Part-Time Lover (Part-Time Lover #1)(68)
“You wrote a blog post?”
She nods, grabs her phone, and shows me a post from fifteen minutes ago. As I read it, my smile can’t be contained. I point to the screen. “You posted that as I was walking over to you?”
She nods and grins like a fool. “I did.”
I give her a look. “Elise, admit it.”
“Admit what?”
I point from her to me. “This is fate. We’re fate.”
She laughs. “Yes. I believe in fate. But mostly I believe in you.” She plants a searing kiss to my lips that makes me want to do very dirty things to her.
I grip her hips, lift her off me. “Let’s go to your hotel.”
We leave the park and hail a taxi.
“By the way, how did you find me?”
“I tracked down your brother’s number and asked him to find out where you were. He seemed quite eager to make sure you’d be here to meet me.”
She laughs. “I’m so glad it was you instead of him.”
I run a finger over the hollow of her throat, touching her new Eiffel Tower charm. “We need to get you a necklace for the gardens now. You don’t have one. Do you need a flower charm?”
She shakes her head and holds up her hand. “I have a diamond instead.”
*
We waste no time when we reach her room. Clothes come off at record speed, and our bodies become reacquainted with each other. It’s only been a few days since I’ve seen her, but it’s been too long since we’ve touched.
When I climb over her, and she raises her arms to loop them around my neck, I look into her eyes. “I want to make love to my wife.”
She doesn’t say yes. She doesn’t say, “Make love to me.” Instead, she says, “Consume me.”
And I do. That’s how I make love to her. Like there’s a fire inside me, and the only way to quench it is to have her. To take her. To bring her to the edge of pleasure again and again.
I lose track of time. I lose track of her orgasms. She twines around me, her skin hot, her eyes glossy. My hands tug on her hair, and my lips crush hers, my teeth nipping at her neck, her earlobe, her jaw. The sounds she makes send me into another realm. My mind is a blurry haze of desire and love and passion.
And at last, after we come together one final time, I pull her close and whisper in her ear, “I love you. I’ve wanted to say that for so long.”
She runs a hand down my chest. “I love you. And I feel like I belong to you, and you belong to me.”
“That sounds about right. There’s something pretty spectacular about falling in love with your wife.”
*
A little later, after I rummage through the hotel fridge, I announce that we must go out to eat. “I’m starving, and I can’t subsist on peanuts.”
We dress and head outside on a summer night in Manhattan. “Show me around New York City, Mrs. Ellison.”
She does, and we extend our trip, staying for the weekend, taking in the sights. I meet her brother and his wife and kids, as well as her parents, since they’re back in town after a holiday. We get along fantastically. So well, in fact, that I make sure they know that when they’re in Paris next month, we want them at our wedding.
Epilogue
Elise
Twilight drapes over Montmartre. Strings of flickering lights hang from the iron posts that hug my courtyard.
That’s all I have for my wedding decorations, and that’s all I want. With the soft light fading above us in the sky, and the curving cobbled street beyond the front yard, this is the ideal setting.
Christian taps a spoon against a champagne glass, and all our guests quiet down. I stand next to him at the top of my steps, my arm around his waist. “Thank you so much for coming today and for joining us as we tie the knot again,” he says.
Our friends and family cheer, and the ceremony begins. There is no aisle to walk down, no flower girls tossing petals, no string quartet playing tunes. This is a simple ceremony, but already it’s my favorite one.
Because everyone who matters is here. Gathered in my small front yard, which blooms with August’s soft pink and pale-yellow snapdragons, are all the people who matter most to us. Joy holds hands with Griffin, Erik stands next to Veronica, my family is gathered close, and Christian’s mom is here as well as his father and his wife. Christian’s not close to his dad, but it still feels right that he’s present.
The officiant clears his throat and marries us once again. This ceremony is nearly as fast as our first one, but it’s better because we can finally say out loud how we feel.
“I promise to love you, cherish you, and adore you for as long as we both shall live,” I tell him, and Christian says the same words to me.
“Kiss the bride, finally, will ya?”
Christian laughs at his brother’s directive, then says to me, “I’ll keep doing that for the rest of my life.”
He kisses me under the twilight sky on our street, in front of my home, where we now live together.
I loop my hands around his neck, and I’m still holding a bouquet of flowers, tied together with a slim rope. It’s a true hodgepodge, with a few roses, some stargazer lilies, a couple of daisies, and some zinnias. This melting pot of petals is courtesy of my new blog readers, the ones who follow my occasional posts about flowers. They didn’t send me a perfume bottle, and I didn’t want one. Instead they chose the flowers for my bouquet. Lilies for beauty, daisies for innocence, roses for love, and zinnias for lasting affection. I love that it’s completely haphazard and completely meaningful in a whole new way.