“I love holding your baby, Hudson.”

I smiled at him as he put his hand over his heart and smiled at me like I had given him the greatest gift in the entire world. “Good to know, honey, good to know.”

It was good to know.

It was good to know I could do this. I could be a mom, a lover, a sister, a friend, a survivor, and I could be someone that someone else might need in order for them to understand that there were options and something better out there. I could be all the things I always wanted to be. I could be all the things I’d never been allowed to be before.

“Come back to bed, Poppy.” His eyes really were glowing now in a way that was intimately familiar and impossible to resist. They promised wonderful, decadent, delicious things. They promised sweaty sex and sore muscles in the morning. They promised thundering hearts and pounding pulses. They promised multiple orgasms, even though I’d already had one that I could still feel, and they promised dirty words that were going to make me blush. But the thing that had me laying the baby in the crib with a kiss on his forehead and a sweep of my fingers through his reddish-brown hair and tiptoeing out of the room was that those eyes always, whenever they were directed at me, promised me they would take care of me however I needed to be cared for. He would always give me whatever it was I needed, which was nice, because all I really needed was him.

BONUS (BECAUSE MY READERS ARE RAD) EPILOGUE

Sometime down the road …

“Two minutes is plenty of time.” My voice was rough in Poppy’s ear as I flipped the skirt of her frilly bridesmaid’s dress over her ass and tugged at the barely-there thong she was wearing under it. Her eyes met mine in the mirror over the sink and her hands braced on the vanity I had her bent over. She shook her head no but her hips pressed back into mine, rubbing against my cock where it was hard and tenting the front of my tuxedo pants. Her teeth bit into her bottom lip and her eyes glowed with golden heat.

I’d gotten good at doing a lot of things in two minutes and under, you had to when you had a growing kid underfoot. There were diapers that needed to be quickly changed, messes that needed to be cleaned up, a dog that needed its fur rescued from strong, grabby hands, feedings that had to happen at the drop of a hat, and tantrums that needed soothing regardless of what the adults in the house might be doing. I was quick; often Poppy was quicker when Royce needed something, but we still always tried to take our time with each other. I would always give her more than two minutes, but today we didn’t have that luxury.

Sayer and Zeb had gotten married an hour earlier and we were both supposed to be down at the reception before the bride and groom arrived since we were in the wedding party. Zeb had asked me to be his best man and I couldn’t have been prouder to stand up there with my oldest friend as he tied himself to his perfect girl. He also had Rowdy and his brother-in-law stand with him while his son, Hyde, acted as the ring bearer. Sayer asked Poppy to be her maid of honor, so I got to walk her down the aisle in a lilac dress shirt that matched the fluffy underlay of the bride’s cream-and-ivory dress. No boring white for Sayer, not anymore. She’d also asked Salem, and Zeb’s sister, Beryl, to stand up with her, so the entire wedding had been a family affair.

The reception was held at the Crawford, so of course I had gotten us a room. Royce was with Kallie for the weekend and I had no plans on letting Poppy out of bed after all the pleasantries of the wedding and reception were said and done. That gave me plenty of time to have my way with her, but I couldn’t wait. I was always hungry for her, starving for a taste of her unique honey and spice flavor.

“You’re going to take longer than two minutes.” Of course I was. With her, I felt like I could last for hours and even days if my body was capable. There was humor in her tone but she obediently opened her legs when I nudged my knee between them. Her shoulders stiffened and her head dropped forward on a sigh as my lips hit the back of her neck and the sound of my lowering zipper filled the room.

I grunted in response and ran a questing finger along the lush line of her ass before dipping it inside and tickling my way down to the sweet spot between her legs. She was already wet, already quivering and unsteady on the tall heels her feet were still encased in.

“No one will even notice that we’re not there.” That wasn’t true, but I was sliding my cock along her cleft and coating myself in her slick moisture, so I was willing to say anything to get her to stay exactly where she was.

She gasped as I pushed in, spreading her open and sinking in. It never got old, the feeling of taking her and of being taken in by her. I groaned into the curve of her neck and moved my palm over the curve of her ass.

“If we take too long Royal will come looking for me and you know it.” She was breathless and I barely heard her warning. If Royal did come looking, she was going to get an eyeful because there was nothing on this planet that would pull me away from this woman, not when she was whispering my name in pleasure and lifting up on her toes so that she could push back against me.

After Poppy’s dad put her in the ER, she’d gotten close with both Royal and Saint. Saint made it a point to stop by and check on her every day she was in the hospital and even asked if Poppy would consider working with the victim outreach program through the hospital. Royal stood by her side through all the court proceedings and even went to court on the day Pastor Cruz was sentenced to twenty-five years in jail for the attempted murder of his daughter. Royal was surprisingly protective of my girl so she would come looking for her, but luckily Asa was good at keeping her distracted. Knowing the Kentucky charmer, I would put good money on him having coerced his wife into finding their own dark corner to race against the clock in. They were still acting like newlyweds even though they’d been together for years and married for several months now.

Asa had given Royal her dream wedding, a low-key ceremony on the beach in Hawaii that we’d all flown out for a couple of months after Salem and Rowdy’s little girl, Glory, was born. It was the perfect winter getaway and Royal made a beautiful bride. It was no surprise to anyone when Shaw announced shortly after the trip that she was expecting baby number two. Rule was over the moon about it, telling anyone that would listen that he was going to have a little girl with his mom’s pretty green eyes. There was something about the balmy beach air that made everyone seem particularly amorous. Rowdy was already planning on another baby even though his first wasn’t yet at the age where she slept through the night. He and Poppy’s sister were in no hurry to get married, claiming they’d been born to be together and a ring wouldn’t change that. Salem was his last and he was hers.