“This is us we’re talking about. We do things the messy way. I’ve got the scar on my palm to prove it, and I seem to remember one on your forehead as well.”
“It’s possible I just broke my toe,” she added, “but who’s keeping score?” She took one hobbling step forward, and Noah shook his head.
His smile fell as he dropped the mistletoe and reached for her hand.
“Shit,” he said. “The room was too dark.”
He helped her back toward the bed and sat her down, kneeling to take her injured foot in his hand.
“How’d you know I’d come back to the room?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I didn’t. After your note, though, I guess I bet on you wanting to find me. Good thing I was right or I’d have probably been out there until after the reception.” He laughed quietly. “God, Brooks. I just wanted to give you the perfect proposal—a perfect memory to kind of, I don’t know, replace the painful ones from the last time we were in Europe.”
Her hands reached for his face, and she urged him up on the bed next to her.
“Is that what this is about? You think I regret anything about the year we met?”
That little spot above his nose crinkled, and she wanted to kiss his adorable confusion away.
“Don’t you?” he asked. “It’s because of me we spent so much time apart that year.”
She crossed her arms. This stubborn, wonderful man. When was he going to get it?
“Do you regret that year?”
He shook his head. “I met you.”
“Then why would it be any different for me?” she asked, and he opened his mouth to say something, but she wasn’t done. “Our road may have been a bumpy one, Noah. And maybe it still is from time to time. But it’s our road. Do you get that? I can’t regret anything that was on the path that led me to this moment—to the man I love wanting to spend the rest of his life with me.”
She kissed his forehead. “Nothing, Noah. I regret nothing.”
He let out a long sigh. It killed her to think that for three years he’d been carrying this with him, that he’d ever doubted how she felt about what she considered one of the best years of her life because it was the experience that brought her to him.
He pulled her legs over his, and he pushed up the narrow skirt of her dress so he could bend her knee. She winced when she saw the swollen pinkie toe on her left foot, but the heat of the pain turned to something else entirely when Noah pressed his lips to the top of her foot, then her ankle. Her calf. The bend of her knee.
“I’m sorry for making you think last night was anything other than our version of perfect,” he said, lips still traveling farther up her thigh. “I love you.” More kisses. “God, I love you.”
“I love you, too. So much,” she said, her head falling back onto the pillow. “I’m sorry for leaving.”
He had already made it to the spot where her thigh and hip met, and Noah was getting dangerously close to rendering her speechless as he peppered kisses down the edge of her panties.
“I think,” he started, kicking off his shoes, and then surprising her by sliding his thumb along that same border, lifting the lace away from her skin and allowing his tongue to startle her with a quick flick against her swollen center.
Jordan gasped, and he peeked up from between her legs, his eyes glinting with mischief.
“I think we can find a way to make it up to each other,” he said, and then dipped his head again.
“Wait!” Jordan cried, and his head bobbed up, that adorable crinkle between his brows present once more. “The ring,” she said. “My ring. If this isn’t a proposal, we’re already engaged, right?”
Noah’s face broke into a smile, and he nodded while his other hand produced the small box. He popped it open with the flick of his thumb while his other thumb massaged the slick spot where his tongue had just been.
Jordan squirmed because, shit, she didn’t want him to stop, but first things first.
She held out her left hand, and Noah dropped the box onto her belly, maneuvering the ring out with one hand so his other could stay otherwise occupied. As soon as the ring was back in its rightful place, Jordan fisted both her hands in Noah’s hair, and he gave her one last grin before his face dropped out of view.
He wasted no time freeing Jordan of her underwear, spreading her wide to take his fill.
His tongue swirled around her outside while two fingers slid in, and Jordan bucked against the maddening pleasure, her heated belly coiled tight and ready to explode.
“God, Noah, I’m not going to last if you don’t slow down.” She gasped with every word, and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to ease up or bring her the fuck home, and then somewhere in her state she remembered that this gorgeous man between her legs was wearing a skirt, too.
“What’s under the kilt?” she asked, and that stopped Noah in his tracks. He pushed himself up so his eyes met hers, his gaze heated like nothing she’d seen before. Sweat trickled between her breasts, and she was sure this dress was toast, but she was too far gone to care.
Noah unbuttoned his shirt and wriggled out of it so Jordan could feast on his lean, muscular torso—his runner’s body—a sheen of sweat on his collarbone and chest. And then his hands went to work unfastening the kilt, and when it fell to the bed, Jordan had to swallow twice to make sure the saliva didn’t pour from her lips. Because there was Noah, his full, beautiful erection unguarded and unsheathed.
“I figure you’re only pretend-Scottish once, so might as well get into full character.” He waggled his brows, and she almost came just at the sight of him.
She had no words, only gratitude that she was an organized woman, one who prided herself on routine, and in three years she’d never forgotten her pill, which meant she was ready for all the spontaneity she could handle.
She hooked her feet around his waist, and without saying anything at all, told him what she wanted—what she absolutely needed—because she knew he needed it, too.
He fell forward and tugged the zipper down the side of her dress, and Jordan dropped her legs so she could shimmy free of the garment.
“You’re so beautiful.”
“Tell me about it later,” she said, and Noah barked out a laugh.
“Later it is.” He pressed her knees so they fell open, and he rubbed his thumb up and down her wet folds, and Jordan was sure she would die of arousal if he didn’t do something quick.
Then he lowered himself to her, giving her one small nudge with his tip before burying himself completely, and she cried out. He rocked inside her and slid his hands up the length of her arms, pinning them above her head.
His kisses were firm and relentless, and she couldn’t get enough of him.
“How could you ever think we were anything but perfect?” Jordan asked, panting as if she were on her final breaths.
He slid out slowly, teasing her like the lovely, maddening, beautiful man he was.
The corner of his mouth quirked into a crooked grin. “My mistake,” he said, and then rocked her until she called out his name…and promptly forgot her own.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Maggie
Maggie meant to walk into the restaurant. It was as simple as putting one foot in front of the other, yet there she stood, holding her breath as Griffin approached. She’d shared an apartment with him for a year—shared her heart with him since the moment they’d met—yet he could still make her nervous, so much so that she couldn’t decide if those were butterflies in her belly or just full-blown nausea. Not like he hadn’t seen her lose her lunch before, though, right?
And there it was, the elephant in the room. She had survived a brain aneurysm but was forever changed, and she had learned to live with that—to accept this new version of herself. But Griffin had barely known her more than a year. He was still learning.