Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) (48 page)

"Stop it," I told him, fighting against the shortness of breath in my chest.

Sanford just shook his head, and now a tiny little smile flitted about his lips before vanishing again. "I'm serious. I love you, Elaine Dean, and I'm proving it."

"You don't need to prove it," I said, my eyes mesmerized by the ring. "I love you too, but this is taking things way too fast."

"Probably," he admitted, not moving. "But I did this last time and chose the worst woman on the planet for me. This time, I've found her opposite, and she's perfect. So take this thing, before my legs seize up down here."

I reached out with trembling fingers and took the ring. "I'm not saying yes," I told him, as I turned the ring back and forth in front of my eyes. "I'm just going to hold onto this until I think that I'm ready to make a decision."

His eyes seemed to pull at mine like magnets. "And when will that be?" he asked, still down on his knees.

I shrugged. "Whenever I feel like you've made up with me," I said, slipping the ring into my pocket.

"Really." His eyes still drew mine, but now I saw a new fire burning in them, a fire that warmed me and sent tingles running down my spine. I knew that expression well. "I think I can find a way to win you over."

I wondered if that same fire was reflected in my own eyes as I looked down at him, wanting him more than I'd ever wanted anyone or anything else in my life. "Yeah? You better start trying, then. I'm going to make it nice and hard for you."

"I think that's my line," he answered, and as I snorted in laughter at this bit of wit, he swept me down into his arms, tugging me off of my seat on the couch and down onto the floor beside him.

"Wait! Shouldn't we get to the bed or something?" I gasped out, as his hands ran over my sides, peeling away my shirt. I noticed for a moment that this was the same marinara-stained shirt that I wore when I ran into Valencia, but Sanford didn't even seem to notice the reddish blotches.

"No time," he whispered harshly against me, biting at my ear, the back of my neck, making me moan as my body arched against him.

Well, okay. I couldn't argue with this, not when I could feel him hard against me, not when my need for him to be against me, inside me, drowned out all other desires and thoughts. I moaned as his teeth nipped at my collarbone, as he drew my shirt up and over my head, his hands not caring about my imperfect body, the curves that his former fiancee kept at bay with yoga and spin classes and probably starvation. He wanted me, not her, and he loved me for who I was, for how I looked. I felt my own love pouring out of my chest, a tide of warm, pink heat that could probably heat my house on its own in a snowstorm.

My own hands reached out for Sanford, tearing at his clothes. I definitely tore off some of the buttons on his shirt, but he just growled at how his clothes still clung to him, throwing them off as he returned his attentions back to me. I felt his member, hard and throbbing between his legs, and he gasped as I wrapped my fingers around its length.

"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."