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He chuckles as I wave from my seat. Denver’s hand clasps my thigh protectively beneath the long table.

“… that I would give her credit and tell the story again…” my father continues.

I part my thighs a little, placing my hand on top of Denver’s and sliding it higher so his pinky grazes my pussy.

“Princess,” he growls under his breath.

A rumble of laughter passes along the table at a joke my father makes.

“Move your hand if you don’t want it there, Brute,” I whisper in his ear, giggling, and he tenses, his eyes flicking along the table at the sea of faces.

Everyone’s attention is fixed on my father and the way he’s radiating love as he lifts Halliday’s hand to his lips and kisses it.

“Those three words were… She’s your gift ,” my father says, reciting the words I told him when I hired Halliday to find him love.

I take Denver’s free hand in mine and clap with it, throwing him a little wink. He glowers at me, and I giggle again. He could have moved his hand and clapped with both of his if he’d wanted to.

We lift our glasses, toasting my father and Halliday. Warmth blooms in my chest at how happy and perfect they look together.

“Look at the way he looks at her,” I murmur. “He’s so deliriously in love.”

“Mm-hmm,” Denver murmurs.

“You’re not even looking,” I say with a smile, feeling his gaze burning into my cheek.

I turn and am captured by glittering green.

“I’m looking, Sinclair,” he rasps, all deep and sexy and him .

“Yeah?” I bite my lip, staring at him as heat pools between my legs. I’ve been with the girls getting ready ever since we got back from the marina this morning. We haven’t been alone together for hours.

His fingers flex against my skin, and he slides them higher, turning his palm so he can swipe the tip of one through my arousal.

He curses quietly.

“You want to pretend you’re helping me with something?” I whisper in his ear as chatter breaks out around the table and serving staff come to refill glasses.

“We can’t leave together. Everyone will know what we’re doing,” he whispers with a tortured groan.

His eyes scan the table, snagging on something.

“What?” I breathe, following his gaze.

My father is leading Halliday away from the table discreetly. She’s gazing at him in adoration.

“I’m incredibly happy for them both, but now you have to sneak me out of here and do deliciously filthy things to me, otherwise I’ll be thinking of what my father is doing right now.” I laugh, pulling his face to mine so I can kiss him.

He gifts me with a scorching kiss full of promise that leaves my lips tingling.

Then he stands and pulls my chair out.

His eyes darken as he gazes down at me, and I blink, not even trying to hide my eye-fuck of him in his suit.

“Let’s go,” he says quietly.

I stand, glancing up and down the table at our family and friends who are all chatting away, love bouncing around the table in every smile and laugh.

“Sinclair,” Denver warns as I pause.

He’s right, he does know me. Because before I can call out to our guests that we’ll be back in a bit, his mouth slants over mine, muffling my words.

But I don’t care.

Because his lips are on mine, and I’m kissing him as though my life depends on it.

A cheer erupts and someone calls out about ours being the next wedding. I grin against Denver’s mouth as he mutters out, ‘ Princess ’, like he’s pissed.

But as I dust my lips back and forth over his, he smiles.

“Sinclair Layne, or maybe Denver Beaufort,” I muse, giggling as his dick presses against me, getting harder by the second.

“Move,” he growls, his hand sliding to the base of my spine as he marches me away from the table.

I lean into his side as we walk away to a wolf-whistle, which I bet was Jenson.

“This spoiled princess loves you.” I laugh, wrapping my arm around him.

He grunts. “I hope so. Because this Brute loves her enough to die for her?—”

“Because it used to be your job?”

He presses his lips into my hair, kissing the top of my head, as his voice softens. “Because she’s everything to me.”

My insides go all gooey, melting like butter on hot toast.

“Everything, huh? You want it all. Now, who’s spoiled?

” I stop walking and turn to look at him from beneath my lashes, lust working its way through my veins and heating my blood as he lifts his hand and dusts his thumb over my lower lip, his pupils flaring as the tip dips inside my mouth and grazes my tongue.

“You saying I’m spoiled now?” He arches a brow, and I have the urge to suck on his thumb, but he moves it before I can, curling his hand around the side of my neck and gripping it in his signature way.

Strong but so gentle.

“Yeah.” I smile. “You’re a spoiled Brute now. Who knows what you’ll be demanding next.”

“Demanding?” he rasps, the depth of his tone sending a shiver of anticipation skating up my spine. “How about I demand you stop talking and kiss me?”

I flick my gaze to the table of guests behind him. We’re far enough away that they can’t hear us, but we’re still within their sights if they were to look in this direction.

“Public displays of affection growing on you? What will you be into next?” I tease.

He steps closer, his jacket brushing my nipples and making them pucker to attention beneath my dress.

“The same thing I’ve always been into.” His eyes roam over my face and my breath hitches at the intensity in them.

Everything around us fades into a low hum.

The sound of chatter, glass clinking, the ocean waves.

He breathes in slowly and exhales his next words like a soft prayer.

“Sinclair Beaufort…” His eyes drink me in again, like he’s looking at me for the first time.

“The woman I love with everything I am.”

Fireworks erupt low inside my stomach. I love intense romantic Denver.

“The one you’d die to protect,” I whisper, emotion catching in my throat and making me need to blink.

“The one I’d die to protect,” he says, “because she is everything to me.”

My lips sink into my lower lip before a goofy smile takes over my face. “Say that again.”

Denver’s gaze heats as he tilts my chin up. “Now who’s demanding?”

The first soft press of his mouth against mine is like those first rays of warm sun in spring, telling the earth that it’s time to grow things again. It’s time to bloom.

That it’ll all be okay.

“I love you,” I tell him as he pulls me into a kiss that I never want to end.

We’re two people who know loss too well, finding happiness in each other when we feared there would be none.

He tells me he’d die for me.

But he needs to know what I’ll do for him.

I pull back far enough to break our kiss, but not far enough that his warm breath doesn’t entwine with mine in the tiny slice of air between us.

“I live for you, Denver Layne,” I declare, stroking his jaw.

“I live for your vanilla coffee tasting lips, and your giant brutish arms around me. I live for your insistence of opening my door for me, which you know I secretly love, but will pretend not to. I live for the way you sleep with your gun under your pillow because you’re worried about losing someone you love again. ”

His eyes shine as his hand wraps around my hip, holding me close.

“And I live for every time you tell me it will be okay… because the only time I’ve ever truly believed it has been when it’s you saying it.”

“Sinclair,” Denver breathes, wiping away a tear that’s rolling down my cheek.

“I love you,” I say again, wanting to tell him over and over. “Thank you for being that one solid in a world where everything felt like it was spinning and nothing was safe.”

The tender smile that graces his handsome face sends sparks bursting through me, like little shots of magic.

“Thank you for letting me be that person.” He strokes my hair back from my face. “I love you with every part of me, Sinclair. You’re everything to me.”

I sniff, fighting back happy tears, before deciding to embrace them. Who cares if our sexy sneak-away has turned emotional? I intend to soak up every second of it. I’ve cried too many tears of grief.

I welcome the wetness on my cheeks now as Denver looks at me like I’m his entire reason for existing.

“Just everything?” I pout, more tears falling.

“And more, Princess,” he rasps.

“How much?”

His rare chuckle washes over me as he leans closer, his lips hovering over mine.

“More than every shoe of yours I’ll find fault with.

More than every door I’ll open for you, secretly loving that you try and fight me over it, because you toying with me is the highlight of my day.

More than the way you love those smoothie stickers that have better jokes than me.

And more than I’ll ever be able to tell you, even if I said it again and again until my final breath. ”

He rests his forehead against mine, waiting.

“Hm,” I muse. “It’ll do as a start, I suppose.”

He purses his lips, his expression serious, only given away by the way his eyes are glittering. “I better up my efforts,” he says.

The next second the stars dotted against the inky sky flash past my eyes as he pulls me up into his arms, my body pressed against his chest, my legs flung over his arms. Like he’s about to sweep me away somewhere with urgency, bodyguard style.

“Sounds like a plan,” I say, pulling his lips to mine.

He kisses me, a deep groan building in his chest. “Time to execute the next phase,” he groans.

“Does it include that thing you do with your?—?”

He cuts me off with another kiss.

“Such a fucking princess,” he scolds. “Trust me, okay?”

“Always.”

“It’ll be okay,” he says. “Everything will be okay.”

And as he strides off with me in his arms, I gaze at his profile, my heart lifting every other second as he glances down to check on me, a smile playing on his lips.

I believe him.

Because now that I have Denver, I know, whatever happens now…

It’ll all be okay.

The End