He stared at me for a moment, his blue eyes filling with the wonder and softness that usually concerned me, but in the current situation made me feel like I was flying.

Then I felt the impulse to add and clarify, just in case there was any question, “This also means that you’ll be my husband. We’ll be married… to each other.”

His face split with one of his rarely used and extremely dazzling wide smiles.

It took my breath away.

Then he literally took my breath away when he grabbed me and kissed me.

I was on his lap, the hem of my dress nowhere near appropriate levels of modesty. His mouth was fierce, hungry, and I felt both his relief and possessiveness in his kisses. They were deep, adamant, greedy. Likewise, his hands were all over me, or at least felt that way. One was on my upper thigh then in my hair, then pressing firmly against the center of my back, then flexing on my bottom under my dress. I got the impression he wanted to touch me everywhere at once.

I was being thoroughly and unequivocally claimed.

The less than subtle insistence of his fingers gripping and tugging my underwear alerted me to the precariousness of our situation and current surroundings.

I pulled my mouth from his and moved my head to the side, tucked against his neck. My breathing was understandably heavy when I gasped, “Quinn.”

He answered my gasp with a growl, kissing then biting my neck, his fingers still hooked in my panties. “Take these off.”

“Wait, wait, wait-”

“Take them off or I’ll rip them off.”

“Guh.” Was my response, because the arousal fog was back, and I was losing my grip on caring about my surroundings. I was entering the territory of only caring about getting his pants off.

The last thing that happened before I was pulled under, beyond caring or shame, and engaging in a scandalously explicit semi-public display of affection, was my underwear being torn in two by the very happy, very domineering, and very soon to be my husband, Quinn Sullivan.

Part 2: The Engagement

CHAPTER 4

*Quinn*

I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t want to wake her up. Not yet.

Without premeditation, I reached for and carefully pulled her left hand away from her body. She was holding it close and tucked under her chin.

The clock on the side of the bed told me it was just before 5:30 a.m. Heavy curtains blocked most of the pale, early sunlight, but the beginning of a gray morning still filtered in, filling the room of our suite just enough to make everything visible. I had a meeting at 9:00 a.m. and needed to get up and moving if the day’s schedule was going to proceed as planned.

Instead, I continued to stare at her.

Janie is cute when she sleeps. More accurately, she is f**king adorable.

I’ve studied her enough to memorize her face. Her eyelashes and eyebrows are a shade darker than her hair, and they flutter just before she wakes up. Every so often, she scrunches her nose as if the light freckles on her pale skin tickle her while she sleeps.

She is a quiet sleeper; even her breathing is silent. The first time we slept together, in Vegas, she was so motionless and quiet that I’d checked her neck for a pulse.

Her hair is a mess. She says it’s like curling snakes. I agree. They reach out in every direction. I’ve been pulled out of sleep more than once by a mouthful of her hair, and I’ve come around to her way of thinking, that her hair has a mind of its own.

She once told me that there were four independent, sentient beings in our relationship: her, me, her hair, and my eyes.

I reluctantly moved my attention from her face to her left hand, now held in mine. I rubbed the skin around the gold and ruby ring with my thumb. The band was thick, substantial, and the ruby was huge.

Elizabeth was right about the ring. It was perfect.

Seeing it on Janie’s finger and feeling the weight of it there was tremendously satisfying. Giving the woman you’re going to marry an outrageously expensive ring to mark her as your own was genius. Women probably thought they were the winners of tradition in this scenario. They were wrong.

Men were the winners, because the prize wasn’t the ring. The prize was the woman.

The engagement hadn’t gone according to my original plan. It went better.

Every guy is nervous when he proposes to his girl. If he isn’t nervous then he’s a fool, or he’s not in love.

Proposing is like giving someone your dick and a sharp knife, then waiting to see what they do next.

So, yeah, I was nervous.

The original plan called for getting her drunk before proposing. This wasn’t ideal, but I’d been prepared to do what was necessary to secure a yes.

I was trying to be romantic, and she kept bringing the conversation back to beheadings, suffering, and patricide. No one wants to give a girl his dick and a sharp knife, especially not when she keeps talking about torture.

She was frustrating. She was driving me crazy. She was ruining my plans.

The first glimmer of hope came when she saw the ring among the Crown Jewels. She pointed it out to me. Of the rings, it was also the one I liked the best.

Then, the medieval device room, the rack, and tying her up….

God bless Janie’s insatiable curiosity.

Yeah, yeah—I know. I’m not a good guy. I try to be, for her. I want to be worthy of her brain and heart. I want to deserve her trust and admiration.

But I’m still selfish, especially about Janie. I’d like to say I’m working on it. I’m not. Not really. But she doesn’t seem to mind, so I’m just going to go with it.

After all, she’s wearing my ring, right?

I approve wholeheartedly of expensive jewelry. In fact, the bigger the better. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have given her a 24-karat gold necklace that read Property of Quinn Sullivan.

But I didn’t think she’d go for that.

I also don’t think of her that way—as property—but I do think of her as belonging to me, because I belong to her.

I belong to her, and I am completely screwed, because I want her ownership. I want her to use me. I want to give her everything. I wouldn’t have a problem getting a tattoo that reads Property of Janie Sullivan.

I smiled, blinking once as I thought about the realization. But my devotion was an affirmation more than an epiphany.

She wouldn’t want me to do that. She wouldn’t want me to get a tattoo about her. Sometimes her selflessness was exasperating, but it was also f**king adorable.

Janie stirred and I loosened my grip on her hand. She immediately tucked it back under her chin. Her legs straightened, stretched under the covers. She snuggled into the pillow.

She shifted to her side and back; the covers slipped and exposed one of her perfect br**sts. I held my breath and tugged the covers even lower to expose the hidden twin. She settled again, her lips slightly parted. I watched her bare chest rise and fall with her silent breath, and stifled a groan.

She was no longer f**king adorable. She was now sexy as f**k.

I gritted my teeth, reached down, and gripped the morning stiffness between my legs, glanced at the ring on her finger.

After last night’s events—ripping off her underwear, inadvertent and frantic tent-sex, her embarrassment during dinner, making out in the limo, then making love in the shower before collapsing on the bed—my first instinct this morning was to wake her up with my mouth between her legs.

I studied her and recognized signs of fatigue. I’d kept her up late, and we’d been very active. She needed time to recuperate. We had a meeting today with a corporate client. She needed her rest. I knew she didn’t like having to take three guards with her everywhere she went. It was wearing her down, but we were far from my base of operations, so I considered it necessary.

My influence in Europe is limited, unlike how it is in the States. The presence of three guards might be overkill. I don’t care. I need her safe. If I can’t be with her every minute of the day, it gives me peace of mind that she is well protected.

She is mine to protect, and I will do the right thing: I will let her sleep.

I closed my eyes to augment my resolve. If I kept looking at her, thinking about her, smelling her, then I’d likely ignore my newly found conscience and have her for breakfast.

Moving silently, I got up, dressed, and grabbed my gym bag. I gave her a kiss on her cheek before I left.

Kissing her was a mistake.

I was still hard when I left the room. I needed to stop thinking about her lying na**d in our bed. If I kept thinking about her, and how she had excitedly told me about Roman stone work and hundred-carat diamonds while tied to the rack, I wouldn’t make it to the elevator.

So I thought about restitution. I asked her about restitution last night because I wanted to see what she would say.

Something Janie and I have in common is that we both look at the world and see black and white, right and wrong, good and bad.

I look at myself and see black. I see wrong, bad. When I look at her, I see white. I see right, good.

Shades of gray are for idiots, ass**les, and cowards, and politicians (which, again, idiots, ass**les, and cowards).

She isn’t perfect. No one is perfect. But she never knowingly hurts people. I do. Or, more accurately, I used to.

I need to believe in restitution. I have to believe in penance. I don’t have a choice. If I don’t believe, then I am screwed. My brother is dead because of me; my parents blame me; I blame myself.