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I laugh lightly. “The coffee maker? That’s the perk of living here? Not the twenty-four, seven dick on demand?”
I feel her nod against my chest as she agrees, “It is a very nice dick.”
“Nice?” I bite out, teasing her. “I’ll show you nice.” She laughs, wiggling wildly as I smack her ass,the sound echoing loudly. I don’t know how I have any energy left in me after tonight, let alone the last forty-eight hours. But this is right. Everything about her is right. She is my one and only. I think I knew that the moment I met her. I just wasn’t ready to admit that I needed her.
Her finger traces shapes on my chest, and more seriously, she says, “We’re moving fast.”
“When you know, you know,” I argue. “Think of it, we can wake up every morning, fuck in our bed, go to work together, make tons of money, fuck on my desk, come home, eat dinner, and fuck anywhere we damn well please.”
“Interesting counterproposal,” she says. I can hear the smirk in her tone. She sighs. “You’re gonna think this is stupid, but I’m kinda old-fashioned. I don’t think I can live with someone until marriage is on the table.”
My heart stops in my chest. I’m not getting married. Ever.
I drew that line, not in the sand, but in concrete the day I heard Olivia and Evan fucking behind my back. Yes, Raven is different. We are different. But marriage is… marriage.
“I’m not rushing that,” Raven says, sensing my shift in mood. “If it’s too fast to move in, it’s definitely too fast for marriage. But that’s how…”
She keeps talking, but my mind has been ripped to the past, filled with memories. Not of Olivia or Evan, but of Raven. Her smiles, her strength, her poise in the face of adversity, her intelligence, her willingness to sacrifice herself for me, her love. And in the same flashes of memory, I see my own growth, the way she’s cracked through the stone walls around my heart and I’ve let her in, giving her the deep, dark, ugly parts and trusting that she won’t run from them or from me. She makes me a better man, and she is a better woman than Olivia could’ve ever been.
Because she’s my Raven. There is no other. There could never be anyone like her. She was meant to be mine, and I was meant to be hers. I want her here. No, I need her here. Ifmarrying her is what she wants, I’ll do it. Because what I want is her.
“Marry me.”
“What?” she exclaims, lifting up once again. Her green eyes are wide and wild, but there’s the tiniest glimmer of hope hiding deep there. I can see it, can feel her excitement even as she doesn’t fully risk believing me.
“Raven, I love you,” I start and then freeze. I chuckle at myself. “I’m not sure what I’m going to say since I didn’t plan this. That’s very unlike me, so I’m gonna speak from the heart.”
She nods, tears threatening to spill.
“I love you. I didn’t mean to fall for you. It was supposed to be business, nothing more, but it could never be just business with you. You intrigued me that first day, you impressed me at the fundraiser, you amaze me with how your mind works at the office, and you challenge me to see every day, not as a competition for who has the most money and power, but as a gift. You have healed scars on my heart and in my soul that I thought I would carry until the day I died as a lonely, old, bitter bastard. And you ask for nothing in return. You want to make your own way, stand on your own merits, of which there are many, and be seen as the beautiful, strong woman you have always been and will always be. I don’t want to get in the way of that. I want to stand by your side and witness you conquer the world, loving you every step of the way. I want you beside me. I want the world to know you’re mine. Marriage makes sense. So, Raven Hill, will you marry me?”
Tears started tracking down her face right about the time I repeated, ‘I love you’, and they’re flowing freely now.
“It’s too fast, and…”
My heart stutters to a stop as I consider that she might say no, or at least no for right now. She continues as panic runs through me, “And I don’t care what anyone thinks. I care about you, I care about us, and this” —she pointsat herself and then places her hand on my chest, where my heart has started beating again— “feels special. You are everything to me, Dylan, and I would do anything to protect you, to make you feel cherished, and to love you. So yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Thank fuck.The moment she says yes, I can breathe again.
She falls into me, kissing me hard in her excitement. I wrap my arms around her, holding her tightly. We simply exist in the magic of the moment, the two of us promising to become one.
“Oh, my God,” Raven says, pulling back. “We have to do this again.”
“What?” I laugh, not understanding the sudden horror on her face.
“I cannot tell my mom and dad… or Maggie… oh, my God, Maggie… that I got engaged while naked on a couch after screwing like that,” she explains, her smile only growing as she paints the picture of us as we currently still are.
I shrug. “Thought you didn’t care what anyone thinks,” I remind her.
She glares at me, or tries to, anyway, but the laughter’s winning. “I didn’t mean my mom!”
“Okay,” I say, shifting her so that she’s lying on top of me once again, “I’ll propose every day, buy you as many rings as you want, and marry you as many times as you need, as long as you, Raven Hill, marry me, Dylan Sharpe. And be my forever.”
EPILOGUE
RAVEN
“See you for lunch?” Dylan asks me as we pause at my office door. “I’m thinking… Thai?”
