Page 6 of Her Forever SEAL

She smiled. “Did you think the dress was too short?”

“The dress is perfect,” he said. “You’re perfect.” He offered his arm properly, and she took it, and he walked her the rest of the way to the suite at a pace that was respectful of the shoes.

He unlocked the door and held it open. She walked in ahead of him, and he took a moment to admire the view from the back.

“The dress,” he said, “needs to go.”

Sophia gave a low, sultry laugh that did nothing to help his situation. “Are you sure?” she asked looking over her shoulder. “You seem to like it an awful lot.”

“I do.” He set the cake box on the entry table and crossed to her. “But it's in the way of what I have planned. But the shoes stay on.”

She laughed again, full and warm, and it was still one of his favorite sounds in the world after twenty-two years together and twenty years of marriage.

He bent and scooped her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. The turndown service had been through, the duvet folded back, the lamps low, two small chocolate candies on the pillows.

He set her down slowly, letting her slide down the length of his body until her feet touched the floor, and she was standing before him in the silver dress and the shoes and all of it, looking up at him with blue eyes that had always seen him more clearly than anyone else ever had.

He reached around and found her zipper and drew it down slowly. The dress slipped from her shoulders and fell to the floor and pooled around the shoes.

She reached for his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders. Then his tie, unhurried, her fingers working the knot with the ease of long familiarity. Then his shirt, button by button, her hands warm against his chest as it opened. He shrugged it off. She reached for his belt and he let her. Soon there was nothing left as he stood before her, and she looked at him the way she had always looked at him, like she liked what she saw.

She glanced at the pillows, saw the chocolate candies, and laughed softly.

“Those can wait,” he said. “I have other plans.”

He kissed her, walked her back toward the bed, and she went willingly, the way she always did. He laid her down carefully against the pillows and looked at her. The ivory lace, the garter belt, the stockings, the shoes, and took a breath.

Then he reached for the lace panties and drew them down slowly, carefully working them over the heels of the shoes, and set them aside.

He lay down beside her and she rolled toward him and then up and over him. Her long blonde hair fell around them both like a curtain, enclosing them in their own world, just the two of them the way it had always been. Just the two of them even in a life that was full and loud and abundant with the people they loved.

She looked down at him through the fall of her hair and smiled, and then she leaned down and kissed him.

His hands moved down the curve of her back and further, finding the lace of the garter belt and then the warmth of her skin below it. He cupped her and squeezed gently and felt her breath catch against his mouth. She whimpered softly and he did it again because he had always loved that sound, had been collecting that whimper of passion for twenty-two years.

She broke the kiss and he moved her, shifting her up so he could draw her breast free of the demi-cup bra, and he pulled the tip into his mouth and felt her gasp. Then the other, slow and deliberate, and she was moving against him, restless and warm, her hips rocking with a rhythm that was making it very difficult for him to take his time.

He looked up at her. Her blue eyes were dark, her skin flushed, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

She reached between them, found his needy cock, and he closed his eyes for a moment, just breathing.

Then she rose above him, positioned herself, and lowered down onto him slowly, taking him in inch by slow inch until he was fully seated inside her hot, tight sheath. Then they both went still for a moment, just feeling it, the way they sometimes did, this specific miracle of being this close to one another.

Then she began to move.

He held her hips and let her set the pace, and she did, finding the rhythm that was theirs, the one they had built over twenty years of marriage and two years before that, slow at first and then a little faster. He watched her face the whole time, the way her eyes closed and her head tipped back and her lips parted, and he thought, not for the first time, that he would do absolutely anything to keep this woman happy for the rest of his life.

He felt her tighten around him and heard the soft, broken sound she made and he let himself go, pulling her down hard against him as they came apart together, her name in his throat and her hands braced on his chest and everything else in the world fell away.

Afterward they lay wrapped together in a tangle of sheets, her head on his chest, his hand moving slowly up and down her back, surrounded by silence.

“I think,” Sophia said eventually, in the unhurried tone of a woman who was completely and thoroughly satisfied, “that it gets better every time.”

Mason laughed. “It was the shoes.”

Sophia's head came up off his chest.

She looked at him.