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Just like I playfully beg for him during our nights together?
He takes the small crown out of its box, then slips it onto my head. I don’t have to see myself in a mirror to know that I’m beautiful, because I see that in Cage’s eyes. I always have.
“My gift,” he murmurs. “My queen.”
When he bends down to scoop me into his arms for a kiss, I melt. I cling to him during this lazy, loving assault of emotions. I feel as if we’re in the eye of our own storm, everything whirling around us as the chaos echoes inside of me, too, and when he deepens the kiss by stroking my tongue with his, I’m his erotic slave.
I’m his everything, even after he pulls away to look down into my eyes.
Fire…storms…us. He belongs to me and I belong to him, forever.
He runs his fingers down my neck, over my aching and swollen breast, then to my baby bump. With a naughty glance, he goes lower, skimming under my summer dress to my pussy.
I moan and bite my lip as he teases me there, awakening my clit and the pounding of my blood.
“There’s no time,” I whisper.
“There’s always time for me to take you into our bedroom for—”
The doorbell chimes, and the hot moment between us suspends in the air. We laugh at the timing, but it’s not as if there won’t be other opportunities.
I smack his hand away from me, and he chuckles. Then I slide the tiara off my head, not caring that’s it leaving my hair a mess. I’ll live.
I tuck the headdress into its box, saving it for our wedding day.
Igor is in high spirits, and he’s brought his wife, two children, and grandchildren with him. The kids immediately go for his pile of presents in the living room, inspecting them, politely guessing what could be inside.
As Igor’s family surrounds my own, laughing together, Cage, Igor, and I stand back and watch.
“Ah, family,” Igor says. “I cannot wait until you have your own children to join in festivities such as this.”
He smiles and looks at my baby bump, and Cage can’t help but to touch me there again. I look up at him to see the glowing affection in his eyes, and I almost lose track of where we are and who we’re with until the kids laugh gleefully at the sight of Daphne wheeling the massive birthday cake into the room on a linen-covered cart.
But Igor isn’t watching them. He’s watching us with a satisfied smile.
“I always knew the two of you would work things out,” he says.
He has no true idea. Cage never did lie to Igor about how I had to “take care of my sick mother” and how that resulted in our breakup. Instead, Cage told him something closer to the truth—that he had blown it with me and wanted me back.
And he sure got what he wanted.
“You know, Cage,” Igor continues as the kids surround the cake now, “meeting Karini was actually what convinced me that you could be trusted. She, as they say, was your ace in the hole.”
The air in the room seems to go still as something passes through Cage’s eyes. A memory of how dark things used to be for him, perhaps. But then he looks at me and his eyes are shining.
He slips his hand to the back of my head and gives me a kiss so tender that my knees go weak. Then he smiles down at me.
“Meeting Karini is what convinced me that I could be trusted, too,” he says so softly that I’m not even sure Igor hears it.
But I did, and that’s all that’s going to matter for the rest of our lives.
THE END