt. “Who says it was her in the dream?”

  “Is there somebody else’s brain you want to open like a can of beans and remove spoonful by spoonful?”

  “Huh.” I seesaw my head, thanking my joints for a couple of effective electrical cracks. “I said that? Well, that’s got to score me creativity points.”

  She takes her turn at the scowl. “You really are going for that evasion gold medal, aren’t you?”

  The woman always gives me the best reasons to change glowers into grins. But sometimes—like now—it’s an easier feat than usual. “Baby, I was grabbing gold from the second you came for me.”

  She rolls her eyes before shoving away and leaving the bed. As she pushes to her feet, she stabs her arms into her robe. “Fine. If we’re really going to joke this away, for the third night in a row, maybe I do need some garlic ice cream.”

  As her footsteps grow fainter down the hall and then the stairway, I entertain a caveman urge to go after her. To not stop until I’ve got her back in here and under me again, screaming twice as loud for me. But eventually, that would land us right back in this position. Her, demanding I spill more than my come for her. Me, going after the gold medal in evasion. Because one time a night to live through Faline’s soul evisceration, even subconsciously, is more than enough.

  Especially with the day and night still ahead of us.

  Which, God help me, will really be as boring as the plans look on paper.

  I allow myself a below-the-breath chuckle of the F-word. Saying it any louder will only make the sentiment—and the disbelief beneath it—more real.

  But yeah, this is really me, really thinking this. The guy who, just four years ago, was ringing in the new year with coke-spiked champagne and some willing Amsterdam beauties, who is now craving to be in one bed, with one woman, well before midnight.

  Dear God, I can only hope.

  Surged with that hope, I kick the covers back and hoist out of bed. Five minutes later, with a pair of workout shorts covering my junk in all the right places, I head out the door, down the hil
l, and toward the shoreline. Hopefully a predawn run will clarify shit in my psyche again—and rebuild the thin wall I’m fighting to keep erect between my reality and my imagination.

  Emmalina and Bean and the love that binds us? Reality.

  Faline and her obsessive power trip fuckery? Not my reality.

  Nor will it ever be again.

  I have to keep believing that. I have to keep choosing that. Even if it takes living this “reality” a little while longer. And even if that means I’ve got to get through a few hours tonight in disguise as a science nerd with a hard-on for UFO debates, escorting my equally “nerdy” wife to an intimate New Year’s Eve “party-gathering-semi-fundraiser thing” with the neighbors.

  Okay, so seventy people could technically still be “intimate”—and if not, in the grand scheme of things, it could still be worse. Mel and Maddie Makra, our eccentric and energetic hosts, have confirmed that Emma’s parents, who always ring in the new year from someplace exotic and expensive, won’t be attending, thank God. That means that though we’re attending the soirée as fabricated people, we’ll get the chance to quietly bid on some silent auction packages benefiting our very real charity, Richards Reaches Out. And yeah, I do mean quietly. At this point, I’m even wondering if “Steve and Sophie’s” attendance will be noticed, considering how Maddie and Mel have made it pretty damn clear the fundraising element of the evening is a blatant bid to score the first post-wedding appearance of Reece and Emma Richards.

  Yeah, I’m completely serious.

  And no, Merriam-Webster isn’t accepting new submissions for their “Irony” listing.

  At any rate, this is going to make things interesting.

  So bring on the interesting. I’m ready. I can do this. It’s just a couple of hours and only with seventy people. What could possibly go wrong?

  The charge resonates through me as I pause atop the berm to catch a breath and watch the first tendrils of dawn sneak over my shoulders on their way to the water. But like the light on the ocean, my thoughts are illuminated by murky hues. There’s no depth to those waves, still rolling beneath the sky as gray masses, crashing quietly against the sand to punctuate my instinct’s response to its challenge.