He put his hand over my heart, his fingers grazing my breast. “I want forever.”

“You had that the day we met.” I smiled. “You just didn’t know it.”

He was still for a few seconds, then his shoulders relaxed. “I’ve missed you.”

“Then show me. I’m all yours.” We walked into my room and I kicked the door closed behind me, stripping off my shirt as I did. His eyes widened as he took in the sight of my breasts in the skimpy bra. He reached out and covered my breasts with his hands, scooping the flesh up and burying his face in the valley. Turning his head slightly, he nuzzled the side of each with his jaw, gently scraping his five o’clock shadow across them. I gasped.

He grinned and lifted his head. “You like that, baby?”

“I like everything you do,” I whispered.

“What about this?” He unhooked my bra and tossed it aside, then took one of my nipples into his mouth while he gently squeezed the other with his fingers. I threw my head back and whimpered.

He slid his hands down my sides and into my jeans, exploring until his fingers found their way into my panties. Sliding his finger in, he moved it in and out. “So wet for me.” He pushed another finger in and I clutched his shoulders, squirming my hips toward him.

“Take off your jeans,” he ordered.

I unfastened the button and he kept working me the entire time, running his finger over my clit and up the top of my vagina. As I started pushing my jeans down the sides of my legs, he took my clit between his thumb and middle finger and started rubbing it. I moaned and my knees buckled.

He caught me with his free hand and kept touching me with his other one. “Ryan...” My stomach clenched and a ragged scream tore from me as I came. As soon as I could think clearly, I pulled at his clothes, stripping him naked. His erection sprung free, thick and ready. I stroked my thumb across the head of him and watched his eyes glaze over. “It’s my turn to play,” I said, but Ryan picked me up and fell with me onto the bed, our mouths locked together, our legs entangled.

“Let me see your face.” I ran my fingers across his cheekbones and down to his lips. “I want to see the exact moment that you enter me and you’re mine.”

He lifted up to cover himself with a condom, then looked deep into my eyes as he moved into me. I could have wept with the rightness of it. He ran his hands up the side of my body until he reached my hips, then rocked me. “I have always been yours.” He moved slowly, driving me crazy as he dragged his erection over the most sensitive part of me. Easing almost out, he paused then plunged in and I gasped, loving the fullness, the pressure of his pelvis against mine. It was hard, hot and fast and incredibly mind blowing.

I lifted my face for his kiss and he dove into me, kissing, gently biting, and devouring me like a man starved. I gave and I took as he sped up the movements of his hips until we both tensed and exploded together. Ryan collapsed against me, then rolled off to deal with the condom.

When he came back to bed, he got beside me, pulling me on top of him.

“So the past is really over?” I pressed a kiss to his chest, tracing my tongue across his tattoos, then ran my hands across the tautness of his abdomen.

“It’s over,” he promised. “Cooper said to me once that the Southtown Brothers would always be in my blood and he’s right about that. Not because it’s what I want to be a part of or even where I plan to be but because it’s who I once was.”

“But the situation with Chanos, that was the last act? You’re not involved in anything else?”

He hesitated.

“You might as well tell me. I don’t want anything to crop up and take me by surprise.”

His gaze darkened. “I’ll tell you, but I’m not sorry for it.”

“What?”

“I went to see your father before I came up here.”

I moved off of him and clutched the sheet around my breasts. “Why would you go see my father?”

“I told him that I knew he had money in an offshore account.”

“I told you about that but he’s never admitted it. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“After I told him I knew about the money, I told him that I was harmless in spite of my rap sheet. I said I was just a guy who loved his daughter. I mentioned a few things I’d done in the past that made him need to sit down suddenly. I explained how hard it had been for your mom and how great it’d be if someone could help her out. Next thing I knew, he was shoving a check in my hand telling me he never wanted to see me again. I had no idea he was such a generous guy.”

“Oh my God, Ryan. You scared the shit out of my dad.”

“Really? I thought the visit went well. I mean, other than him not wanting to invite me back.”

I laughed. “I knew he’d hidden that money so he wouldn’t have to give Mom any in the divorce. I can’t believe you were able to make him do that.”

“I didn’t make him do anything. He wanted to. Was eager to, in fact.”

“Mom knew about this?”

“I gave her the check and she didn’t ask any questions. She said she wanted me to know that whatever was done was done and she didn’t hold anything against me except breaking her daughter’s heart.” Ryan sighed and put his hands behind his head. “She was upset for me. Said she couldn’t imagine one of her kids having to make the decisions I’d had to make then said she’d kick my ass if I ever made you cry again.”

I trailed my fingers up his chest. “Is that all she said?”

“I told her that I was coming after you and that I loved you. She wished me luck and said you were hard-headed.”

I lightly smacked him. “She did not!”

Ryan lowered his arms and tangled his hands in my hair. “She didn’t. She said we were young and to take it slow.”

“How slow do you want to go? Hmm?” I kissed his shoulder, the side of his neck and finally his lips.

He raised his head from the pillow to return the kisses, then drew back. “You’re smiling. What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking of something that you said to me once, but you were wrong. You said that you were my first but not my last.”

“I said that when I was trying to drive you away. But I was wrong,” he said, pushing my hair back. “I’m your first and your last boy.”

“I like the sound of that, Ryan Collins.”

“Me, too,” he said and kissed me again.

We made love throughout the night and the next morning when I woke up, I panicked at first because Ryan wasn’t in the bed. Then I looked at the window and he was standing in front of it, watching the snow gently fall. Tucking the sheet around me, I slid from the bed and walked up behind him to rest my cheek against his bare back. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking about family.”

“You miss them a lot?”

He turned around and pulled open the sheet, stepping inside the material with me. “Yeah, I do but you’re my family, too.”

“I suppose next you’re going to tell me that you see us getting married someday and having kids.” I was only teasing because I hadn’t thought that far into the future but the serious look on Ryan’s face told me that the idea had at least crossed his mind.

“I never thought I could ever be part of a permanent relationship until you and now, it all makes sense. Home for me was never a place. It was a person. You. I think about kids and how I’d keep from screwing them up. I think what if I have a son? How could I teach him to be a good man when I’ve done such bad shit? Or a daughter? How could I keep from beating the shit out of any guy who even thought he had the balls to ask her out?”

He shook his head and grinned when I laughed. “Then I realize that I’m changing every day. Letting go of a little bit more of the chains that always held me. So maybe...” His throat worked as he swallowed. “Maybe I wouldn’t screw kids up too bad. At least not permanently.”

“I feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have you in my life and I know that if you and I do have children one day, those kids would be the most loved, luckiest kids in the world to have you as a daddy.”