M. Leighton: Some Like It Wild

That’s all I can say before I start sobbing like a two-year-old who lost her cat.

I hear the creak of the hammock and then I feel strong, warm arms come around me. Jake pulls me in close to him and whispers against my hair, “You stole all my best lines.”

I lean back to look at him. He’s smiling a beautiful, perfect, happy smile down at me. “Is that a yes?”

“No. That’s a hell yes!”

The tears are still streaming down my cheeks, coming in a great flood of happiness and relief. “I don’t know if they’ll fit. Or if you’d even want to wear them, but—”

“If they don’t, we’ll put them on chains and wear them around our necks. This will be a reminder of one of the happiest days of my life and I’ll never let it go. Just like I’ll never let you go.”

My heart feels like it has melted and run all over my body, making me warm and more content than I can ever remember being. “Please don’t. Don’t ever let me go,” I say, breathing in his skin as I tuck my mouth against his neck.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I couldn’t survive without you. And I don’t even want to try. You make me the kind of man that I’ve always wanted to be. You make me a better me. And without you, I’m nothing.”

“But to me, you’re everything.”

“That’s just proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“That love really is blind.”

“Not this love! I see very clearly. And I love what I see.”

“Well, if you’ve got a few minutes, I can give you a lot more to look at,” Jake says, his grin suddenly playful. He stands to his feet, pulling me with him and into his arms, where the heat rises by several million degrees.

“A few minutes? Is that all it’ll take?”

“Oh, no! You did not just ask me a question like that! Challenge accepted.”

Tossing me over his shoulder, Jake takes off at a run for the back door.

“Jake, stop!”

“You’d better enjoy that word, baby, because that’s the last time you’ll be saying it for a very, very long time.”

I squeal as he flings open the door, races through the kitchen, and takes the stairs two at a time.

He needn’t worry about m e ever asking him to stop. I’ll never want him to stop loving me.

To preorder the next Wild Ones novel,

There’s Wild, Then There’s You

visit mleightonbooks.blogspot.com.