He shudders, pain twisting his features, and it’s only then I understand why this is so hard for him. All this time, I couldn’t make sense of it, but it was staring me in the face. He told me about his family. The betrayal he felt from his brother. The coldness I’ve seen in his mother when she looks at him. The agony he feels over letting her down. Everyone he’s ever loved has let him down and made him feel unworthy. Why would he think I’d be any different?

That realization wrenches my heart, twisting me up inside as I squeeze him in my grasp, trying to convey the intensity I feel for him.

“I love you,” I tell him again. “And I always will. No matter how much you piss me off. No matter how much we fight. Regardless of what the future brings, you are imprinted on me. Do you understand that? You are and always will be the one person who makes me feel this way.” I crawl onto his lap, bringing his fingers to the beating pulse of my racing heart. “That song is just for you, Lawson Montgomery. Nobody else gets that.”

He cups the back of my skull in his palm, drags me to him, and kisses me. It’s a kiss of possession. Of claiming. But something deeper. Something unbreakable. And that tether that binds us will always be. I know it. He knows it. And we give in to it, for real this time.

He sets me on his cock, back where I belong, and we move at a slower pace. Less rushed and more of a prolonged burn. I realize it as he’s kissing his way over my neck, down my collarbone, and groping my breasts with a reverence he doesn’t hide. He’s making love to me.

“Lawson,” I groan his name, and he rumbles an appreciative sound in response.

My fingers tangle in his hair, tugging as he sends me off into oblivion, shattering around him with the most intense orgasm of my life. When I come back down, he grabs my face, staring into my eyes until his release severs the connection. I swallow the sound of pleasure from his lips and squeeze around him, collapsing into his chest.

His fingers move to that blank space on the back of my neck, stroking me, and I know what he’s thinking before he even says it.

“This was always meant to be mine.”

“Then brand me already,” I challenge him. “Take it because it’s yours.”

He tips my chin up, pulling back to meet my gaze. “Tonight.”

“What?” I blink at him, not certain I heard him correctly.

“Tonight,” he repeats. “I don’t want to wait another day. Marry me, Mercedes. Let me claim you the way I should have a long fucking time ago.”