Those infinitely blue eyes glowed at me in the dark as a grin pulled up the corner of his mouth.

“Hey.”

I was leaning over him, so I bent down to kiss him quickly and rub the end of my nose against his.

“Hey.”

He reached up a hand and tangled it in my hair where it slid over my shoulder and landed on his chest.

“How did it go?”

I sighed and lifted a hand to trace my fingers along that scrolling tattoo along his rib cage. The ink and name that rested there seemed so much more important to me now than it had before. “I met your mom and said good-bye. It broke my heart just a little bit, but I’m so happy you asked me to go and see her. And I may have threatened my father with a sex tape.” The last was muttered under my breath as his eyebrows shot up and he used his grip on my hair to pull me over him so that we were both sprawled across the bed.

“Do you have a sex tape?”

“Hell no, but he doesn’t know that and he wouldn’t put it past me. Surprisingly my mom stepped up to the plate and agreed to leave Poppy be. She admitted that she f**ked up pretty majorly. I wish it mattered.”

His chest moved as he sighed. “It’s too late for any of it to matter now.”

“That’s kind of how I looked at it. How’s Poppy doing?”

He swore a little bit and shifted under me. There was evidence of how much he missed me the last week poking me in the hip. It made me smile and had me wiggling enticingly on top of his hard body.

“Not good. She’s withdrawn, jumpy. She doesn’t want anyone to touch her and she wakes up screaming almost every single night. Sayer is really good with her, but I’m worried.”

I nodded and brushed my mouth over the flat nipple that was closest to my mouth. I heard him suck in a breath and it made me smile against his skin.

“Me, too. I think we’re just going to have to stand strong for her and wait until Poppy’s ready for us to help. My sister is stronger than any of us ever thought.” My voice got husky on its own accord.

“She is.” I felt his hands tighten in my hair as he pulled my head up so that he could devour my mouth with his own. “I missed you.” I could taste his missing me in the way he kissed me and held me. He also sounded just as rough and needy as I did.

“I missed you, too.” And I was past ready to show him just how much.

I moved my mouth down to the other side of his chest so I could run my tongue around the other flat disk and worked my hands down his sides so that I could get them under the waistband of his boxers. I gave the rock-hard globes of his ass a squeeze for good measure and worked the dark fabric out of my way. He helped set his straining erection free and the taut skin burned in my hand and I wrapped it around the turgid shaft. I loved the way his body throbbed and pulsed at my touch. It was a heady thing to know this was the way he always responded to me.

I used my thumb to caress the hot metal that rested on the top of the head of his c**k and looked up to see blue blazing down at me.

“Thank you for coming back to me.” His voice sounded like a love song.

I used the hand that wasn’t around his dick to draw a heart on his chest with my finger. “Always. I love you. Thank you for always being there for me to come back to.” I moved my thumb to play with the bottom of the piercing and he groaned.

“I don’t think I’ve ever not been in love with you, Salem.”

I kissed the place on his chest where I could feel his heart thundering in time to every sweep of my thumb and every twist of my wrist. I let go and started to slide my hand up and down as he went stiff underneath me.

“I know the feeling, Rowdy.” I also knew the feeling of wanting to have him, to feel him, to be all over him and under him as pleasure covered both of us like a blanket. I was done talking and moved so that I had something in my mouth to prevent further conversation.

He barked out my name as I took him between my lips and circled that creatively pierced head around and around with my tongue. I adored the tang of metal and man as I licked him like he was my favorite dessert treat. I felt his stomach muscles tense and his thighs go tight as I worked him with my hands and mouth. There was something insanely satisfying about making that strong, tattooed body quiver and quake under my command. It was a feeling that would never get old. Neither would the way he said my name like a curse and pulled on my hair. I loved the way his palms cupped my head and the way I could feel how close to the edge he was as I rolled those metal balls back and forth across my tongue.

He arched his h*ps up off the bed, which totally threw off my rhythm and had me pulling up to tell him to cool it, but as soon as I was vertical he started pulling at my clothes, ripping my shirt off over my head, and practically wrestling my tight, black pants off of my legs. My underwear disappeared under impatient hands that were sexy and rough as he pulled me over him and placed me over his cock, which was all shiny and slick-looking thanks to my mouth.

He cupped the heavy weight of my br**sts in each of his hands and mimicked the way I had been playing with his piercings on my own. It made me suck in a sharp sound of pleasure. I sat myself down on his erection and let each inch by delectable inch slide inside my welcoming heat. I braced my hands on his chest and leaned forward so that we were cocooned in the dark fall of my hair. Everything about us just felt so good and so right. As we started to move I groaned and whispered.

“You are my perfect match.”

His eyes got heavy-lidded and his breath started to whoosh in and out as I really started to rock on top of him.

“And you’re mine.”

There wasn’t any space to talk after that. There were only the sounds of kissing, of bodies moving together, of flesh on flesh and pleasure as it filled the room. There were hands on faces, there were hands between legs, there were kisses and bites, and there was more than one orgasm as we moved together and against one another. There were soft sighs and dirty swearwords, and at one point when he had his mouth between my legs and knees up around my ears, I was pretty sure I saw the God I had always heard so much about.

Hours later, when morning was just starting to creep in, I laid my head on his chest after he dragged me into the shower and settled into the only place I was ever supposed to be.

The journey to get here had been long, often filled with wrong turns and missteps, but at the end of it, all that really mattered was the destination no matter how long it took to get there.

EPILOGUE

I WAS TRYING REALLY hard not to smile at the disgruntled expression on Salem’s face as she glared at me in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. It would have been easier to believe she was actually upset if her lipstick wasn’t smudged across her pouting mouth and the hem of her dress wasn’t up around her waist as I drove into her balls deep, from behind. I had one hand on top of hers where she was braced against the mirror and the other on the edge of the sink so I had the optimum amount of leverage.