Loving Valentine: A Novella Read online

  The truth was, I’d never gone to this much effort for a guy before. And I didn’t just mean the time I’d invested in my appearance. There was a helluva lot of emotional investment here.

  Please be worth it, Micah.

  Micah stood on the other side of the door when I opened it, hands in the pockets of his coat. He was wearing a dark gray waistcoat that matched his suit pants.

  Minus the newsboy cap, he looked straight out of the TV show Peaky Blinders.

  It was a hot look.

  He was HOT.

  Reaching for my coat, I returned his soft smile. His eyes filled with as much anticipation as I felt.

  “Let me.” He stepped forward into the apartment and took hold of my coat.

  With my back to him, I bit my lip, admitting only to myself how much I enjoyed his gentlemanly behavior. I’d never had a date hold a door open for me before, never mind my coat. Once I had my arms in the sleeves, Micah settled his hands on my shoulders and gave me a little squeeze. “You ready?”

  I turned to him, inhaling his spicy, delicious cologne. He was close enough to kiss. “I’m ready.”

  Those gorgeous gray eyes of his dropped to my mouth.

  The air suddenly crackled between us.

  “Should we go?” I whispered just as he seemed to lean in for a kiss.

  Micah blinked rapidly, as if coming out of a daze. He took a step back. “Yeah. Uh, yeah, let’s go.”

  Outside, he hailed a cab and when we got inside, he gave the driver an address I didn’t recognize. “Where are we going?”

  Micah smiled and reached for my hand. “You’ll see.”

  I stared at our entwined hands as we sat in tense silence while the cabbie made his way through the city. It wasn’t tense as in ‘bad’, it was tense as in electric. Micah casually brushed his thumb over the top of my hand, back and forth, back and forth. Shivers sprinkled down my spine at the caress.

  He was turning me on with a mere touch.

  I didn’t know if I let out a disgruntled sigh or what, but suddenly Micah was smiling at me, somewhat smugly. He raised our hands to his lips and kissed the back of mine.

  I melted.

  Oh, yeah… minutes into the date and already he was getting behind my defenses.

  Dangerous, dangerous man.

  Thankfully, a mere fifteen minutes later, the car pulled up to a stop in front of a block of red brick apartments in Allston. After he paid the cabbie, I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the building. “Where are we?”

  Micah took hold of my hand and repeated, “You’ll see.”

  As he led me into the building and up the stairs, I worried that he’d brought me to his apartment for our first date. It was not only presumptuous; it was way too fast. Heart racing, I bit my tongue, hoping I was wrong.

  He took us to the top floor and then opened a door at the end of the hall that led to a dark flight of stairs.

  Confused now, I stayed quiet and followed him up the steps. He pushed opened the door at the top, leading us out onto the roof of the building.

  Shock. Amazement. Wonder flooded me.

  The roof had been transformed into a fairytale wonderland.

  Garden trellises covered with flowers and strung with ropes upon ropes of fairy lights created a cocoon around a picnic area. There were candles placed here and there, too, their flames dancing in the soft breeze.

  Pots and vases of peonies covered the roof space. And in the middle of the trellis arrangement was a fur blanket with a picnic basket on top of it. There were several bowls of golden wrapped Ferrero Rocher. A bucket with a bottle of champagne in it. Two champagne flutes.

  And soft indie rock music played from a dock beside the picnic basket.

  My dream date.

  He remembered.

  I didn’t expect to react like I did.

  The sob just burst out of me.

  Suddenly I was in Micah’s arms as I cried against his chest. “Cupid, tell me these are good tears?”

  I nodded, unable to speak through the intense emotion clogging my throat.

  Micah’s voice was gruff. “I have loved you for a very long time.”

  Finally, I raised my head, my fear still prodding me even as I felt myself letting go. “You don’t know me anymore.”

  “I do,” he replied fiercely, his grip on me tightening. “I know you. And I miss you like crazy. I’ve been walking around for years missing a piece of me, an immense piece of me. And that emptiness would go away unless I have you. I know I promised not to push, not to move too fast, but I needed you to know—”

  I pulled his head down to mine and cut off his desperate words with a kiss.

  He groaned, lifting me into it, turning it wild and voracious. I clung to his neck, my feet now inches off the ground.

  When he finally lowered me to the rooftop and we parted to draw breath, I confessed, “I still love you too. And that you did all this for me…” I gestured around us. Somehow it had changed everything. It was a reminder of who he really was to me. The person who made me feel special and seen. “Micah, I don’t want to go slow with you. I want to stop wasting time and start making up for the time we lost.”

  It was difficult to keep our hands off each other as we settled to have the picnic of sandwiches and snacks Micah had put together. We laughed and reminisced about the past, caught up on each other’s lives, the things we’d missed. Touching and kissing in between. A slow foreplay that was driving me crazy. Hours passed up there in the sky, the city lights in the distance, surrounded by people but all alone. Together.

  When Micah took me downstairs, I should have let him call me a cab like we planned.

  Instead, I whispered, “I want to see your apartment.”

  We both knew what I meant.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered back, his eyes shadowed with desire.

  I nodded.

  I barely saw his apartment when he let me into it. We were too busy hurrying toward his bedroom. As soon as the door slammed shut behind us, we became frantic arms and hands trying to undress one another. It was like being stuck in a scorching desert with too many clothes, desperate to feel nothing but air on our bare skin.

  Except we were desperate to feel nothing but each other’s skin against skin.

  Laughing and stroking and kissing, we eventually ended up on Micah’s bed naked, his body braced above mine. When he slid a hand between my legs, my breath caught.

  Micah was touching me.

  It was like a beautiful dream.

  I lifted my hips, widening my legs, inviting him as he slipped two fingers inside me. My need for him eased his way and Micah’s face was suddenly harsh with lust.

  He kissed me, lowering his hips so I could feel his hot erection throbbing against me. Then his lips left my mouth to discover my body. He kissed every inch of me, sucking on my nipples until they were distended and tender, kissing between my legs, his tongue laving at my clit until I came. And then he started all over again.

  “Micah, I can’t,” I moaned, my nails biting in his back. “I need you. I need you.”

  “It should have been me,” he whispered, suddenly sounding pained.

  He raised his head from my breasts and I saw regret mingling with his passion.

  I stroked his face. “Micah?”

  He leaned into my touch. “I should have been your first, Cupid.”

  Yes, that would have been perfect. Instead of with Graham in the back of his parent’s Range Rover. But I wouldn’t go back. Not if it led to this moment. “What does any of it matter as long as you’re my last?”

  My words, the promise in them, shattered whatever control Micah had. He leaned over the bed and opened the drawer of his bedside table to remove a foil. His eyes were dark with need as he ripped open the packet with his teeth. The taut desperation low, deep in my womb coiled tighter as I watched him roll the condom up his thick hardness.

  Micah’s hands depressed the mattress on either side of my head, his chest lifting
off my body. He nudged my knee with his and I opened my legs wider at his silent request.

  I gazed into those beautiful gray eyes, letting him see everything I felt.

  He stared back at me, his cheeks flushed, nothing but love and tenderness in his gaze. “This is a dream come true, Cupid.” Then he pushed into me and I grabbed onto his waist, holding tight at the pinch of pain. Micah was bigger than I’d expected.

  I felt full. Overwhelmingly full and surrounded by him.

  He withdrew a little and then pushed back in and the slight pain was eclipsed by pleasure.

  “Yes,” I gasped, tilting my hips up to pull him deeper.

  He let out an animalistic growl that made me unbelievably hot.

  I cried out as he thrust, pushing deep, hitting that perfect place inside me, and gliding slowly out again. I arched my hips, trying to pull him back in.

  “Cupid,” Micah grunted and I felt his thrusts pick up speed. Then suddenly his features hardened and he froze over me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “What is it?” I breathed hard. “Don’t stop. God, don’t stop, Micah. Please.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stared down at me, something like awe in his eyes, his muscles straining in his arms. “I’m just… I’ve fantasized about being inside you a million times and now that I am… fuck, I’m so turned on I’m gonna come too soon, like I’m a fucking kid again.”

  He looked boyishly frustrated by this while I gloried in the feel of my feminine power. It made that low, savage, needful part of me pulse with want. “Come then.” I arched into him again. “Just come. I’m not planning to get out of this bed any time soon so we have all night to come as many times as we can.”

  Micah groaned with need. Then his thumb was on my clit, the delicious pressure leading me toward climax. My hips lifted against his as I came around him and his suddenly jerked as he shuddered and throbbed through his own release.

  I wrapped my arms and legs around him, loving the heavy weight of him.

  Not long later, I reluctantly released him so he could go take care of the condom. When he returned, he stood over my body, his hot gaze taking in every inch of me. I’d never been that confident about my body. I was soft around the tummy and thighs. While I had a small waist, I wasn’t trim. Curvy hips, lots of tits and ass.

  I’d held sheets to hide myself anytime I was in bed with a guy… but something about Micah’s expression made me feel like the sexiest woman on the planet. I sank into his mattress, bit my lip to stop the moan that wanted to escape from his mere perusal, and I widened my legs in invitation.

  Suddenly he was on me again, his enthusiasm making me laugh.

  My laughter turned to giggles, then to gasps, followed by sighs and moans.

  Then screams of pleasure as he took his time wringing bliss out of my body.

  And when were finally semi-sated by the wee hours of the morning, Micah curled me in his arms and whispered, “I love you, Valentine. Always have. Always will.”

  For the first time since I was a kid, I felt safe.

  I let myself trust him, trust that his love was unconditional. “I love you, too, Micah Green.”

  Epilogue

  MICAH

  AGE 28

  Valentine Fairchild walked toward me in a white dress. Mindy designed it for her.

  It was just Valentine’s style.

  She was an absolute angel to behold.

  But she could have been wearing nothing but a plastic trash bag and I wouldn’t have cared as long as she was walking down that candle lit aisle toward me.

  My mom sat in the first pew on my side of the church, watching Val make her way to me with a bouquet of peonies clasped in her hands. Mom dabbed at her eyes, her joy for us genuine. Her boyfriend, a widower called Rick, who actually seemed like a decent guy, sat at her side as her date.

  Wells stood at my side as my best man. Cherry sat next to Rick, a big smile on her face. She and Val got along great. But I knew they would.

  And on Val’s side was Mindy in her Maid of Honor dress. Her boy Xander in the second pew from the front on the bride’s side.

  In the front pew sat Caroline, Jim, and Val’s grandparents.

  The relationship between the Fairchilds and their daughter might never be easy, but I was trying to help repair old wounds and it meant something that they were here and that they were happy for us.

  I felt them all. Cheering us on. But I only had eyes for her.

  This nervous energy had been rushing through me for days. Probably months.

  Valentine had talked me into waiting almost a year before we married.

  A fucking year.

  It was like a lifetime.

  Now it was finally here.

  And that nervous energy inside me finally relaxed as I held my wife’s hands and the reverend announced, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

  I gazed into the warm, kind, beautiful dark eyes of Valentine Fairchild Green and whispered, “You happy, Cupid?”

  She grinned, her dimples popping with joy she couldn’t contain. Val threw her arms around me, pulling me into a hug that made me stumble, and we laughed as we held each other tight.

  It was the only answer I needed.

  About the Author

  Samantha Young is a New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author from Scotland. She’s been nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Author and Best Romance for her international bestseller On Dublin Street. On Dublin Street was Samantha’s first adult contemporary romance series and has sold in thirty-one countries.

  Visit Samantha Young online at

  www.authorsamanthayoung.com

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