Kissed (31 page)

And then I collapsed against her, my head to her shoulder and her legs wrapped around my waist. I panted against her neck, and her chest rose and fell quickly under my weight.

And then the stairs creaked.

“Shit,” I muttered as I pulled away from her. I snapped the condom off my dick, pinching it closed as I quickly pulled my pants back up and fastened them. She slid off the window ledge, watching me as her lips pulled up into a mischievous smile. I shook my head as I rounded toward the sound of the approaching footsteps.

“Wait,” Gabe hissed. “I need my underwear.”

I reached back, grabbing her hand and passing off the condom I was still holding. “Have a spent condom instead.” I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I’m keeping your underwear.” I winked and turned back around just as Darla entered.

Gabe and I stood there panting, sweating, and looking completely guilty as Darla eyed us suspiciously.

“We were just looking at…” My eyes searched the room, trying desperately to get my brain to work. “Crown—”

Gabe cut me off. “The view.”

“—molding.” I gasped for breath. “And…uh…the view.” I nodded stupidly. “Can we look at the…uh…” I pointed at the door behind Darla as she still watched us.

“Toilet,” Gabe said.

I looked back at her, my eyes popping open wide.

She shrugged as her brows shot up. “You know, in case the plumbing…you know”—she started searching around desperately just like I’d been doing—“isn’t—”

“Working,” I supplied.

“—there,” she finished.

Fucking hell, this wasn’t going well.

“Uh…this way.” Darla turned and walked toward the door to the en suite bathroom. She definitely hated us.

We followed her, and it was only after Darla gave us a moment of privacy in the bathroom that I figured out why Gabe wanted to see the toilet. She flushed the condom just as Darla peeked back into the large bathroom, clearly not trusting us to be alone.

“It works,” Gabe said as she smiled.

“Yay,” Darla said with mock excitement, and then she turned and walked back out once again as Gabe rolled her eyes.

“Did you really just ask our realtor to see the toilet to make sure the plumbing was there?” I whispered.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I panicked,” she whispered back.

I reached for her hand. “We have two more houses to see today.” I tugged her out the door, following Darla back downstairs. “We’re going to have to behave.”

“Oh dear God,” Gabe groaned dramatically.

I chuckled as we walked out of the house.

“So, what did you think?” Darla turned toward us, smiling skeptically.

“Uh…stairs were a little creaky. Next house?”

Darla cleared her throat and nodded.

When Gabe was seated next to me in my car again, I leaned over and cupped her cheek. “You’re worth all of this. Do you know that?”

Her brow flinched momentarily as she looked at me. She wouldn’t argue with me. I knew that. But I also knew she wouldn’t likely agree with me either.

“You deserve to be kissed every day by a man who loves you. This kiss,” I whispered as I ran my thumb across her lower lip. “This kiss,” I said again as my other hand reached out and covered her heart.

Her lips pursed into a sweet smile, and her eyes shimmered with the best kind of tears.

“I can’t stop crying today,” she said even as she laughed.

I smiled at her. “It’s been a good day. A really good day.”

She nodded, and I leaned forward, pressing my lips to hers. I captured her lower lip between mine, and she moaned quietly.

“Are you really moving here?” she said in an almost dreamy tone once I’d given her mouth back to her and I was buckling my seat belt.

“I listed my condo at ten percent under market value. My D.C. realtor has already shown it six times since I signed the paperwork yesterday morning, and she’s pretty sure she’ll have multiple offers on the table before the end of the day, so yeah, I’m really buying a home here.” I winked at her quickly before starting my car.

I pulled away from the curb and glanced at her. “Do you suppose we could get you on birth control soon so I can stop being so prepared all the time?”

She smiled at me. “Yes.”

Chapter 20

Gabrielle

I
rolled, quite literally, out of bed and onto the floor the next morning when my phone started ringing from my purse. The drapes in our hotel room were pulled tightly closed, and it was dark, even though the alarm clock said it was nearly nine. I smacked my knees on the floor as I fell.

“Ow,” I grunted out as I tried to stumble toward the ring coming from across the room.

Keegan started chuckling, and then I heard the click of the lamp and the bedroom lit up around me. He was propped up on his elbows watching me, his eyes squinted as he tried to wake up.

I’d woken up in the middle of the night with his fingers inside me. It was hands-down the best sensation ever. I’d gone from dreaming the most erotic dream about being touched to slowly coming to the realization that I was actually being touched. It was slow, damn near melodic, the way he penetrated and twisted his fingers. I’d listened to his quiet moans and grunts, and after he made me come with his fingers, he’d replaced them with his far larger cock and made me come again.

Now I was pleasantly sore and experiencing what I could only explain as a brain-numbing sex hangover while trying desperately to find my phone in the bottom of my purse.

“Hello… Hello—”

“Hi, Gabrielle. This is Barbara from St. Mary’s College.”

I shot upright, suddenly standing at attention and whipping around to face Keegan. He pushed up to sit, the sheets barely covering his lap. His brow was suddenly furrowed.

“Well, I know you’re working very hard to get caught up in some of your classes, so I wanted to let you know as soon as possible that the panel voted four to one to keep you in regular student status for the time being.”

“What?” I practically shrieked. “Really?”

Barbara laughed sweetly. “Yes, dear. Of course this could change if there are any developments related to the allegations in question, and the school will have to act accordingly if there are, but for the time being, this panel has concluded that there is no reason to place you on interim suspension. Your professors are all being notified today, and you’re expected to return to class next week and contact them yet this week to ensure you’re keeping up on your workload.”

I nodded my head stupidly as though Barbara could actually see me.

“Congratulations, Gabrielle. I’m really very happy for you.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you. I just…thank you.” A huff of overexcited breath left my lungs in a rush.

I disconnected moments later, and when I lifted my eyes to meet Keegan’s, he smirked.

“Think we can plan this life of ours now?” he asked with a wry smile.

Epilogue

Two Years Later

Keegan

JESSA
glanced at me as she reached for the coffee pot. She scowled, and her shoulders curled forward. This was Jessa pretty much every Saturday morning.

“You look like you died last night and came back as a zombie this morning,” I commented as I sipped my coffee and flipped through the newspaper that sat on the kitchen island in front of me.

She turned to me, waving the creamer spoon in the air. “For your information, Keegan, I was hanging out with some classmates, being a cool college kid last night. I know you don’t know anything about that because you’re uneducated.”

I scoffed, even as my lips pulled up. “I have three degrees.”

She shrugged as though I was missing the point.

“So you’re hung over?”

“No. We stayed up late watching
The Walking Dead
reruns.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the living room. “Where’s G-Dog? We just made it to season four, episode eight, and I wanted to spoil it for her before I go to class.”

“Uh…no you’re not. I’m binge-watching it with her, and if you spoil it for her, she’ll spoil it for me.”

“Well, you know that one guy we love so much—”

“Zip it,” I said, cutting her off.

“He gets—”

I cut her off again. “No.”

She gave me the finger across her throat gesture along with a scritching sound. “Just sayin’.”

I rolled my eyes.

She screwed the lid on her travel mug, sighing dramatically.

“Tell me again why you decided to take a Saturday class?”

She shook her head, groaning. “I don’t know. It sounded like a good idea at the time.” She looked back at me. “You didn’t answer me. Where is Gabe?”

“Still in bed. She’s not feeling well.”

Her eyes narrowed. “She’s been
not feeling well
a lot lately.” She cocked her head to the side. “Wait a minute…” She hummed. “You’re poisoning her, aren’t you?” she accused. “If I find out you’re poisoning her, I will kill you and take your car.”

I chuckled but didn’t respond.

Jessa looked at me again, her eyes narrow slits of suspicion at this point, and then she harrumphed. She was on to me.

She walked from the room, bounding up the stairs two at a time, and I followed at a more reasonable pace. When I walked into Gabe’s and my bedroom, I glanced toward the en suite bathroom. Jessa was standing in the doorway, staring down at Gabe, who was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet. Gabe looked exhausted, and her face was flushed. This was fairly typical of her mornings right now—hell, afternoons, too, on occasion.

“Just tell me. Do you feel like your husband might have poisoned you?”

Gabe gaped at her sister for a moment, shaking her head as though dumbfounded. Gabe glanced past Jessa to me, and her forehead scrunched up in confusion. “Uh…no?” she finally responded, and then her focus shifted to me. “Remind me why you told her she could live with us?”

I chuckled. “Because she’s a poor college kid, and the University of Chicago is expensive.” I winked at Gabe. “Besides, she’s free entertainment.”

Jessa rolled her eyes at me before looking back at Gabe. “Think hard,” Jessa continued in her completely serious tone. “Has he ever tried to kill you before?” She said the words slowly, and her head rose and fell as though maybe it would all come back to Gabe if Jessa was just patient enough. “You know, left the toilet seat up so you’d fall in and break your back, conveniently left his toy cars on the stairs so you’d slip and fall, accidentally bumped into you when you were hiking along the rim of the Grand Canyon?”

Gabe shook her head. Her lips were pulling up but not very far at the moment. She was clearly not feeling well.

“Those are just
some
examples.”

Gabe started nodding slowly then. “Now that you mention it. He did…he did poison me.”

Jessa gasped dramatically, looking over her shoulder at me with a feigned look of viciousness that looked oddly like the real version. Jessa turned back to Gabe. “Tell me. What did that
bastard
do to my poor dying sister?” She held the back of her hand to her forehead as she leaned back against the doorframe.

“He poisoned me with his seed,” Gabe groaned as she clutched her stomach.

I started laughing then. I’d come to realize my wife was actually just as capable of being silly and ridiculous as her younger sister, a side of her that didn’t come out until our relationship and life together settled down a couple years ago, but it certainly didn’t happen all at once or overnight.

Within days of finding out the disciplinary panel had voted to keep Gabe in school, we moved into a vacation home in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee. We spent the next six weeks finding a house in Chicago and then buying it, me applying for advertising jobs and Gabe working her ass off day and night to get caught up with her classes. She landed an internship in Chicago for her final semester of school, working for a non-profit organization that designed, developed, and executed after-school programs targeting at-risk youths in the Chicago area, and she started her job there only days after we moved into our new home. The organization she interned with loved her so much she was now on their payroll full time.

Gabe had been brought in for questioning a couple of times in regards to her possible involvement in criminal activity, and she didn’t let go of the worry that her mistakes might someday bite her in the ass until David Edgerton relocated to Dallas, Texas. Once he was gone, there seemed to be little remaining interest in the controversy, and that was when the stress slowly started slipping away, the last of it dissipating the very day she graduated from college. I could literally feel the shift in her. She’d practically jumped in my arms when I met her after the ceremony, and I swear I could feel every ounce of stress and worry draining from her body as I held her. It was the most incredible thing in the world.

Jessa had been right. My wife did know how to smile, and she did it well and often now—even as her head hung over a toilet bowl on a Saturday morning in fact.

“You mean…you mean…” Jessa turned to me, smiling broadly. She ran at me, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. When she let me go, she walked back to the bathroom, approaching Gabe and rubbing the top of her head as if she was a dog and leaning down and kissing the crown of her head.

“Oh God…” Gabe croaked out, her face turning green as the motion sickened her.

“I can’t believe you have morning sickness just for some”—Jessa sighed whimsically—“elaborate scheme to surprise me with this news.” She shook her head as she looked back and forth between us.

I nodded. “Yeah, you know we didn’t actually plan the morning sickness as a means of breaking the news to you, right?”

“Ah shucks. You’re just saying that.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Mmm-hmm,” I responded. I did that a lot with Jessa when I had no idea what she was saying.

“I mean, congratulations to me, right, guys?” She smiled exuberantly at us.

Gabe lifted her head from the toilet where she’d been resting her cheek. “Yeah,” she said weakly. “Congratulations, kiddo. I’m so, so happy for you. Could you guys…I don’t know…get out so I can finish puking up my guts? That would be…” She gave us a thumbs-up, even as she reached out with her foot and pushed the door closed in our faces.