My face melts right alongside my heart. “You are?”
The tip of her nose turns pink, and her eyes are glittering a bit. “Of course I am.” She sniffles, and tears well up on the rims of her eyes. “We’ve had a really bad run. More than bad. But… Malachi…” Her bottom lip trembles. “Your heart stopped right under my fingers. And all I could think of was our whole lives. And these amazing people…” She lifts her hand briefly to gesture out the hospital room door before laying it back on my chest and curling her fingers between mine. “They brought you back, and I would be lying if I didn’t say it feels like they brought you back to me, and I don’t want to waste that. Everything that went wrong, and every bad thing that happened while we were married… it just doesn’t matter. I forgive you for all of it, and I hope you can forgive me for everything I did, because I just need you. I need us. I love you. You are so much a part of me that I don’t think there is a me without you. I just want to try.” She blinks, and a tear trips over her black eyelashes to slide down her weary face. “Will you try with me? Can we try? Can we fix all of this together? Please?”
My eyes shift slowly because it feels too good to be true. To the point that I can’t tell for sure if this is actually real, or if it’s a hallucination from the copious amounts of drugs I’m definitely on right now.
Nevertheless, even if it’s a hallucination, I’m prepared to drown myself in it, and answer with a simple, “Yes.”
Isla offers a small nod back, brows lifted. “Yeah?”
I’m suddenly very aware of how dry my mouth still is, and I swallow. “I can’t think of anything I need to forgive you for.”
She lifts one shoulder. “I was hateful to you a lot. Especially after I learned that it was all a lie. I was psychotic.”
“You had every reason to respond the way you did.” I let my head sink deeper against the pillow as I incline my face upward to see her better. Literally every part of me aches like a mother fucker, but I couldn’t be more content and happy. “Isla.”
She combs back my hair. “Yes, amor.”
“Thank you for not hating me anymore.”
Her lips pull into a small, impish grin. “You’re welcome.”
I lift my hand to thread my fingers through the tips of her ponytail. Just as soft and silky as it always has been. “I wish I had words to tell you how much I love you.”
Her grin relaxes into a content, amorous smile as she leans close to my face, our fingers still laced together at my chest, and she presses a kiss to my lips that feels a hell of a lot like the first one she gave me when I was only fourteen.
“You don’t need them, cariño. I already know. I always have. I always will.”
EPILOGUE
ISLA
Eight Months Later
STARING OUT THE WINDOW of a suite in the Bellagio, I take in the view of the Las Vegas Strip all lit up against the black desert night, and then coyly turn to look at Malachi, who is momentarily stark naked as a jaybird after a shower. He’s minding his own business, picking up a pair of black boxer briefs off a chaise lounge where his suit is laid out, and we have impending plans with Joaquin and Liliana, as well as Elle and Colin, but I think all of that can wait for a bit.
I point at him with my flute of champagne. “Stop what you’re doing.”
Malachi cuts his pewter gaze up to me and arches an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon.”
I set my glass on a nearby table and place my hands on my hips, returning his arched eyebrow. “We’re about to do something very naughty,” I remind him. “But I want to do something even naughtier first.”
His dick goes hard and erect instantly, and then he tosses the boxer briefs aside as he approaches me with a chuckle that shakes his large shoulders. “There’s nothing naughty about either of those things,” he says with a smirk.
I lift my chin toward his face as he wraps his hands around my waist and pushes me against the window. The glass is cold on the skin of my back, exposed by a low-cut, white-beaded cocktail dress, and chills scatter my arms. “Pre-marital sex is very naughty, Malachi. Sex against a window is even naughtier.” I nip his bottom lip. “But we have always been a couple of sinners, haven’t we, amor?”
He laughs heartily. “I guess when you put it that way.” With both hands, he grabs the hem of my skirt and shimmies it up to my hips, flicking his gaze down and then dragging it back up to my face, his silver eyes darkening with heat. “Speaking of sin. I see that my ex-wife-slash-bride-to-be has forgotten a very important part of her wardrobe.”
I hitch a shoulder carelessly. “Panties are inconsequential when I’m constantly having to remove them for you, ex-husband.”
He licks his lips as he uses his leg to push my knees wider and draws his hand up the inside of my thigh. “I can’t exactly disagree with you.” His fingers slide between my wet, aching slit, stroking me while he jerks his chin at the glass. “They told me these rooms are soundproof. Certainly is accommodating.”
“I couldn’t care less if the thousands of people in this hotel can hear me.” I throw my arms around his neck, and hook my knee around his hip. “Now, pre-marital fuck me against this cold-as-hell window, ex-husband.”
Malachi laughs again, but silences himself with his mouth hard on mine as he drives his throbbing cock deep inside me and hoists me up with his hands cupping my ass.
He thrusts into me so fast and so hard that I’m just slightly worried about the glass breaking and us falling to our deaths on the Las Vegas Strip, but fuck it.
It feels like we already died and were resurrected eight months ago on the rug in my parents’ living room. You apparently don’t only live once, and I fully intend to live out this second chance with him with full abandon and without regrets.
But the glass is as solid and strong as our revived love for each other, and it holds me up while Malachi slams into me, devouring my mouth with kisses and throaty, murmured words.
“I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you,” I manage as my vision goes black with the surge of my climax, and I feel him pulse deep in my core, causing me to literally scream.
And yes, I do hope this entire hotel has learned his name by now.
We’re both panting as he slides out and lowers my feet to the floor, then claims my lips for another searing kiss before he smiles at me. “Not naughty.”
I playfully narrow my eyes. “Completely naughty.” I comb his hair back before sweeping my own away from my face. “Don’t ruin my fantasies, ex-husband, or I will make you wait another day before allowing you to remarry me.”
He chuckles, offering a low dip of his chin. “As you wish, past-and-future Duchess of Corwick.”
Pressing one last kiss to my lips, he turns from me to retrieve a towel so we can clean up all over again, and then I allow him to finish dressing. I do not put on my panties.
After all, if you’re going to elope to Las Vegas for your remarriage, you might as well make the most of it and re-consummate said marriage in a casino bathroom.
“YOU SHOULD DO IT,” I say to Elle as we wait in the lobby of a tiny wedding chapel smack in the middle of the Strip.