Rome (Marked Men #3)(54)
Author: Jay Crownover

I let myself into Cora’s house. It was always so sunny, so cheerful, just like her. I didn’t see Jet or Ayden, but my girl was in the kitchen singing along to something that might have been music if it hadn’t had a chick screaming at the top of her lungs.

I propped myself up on the long bar of the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room and just watched her as she danced around between the stove and the sink. Her short hair was slicked down to her head today. She had on a short red skirt that was ruffly and fluffy that made her look like the princess in a punk-rock fairy tale. Her top was loose and flow-y over a belly that was just starting to round out in the barest hint of baby belly. The flowers on her arm, and the water and fire on her leg, looked vivid and exotic and I couldn’t imagine ever coming home to anyone that wasn’t her. I was in love with her. Plain and simple.

“What are you doing?”

She gave a little shriek and spun around to face me. Her eyes were big in her face and she put a hand to her chest.

“You scared me. What does it look like I’m doing? Gymnastics? I’m cooking dinner.”

I walked up behind her and put my arms around her waist. I flattened the palm of one hand on her stomach and spread my fingers wide. She put one of her much smaller ones over the top of it and ran her thumb over the scar that decorated my knuckles.

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

She snorted and turned in my arms to put her arms up around my neck. I liked that she was so short that she had to get on her tiptoes to get ahold of me. It made her skirt ride up higher and her curves press against me.

“It’s not haute cuisine but it won’t kill us either. I didn’t hear the bike or the truck. How did you get here?”

“Brite dropped me off.” I walked her backward until her back touched the counter. “I had a little car trouble.”

She dropped her pale brows and squealed a little when I picked her up by her waist and set her on the flat top of the counter. Her legs parted immediately and I stepped between them. Her eyes were laughing up at me but got serious real quick when I ran my thumb along the curve of her delicate jaw.

“Cora.”

She curled her hands around the back of my neck and swung her legs so that her ankles were locked around my waist.

“Rome.”

“Brite sold me the Bar today and I’m in love with you.” That was my future in a nutshell; nothing else mattered.

Her eyes got huge in her pretty face and her mouth dropped open in a little O. Her legs tensed around me, but that could have had more to do with the fact I was working my hands under her poufy skirt with every intention of getting into her panties than it did with the L-bomb.

“WHAT?!”

I dropped a kiss on her mouth and nudged her with my hips so that I had enough room to hook a finger under the lace trim and work her panties down over her hips and decorated thighs. She was always so soft and smooth, which was such a contrast to her prickly and sharp-witted personality. I tucked the lace in my back pocket and kissed her on the shoulder where the neck of her shirt dipped down. She always tasted so sweet.

“I own a bar and I want you forever.”

“Rome.” She was breathless and I could hear the undercurrent of fear working in her voice. I knew she wasn’t there yet. She still had reservations having to do with that douche from when she was younger, and because of my dumb-ass freak-out, she wasn’t sold on the idea that I would never do that to her again, but she would get there. I had no doubt. Besides there was no other option. She was it for me.

I shook my head at her and flipped the edge of her skirt over my wrists and grinned down at her.

“You don’t have to say anything, Half-Pint. I just want you to know what this is for me, that I’m not going anywhere ever again. I promise you that, and I’ll prove it to you no matter how long it takes.”

Her eyes were luminous as she stared up at me. I could see a million and one questions chasing across the light to the dark, but she didn’t push me away when I bent down to kiss her like I meant it. Her fingers tightened in the hair on the back of my head and she pulled me closer with her legs. I wanted to sink into her, to remember this moment, the look on her face, forever. Whatever my future looked like, as long as she was at the center of it, I knew I could handle it, even the unknown.

I was really getting into the kiss. I had my tongue in her mouth, one hand up her shirt and under her bra, and the other working on my belt buckle while she wiggled and squirmed on the counter in front of me when the timer on the oven dinged loudly and had her jerking her head away and panting to catch her breath. Her eyes were dazed and swirling with a heat that I was sure matched my own.

“It’ll burn. I have to take it out.”

I leered at her. “I have something hotter you need to take out.”

I adjusted the bulge in the front of my pants for emphasis, which made her laugh like crazy. When she bent over to pull the concoction out of the stove, it was all I could do not to grab her and throw her on the kitchen floor and have at that little peek of her bare ass under all that scarlet material. I would never, ever get tired of this girl; I knew it to the bottom of my soul.

She plopped the glass dish on the stovetop and cranked the dials off. She tossed the oven mitt off to the side and whirled around so that she was facing me. I grunted in surprise when she launched herself at me. I caught her with a hand under her naked butt and hefted her up so that we were eye to eye.

“As hot as the idea of you devouring me in the kitchen looking all handyman hot in your work pants and boots is, Ayden could walk in the door at any minute. And while I may have caught her and Jet in a compromising position on more than one occasion, it is not something I care to relive. Take me to bed, big guy.”

I carried her to the back of the house toward her room. When I put her on the bed I hovered over her with my hands on either side of her head. We were almost nose to nose and she was smiling up at me. Right in that moment I knew that all was right in my world.

“We need to find our own place.”

“Excuse me?”

I reached up over my head and pulled my shirt off with one hand.

“If I want to take it to you in the kitchen, on the couch, in the middle of the goddamn living room, I don’t want to worry about being interrupted. This is it for me, Cora. We need our own place.”

She might not be quite ready to tell me she loved me back, but the idea of being stuck with me for the long haul must not have been all that frightening because she lifted her hips when I tugged the skirt off and pulled her shirt off over her head. I kissed the slight swell of her belly and she tangled her fingers in my dark hair. I felt her sigh against my lips while I licked across the delicate skin covering our baby.