In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(85)

Marry. Me.

Dear Lord, they were just two words. Two little words. But they managed to make her heart sing. Then again, those two words hadn’t been preceded by the requisite three words.

Oh yeah, she hadn’t forgotten about that.

With tears filling her eyes and the promise of forever burning in her chest—she certainly wasn’t cold anymore—she leaned toward him. Stopping with her lips a breath away from his.

“You skipped a part,” she murmured, running a hand through his hair, marveling in the texture, amazed that she’d be free to do this, just this simple thing of running her fingers through his hair, for the rest of her life.

“I’ll get down on one knee if you want me to, but I’m gonna look pretty silly doing it in this cast.”

“That’s not the part I’m talking about.” She threw a leg over him, straddling his lean, naked hips, careful to avoid bumping into his cast. “I’m talking about the profession of certain feelings that are usually made before a proposal of marriage.”

“Oh, that…”

“Yes, that.” She lightly bit the tendon in his neck.

“I love you,” he said. Just like that. Plain and simple.

Well of course, that’s how he’d deliver it. He was Frank Knight, after all. No-bullshit, no-prevarication Frank Knight. What did she expect?

The tears that’d been hovering burst free, and she buried her nose in his neck with a sob. “It’s about damn time,” she mumbled when she could find her voice.

“Yeah well, are you going to answer my question or not?”

“Yes,” she whispered through her tears, sitting up to look into the most brutal, beautiful face she’d ever laid eyes on. “Yes, I’ll marry you. On one condition.”

He grinned as he rolled his eyes. “I guess if I’d wanted a nice, biddable wife, I should’ve looked somewhere other than a tattooed, sharp-tongued, Harley-riding, motorcycle designer.”

“I’m serious,” she sniffed, reaching to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

“So am I,” he said with a scowl.

She punched him on his good shoulder, eliciting a bark of laughter from his deep chest.

“Okay, okay,” he held up his hand in surrender when she narrowed her eyes. “Whatever it is, whatever your condition, just name it.”

“I don’t want to be treated like a nosy civilian. I want in. On everything.”

For a minute, he just stared at her. Then he closed his eyes and grimaced like someone was shoving hot needles under his fingernails. Finally, he said, “It’s going to kill me, you being out in the field, but if that’s what it takes to make you happy, then you can be an operator—ah!” He pressed a finger over her mouth when she started to interrupt him. “But before I let you out on an assignment, I’m going to test you on everything from weapons to recon to field dressings, and if you don’t measure up, I’m keeping your sweet ass at home.”

“Can I talk now?” she burbled around his finger, joy and peace and so much happiness filling her up that she wanted to shout her triumph to the walls.

“That depends.”

She lifted a brow.

“Are you going to argue with me?”

“You said yourself you didn’t want a biddable wife,” she continued to have to talk around his finger, because he’d yet to remove it. The arrogant, fabulous dill-hole.

When he frowned and looked like he was mentally gearing up for a fight, she relented. “But in this case, I’m not arguing.”

It was his turn to raise a brow.

“I’m not arguing, because I don’t want to be an operator.” He got very still. “I just want to be let in on what’s going on with you and the guys when you’re out in the field. I don’t want to be treated like the unloved stepchild. You and the Knights, you’re my family, blood or not, and I deserve the right to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’re a team. All of us. It’s time you realized that.”

He reached up and thumbed away a tear that lingered on her cheek, the look in his eyes so warm and full of love she almost started crying all over again.

“You don’t want to be an operator? But you’ve worked so hard. What changed your mind? Not that I want you doing that kind of work, or course, but I just want to make sure it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened today. Because you gotta know you did the right thing in that motel room.”

“I know,” she told him as she tucked her head under his chin, sucking in the smell of soap, leather, and warm, healthy male. “I know I did. But I don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“Not all ops require—”

“I don’t care about being an operator, Frank,” she pushed her nose into his neck, a niggle of desire heating her blood when her lips brushed against his hot skin. “I’m not sure I ever really did. What I cared about was being included.” She sat up. “Are you going to include me?”

“Well, that depends.” He grinned when she rolled her eyes.

“I guess if I’d wanted a nice, biddable husband, I would’ve looked somewhere other than an ex-Navy SEAL turned private covert operator. So go on, what’s your condition?”

“That you marry me,” he said, catching her lips in a kiss so hot her ears burst into flames.