Beauty and the Barracuda (17 page)
Fuck. “Never,” Nyssa answered quickly.
“Then this subject is closed.”
“I think you’re wrong about Luc.”
“I think you’re wrong about a lot of stuff.” Nyssa considering popping Samara in the mouth, but Sansone hollering, “Someone! Anyone! Save me from the demon seeds!” stopped her. With a sigh, she stood. “I’m going to help him.” She pointed at Samara. “The moment he proposes, I wanna know.”
“He’s not gonna propose!” Samara called after her, but Nyssa knew it wasn’t true. Her sister had found the love of her life. She just needed to stop being so goddamn stubborn and realize it.
Nyssa stopped before the mass of children rolling all over the love of
her
life. “I’m counting to two. One…” They all scrambled away, leaving him groaning.
Trying not to laugh, she dropped to her knees beside him on the grass and brushed pieces of it from his hair. “You’ve been abused.”
He pouted. “Not just by them.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I know.”
Sansone sniffed and looked away from her. “You left me this morning. Naked…vulnerable…”
The laugh got lodged in her throat. “I’m sorry.”
He grunted.
Nyssa reached out and he popped her hand. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want to hear any more of your beautiful lies!”
She would not laugh in his face. “Sansone…”
Folding his arms across his chest, he turned away from her.
Grinning, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I love you.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“Then why won’t you move in with me?”
Nyssa exhaled. “Because I’m scared again.”
His teasing stopped, and he grabbed her arm to pull her around to face him. “Do you trust me?”
The words sent a sense of déjà vu rushing over her. She gazed at him and nodded. She did. She trusted him more than anything. It was just that a step this big made her wary.
He brushed his thumb against her mouth. “You shouldn’t.”
When her brows drew downwards, he stood and started walking backwards. “Mainly because I have a moving company settling all your nice things in with my nice things as we speak.”
“Goddammit, Sansone!” She jumped to her feet as he took off running.
“Barracudas are voracious, opportunistic predators,
cara
!” He laughed. “Opportunistic predators!”
Insane, hair-obsessed, fashion forward, loveable bastard!
Present day…
“Sunny?” A hand waved before his face. “
Suuuuunny
?”
He blinked and looked down into the grinning face just beneath him.
Nyssa’s head tilted. “Where’d you go just now?”
“Uhh…” Sansone laughed a little. “On an amazingly insane, frighteningly beautiful walk down memory lane, baby.”
Her brows winged. “Do I want to know?”
Smiling, he shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Unh-hunh…” Her lips twitched and she tapped his side. “Off.”
“You’re supposed to be invading my boxers!”
She pushed at his shoulders. “Move it, man! I’m trying to show you something!”
Eyes narrowing, he lifted as she scooted from beneath him and headed for their closet.
When she returned, her hand was behind her back, her face a mask of complete innocence. He looked from her to her hand and back again.
“What. Did. You. Do?”
She burst out laughing. “What?”
He jabbed a finger in her direction. “You’re standing there with your ‘
I want you to believe I’m a good girl even though I do really naughty things’
expression, so I ask once more, what crimes have you committed?”
Shaking her head slowly, she walked toward him. “Paranoia doesn’t look good on you, baby.”
Snorting, he folded his arms. “
Everything
looks good on me, difficult female, and don’t you forget it. It’s one of my many attributes.”
Nyssa blinked. “If I searched the closet, would I find assless chaps?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you,” he retorted. “And this isn’t about the utterly devastating beauty I hold. This is about your evil misdeeds.”
She threw up her free hand. “What misdeeds?”
“You tell
me
!”
“There’s nothing to tell, you mental ward escapee!”
He ran a hand through his hair and gave a mock grimace. “Do I look that bad? I was going for adorably mussed bordering on sexily disheveled.”
Nyssa let out one of her sighs. It was the sigh that said she was contemplating whether she could manage to scrub his place clean of all DNA evidence after she murdered him.
“Am I making you want to leave me again?” he asked.
The look on her face told him all he needed to know so
he patted his lap. “Sometimes a hug helps,
cara.
Sometimes a hug helps…”
Her lips twitched as she came to sit across from him. “I love you, but I fear for the mental stability of our future offspring.”
He leered. “Let’s think about that later and practice
now
.”
She shook her head. “In a minute. I have to do this before I lose my nerve.”
He swallowed and tried to determine exactly what her eyes were telling him. She looked…content—as if everything in her world was complete. Sansone had no idea what to do with that so he waved a hand. “Go ahead. Confess your sins.”
“I didn’t commit any
sins.”
His brows inched upward. “None?”
“None.”
Sansone stared at her for a while, and she stared back before he bellowed, “Insidious female! I don’t believe you! Assume the position!”
“Sunny!”
“Argue not, just do as you’re told!”
“Why am I in a relationship with you?”
“Because I made your thighs tense so hard last night you had a charley horse for over an hour?”
Nyssa pointed in his face. “That was a muscle spasm because
you
wanted to try some unusual shit that I
told
you would result in injury.”
He nipped her finger. “But wasn’t it worth it?”
“Goddammit! All right!” Obviously exasperated with trying to do things the easy,
rational
way where he was concerned, she pulled her hand from behind her back and in it sat a ring box.
Sansone stopped breathing.
She went quiet then rushed out with, “I know this isn’t traditional but really, what about us
has
been? I can’t imagine my life without you. I never could from the moment we met, and I don’t want to ever try. I’ve fought you at every turn, I’ve run from you, and I’ve driven you to the madness that you exhibited just moments ago, but I wanted to do this one thing for you. I wanted to make this
one thing
easy. I wanted to ask
you
to marry
me
because as crazy as we are, as strangely frightening as our relationship is to the outside world, I love you with every strand of me. I am totally and completely yours, Sansone Sultana, and if you don’t say something soon, I’m going to redecorate the beauty that is this fine, Japanese-inspired duvet we picked out together.”
Utter disbelief caused his hands to tremble as he reached for the box. Inside was a simple platinum band, inscribed with, “
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered. I’m yours.”
“Oh,
cara
.”
Sansone looked up from the band and found her watching him, her pulse beating in time with his. Complete joy swelled within him, and he had to swallow for fear of his voice breaking when he spoke. “I am…you’re…” He sucked in a deep breath. “
Yes
.”
Ring forgotten, he caught her about the waist and rolled her beneath him, brushing her hair away from a face that had been his downfall so long ago. “I was going to propose later this week on the anniversary of the hurricane but this”—Sansone planted a kiss on the tip of her nose—“is so much better.”
She blinked back the moisture he could see building in her eyes. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm,” he murmured, pressing his mouth to hers. Then he added, “Even if it
is
missing the three-carat diamond I had put on yours. I’m willing to overlook that being that you’re about to get naked.”
He laughed as she slapped his back. “
Goddammit, Sansone
!”
Beautiful Trouble Publishing
Sweet Beginnings (Sweet Series)
Sweet Notes (Sweet Series)
Sweet Holidays (Sweet Series)
Truth or Dare
Mocha Memoirs Press
What a Bear Wants
One Shot Too Many
Talking Dirty
Under The Christmas Tree
Shara Azod LLC
Working It Out
Flaws And All
The Sweetest Thing
The Beauty and the Brawler
A SEAL’s Heart (Hero’s Crossing)
The Viking’s Pursuit
Vexed
Change of Heart
SEALed With a Kiss
Body of Art
Words Never Said
Self-Published Works
Kiss and Tell