Page 23 of Forever King

“I know, honey. We were meant for each other.”

I watch her ride me and let myself enjoy the gorgeous view of my wife. She’s always been the only woman I ever wanted, and now that she’s mine officially, I’m never letting her go.

Then an idea comes to me.

“Since it’s the first night of our honeymoon, I say we should do something new.”

Kate stops and looks at me oddly. “New? I’m intrigued.”

I slide my left arm around her body to hold her up as I stand. Unsure what I’m doing, she wraps her arms around my neck.

“Ronan, when you said new, you didn’t mean hanging me off the ledge of this penthouse floor, did you?” she asks with wide eyes full of fear.

Smiling, I shake my head as I walk us over toward the wall at the back of the balcony. “I said new, not daredevil. I leave that kind of thing to Kellen.”

Relief washes over her, and she relaxes against my body. “Okay. I trust you.”

I kiss her as I gently press her back against the wall next to the glass doors leading inside. “Happy honeymoon, Mrs. King.”

My new wife holds on to my shoulders while I pump into her, our moans drowning out any sounds from the world around us. She feels perfect, just as she always has, and as we race toward that final moment when each of us finally finds release, we search for one another’s mouths. We’re raw and needy to come. For tonight, it’s hard and fast, but that’s okay.

We have forever. I’m hers and she’s mine, just the way we dreamed it would be all those years ago when we were in high school.

When we’re done, Kate rests her head on my shoulder and lets out a heavy sigh. “Happy honeymoon, Mr. King. What do you say we try that again inside on something softer?”

I love the way this woman thinks. God, I’m a lucky man.

MARIUS AND DUCK

9

Marius

Silence fillsthe house for one of the very few times recently. I close my eyes and let myself relax, happy to have some peace and quiet for the first moments today.

I seriously don’t know how women have been dealing with this for millennia. I love my daughter, but even though she’s only five months old, Lily’s a handful on a good day.

And today has not been what I’d call a good day.

She spit up after her breakfast in a way that made me wonder if she’d somehow turned into the girl from The Exorcist. How could someone so small throw up that much? One second I had her angelic, chubby little face smiling at me as she rested her head on my shoulder, and the next I was trying to block projectile vomit from covering my entire head. After I cleaned up the two of us, she cried for nearly thirty minutes while I walked around the house with her, practically begging her to just stop for even a minute.

And all of that happened before nine o’clock this morning.

Thankfully, she grew too tired to cry or vomit any more and went down for her nap twenty minutes ago. Now it’s nearly noon, and all I want to do is go online to search for a nanny.

Why don’t I? That’s a great question. I know the answer too. My wife, the woman I adore as much as Lily, wants us to bond with our daughter before we hire someone to help. I agreed since in theory that sounded wonderful. Who wouldn’t want to grow close to their child?

So I dove headfirst into this dad thing, thinking it would be relatively easy because she was a newborn. The first few weeks were a piece of cake. All she did was eat, burp, shit, and sleep. I couldn’t imagine what everyone complained about when it came to taking care of their kids.

Oh, what an overconfident fool I was.

By month two, reality set in. Duck warned me it would happen, but I was too cocky to listen. I actually had the balls to say to her that she probably just needed to practice more when Lily cried since she rarely did that with me.

That was the day Duck and I made a deal. She still wanted to work, even though I told her she didn’t have to return to her job since we have enough money, so I said I could handle our daughter if she agreed to take things slowly and go back part-time, at first. I didn’t want her overdoing it. She just gave birth a few weeks before, but she insisted she’d be fine.

And fine Duck was from that first day. She loved being back at her office and knew everything here at the house was in good hands.

Except that turned out to be a complete fiction.