I stand there and watch them, my soul aching in the best fucking way possible at how I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth. I’ve been to Hell and back, but it was worth every goddamn second for what I feel right now … feelings that aren’t so fucking foreign any more.
The ones I can’t imagine living a lifetime without.
The giggles stop as a pair of green eyes look up at me from beneath dark lashes, freckles on his scrunched nose dusted with flour, and a lopsided smirk on his lips. He just looks at me, gauging if I’m going to get upset at the mess he obviously played a part in.
Then violet eyes look up at me, that soft smile, on those lips I love, directed straight at me. And I silently marvel at how that simple smile gets me every fucking time, no matter how many years have passed. It has me wanting to pull her into my arms, share all my secrets, and fuck her senseless simultaneously.
Her voodoo powers still in full fucking effect.
And fuck if I’d want it any other way.
I fight the smile creeping onto my lips because I’m the biggest fucking softie when it comes to him—a fact I deny regularly—and try to act tough. “What’s going on here?” I ask, stepping into the room as Rylee pats her hands together and a plume of flour flies into the air like a dust cloud around her, causing them to erupt into another fit of giggles.
I walk over to them, flour coating the soles of my bare feet, and squat down beside them. My eyes dart back and forth over them before I reach out and place a dot of flour on his nose with my finger. “Looks like you guys made quite a mess,” I say, trying to play the part of disciplinarian but failing miserably.
“Well thanks, Captain Obvious!” he giggles at me, sarcasm in full swing.
“Ace Thomas!” Ry reprimands our son, but his words have already knocked me on my ass.
I look at him, search his face over and over, studying it like a fucking road map to see if he has any clue, any goddamn inkling what he’s just said to me, but there’s nothing looking back at me but mischievous green eyes and a heart-breaking smile. My spitting image.
“Hey?”
That telephone-sex rasp of a voice pulls me back from flashes of plastic helicopters, superhero Band-aids covering an index finger, and the sound of thwacking. Thoughts I don’t really remember but that seem clear as fucking day somehow. I shake my head and try to clear out the confusion before I look over to her. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” She reaches out, touches my cheek, and stares at me.
And then he starts giggling, breaking the thoughts holding me hostage. He points to the flour she’s now transferred to my own cheek. “What?” I growl in a monster voice, causing the almost six year old to squeal like a little girl as my fingers reach out to tickle him.
“You’re a flour monster too now!” he says between panted breaths as he tries to squirm away from me.
Our tickle fest lasts for a few more seconds as I let him escape, chase him, and then hug him. And he wiggles for a bit more before I feel his arms slide around my neck and hold on tight.
Those tiny arms pack the biggest punch of all because they hold everything I am in their fucking hands. I take a moment and breathe him in—little boy, flour, and a bit of Ry’s vanilla all mixed in one—and close my eyes.
I guess it was in the cards after all.
Fuck me running.
He saved me.
Then. And now.
Just like his mother did.
I feel her hand on my back, feel her lips press against my shoulder, and open my eyes to look at her—my whole fucking alphabet—and smile.
“I think our flour monster here needs to take a quick bath before dinner,” she says.
“Nah.” I reach up to ruffle his hair, flour flying again. “Nothing a cannonball in the pool won’t wash off, right, Ace?”
He shouts out a “Woohoo!” and gives me a high five before running out of the kitchen at full speed. I watch him run and jump into pool, Zander yelping as the splash soaks him.
“He’s got you wrapped around his little finger,” she says as she walks over to the sink to wash the flour from her hands.
“And you don’t?” I ask with a shake of my head as I walk up behind her and slide my arms around her waist, pulling her back into me. And fuck if that ass of hers pressed against my dick doesn’t make me ache to take her, throw her over my shoulder, and haul her upstairs right now.
I press a kiss to that spot beneath her neck, and even after all this time, her body responds instantly to me. Goose bumps appear on her exposed skin, her breath hitches and the fucking sigh that turns me on, as if her hands are wrapping around my dick, falls from her lips. And if her beautiful body doesn’t turn me hard as fucking steel, her responsiveness does without a fucking hesitation.
That and how much I know she loves me, faults and all.
How in the fuck did I get so lucky?
I shake my head as all of the shit that’s happened in my life flashes through my mind. I chuckle, the things that hit me the hardest—that mean the most—all started with a damn storage closet and this defiant-as-fuck woman in my arms who called me to the carpet, grabbed me by the balls, and told me our outcome was non-negotiable.
And fuck me, we’ve still got a lifetime left for her to call all the shots she wants because my balls are still nestled exactly where they’re supposed to be, right in her hands.
“What are you laughing about?” she asks.
“Just thinking of the look on your face when you found out I’d won the auction,” I tell her, the memory clear as fucking day. “You were so pissed.”
“What woman wouldn’t have been when you came off as arrogant as you did?” She snorts out a laugh and then sighs softly.
And the sigh alone makes my dick start to get hard.
“Arrogant? Me? Never,” I tell her.
“Whatever! I know you fixed that auction, Ace.”
And I laugh. God, I love this woman. Ten years later and still feisty as fuck.
“Baby, that answer I’ll hold on to forever,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to the back of her head.
“That’s not possible,” she whispers, looking up to press a kiss to the underside of my jaw, “because you’ll be busy holding on to me.”
Fuckin’ A straight I will.
I squeeze her a little tighter, not wanting to let her go just yet because, fuck, what racer doesn’t want to hold on to their checkered flag a little longer?
At least I know mine waves only for me.
My kryptonite.
My alphabet, motherfucking A to Z.
My fucking Rylee.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Wow! Where do I even begin to start? I was criticized for the length of my acknowledgments for Fueled…so if you were one who thought I was verbose, I suggest you skip this next part.
A little over nine months ago, I pushed publish on Driven. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen. I just know that both my mom and my husband kept telling me to not get my hopes up. I could lie and tell you I had grand visions that people would love it and my writing career would take off overnight. In reality, I was scared to death. I’d never done something that put me ‘out there’ in the public realm to be scrutinized, criticized, or possibly praised. I hoped people would buy the book about this cocky, self-assured race car driver and a feisty yet believable heroine. Yes, I did use the formulaic story line of good girl, bad-boy, but I hoped that people would pick the book up for that reason alone and discover that I could actually write, spin a tale, draw you into a different world, and make you feel. And people did buy. And people did criticize my thematic plot. But people also fell in love with Rylee and Colton and the boys.