Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2) (50 page)

"Mine," I told him, feeling how he responded to my touch, how, despite all his strength, I could control him. I loved that rush of power, loved knowing that I could dominate him with my sensuality just as well as he could dominate me with his strength.

He grinned back at me, flashing me that savage grin that, when I first met him, intimidated me so much. "Mine," he replied, pulling me astride him so that he could run his raspy tongue over my nipples.

No time to take off the panties. He pulled them aside, his muscles standing out beneath his skin as they tensed with effort. His fingers rubbed against me, but I was already warm and wet and open for him, a womb waiting for him to fill.

He entered me, big and hard and commanding, and I shattered against him. I slumped down on top of him, my bare skin afire as it pressed against his, my every breath and movement making me hyper-aware of him inside of me. I wanted this sweet, delicious agony to go on forever.

He moved against me, and I clung to him and rode out the rising waves of pleasure that he created. He kissed me, held me, loved me in a way that told me that there was no one else, had never been anyone else except me. I clung to him like he was my rock in a thrashing ocean, gasping, moaning, begging for more.

"Tell me yes," he commanded, his voice a hoarse whisper as he made every nerve and fibre of my being sing in pleasure.

"Yes," I answered him, my voice breaking as he pushed me over the edge and ecstasy swept me away into Heaven. "Yes, yes, yes!"

He held me, and loved me, and I knew that he'd always be there to drape that warm, comforting arm over me while I slept.

Epilogue

*

I sat in the ornate Louis XVI armchair, for once not noticing its beauty as I drummed my fingers on the armrests and tried to think of what I would say to Sanford when he got home.

Normally, I loved sitting in this chair, looking around at the rest of this sitting room. Sanford had agreed to let me repurpose most of the antiques to decorate the house, and the room looked as if I'd stepped back in time into Versailles, with intricately detailed Persian rugs on the floor, the stamped tin ceiling polished to a shine, and lovely, beautifully restored classic French furniture set around a central marble coffee table. Even the Queen herself would feel at home here.

Sanford sometimes joked that this made me his queen, and he always greeted me with a little bow and a "Your Majesty" when he came home to find me in this sitting room. I, of course, would usually stick out my tongue at him and blow a raspberry, shattering the illusion.

Naturally, he loved it. He'd usually bend down behind me to kiss at my neck, distracting me from the laptop open in front of me on my lap and putting a stop to my productive work for the afternoon.

Not that I minded at all, although I made him carry me upstairs so that we didn't sully the restored furniture.

I glanced up as I heard a "meow" from the room's doorway, and grinned as Whiskers came sauntering in. "Hey there, old buddy," I greeted him, moving my computer aside in expectation of what he'd do next. "Woke up from your nap?"

Whiskers approached me, looked up at me for a moment while meowing, and then, just as I'd expected, jumped up into my lap. I groaned as the weight of him hit my thighs, but I wrapped my arms around him and adjusted so that he could flop down on top of my legs. "You know, you won't be able to keep on doing that forever," I told him.

He just purred up at me, rolling a little so that I could scratch under his chin. His eyes squeezed shut as I petted him, clearly blissfully enjoying the moment.

The ring on my fourth finger glittered up at me as I rubbed my hand through Whiskers' orange fur. I'd originally intended to stand strong against Sanford, making damn sure that the man wanted me, and that he'd stick with me through both the hard times and the easy ones, before I finally put the thing onto my finger.

I tried talking things over with Della, but that didn't really help much. As soon as she caught sight of the ring in my palm, she howled with envy and love for me, and told me that I had to say yes and I had to make incredibly handsome, sexy little babies with Sanford, that I owed it to the human race! I also apparently had to hire Della for the wedding catering and alcohol, and I had to tell her all about the wedding night, and let her make sure that I picked the best dress to flatter my figure and show off my assets... When I insisted to her that I was going to wait until I was certain before accepting the proposal, Della looked on the verge of stealing my phone to answer "yes" for me.

That decision didn't carry me along for more than a fortnight before I broke down and, in the middle of breakfast, burst out that yes, of course I'd marry him, and I wasn't ever going to let him go.

Sanford, of course, had just looked up at me and smirked for a moment before returning his attention back to his coffee. He acted so smug, as if he'd known that this was coming all along!

I made sure to prolong his next orgasm, twenty minutes later, for as long as I could hold out. Just to teach him a lesson, of course.

But as it turned out, there was a lot more to getting married than just saying yes! Over the next tumultuous few weeks, I introduced Sanford to my parents ("He seems very nice," my mom burbled, blinking through lovestruck eyes up at Sanford as she fluttered her lashes and imagined that she was twenty years younger. My father talked with Sanford for fifteen minutes in some sort of deep, incomprehensible babble about some sports team, and then offered my new fiance a beer. In my father's language, the offer of a beer is a clear sign of his approval), bought a massive stack of wedding magazines that soon turned into fodder for Whiskers to scratch, and overall realized that I was in far too deep over my head.

"Just hire a wedding planner," Sanford said to me one night as we lay together in bed, drenched with sweat from our recent exertions. "Money isn't an object. Just tell her what you imagine for the perfect wedding, and she'll make it happen. That's her job."

A part of me still wasn't at all used to the idea that I didn't need to worry about money any longer. I kept on trying to cut corners on prices, worried over the pennies adding up, and I think it amused Sanford to no end.

"But you're not working!" I pointed out to him a few days later, when he came home to find me fiercely negotiating with a wedding planner over her fees. "You've got lots of money now, but what happens after it runs out? You'll just start up another business?"

He pulled out the other chair at the kitchen table. "Actually, I was meaning to talk to you about that," he said. "I think I would like to start another one up, although I'll need your help."

"My help?" I blinked at him. "What can I help you with?"

"So many things," he chuckled, reaching out and petting me with one finger under my chin. "But in this case, I'm thinking of going into the business of restoring old furniture. Fixing up some of those antiques that you say are too broken to sell, but not worth the cost of fixing." He grinned at me. "I'm sure we can work out some sort of discount."

Ignoring the lecherous subtext, I blinked as I turned over my fiance's new business idea. "You want to fix furniture?" I repeated. "Do you know anything about it?"

He shrugged. "I might have been working on a few pieces in the garage during my spare time. Want to come take a look?"

Out in the garage, my mouth dropped open as I stared at what Sanford had been doing during the last few weeks. "A few pieces?" I repeated in disbelief, my eyes wide as I took in the expanse of shaped wood pieces, propped-open books, and tools of all shapes and sizes, neatly organized on boards or laid out on tables.

"I wanted to make sure that I got them right," Sanford said behind me. "Take a look at the chair over there. I took it out from the sitting room on the first floor - you said that it was too broken to sell, but not worth repairing on its own."

In amazement, I wandered over to the chair that he'd indicated. The chair was a Louis XVI armchair, and it looked perfect, like it had just been delivered to the king himself. Every single inch of the wood was elaborately shaped into pleasing, smooth whorls, burnished until the entire chair practically glowed. The cushion was a soft ivory color, covered in detailed embroidery that traced out patterns complementary to the shape of the wood.

"You did this?" I asked, reaching out and running one hand gingerly over one of the wooden arms, as if afraid that the whole thing would splinter into matchsticks at a touch.

Sanford nodded. "This was my test piece, of sorts, to see if I could handle this kind of work," he replied. "Would it sell?"

Of course it would sell. A piece like this, even with the disclaimer that it had been restored, could probably set off a bidding war. "I don't want to sell it," I said, gently sitting down on the chair, still marveling at the detail and sureness of his work. "I want to keep it."

Sanford laughed, a happy sound. "Of course you can keep it," he told me, rubbing my shoulder as he beamed down at me with love in his eyes. "But I can match this level of work on other pieces, and I figured that you wouldn't want to keep every antique in this mansion. And there's even a property downtown, that would be perfect for a shop-"

I cut him off by leaping up from the chair and throwing my arms around his neck, dragging his broad frame down to my height so I could kiss him.

"You're amazing," I whispered up to him, not letting go after the kiss ended.

"Only because I'm with you," he replied, kissing me back.

A couple of months had passed since that day when he revealed his dream of a shop, and things had flown along in our preparations. Working with the wedding planner, a smart, no-nonsense woman named Angela, our dream wedding took shape. Working with a real estate agent, meanwhile, Sanford bought a lease on the building downtown, and set up his antique store. Just the mystique of the store's proprietor was enough to draw crowds on its opening day, and he'd done a brisk business ever since. He might have intended the shop to be more of a hobby, just something to fill his days, but his natural business sense kicked in on its own, and he was already estimating that he'd turn a profit for this year, and a much bigger one next year.

"I might even need to expand," he chuckled to me one night, shaking his head at the good fortune of it all. "Not that I'm ready to build another retail empire, but there's definitely the potential there. Maybe as a partner with someone else, if I can find a good business partner."

"As long as she doesn't hog all your time and keep you late at the office," I answered him, snuggling in closer. "After six, you belong to me!"

"I wouldn't have it any other way," he said immediately, his big, strong arm wrapping around me to pull me in close, making me feel safe and like the luckiest, happiest woman in the world.

Today, however, I had something else to discuss with Sanford, and I sat anxiously in the armchair he'd restored for me as I waited for him to return home.

I heard him before he arrived, the rumble of his sports car pulling into the driveway. Of late, he'd been less willing to have Winston drive him around, instead preferring to keep behind the wheel. Instead, Winston stayed home with me, reluctantly offering his opinions on things like tablecloths and china patterns when I cornered him. Most of the time, I was pretty sure that the butler kept out of the way in the kitchen, cooking up delicious meals and spoiling Whiskers.

Sanford opened the front door to the mansion a minute later, his steps light as he entered the house. "Elaine!" he called out. "Elaine, I've got something to show you!"

"And I've got something to tell you, too," I replied, raising my voice so that he could hear me. "I'm in here."

I didn't have to clarify any further; Sanford knew where to find me. He stepped around the corner into the doorway, beaming down at me. He held some small bundle in his hands. "Hey, there you are! I've got some news - someone new!"

"Me, too," I murmured again. I frowned, however, as he stepped closer and I got a better look at what he held in his hands. "Wait - what's that?"

"This," Sanford said, settling down on the couch next to my chair, "is the little girl who I found huddling under some pallets behind my store this morning."

In his lap, the little bundle of fur blinked a pair of huge green eyes and uncurled herself, revealing tiny paws and a bright pink tongue that slipped out of her yawning mouth for a moment. From inside my chest, I felt an uncontrollable "aww" come bursting out. The tiny kitten blinked and looked around at its new surroundings, but didn't seem motivated to leave the warmth of my fiance's lap.

In my own lap, Whiskers straightened up a little at his realization that he wasn't the only animal in the room. He stared over at the kitten, and then stood up on my lap, stretching up his back, and stepped over to the couch.

"Should we-" I began, but Sanford held his finger to his lips, shaking his head. He didn't move, just watching as Whiskers moved in closer, his nose twitching as he cautiously sniffed at the new kitten.

The kitten didn't seem to have any objections to being sniffed by another cat more than three times its size. It purred and leaned in against Whiskers. My big, fat orange tomcat looked surprised for a moment, but then settled down, and he started licking the top of the little kitten's head.