Too Late

Good thing my father taught me not to let a woman’s tears fool me.

I lean in toward her until I’m a mere two inches from her. I scroll over her eyes, her mouth, every fucking lying part of her goddamn face. “You just said his name, Sloan. I had your fucking nipple in my mouth, trying to please you. But then you whispered his fucking name. You said Carter.”

Sloan shakes her head. She’s so adamant about it, shaking it with such intensity, I ease my grip around her throat so she can speak. After inhaling a gasp of air, she blurts out, “I didn’t say Carter, you fucking dipshit. I said harder. I was awake and could feel you kissing me. I wanted you to do it harder.”

I stare at her.

I let her words sink in.

I let her explanation massage the ache in my chest until I can breathe again.

I slowly slide my hand away from her throat, down her neck.

Fuck.

I’m being paranoid.

Why would I ever think she’d dream about another guy when she sleeps next to me? She wouldn’t cheat on me. She can’t. She has no one else. It would be the worst mistake she ever made and she knows it.

I need to get her out of this house. Away from all these people. I’m more certain now than I was ten minutes ago that I need to make her a mother. Make her a wife. Give her a place of our own where other men are never around to make me this fucking paranoid.

Sloan leans forward and reaches to the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head. She tosses it on the floor and then pushes me back against the headboard, sliding onto my lap.

And just like that, I’m hard again.

She presses her breast against my mouth and offers herself to me. I take her nipple in my mouth again and I give her what she wants. I suck her harder. So hard it hurts her. I want her to feel the ache my mouth left on her for the rest of the fucking day.

She wraps her hands in my hair, pulling me against her as she moans and says my name. She says, ”Asa.”

She says it three times.

My name.

I grab her hips and lift her slightly until she’s positioned right over my dick. I bring her back down until I’m buried inside her, almost certain I’ve never been this deep. God, she feels good. It feels so good when I don’t hate her.

I didn’t like how it felt to hate her.

“You’re mine, Sloan,” I say, dragging my lips up her neck and to her mouth.

She whispers, “Yours, Asa.”

I slide my tongue in her mouth until she moans, and then I pull away from her. I grip her throat again with my right hand and guide her hips up and down with my left. She winces a little when I squeeze her throat, and it makes me wonder if I hurt her neck earlier. I move my hand and can already see a handprint. There’s even a little bruising.

Fuck. I did. I hurt her a lot more than I intended to.

I lean in and kiss her softly on the neck, giving her a silent apology. Then I look into her eyes as she rides me. “I want to marry you, Sloan. I want to make you mine forever.”

She doesn’t say anything right away. Her whole body stiffens and she stops moving against me. “What did you say?” she asks, her voice shaky.

I grin and rub my hands down her back, gripping her ass. “I said marry me, baby. Be my wife.”

I lift her off of me and push her onto her back. I slide back inside of her, relishing the fact that I don’t have on a condom. I move in and out, savoring every sensation while she stares up at me, speechless.

“I’ll buy you a ring while you’re at school today. The biggest one I can find. I just need you to say yes first.”

A tear falls out of her eye and that’s when I know for sure that she loves me. The thought of spending forever with me just made her cry.

I somehow find a way to push into her even harder this time and she winces. I want to be as deep inside of her as I can reach. I want her to feel every piece of me. I want her to feel how much I love her. Her fingers dig into the flesh of my arms as she pushes against me, her body’s natural reaction to the pressure between her legs. I don’t care how many times we’ve done this, I know it still hurts her sometimes. She’s so tight and I barely fit inside her, having to force myself against her so hard it makes her wince and push against me.

Just like she’s doing now. I probably shouldn’t like it when she’s in pain, but I do. I fucking love it when my dick hurts her. I like knowing that even when the sex is over, she’ll feel me inside of her for hours with every movement she makes.

God, I love this girl.

I speak between thrusts, staring straight down at her tear-filled eyes. “I love you, Sloan. So fucking much. I need to hear you say yes.”

I groan, feeling how close I am to finishing. Finishing inside her. Experiencing something with her that we’ve never experienced together before. I kiss the side of her head and then lower my mouth to her ear. “I need to hear you say yes, baby.”

She finally releases a quiet, “Yes.”

That word makes me so goddamn happy, it only takes one more thrust for me to come. And I release inside her. Deep inside her. Inside my fiancée.

My legs shake and my whole body jerks against her like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m shaking—practically trembling when I’m finished, but she’s still in shock. She remains completely still, unable to move or speak beneath me. I know that felt as good to her as it did to me. She’s just still in shock because she wasn’t expecting a proposal. Especially in the middle of the fucking night. Or morning. However you look at it.

I pull out of her and roll onto my side. I immediately bring my hand between her legs, wanting to feel what I left inside her. Warmth trickles out of her and I spread it around with my hand, touching her, circling my fingers against her wetness.

I already want to fuck her again. But that can wait. Right now I just want to make her come and then fall asleep next to her. Next to my fiancée. My naked fiancée who’s going to start sleeping on her fucking stomach.

She closes her eyes while I touch her. Squeezes them shut, actually. I watch her face while I continue to stroke her. I wait for the moans to pass the lips that just spoke the word yes to me when I asked her to marry me.

I didn’t even have to convince her. This is already so much easier than I thought it would be.

Asa and Sloan, happily ever fucking after.

Fuck my father and his bullshit philosophies on love.





“I’m not telling you again. I don’t want her involved.”

Dalton—Ryan—clenches his fists and leans back in the chair, frustrated with me. “She’s already involved, Luke. You’re not putting her in danger—she lived there before we ever got involved.” He leans forward again. “This wasn’t an issue in the last job. Remember Carrie?”

I remember Carrie. “Carrie was your project. Not mine. I’ve never gotten involved with a girl for the sake of an assignment, Ryan.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “But you’ll get involved with one while you’re on a job, just not for the job? You’ll allow your feelings for her to put us both in danger?”

I push my chair back and stand up. “I’m not putting us in danger. Nothing is going on. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat that.”

I hate that he’s right, but I’ll never admit that to him. I face the one-way mirror of the interrogation room and stare at myself. I look tired. I run a hand through my hair and close my eyes.

“Do you really believe that whatever is going on with her is innocent? That it isn’t putting us at risk in some way?” Ryan says. “Did you not attack Jon—Asa’s best friend—because he was kissing Sloan last night?”

I find his reflection in the mirror and I eye him hard. “Kissing her?” I spin around and face him. “He was about to rape her, Ryan! What’d you want me to do, walk back outside and double down on the fucking poker game?”

I face the mirror again and watch him. He knows he would have done the same thing if he had walked in on that.

It’s fitting that we’re doing this inside an interrogation room at a nearby precinct, because this case review is starting to feel just like an interrogation.

We’re both quiet for a while. I run my hands down my face and sigh.

“How is leading this girl to believe I have feelings for her going to help this case?”

Ryan shrugs. “I don’t know. It might not help. But it’s worth a shot. Especially since you already seem to have some sort of friendship with her that she values. Her guard would be down around you. She might tell you things in confidence that we don’t already know.”

He stands up and walks around the table, then leans against it.

Technically, he’s my superior. I have to remind myself of that sometimes with the way we have to interact and with as many undercover jobs as we’ve done together. He’s been doing this about five years longer than I have and I know he knows what he’s talking about. As much as I don’t want to admit it.