He jokes about having outlived his warranty.
I don’t think that’s funny, but I laugh so he doesn’t think I’m fretting over him.
He doesn’t like when I do that.
I’m wound tighter than a drum tonight, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to hide that from him. I need to remember this for next year and have my doctor fiancé prescribe me a sedative that’ll knock me out for two full days so I can wake up when it’s over to hear he’s fine. What do you suppose the ethics of something like that would be?
Before I can think of something I can do—immediately—to diffuse my stress, he’s coming out of the bathroom, naked as the day he was born with the gorgeous, elaborate chest tattoo that hides his surgical scars on full display.
“I love that freaking Peloton,” he announces. “Best workout I’ve ever had. Makes me sweat my balls off.”
I hate that freaking Peloton and hold my breath every minute he’s on it, pushing himself to extremes that cannot be good for his transplanted heart. Okay, I admit it, living with a man who’s outlived his warranty is harder than I thought it would be.
“Don’t sweat your balls off. I need them for procreation.” I try for a flip, nothing-on-my-mind tone that I think I pull off rather convincingly, since he laughs at my comment.
Here’s the truth—he was right, and I was wrong. But even knowing how hard it is to live with his potential medical challenges, I wouldn’t change a thing about days that end this way, with him curling that hot, muscular, perfectly healthy body around mine and setting me on fire with needs I never knew I had until Dr. Wyatt Blake showed me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, zeroing right in on the fact that my muscles are so tense they must feel like concrete to him.
“Nothing. What could be wrong two days before Christmas?”
He raises a dark brow that manages to call me out on my bullshit without him having to say a word. “You promised me you wouldn’t do this.”
“What am I doing?”
“Freaking out over what will be a perfectly routine annual check of the ticker.”
“I’m not freaking out about that.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m worried about how Abuela assigned the sweet plantains and yuca to me for the first time ever, and I want to get them right. She’ll never let me hear the end of it if the plantains aren’t sweet enough.”
“You did a trial run last week, and I ate every bite of what you made. I think you’ve got this, babe.”
“You’re hardly an impartial customer. You like everything I make for you.”
“Yes, I do.” He kisses the end of my nose and then my lips. “And your family will, too, so how about you stop feeding me sweet-plantain bullshit and tell me the truth about how you’re having a thermonuclear meltdown about this checkup I’m having tomorrow?”
“No, I’m not!” That my voice is a full octave higher than my usual tone doesn’t do much to make my case.
His soft laughter echoes off the walls of our huge bedroom in the house we bought to live happily ever after together. Except that won’t be possible unless he’s here with me for a very long time. “Let’s see what we can do to make you nice and relaxed so you can get some sleep.”
After months of nights just like this, he knows exactly how to kiss and touch me until I’m not thinking about anything other than how I can get more of his special brand of magic. His tongue is soft, persuasive and insistent when it encircles my nipple, making it stand up with attention and interest in what might come next.
Sometimes that might be teeth, other times it might be gentle suction that’s almost enough on its own to take me right over the edge into orgasm. He’s that good. Tonight, seeming to realize they’re needed, he brings out the big guns and has me quivering like a bowl full of jelly under him in no time at all.
What, me worry? Ha, who has the brain cells for that when Wyatt Blake has your legs on his shoulders and his face buried in your hoo-ha? Not me, that’s for sure. He’s found the natural sedative I needed in the form of multiple orgasms—and that’s before we get to the main event.
And you wonder why I was willing to risk epic heartbreak to have this with him?
“Dee.”
His voice pulls me out of my head to open my eyes, blinking his gorgeous face into focus.
He’s propped above me, watching over me with blue eyes gone fierce with love.
When he looks at me that way, he can have anything he wants.
“Are you with me?” he asks as he begins to press his hard cock into me.
“I’m with you.”
“I want you to repeat after me. Are you ready?”
He expects me to speak when he’s stretching me to my absolute limit? I lick my lips and nod.
“I, Dee Giordino…”
“I, um, Dee Giordino…”
“Do solemnly swear to stop worrying about Wyatt Blake…”
I don’t want to say those words, so I shake my head.
“Say it.”
Begrudgingly, I say the words.
“Because he swears to God on a stack of Bibles there’s nothing to worry about. If something was wrong, he would know it.”
My chin quivers as I battle emotions that want to suck me into a spiral from which I might never recover.
“Do you hear me, babe?” he asks in a soft but urgent tone. “I would know if there was something wrong. There’s nothing wrong, and they aren’t going to find anything tomorrow. You got me?”
I want so badly to believe that.
“Delores…”
He’s pulling out the biggest of guns now—in more ways than one as he withdraws completely from me.
I grasp his muscular ass cheeks and try to put him back where I want him. “Why did you stop?”
“Because you’re not hearing me.”
“I am!”
“Then why are you still all tense, and not in a good way?”
“Can’t help it. I love you, so I worry.”
“We had a deal about this. You promised if I let you fall in love with me, you wouldn’t be stressed all the time.”
“Haha, let me fall in love with you… As if I had any choice. I think I loved you the first time you turned those potent blue eyes my way at Carmen and Jason’s wedding and smiled.”
“That was all I had to do?” he asks with a small grin.
“I was that easy.”
“You were so beautiful that day in your bridesmaid gown.” He kisses me sweetly as he enters me once again, making me gasp from the pressure and the pleasure. “So happy for your cousin getting a second chance at love.”
“She deserves it.”
“She does, and so do you. I promised you I’d give you everything, and I intend to keep that promise. But you need to keep your promise to trust me that I’ll tell you if there’s anything to worry about. Right now, today, there’s nothing. I swear it, Dee.” He kisses me again, deeper this time, rubbing his tongue against mine before he retreats. He never stops moving in me, firing up my body even as he touches my soul with his heartfelt words. “My heart has never been in better shape than since I found you.”