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Ace

I feel around in my suitcase for what Julian left for me. It’s a small black velvet drawstring pouch that holds a ring that I never expected to have made, never mind give.

Morning light filters in through the sheer linen curtains. The cool breeze of a Colorado morning forced Hadley to burrow into the bed deeper as soon as I snuck out of it. I could barely make out her shape beneath the plush covers. It’s a lump and wild brunette curls that drape over the pillows.

Once I find what I’m looking for, I bring the tray of coffees and croissants from the bakery in the hotel lobby toward the bed.

“Please tell me you have breakfast and that I’m not just dreaming about coffee right now,” she says in a raspy morning voice.

When she surfaces, her face is flushed and sleepy.

Wisps of hair block her eyes, and even like this, under the covers first thing in the morning, I feel so many things for her.

Lust, attraction, love, want, and the need to be whatever she needs.

It feels like the right time. On a day when she can be carefree, away from our life at home—between running a business and dealing with the chaos we started, now is more than the right time to ask for the right reasons.

“We’re not at my place, so I couldn’t find a clementine, but I have iced coffee—splash of cream and a squeeze of honey. And some water.” I glance at her sitting up, looking like a perfectly worked-over woman. My woman. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She smiles wider and sing-songs, “You are so obsessed with me.”

I lean over the bed to get closer to her lips and say softly, “You’re catching on.” When I steal a quick kiss, she smiles.

She rips off a piece of croissant and shoves it in her mouth with a hum. “Breakfast-in-bed delivery from my sexy-ass husband? Best. Honeymoon. Ever.”

I pull off my Foxx Bourbon T-shirt and toe off my shoes to join her, opening my mouth for her to give me a bite of the flakey croissant.

She’s right; it’s the kind of morning that gets stored away and taken out when life feels complicated again.

Sitting here with her, watching crumbs from her breakfast stick to her lips and the way she closes her eyes when she sips her coffee, is the kind of easy I never realized I could have.

I feel around in my pocket, knowing without a doubt that there isn’t a more perfect time for this.

As I lean back against the headboard, giving her a place to rest up against, she traces the cursive lines along my torso and whispers, “The Bourbon Boys.” She offers me another bite, and then, with a mouthful, asks, “It seems like something I should already know the answer to, but did you always want to make bourbon?”

“I thought I had a choice.” I smile to myself. “So I thought I would want to choose something that wasn’t what everyone in my family said I was supposed to do.”

“But you seem to love it. You’ve always seemed like you love what you do here.”

I nod, agreeing with her. “It became my choice. Bourbon, and proof that if I made enough things right, I might find the kind of life my parents had. Full, hard, happy, and brimming with so much love that everyone who knew them felt it.”

I run my fingers along the top of her knee, back and forth, as if touching her in some way is necessary. An eagerness thrums through me as I reach into my pocket with my other hand.

“Did you never settle down with someone because—” she starts to ask, but I cut her off.

“Because anybody else wasn’t you.” I hold up a ring pinched between two fingers.

It’s something she would wear—gold and lined with diamonds.

Nothing too over-the-top, but something that’s comfortable, beautiful, and just for her.

Julian outdid himself with this design. It’s entirely original. “We did this all wrong, sugar.”

Gasping, her hand moves over her eyes, like she’s too overwhelmed to even look. She pulls in a breath first and blows it out slowly, moving her hands away from blue, tear-filled eyes. “I don’t know why I’m so overwhelmed; we’re already married,” she says with a watery laugh.

“That was for show. This one’s for us,” I tell her as I take her hand, sliding the ring above the one that already occupies it.

“Ace...” she breathes out, and I swipe away the tear tracking down her cheek. “This is beautiful.”

It feels pretty spectacular to take this woman’s breath away and make her speechless as she stares at the ring.

But I need to tell her how much I want this life with her.

“I’ve been trying to catch my breath since the moment you walked into my life.

And I know that I’ve done this all wrong, but I want to make it right.

” I steady my voice when I say, “I’m in love with you, Hadley Foxx.

We may have already gotten married, but I want to be your husband in every fucking way if you’ll have me.

And I don’t want this feeling to ever go away, so I’m asking you to stay married to me.

Throw out the rules we’ve barely followed and just keep choosing each other.

Let me love you, sugar, like I should have from the start. ”

She barely lets me finish as her hands find my face and pull me into a kiss.

“Yes. It’s always been a yes from me,” she mumbles across my lips.

Wrapping her arms around my neck, she practically tackles me back onto the bed.

“I thought the first ring was romantic, but asking me to stay with you...” A soft smile brightens her face as her fingers graze along my hairline.

“You would’ve had to find a way to get rid of me, because I was never going anywhere.

Even when I was pissed off at you, I was already stupidly in love with you. ”

I can’t help the smile that pulls out of me, knowing that she’s been feeling the same way I have.

She looks at the ring on her finger, above the metal band from the bottle of bourbon.

“I think I’ll wear both. One for loving you and pretending I didn’t and the other for being able to say it whenever I want now. ”

I push her hair back behind her shoulders and look up at my beautiful wife. It’s a view I don’t think I’ll ever forget—her smiling at her ring as she lies on top of me and the word “love” being thrown around like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say to someone. To her, it is.

She glances at me and cracks another smile. “What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

A few pieces of her hair fall from the knot on the top of her head as she looks at me curiously. “Why are you smiling at me?”

“A lot of reasons,” I say, drawing my fingers along her bare shoulder.

“You don’t have any idea how brilliant you are.

Sexy, yeah, absolutely, but...” I tuck a piece of her flyaway hair behind her ear and tell her the simplest truth.

“I’m in awe of you. Always have been.” I smile at the way she’s looking at me, like this isn’t obvious to her.

“You drained your father’s money and bought up most of Fiasco’s commercial real estate.

And you did it to help people.” I shake my head.

“Not out of greed or to take something for yourself.” Leaning in, I kiss her pretty lips.

“I love touching you, tasting you,” I breathe out.

“But I also love the way this thinks,” I say, dragging my fingers along the side of her forehead.

“And the things you say.” I swipe my thumb along her lips.

She closes her eyes, smiling. Jokingly, she says, “I’m awesome. We’ve already established this. Plus, I didn’t need any of that money or real estate—that’s what I have you for.” Wiggling her eyebrows, she bops her finger on my nose. Such a brat.

I pinch her nipple, making her screech a laugh. “Kidding. I’m kidding,” she says, out of breath. “That’s what I have Midnight Proof for?—”

“And Foxx Bourbon,” I say, cutting her off. “And whatever else we build out from there.”

“Baby, Foxx Bourbon is yours and your brothers’.”

That hits me right in the chest . I close my eyes for a second and hum, “I like that one,” I tell her.

She furrows her brow, trying to work out what I’m talking about.

“ Baby is good when we’re like this,” I say, and then drag her closer to my lips again as her body wraps fully around mine. My cock rubs up against her barely-there satin shorts. “But when I’m hard or you’re wet, I want you to be a brat and call me Daddy.”

Her cheeks flush pink immediately, and then she bites that pretty bottom lip.

“Say it,” I demand as I drag my nose along the column of her neck.

“Yes, Daddy,” she breathes out.

“And your last name is Foxx, which means Foxx Bourbon is just as much yours as it is mine.” I wrap my hand around her neck, just as she settles her pussy right on my dick. She grinds herself over me as I tug her bottom lip with my teeth. “Tell me okay, so I can flip you over and fuck you again.”

A breathy chuckle escapes her as her eyes blink slowly. “How are you ready to go again?”

“I have more than a decade’s worth of sexual frustration to work out on this pretty pussy.” I move my other hand below the covers to her already slicked clit. Petting it with my thumb lightly, I’m hoping to hear her beg me for more.

Her neck tilts back as she lets out an audible exhale. “You’ve had sex in the last decade.”

I sit up with her on my lap as she tries to grind her pussy into whatever I’ll give her.

Dragging my teeth along her pebbled skin, I suck one of her nipples so hard that she cries out.

When I pull back, I lick and soothe the divots I just made.

“Yes, but I’ve been fantasizing about having it with you for just about that long. ”

“You’re...” she trails off as I slide two fingers inside her. “Oh god?—”

I flip us over and tease my cock along her slit. “I could see why you’d call me that, but you can do better.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and barks out a laugh.

Sliding into her all the way, I make her whimper and writhe.

The sounds of her pleasure fuel me. As much fun as it is to deny her, I get off on hearing her come loudly against me.

I pull myself back, inching out of her slowly.

Tapping the head of my cock along her clit, I say softly, “Tell me what I want to hear, sugar.”

I glance at the gold band that’s proudly displayed on her hand. With her breath labored, she smiles up at me and says, “Fuck me like you mean it, husband.”

I barely let her finish the words as I thrust into her hard and deep, both of us moaning together. And I do exactly as my wife demands.