The Redemption (37 page)

Our small audience on the beach applauds again and someone shouts, “
Bravo
!”

“My future wife,” I say to the crowd, pointing at her. “She said yes.”

She laughs. “Oh, Jonas.”

“I don’t want to wait.” I grip her shoulders with urgency. “Let’s get married right away.”

Her face bursts into flames of excitement. “Whatever you say—my future
husband
.” She giggles.

“Baby, take a month to plan the wedding and—”

“Whoa, what?”

“—make it however you want it. Hire ten wedding planners if you want. I don’t care what you do, as long as I get to call you my wife a month from now.”

She puts her hands on her cheeks like she’s the
Home Alone
kid. “Jonas, I can’t plan a wedding in a
month
.”

“Sure you can.”

“No, you don’t understand. I need a year—six months at least.”

I groan. There’s no fucking way I can wait six months to marry this girl. “
Please
, Sarah.
Please
.” I’m manic. I’d marry her right this very second if she’d let me. “Spend whatever you want—hire whoever you need. I don’t care what you do. Just don’t make me wait.
Please.
”

She laughs. “You’re so effing demanding, you know that?”

I don’t care if I’m demanding. Not about this. I absolutely can’t wait. Waiting a whole month for this moment to arrive almost killed me—I can’t wait more than a month to call her my wife. “Sarah, please, please, please.”

She shakes her head, like she can’t believe what she’s gotten herself into with me, but then she shrugs with resignation. “Okay, baby, whatever you say.”

“Anything’s possible when you throw enough money at it. Trust me.”

She grins and rolls her eyes. “You know what? I don’t even care about the wedding. All I care about is being married to you.”

“No, no, baby, make it however you want it. Hire whoever you need to make it perfect—pay five times as much as any sane person would pay. I don’t care what you do—just please, please, please don’t make me wait.”

“Okeedokee,” she says. She snaps her fingers. “Easy peasy.”

I pull her close. I’m so fucking relieved I could scream. “Really?”

“Of course.” She kisses me. “I told you—all I care about is being married to you. The wedding’s just a party. I can put together a party in a month. No sweat.”

I feel high. Adrenaline is flooding me. My cock is tingling. My skin is electrified. “Let’s run down the beach to some secluded spot and go skinny-dipping,” I whisper, my chest heaving with excitement.

She looks at the rock on her hand and grimaces. “I don’t want my ring to come off in the ocean.”

Motherfucker. The engagement ring I bought for my future bride is gonna keep me from making love to my future bride right now? Talk about irony.

She motions to the pilots. “Do either of you have an extra parachute we could bring with us on a little walk? We’ll bring it right back.” She turns to me and grins. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

I smile broadly. She’s so fucking smart. And so fucking hot.

One of the pilots pulls a colorful parachute from his pack. “Is not for flying. Is for to practice on the ground,” he says. “Is okay?” He hands it to her.

“Perfect. Thank you.” Her eyes blaze wickedly at me. “What do you think, baby?”

“I think, fuck yeah.”

I grab the parachute in one hand and her hand in the other and we sprint down the beach, laughing the whole time. We run and run, until there’s no one around us as far as the eye can see, and when we’re sure we’ve reached a stretch of beach that’s ours alone, we lie down in the sand and throw the parachute over us. Filtered sunlight streams through the brightly colored fabric casting glorious swaths of reflected red, blue, and yellow onto the sand all around us.

We’re savage animals, both of us, desperate for each other. She rips off her shirt, gasping—her face awash in a haze of reflected blue—and I rip off mine. She pulls frantically at my pants and my cock springs out.

“Jack in the box,” she says, panting.

“Only if you’re the box.”

She laughs—she always laughs at that one.

“The future Mrs. Faraday,” I mutter, slipping my hand inside her pants and cupping her bare ass in my palm. Oh shit, I’m hard as a rock. “The future Mrs. Faraday,” I say again, just because it feels so fucking good to say it. “You’re gonna be my wife.”

She groans loudly and nibbles on my lip. Her hand grips my shaft. “My future
husband.
”

Her words release a surge of electricity through my veins. “Again,” I moan, pulling her pants off.

“My future
husband.”
She works my shaft with authority, making me shudder, and then leans back into the sand, pulling my cock with her, inviting me inside her, a haze of red-filtered sunlight washing across her beautiful face.

She tugs on me, coaxing me to enter her, but it’s not going to happen. I’ve just asked this glorious woman to become my
wife
—and nothing, not even the indomitable Sarah Cruz, not even Orgasma the All-Powerful, is going to prevent me from taking my future wife to church.

I kneel between her legs and open her thighs and begin worshipping at her altar like the zealot I am—oh God, the future Mrs. Faraday tastes so good—and she moans and quivers under my tongue.

“My future wife,” I whisper, licking her again and again. “I’m gonna marry you, baby,” I say hoarsely, tasting her the way I know she likes it best—until, finally, deliciously, she arches her back into me, and comes undone.

When her climax subsides, she opens her eyes and smiles at me. “Get inside me, future husband.”

That’s all the encouragement I need.

“This is the best day of my life,” she whispers into my ear, tilting her hips up to greet mine, her face now awash in a haze of yellow.

“Mine too.” I kiss her deeply.

She trembles. “Oh, Jonas.” She wraps her legs around my back and moves her pelvis with mine. “That was the best proposal ever.”

“I did okay?”

“Oh, baby, better than okay. You’re a
beast
.” She grunts. “Now fuck me like the beast you are.”

Damn, this woman turns me on. I do exactly as I’m told.

“Just like that,” she says. “
Yes
.”
She bites my neck.

“Ow.” I shudder.

She laughs and bites me again.

“Why so violent?”

She laughs again.

I shift myself so my cock rubs her at a new angle and her body ignites underneath me.

“Oh, God, just like that. Don’t stop doing that.” She gasps. “Oh, yes, baby—oh my God—yes, yes, yes.”

There are no words for this kind of ecstasy because there’s never been a love like ours. She’s the divine original form of woman—and our love is the divine original form of love. “Sarah,” I say, teetering on the edge of my own Nirvana, “I love you.”

“Mmm.”

The parachute casts magnificent colors around us in the sand, illuminating our cathedral as surely as any stained glass window ever could.

“I love you, baby,” I groan, kissing her again and again.

“Jonas,” she breathes, teetering right on the edge. “
Yes.
”

“And I’m gonna marry you,” I say.

She begins to make The Sound.

“You’re gonna be my
wife
.”

She’s hanging on by a thread.

“Mrs. Faraday.”

That does it. She’s gone.

And so am I.

She’s my savior.

She’s my religion.

She’s my redemption.

I’m born again.

There’s never been a love like ours.

And there never will be again.

Our love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods—the culmination of human possibility.

Jonas
 

“Mrs. Faraday,” I whisper softly.

She doesn’t reply. She’s lying on her belly, her face smashed into her pillow.

I run my fingertips slowly down her back over her tank top, softly singing the chorus from “I Melt With You” by Modern English. I’m a horrifically bad singer, I know this without a doubt—but, for some reason, she loves it when I sing, especially this song.

Still nothing.

“Oh, Mrs. Faraday?” I call out softly. I sing to her again.

“Mmm.”

“Good morning, My Magnificent Mrs. Faraday,” I whisper. “You awake?”

“I am now,” she says, her voice extra gravelly. “How are you already back on Seattle time?”

“I’m not. My body’s still on New Zealand time—it’s just that my mind is too happy to sleep.”

She buries her face in her pillow and groans. “I’m married to a madman.”

I poke her ass cheek through her pajama bottoms. “Hey, wifey.”

She swats at my hand. “Weirdo.”

“Wife?”

“What time is it in New Zealand right now? Because that’s what time my body thinks it is.”

“Come on, sleepyhead. I’ve been awake for three hours. I’ve worked out, done all the laundry in both our suitcases, and answered a hundred emails. And now I’m lonely for my sexy wifey.”

“How the hell do you sleep so little, you nutball?” She still won’t look at me—she’s stubbornly got her face buried in her pillow. “I swear to God you’re not even human. You’re a frickin’ droid.”

I sit on the bed next to her and caress the curve of her beautiful ass. I can’t help myself—I pull down her pajama pants and lay a soft kiss on her ass cheek. It’s taking all my restraint not to yank her pants all the way down and do a whole lot more than that, but I know she’s exhausted. “What if I were to tell you I brought you a cappuccino?”

She lifts her head. “Then I would say, ‘Why, good morning, dear husband. So nice to see you.’ You should have opened with that, you big dummy.” She turns over and sits up.

I hand her the mug off the nightstand. “Here you go, dear wife.”

“Thank you, dear husband, you’re the best—even if you’re a nutball and a droid and a weirdo.” She takes a sip. “Mmm.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby. It was amazing to finally sleep in my own bed again.”

“There’s no place like home.” Especially when it’s
our
home.

Of course, I loved every minute of our honeymoon—a week in New Zealand (it’s the adventure capital of the world, after all), followed by three days in Venezuela, joined by Josh and Kat (Sarah had arranged an emotional reunion for Josh and me with Mariela), and capped off by four magical nights for my baby and me (and our friends the howler monkeys) in our jungle tree house in Belize. It was amazing, all of it—and yet, when it was time to come home, I wasn’t at all sorry. In fact, I was chomping at the bit to come home and start my new life with my baby, my wife, the goddess and the muse, Sarah Faraday.

Sarah looks dazed as she sips her cappuccino. “Oh my God, I can’t move,” she groans. “After all that bungee jumping and rappelling and hot monkey-sex, my body’s in a perpetual state of wet-noodledom.”

“I’m pretty wiped, too,” I admit.

“Yeah, that’s why you’ve already worked out this morning and done all our laundry, you weirdo.”

“I told you—I’m too happy to sleep.”

“That’s sweet,” she says, which means she thinks I’m being intense or creepy or both.

“There’s a big stack of cards and gifts in the kitchen,” I say. “Josh and Kat must have brought everything back for us after the wedding. Do you want to open all that stuff today?”

“Yeah, but later, when I can focus,” she says. “I’m just so frickin’
tired
.”

I push her hair away from her face. “Even when you’re tired, you’re beautiful. Do you know that, Mrs. Faraday?”

She sighs happily. “Wasn’t the wedding lovely?”

“It was perfect.”

Sarah and I have talked about our wedding countless times over the past two weeks, of course, but apparently, neither of us has tired of the topic.

“Didn’t Georgia look great?” Sarah asks. “And Trey was so dapper in his suit.”

“Your mom didn’t stop smiling the whole time.”

“Well, except for when she was bawling like a baby.”

“No, even then she was smiling.”

“And, oh my gosh, the look on Miss Westbrook’s face when she saw you, Jonas—oh my God, I could sob just thinking about it. That was a beautiful thing.”

I smile. That
was
a beautiful thing. But I could say that about every minute of our wedding day. Sarah planned the whole thing top to bottom—all I had to do was pay the bills and show up like any other guest—and it was glorious. When she walked down the aisle toward me, I truly thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And when she said, “I do”—when she officially became my wife in front of God and everyone—it was the happiest moment of my life.

And then there was the party. Holy fuck, what a fucking party. I mean, Jesus, I even
danced.
All night long. With Sarah, of course, but also with Georgia and her new boyfriend and Trey and Miss Westbrook and her kids (including my namesake himself, who turned out to be quite a strapping young lad) and Sarah’s mom and Kat and Josh and Henn and a whole bunch of Sarah’s awesome friends. I even danced with Uncle William after the Scotch started flowing, after the band had kicked things into high gear.

I’ve never had so much fun in my life—good old fashioned, silly
fun
. Well, yeah, I’ve had plenty of silly fun with Sarah, of course—and with Josh, too—but I’ve never let loose like that with anyone besides those two, and especially not with a whole room full of people, some of whom I honestly didn’t even know. What a stroke of genius on Sarah’s part to rent out Canlis for the occasion. What better place to celebrate than the site of our first date?

“Earth to Jonas.”

I smile at her.

“What are you thinking about, baby?”

“Our amazing wedding.”

“It was amazing, wasn’t it? Did you see Uncle William dancing with Kat?” Sarah asks. “He was adorable.”

“Yeah. And did you see Henn trying to do some kind of, like, weird break dancing thing?”

Sarah laughs. “I honestly didn’t know what the heck Henn was trying to do. I was a bit concerned for his safety.”