“No,” he ordered. “I won’t last if you do. They are my last line of defence, and I don’t want tonight to end.”

I smiled, feeling the same way. Sitting over this loving, possessive, sculpted, gorgeous man, I was overwhelmed that he was mine. I didn’t question why he’d chosen me, or how long it would be before he tired of us. At that moment, I saw myself as he saw me, and I was empowered. I felt sexy and emboldened, and I realised that O’Connell hadn’t given me this power. It was mine all along. What Frank had done was horrific and for the longest time I lost myself. But this was who I was, and O’Connell loved me for it. Was I sexy because I was confident, or was I confident because I was sexy? I didn’t know. But knowing that his body, his release was mine to control, excited me.

“Tonight ended hours ago. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”

I leaned forward, allowing my bare breasts to graze his chest, kissing and nibbling a torturous path from one nipple to the next. He breathed hard but didn’t try to stop me. Rolling my pelvis, I sat up and leaned back against his cock. I pulled pin after pin out of my hair until it cascaded down my shoulders.

“Do you have any fucking idea how beautiful you look right now?” he asked me.

He reached up to rub my nipples with the pads of his thumbs, but his touch was fleeting as I pulled away to ease myself down his body, kissing a painfully slow path down his washboard abdominals. He groaned when my breasts brushed against his rock hard erection and closed his eyes when my warm breath blew across him. I licked my way along the length of his cock and took him deep into my mouth.

“Jesus,” he whispered, as his hips lifted off the bed.

He ran his fingers through my hair but didn’t force my head down, or make me feel uncomfortable. If it was possible, he grew even harder as he moved closer and closer to orgasm, but his stamina wasn’t limitless.

“Come here, baby,” he urged. I complied, crawling up his body to wrap my tongue around his hungrily.

He slid my panties down my legs and tossed them aside. Moving me beneath him, he slid inside me, all the way to the hilt. Holding each of my hands in his own, our fingers intertwined, he stopped to look me deep in the eyes.

“I love you, sunshine. Forever,” he whispered.

“And I love you,” I answered, contentedly.

I closed my eyes as he moved inside me and trapped my bottom lip between his teeth. Our slow, gentle rhythm quickly became frantic, but I wanted him harder and faster. As though he heard my silent wish, he complied, pounding into me relentlessly. I was so close that I held my breath, feeling the tremors work their way through my body at the edge of my orgasm. I lifted my hips to meet O’Connell thrust for thrust, and when he unexpectedly leant down to take my nipple in his hot, wet mouth, I was there. With my husband deep inside me, I came hard, exploding into a million pieces before falling back down to earth. His body tensed, and he gave a hoarse shout as I took O’Connell with me over the edge. It was beautiful and perfect and the best end to our wedding. He collapsed on top of me, and I welcomed the familiar weight of his body against mine.

“I don’t want to go to sleep in case I wake up and this was all a dream.”

“And what would you do if it was?” I smiled.

“Fuck something up until I found you and made you do it all over again for real,” he admitted.

“Sleep, O’Connell. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

I never got an answer. He was fast asleep on my chest, and moments later, I was, too.

I GOT OUT OF THE SHOWER the next morning to find O’Connell wearing nothing but tight black boxer briefs and a frilly blue apron, cooking a fried breakfast and singing off-key to the radio. He looked effortlessly sexy, but it was the look of pure joy and happiness on his face that made my heart ache. Leaving him to it, I threw on some underwear, leggings, and one of his oversized hooded sweaters and joined him as he set down our breakfasts.

“I could get used to this.” I grinned.

“Sunshine, fuck me every day like you did last night, and I’m at your beck and call.”

I choked on my bacon as I registered what he’d said, and he laughed as he slapped my back, helping me cough it back up again.

“Maybe you’ve had enough meat in your mouth for one day. I don’t want you to choke on it.”

“Very funny,” I said sarcastically. “But try not to say stuff like that when I’m eating. You almost became a widower less than twenty-four hours after becoming a groom.”

He frowned, not liking that idea at all.

“Sorry, love. It’s so easy to make you blush, I can’t help myself.”

We polished off breakfast, and I reached for our box of wedding cards as I sipped my

tea. The radio was still playing Christmas songs in the background. The flat was deliciously warm and sitting here with O’Connell felt so domestic and intimate that I wanted to cry with happiness that this was my life now. I wasn’t alone anymore and neither was he.

“What you doin’, sunshine?” he asked, licking the last of the bacon off his fingers.

“I was just going to read our wedding cards.”

We both picked up a handful of cards and started ploughing through them. As I opened the first one, a pile of notes fell out, and I counted up thirty pounds.

“There’s money in here!” I exclaimed, shocked.

O’Connell didn’t seem at all surprised. If he knew that some people had given us money, why was he so casual about leaving the box of cards lying around at the reception?

“A few people asked me what we wanted for a wedding present, and I couldn’t think of anything so I just said money.”

We worked our way through the huge pile, and by the time we got to the bottom, we had over fifteen hundred pounds.

“I can’t believe people have been so generous.”

“They just wanted us to have a good start,” he told me, looking more than a little stunned himself. This was more money than I’d ever had in my life, and my first thought was that we needed to get it to the bank, quick.

“Can we put it with the money I have left from the car toward a deposit on buying our own place?” he asked.

“It will be a while before we’ll qualify for a mortgage,” I warned him.

“I know. But at least we’ll have a deposit saved when we do. I just like the idea of having a home that’s ours, not someplace that we rent. I learned a lot working in construction. Maybe we can get somewhere rundown for a good price and me and the boys can fix it up between fights.”