Evie Ever After. Beth Ciotta

with my predictions. He took it slow. Achingly slow. My body trembled with delicious sensations as he tormented me with his thick, hard shaft, withdrawing completely before filling me once more.

      Just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, he pulled off the blindfold and nailed me with a gaze that sent me over the moon. I relinquished my hold on the rails and latched on to his shoulders. I cried out his name. I came and I came and, “Oh, my God!” came.

      Arch shuddered with his own release and dropped his forehead to mine.

      My body and mind sparked and sputtered. “That was…”

      “Aye.”

      After a moment he rolled aside and pulled me into his arms. His heart pounded as hard as mine and he gazed at me as though I were the most beautiful woman on earth. I thought about how awful I looked and how wonderful he’d made me feel. He was right. I did focus too much on outer appearance. I thought about all the whining I’d done over the past few weeks. How I constantly compared myself to women in their twenties or Bond-type women and came up lacking. Yet I’d given a bad boy, a younger bad boy, a hard-on even with my less than perfect body slathered in chalky pink medicine.

      I felt a shift deep inside. A snap.

      I palmed Arch’s cheek, smiling when I noticed a pink smudge on his chin. “Thank you.”

      “My pleasure.”

      “Not the sex. Although that was…”

      “Fan-fucking-tastic?”

      I grinned. “Actually I was thanking you for the life lesson.”

      “Just reciprocating, Sunshine.”

      I blinked. “I’ve taught you a life lesson?”

      “A couple, yeah?”

      “Really?”

      He kissed me. “Really.”

      I wondered what, but I didn’t ask. That could wait. My need to exert my newly found confidence, couldn’t.

      Looking down, I palmed John Thomas. “All tuckered out, big guy?”

      “If he could talk,” Arch said, clearly amused, “he’d ask what you have in mind.”

      I rolled out of bed, naked as a jaybird and more comfortable in my skin than I’d ever been. So, I looked like a flamingo threw up on me. So, I had a few smile lines and could stand to lose a couple inches in my hips. So, what? I strode to my closet and whipped out two costumes for his pleasure. “French maid or harem girl?”

      Arch’s eyes twinkled and I knew he was a goner. “Bollocks.”

      Yup. Toast.