The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (good book club books .txt) 📕

Since that single minute of her palm sliding over my aching cock was too much, I climbed over her, caging her beneath me, and pried her thighs open. "You happened."

A laugh moved through her, up her chest and across her shoulders as it softened the anxious set of her jaw. "That doesn't seem like enough."

"And that's why I make the high-handed plans," I replied. "Because you're busy thinking you didn't crack open my world the day you came at me with a crowbar."

"That is not what took place and you know it."

I notched myself at her opening, my bare cockhead burning against the wet of her. "Is this what you want?" She stared down the length of her torso to where I held myself steady. When she didn't respond for a moment, I dragged my cock up, circling her clit. "You did, you know. You cracked everything open. I haven't been the same since."

"Is that a good thing?"

"It's the best thing."

She nodded, shifted her knees up to my hips, and said, "I haven't been the same either. I don't want to be the same. But I know I want you." I pushed inside her and watched as she arched back, parted her lips, breathed out a quiet sigh. "I don't hate you."

Her hips rolled, soon finding a rhythm, and I was sliding into her, a little deeper with each pass. "I never hated you." I pulled back before slamming in again. "Never once."

"Are you sure about that?" she asked, angling her hips to find the position she wanted.

"You know I am."

She hummed as my cock slipped out and over her clit. My brain wanted me to thrust into her and fuck her until neither of us could move but some other part reminded me to go slow, to savor this. She arched up and we stayed there, kissing, thrusting, whispering all the things we couldn't stop saying.

I love you. I've loved you for so long. I don't want to be without you.

We moved together, slow slow slow, and the only thing in the world for me was this woman.

"Lin. I need more," she groaned, clenching around me.

I shifted my hands to her waist and found a faster rhythm as I held her, my fingers driving hard into the soft of her skin. The early pulses of her orgasm triggered my muscle memory, the one that reminded my hips how to fuck in that quick, urgent way and made my cockhead unbelievably sensitive, and untwisted the tension of separation and distance and loss. The one that knew this woman was for me and I was for her, and nothing else mattered than the connection we shared right here, right now. I felt it in my balls, and then that sensation spiraled up and down my spine, right on the edge of explosion. Another thrust ripped a groan from me, and I matched it with a quick pinch to her clit.

"I want to feel you come for me now," I said against her ear. "Let go for me."

I pinched her again and her groan turned into a gusting wail. She was unbelievably hot and wet, and when her muscles fluttered around me, I folded her into my arms as I emptied myself into her. We rolled together, still panting and sighing, and I couldn't help but kiss every inch of skin I could reach. Those kisses told her how much I wanted her, how much I loved her, how she was mine.

And she was mine, in as great a way as any single person could possess another.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. "Twins and triplets run in your family, don't they?"

I grinned. "It passes on the mother's side."

She shifted until her back was flat against the mattress, her head pillowed on my arm. "I probably should've asked that before"—she gestured between us—"any of this."

"Would it matter?"

She gave me a wink that tightened my chest with how adorable it was, saying, "No. It wouldn't. I don't think there's anything that could change this."

I eased my arm out from under her and made my way to the bottom of the bed. "And you're all right with that?"

"I'm more right than anything else." Her lips quirking, she asked, "What are you doing down there? What are you doing now?"

I settled between her legs, my shoulders forcing her thighs open wide. "Giving you everything you've ever wanted."

Epilogue

Jasper

The next autumn

I used to think getting fired was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. That losing my job—the only thing at which I'd ever been good and the source of all my pride and confidence—had crushed me in the most absolute sense.

And it did, it completely crushed me. It stripped me right down to the barest of my bones. It took away everything I believed to be right and true about myself.

It forced me to figure out what I wanted to be true about myself.

It made for a tough year but it was a really important one too.

I started working at a local organization focused on expanding voter registration, knowledge, and engagement. Community activism was a good fit for me, a really good fit, but all I'd ever known was diving head and shoulders into work and I couldn't do that anymore. I didn't want to do it anymore. I needed Linden to help me enforce limits like leaving the office at a certain time, switching off my phone when I was at home, committing to work-free weekends whenever possible. Obviously, this required more than a gentle reminder from my lumberbear and there were more than a few situations where I found myself tackled at the front door and relieved of my phone and laptop. A few other situations where my phone just disappeared for the weekend. Another when Linden called me from outside the office and gave me a three-minute warning to pack up for the day