Free Take Me: A Stark E-Novella by J. Kenner Page B

public sex.”
    “I don’t. And I’m not going to. We’re in a limo. No one’s looking in. But I like the fantasy,” he admits. He leans forward and kisses me, even as he slides two fingers deep inside me. “And so do you.”
    “I do,” I admit, both because it’s true and because I don’t want to have secrets from Damien. “You are my fantasy, Damien. You know that, right?”
    “And you are mine,” he says, after kissing me softly. “We’re lucky, you and I. There were so many places where our lives made wrong turns. And yet all those turns, all those horrors, all those days that we want to forget—they all add up to this moment. To you in my arms.” He strokes my hair, his expression tender. “I have no regrets for the past, Nikki. And when I’m with you, the only thing I can see is the future.”
    “Damien,” I say, the word soft like a prayer.
    “Yes?”
    “Kiss me.”
    “Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he says before his mouth closes over mine and I slide down into the bliss of his arms.

Chapter Seven
    I sit in the silence of the Malibu house, sipping a sparkling water as I work at a small desk in the library. The library is my favorite room in this house, and it’s not really a room at all. Instead, it’s a level—a mezzanine—broken into a variety of sections. The comfy chairs and coffee tables are by the wall of windows overlooking the ocean. The bookshelves line the area that is visible from the massive staircase leading up from the entrance hall. The work areas are farther back, hidden from view, and it is in one of those quiet corners that I now sit.
    It is late—barely three in the morning—and Damien is asleep in our bed.
    I couldn’t sleep, and though I stayed in bed for hours, warm in Damien’s arms as I drifted in and out of a hazy dream state, I never managed to fall into slumber. I’m not sure if it was nerves or too much bourbon or the persistent thoughts of my mother, but in the end I gave up and came down here. Now I am sitting in the light of my laptop monitor putting the finishing touches on the gift I intend to give Damien on our wedding day—a scrapbook of our time together.
    I’ve been working on it for months, even before we were engaged, and have managed to gather and edit photos ranging all the way from our very first meeting at a Dallas pageant to the present. I had originally intended it to be entirely electronic, but once he proposed and I realized that this was the perfect wedding-night gift for the man who owns everything, I decided that it needed to be tangible. I bought a leather-bound scrapbook with thick, archival paper, and have been carefully pasting in the images and writing captions and notes to him with my very best effort at penmanship.
    Right now I am searching the computer for a picture of the Vineland Drive-In, because that is a memory I want him to keep, though I don’t think either one of us had any idea what movie was playing. Instead, we made out like teenagers in the backseat, kissing and exploring, touching and groping. And when Damien finally thrust hard inside me—when I came in sudden release and exultation—I am certain that my cry was at least as loud as the movie soundtrack.
    The hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and I know without turning around that Damien is here. His walk, his scent, his presence—I don’t know what it is, but there is something in him that calls so profoundly to me that I am never unaware of him. If he is in the same room, my body knows—and wants.
    I gently close the scrapbook, then tuck it into a drawer before turning to him.
    “I don’t like waking up without you,” he says.
    I smile. “Now you know how I feel.” Usually it is me who wakes up to find the other side of the bed cold and empty.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Just working on something.” I lift a shoulder. “I couldn’t sleep.”
    “Oh, really?” He lifts a brow and eyes the desk.
    “Don’t even think about it, mister.