I tug at his shirt and lean back only long enough to pull it over his head. He whips mine over my head and then we’re kissing again. I can’t get close enough to him, can’t get enough of his skin on mine. I strain against him as I work the button on his jeans. His fingers brush mine aside and make quick work of the closure. He sheds his pants then picks me up and carries me to the bed.
Like magic, he has me out of my clothes in a heartbeat. I thread my fingers through his hair and pull him to me, kissing him with all the love and passion I feel for him. I shiver when he stretches out on top of me, every inch of my body covered by his.
I wrap my legs around his hips and hold on tight, anticipation winding my muscles into coiled springs. I gasp when he pushes into me. Nothing has ever felt more like home. Words pour from my heart, from my lips without thought to consequences.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Trick stills. His body buried deep inside me, he lifts his head and looks down into my face.
His eyes are pale even in the low light. I stare into them, committing them and this moment to memory. The fleeting nature of this perfect piece of happiness rushes in and chokes me. Tears fill my eyes and spill over, running into the hair at my temples. I squeeze them shut, not wanting him to see my heartbreak. Or ruin the poignancy of the scene.
“What did you say?”
His voice is so low, so quiet, I open my eyes to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. His lips aren’t moving.
“What did you say?” he repeats.
Heat floods my cheeks. It’s one thing to confess something like that in the heat of the moment, not knowing rejection is waiting on the other side. It is quite another to do it in the face of such serious lucidity, like now.
But I tell him what he wants to know, partly because I don’t want to regret not telling him how I feel, even though he doesn’t feel the same. I’ll treasure the time I have with Trick for the rest of my life. I might as well go balls out.
“I said ‘I love you’.”
His brow wrinkles. “But what about Brent? And your father? And…everything else?”
“I don’t care about anyone else. Or anything else. All I care about is you.”
“So you’re not back with Brent?”
“No.”
“If you love me, why didn’t you come to me? Why have you stayed away?”
It’s my turn to frown. “I did come to you. I went to your house and talked to your mom. Didn’t she tell you?”
Trick sighs and lowers his forehead to mine. “No, she didn’t.”
Something alarmingly close to hope unfurls in my chest. A question stands on the tip of my tongue. My heart pounds as I let it go. But I have to know. And I might not get another chance. “Would it have mattered?”
Trick looks at me. “Of course it would’ve mattered. Cami, I’m in love with you. I stayed away because I thought it’s what you wanted?”
I hear nothing past the part where he said he’s in love with me. The tears flow faster.
“What’s the matter?” he asks softly, catching a tear with his thumb as it slides from the corner of my eye. “Why are you crying?”
“I thought you were gone. Forever. I thought I’d lost you.”
“I thought the same thing,” he admits, kissing my eyelids and my cheeks. “God, Cami, I didn’t know how I was gonna live the rest of my life without you.”
I wrap my arms and legs tighter around Trick, a physical way of expressing that I’m never letting him go. Never.
The action causes him to move inside me and my body reflexively squeezes, drawing him even further in. I hear the breath hiss through his teeth.
“Damn, can we talk about this later? I can barely think when you do that, much less talk.”
I laugh. In my heart, in my head, in my soul, I laugh. “Yes, we’ll talk later. I think we’ve already covered the most important things anyway.”
He pulls out and thrusts back into me. The sensation steals my breath. “I think there’s one thing left that I need to ‘cover’ if you don’t mind.”
He bites my chin playfully as he flexes his hips, sending fingers of sensation skittering through me.
“Do what you must,” I say.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO - Trick
I put the truck in park right at the edge of the clearing where the house will sit. At least I think that’s where it will sit. My wife will have the final say. Provided that she says yes, of course.
I look over at Cami, sitting quietly beside me, all blindfolded and excited.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“To see what you bought with all that money from the car? Hell yeah, I’m sure.”
“I told you part of it went to Mom and some of it went into stabling Rags and getting him ready to race.”
“But the rest you invested. You already told me. And now I get to see what the big secret is.”
She rubs her hands together excitedly. Now I’m having second thoughts. She’s obviously anxious to know what it is, but I wonder if she has some preconceived notion of what it is. What if she’s disappointed?
I get out and walk around to her side of the truck. I help her down, but leave her blindfolded.
“Come on. I’ll go slow. Just hold on to me.”
Always game, Cami nods and lets me lead her into the clearing. In the distance, I can see where the stable I had built sits at the edge of the field. I hope Cami doesn’t mind staying in the tiny apartment in the top half of it until the house is completed. Since Rags won his first two races, I had enough money to get her a ring plus some to spare for a down payment on a construction loan. All the bank needs is the house plan.
And all I need for that is Cami.
I grab her by the shoulders and position her facing the house site and the stable beyond. “Stay right here.” I drop to one knee and dig the ring out of my pocket. After a deep breath, I tell her, “You can look.”
I watch her face as she pulls off the tie I’d used to blindfold her and looks around. She scans the clearing first and I see her eyes pause on the stable before they search for and find me, kneeling at her side.
When she understands what’s going on, her hands fly to her face. She covers her mouth and turns to face me. My heart jumps up into my throat.
“I know how much you’ve sacrificed to be with me. Having to stay with Jenna because of your dad and having to put off school for a while. And I promised you I’d make it up to you. This,” I say, sweeping my arm out to encompass all the land that I now call mine, “is the first step. I want this to be our home. I want to build a life with you and a business around Rags that we can run together. I want to pick out carpet and curtains with you. I want to pick out new horses with you. I want to pick out baby furniture with you. I want to grow old with you. I want you. Forever. I’m hoping that if you can see that future, the future that I see, you can wait just a little while longer for all of it to come together. I’m working on it. Every day, I’m working on it. For you. For us. But until then,” I pause, holding out the ring. “Cami, will you marry me?”