Page 22

EMBER

Christmas Morning . . .

“Oh God, yes,” moaning, my body arches off the bed, Cerberus moves inside me.

“Fuckin’ love how tight you are, baby.” Cerberus groans and thrusts deeper, faster, harder.

It’s the first time he’s been inside me since the shooting, and I couldn’t ask for a better gift. Sex with Cerberus is everything. The connection it gives us means more to me than any material gift out there.

Okay, except for one. But he doesn’t know about it yet.

Cerberus woke me up with his mouth between my legs and an orgasm on the verge of driving me over the edge.

The two of us cling to each other, more like I cling to him while he powers into me, giving me everything that I’ve been missing out on.

I thought he was going to wait until the doctor cleared me, but I didn’t go back to the doctor for another week.

I’m just glad he didn’t wait. I might have to do something about it.

I mean, I’m still healing, but I’m now able to move around without pain.

I was going back to work the first of the year, maybe.

Cerberus pulls out of me, whips me to my stomach, lifts me so I’m on my knees, ass aimed high.

He doesn’t play around with thrusting inside me again, taking me hard.

It’s amazing, and my release hits me when he hits just the right spot.

It’s not long before his groans join mine, and he’s coming deep inside me.

Long moments passed and we’re both lying on our sides with him still inside me.

“Merry Christmas, babe,” Cerberus murmurs against the shell of my ear and kisses the side of my neck.

“Merry Christmas, Jase,” I whisper, tilting my head slightly to look back at him.

Grinning, he pulls out, rolls me to my back, and kisses me longingly. I don’t want the kiss to end, but eventually he lifts his head. “Time to shower. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.

We do. Between Christmas here at the clubhouse and his family’s house, it was going to be a long day for certain.

First, though, I wanted to give him my gift in private.

Stella was the only one who knew the truth.

The others might suspect, but she’d drawn my blood and kept my secret for me.

She even helped me in getting Cerberus’s gift made.

It was a miracle she’d been able to get it for me in time. But she’d managed.

The day before Christmas Eve, she came into our room and placed a mini-Christmas tree all decked out with lights and tiny ornaments. Underneath, she placed my present for Cerberus.

When Cerberus had seen the tree and the gift, he’d laughed, opened a drawer and pulled out two boxes, placed them with mine, and there they’d sat.

“Let’s open our gifts before we go deal with the chaos,” I suggest.

“Yeah.” Agreeing with me, Cerberus rolls out of bed and moves to grab the gifts.

By the time he makes it back to the bed, I’m sitting up with the sheet tucked around me.

“Open this one first,” Cerberus says, handing me a small box.

Watching him closely, I rip off the paper and open the box to see what is inside. My breath catches at the sight of the leather cut. It’s beautiful. Pulling it out with trembling fingers, my lip wobbles, and tears prick my eyes. On the back of it is ‘Property of Cerberus’.

“You don’t always have to wear it, Em, but now, when we’re on my bike or other people are around, they’ll know who you belong to.”

“I love it,” I tell him, smiling.

“Good, now here’s your other one.” He grins.

Smiling, I take it, unsure of what I’m going to find.

The moment I have it unwrapped, Cerberus takes the box from me, opens it, and shows it to me, while picking the gift up. “I don’t want you to be just my ol’ lady. I want you to marry me.” He slides the ring on my finger, and I look at the simple yet beautiful solitaire diamond.

“Yes,” I whisper, nodding, not taking my eyes off the ring.

“Good. ‘Cause I want you wearing my ring, my cut, and when we can make it happen, I’m gonna take you to get my branding.”

“Your branding?” I lift my gaze to cock a brow at him. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Want my name tatted on you as I’m gonna be getting yours on me,” he says .

He wants me to get a tattoo?

I always wanted one, but I never actually went through with it.

“Okay,” I agree and nod to my gift. “Now open my gift,” I tell him, anxiety ready to overwhelm me. I don’t know how he’s going to feel about this.

I watch his face the entire time as he lifts the box, rips the paper away, yanks off the lid, and tosses it to the side.

First, he lifts the black chain bracelet I asked Stella to pick up for me.

Cerberus used to have one he wore all the time and had given it to me to wear when we were dating.

I ripped it off and broke it, but I never threw it out.

I kept it. I asked her to have it fixed. Now, he has it back.

Leaning forward, I take the bracelet from him. “I never got rid of it,” I admit to him, feeling his intense gaze watching me clasp the chain around his wrist. Once it’s on him, I lean back against the headboard and nod to the box. “Keep going.”

Slowly, he lowers his gaze back to the box and pulls out the leather cut. It’s not a size either of us could wear, but it wasn’t meant for that. Cerberus’s body tenses as he pulls it up completely and reads the patches, ‘Property of Cerberus’.

His gaze comes to mine and he cocks a brow. “This real?”

I nod, watching him closely. “Yeah. ”

“Fuck me,” he growls sets everything to the side, whips the sheets from my body and comes over me. “Was just inside you, now I’ve gotta fuck you all over again, baby. Best gift you could ever give me.”

I could hear the emotion in his voice.

Cerberus brings his lips to mine, claiming, branding, however you want to word it, it doesn’t matter because he was doing it all the same.

I was branded inside and out by this man.

No one else was ever going to be able to give me what he does, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I was finally getting my happily ever after, and I was doing it with the one bad boy I always wanted.