Sweet Sinful Nights(83)
He unzipped his jeans, yanked her panties to the side and handed her the condom. “Put it on me,” he told her, as he held tight to her hips.
She opened the condom and rolled it onto his erection. He couldn’t believe it had only been twenty-four hours since he’d been inside her. It felt like forever. But as he lowered her, he savored both the intensity of sliding into her gorgeous body, and the sweet, blissful knowledge, that he had a lifetime ahead of him to be with her like this.
His wife.
She took her time, rising up and down, and swiveling her hips in a way that drove him wild. He watched her, raking his gaze over her face, her body, her hips. She was his now, completely his. He reached for her hair, threading his fingers into her strands, pulling her on top of him.
“Closer,” he said on a groan. “I need more of you.”
He dropped his hands to her ass, and gripped her tight as he moved her up and down, the friction, the heat, bringing them both to the edge. She rocked faster, harder, her hands grappling with his hair, her breathing turning frantic.
She said his name in the most desperate, ecstatic voice he’d ever heard, and it sent them both over the edge.
After, he wrapped his arms around her, her heart beating fast against his chest, her cheeks flushed. “Come home with me tonight, Mrs. Nichols.”
“Tonight? Just tonight?”
“Every night,” he said, as he smacked her ass. “Get your stuff. You’re moving in with me.”
She shot him a pouty look. “Why your home?”
“Why not my home?” he countered.
“Actually, I don’t care if it’s your home or mine. I just want to be with you. Plus, I hear you have a pretty good dishwasher.”
She went home with him. It had only taken him more than a decade to carry her over the threshold, but all those years of missing her were worth it that night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
One week later
Shannon kissed Brent goodbye at the door to his house. Now, it was their house. “I’ll see you late, late, late tonight in the Big Apple,” she told him.
“I’ll be counting down the hours till you knock on the door dressed as a sexy room service French maid.”
She furrowed her brow. “Just exactly what kind of hotels do you stay at, Brent?”
He winked. “The kind where my wife shows up at midnight.” Then he kissed her. “Have a great rehearsal.” He swooped in for one more kiss. “See you tonight.”
She shooed him out the door. “Go. You’ll miss your plane. You need to be fresh and ready to impress the ladies of Tribeca tomorrow.”
“With you by my side, it’ll be a piece of cake,” he said, then left for the airport.
She finished getting ready for work, pulling on a pair of black leggings, a tunic tank top, and high heels, then tossing her favorite scarf around her neck—the silk, blush pink scarf that Brent had given her. A thin, wispy thing, it was perfect for the summer heat. She had a final on-site rehearsal today with her dancers at Edge. The San Francisco debut had been a smashing success, and with the show set to launch at Edge in Vegas next week, Shannon wanted to make sure everything was perfect. She’d catch a late afternoon flight to New York and land in the Big Apple at midnight. That would still give her plenty of time to go to the picnic with Brent tomorrow, and support him in this key business deal. Tribeca was making him jump through some crazy hoops, and though she might not agree with the neighborhood association, she was ready to stand by her man, and to show, too, that his wife supported him. More importantly, she wanted him to know that his job mattered to her. That it wasn’t a source of friction as it had once been, and that they were in this together now.
The weekend was packed and was sure to fly by in a whirlwind. After the picnic tomorrow, they’d visit with Julia and Clay in the evening. Shannon was thrilled and a bit nervous to meet her brother-in-law’s wife for the first time. She wondered if they’d give her and Brent a hard time for “eloping,” just as her brothers and grandma had done. Of course, that hard time lasted all of five minutes because her grandma then declared she’d start planning a wedding celebration party with barbecue and beer for both families. The menu pleased her brothers, and the party planning pleased her grandma. Julia and Clay were coming to the party in a few weeks, but Shannon was eager to see them tomorrow night, too. Then she and Brent would fly back Sunday morning in plenty of time for Shannon to visit her mom on Monday when Ryan returned from his own weekend business trip. Departure was slated for the crack of dawn on Monday to allow for the five hours of desert driving between Vegas and Hawthorne, a small town with a big prison.
Whew.
She was exhausted just thinking about everything on the agenda. But maybe she was mentally drained, too, in advance of the visit with her mother. As she finished applying mascara, she fast-forwarded to visiting day at the Stella McLaren Correctional Center. Her stomach churned as she heard her mom’s voice in her head, as she imagined that desperate, manic look in Dora’s green eyes—the same damn shade as Shannon’s. Surely she’d be trying to convince them once again of her innocence. But not just convince. Dora wanted to prove she should be a free woman. That had been her mission for some time now. The fact that she’d met with a lawyer gnawed at Shannon.
It was that little detail that twisted her gut. That made her worry. Her mom was losing touch with reality, but surely a lawyer wouldn’t have come to have his ear bent with her mother’s latest obsessive claims. If a lawyer had visited, something was up, and Shannon needed to know what that something was.