Beyond What is Given(123)

“I love you.” My brain lost its ability to think, but I knew I wanted more. “Harder,” I ordered.

He tried to laugh. “I’m doing my best to go soft here.”

“Soft later. Hard now.” He could make love to me all night long. He’d better. But now, I needed everything he had without holding back.

“I love you,” he echoed. “Now hold on.” He started a deep, pounding rhythm that demanded I do just that. My arms looped around his neck and held tight as he drove into me over and over again, the muscles in his arms bulging as he lifted me up and slammed me back down.

He shifted his hands to my ass, and tension spiraled in me again, tighter with every thrust. The man was a machine. Our eyes locked, our breaths mingled, and it was hotter than him sliding in and out of me. I was pretty sure Grayson could bring me to orgasm with a look if he tried hard enough.

He backed up until he hit the edge of the bed and then sat, grasping each of my ankles and bringing my knees flush along his hips. “I can f*ck you like that all day long, but I think this might be better for you.”

I let loose a wicked grin, rose up and slid back down, watching the change in his eyes. I felt powerful, desirable, and his.

Grayson’s fingers slipped between us to massage my clit as I rode him, and any of my previous thoughts fled. There were only our bodies, and the rhythm that drove us higher, brought us closer together.

“Grayson,” I cried as my muscles locked.

“I’ve got you,” he growled, pressing on those nerves just right, and I flew. My orgasm set his off, and we clung together as we came back down.

His lips were soft as he kissed me.

“Whoa,” I said, raking my nails gently over his scalp.

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly,” he commented, and rolled us so we lay side by side.

I couldn’t stop looking at him, or running my fingers along the back of his neck. “I missed you so much.”

“You don’t have to miss me anymore.” His slight smile would have collapsed my knees if I’d been standing.

“And you’re sure that you’re okay here?” I had to ask. He’d given up so much for me. For us.

He smiled, and my heart faltered. “It was selfish of me to ask you to give up what you worked your ass off for. I’m here. I’m not leaving you until the army says we have to move, and then I’m kind of hoping you’ll come with me. We should have at least a couple years here, long enough to finish your degree. But I promise we’ll keep this house. Our kids will mark their heights on that door.”

I arched up and kissed him. “I love the door. I love the house. I love you, and I’ll go wherever I have to so I can be with you. I used to think that home was a place. Walls, and windows, and home-baked brownies, but it’s not, Grayson. That’s just a house. You are my home. So where you go, I’ll go.”

His mouth met mine in the sweetest kiss we’d ever shared. “I promise I’ll always put the coffee on the bottom shelf.”

“That, or you always have to be around to catch me when I slip off the granite.”

His smile was brighter than the sunlight streaming through the windows. “I told you once—I’ll always catch you.”

I lifted an eyebrow and ran my hands down his naked back.

“You are pretty good with your hands.”

He scoffed. “Pretty good? We’ve been apart for what, four months, and now I’m only pretty good?”

I brought my leg up to hitch around his hips. “I guess I could use a reminder.”

“Oh, I’ll remind you.”

“I might forget pretty often.” I gave him my best wide-eyed stare.

“I’ll remind you every f*cking day, Samantha.”

Yes. Every day. He was my future, my home, my universe, this phenomenal man who’d altered my world and claimed it for his own. “Promise?”

“Promise.”





Epilogue


Seven years later


The hangar doors opened on Butts Army Airfield and the crowd roared above the music of the army band playing. They marched in, all one-hundred-and-twenty-five of them, filling the empty floor with row after row of camo.

My eyes swept the front of the line until I found him, and my heart started to race. He was here. Finally. After the longest nine months of my life, he was finally home. No, this hadn’t been our first deployment, but it had been the hardest.

Then again, after three of them, it always seemed to feel that way.

He faced forward, standing at attention at the head of his company while the General took the podium, but I could see Grayson’s eyes scanning the bleachers looking for me. For us.

“Daddy’s here!” I said to Delaney as I adjusted all forty pounds of her on my hip.

“Daddy!” she shrieked, breaking the silence to the laughter of those around us.

Who could blame a four-year-old?

I tucked one of her long, caramel spiral-curls back over her ear. “We have to wait a minute, baby.”

When I looked back to the formation, Grayson’s eyes had locked on to me. My stomach clenched. Five years of marriage, and he still had the power to knock me to my knees with just that look.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The general dismissed the troops, and the crowd rushed from the stands in a tidal wave of joy, until the hangar floor became a sea of welcome-homes. Careful in heels with Delaney in my arms, I picked my way down the bleachers until we reached the last row, where Grayson had just arrived.