Callum laid me gently on his dark bed before standing to close his bedroom door. “Are you comfortable, Mrs. Tate?”

“Very much, Mr. Tate, thank you,” I told him.

He lowered himself next to me and kissed me like there was no tomorrow. “I’m so unbelievably grateful to be lying next to you, wife. You feel like a dream to me.”

“Maybe it is a dream. Maybe we’re not even awake right now. Maybe you’re a figment of my imagination and this entire ride has been a trip down unconscious lane. Maybe I’m still in my coma,” I contemplated, irrational fear creeping up my healing spine.

Callum kissed me deeply. “Does that feel like a dream?” He asked.

I smiled, inches from his lips. “No, it most certainly does not.” He began to kiss me again but I stopped him. “Help me up,” I told him.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said seductively.

“Yes, I need, uh, to shower.”

“What? No, you don’t.” He buried his face into my neck and inhaled, kicking up the perfume that laid dormant on my skin. His cologne and my own fragrance mixed well, making me feel faint. The two mixed oh so perfectly together. “You smell amazing,” he said.

“Callum, please? This is a big deal for me. I want it to be perfect.”

“Harper Tate, you’re here, it’s already perfect.”

“Please, I want a shower, babe. Just help me up.”

“Can I watch?” He asked in all seriousness, making me laugh. His eyes twinkled lightly.

“If you want.”

Callum helped me up and brought me to my room. “I guess this really will be the guest room now?”

He chuckled, his chest shaking with the effort. “I guess so.”

I slowly turned the water on, my back still slightly sore. The hot water would help get rid of any stiffness I had and that was the real reason I was showering right then. It wasn’t ideal my first time being just after I was recovering from a broken back but I couldn’t complain, not really. Callum made himself comfortable on the marble counter of my sink as I began to undress. He slid to the edge of the marble, his right knee bouncing up and down.

I stopped unbuttoning my jeans and peered his direction. “Don’t even think about it. You stay right there.”

Callum groaned into his fist. “God, you’re making this hard on me, Harper.”

“Go into the bedroom then if you can’t handle it.”

“No, no. I can handle it. I-I’ll be good. I promise,” he remedied with little boy-like excuses.

I laughed.

I shimmied out of my panties, not quite being able to bend all the way over, then stepped out of them before turning towards the shower. Before I knew it, Callum was at my back, running his hands up my sides, up my neck and back down, all the while kissing my shoulder.

“Callum,” I playfully admonished.

“Fine,” he grated before forcing himself to sit back down.

I tied my hair up, having just washed it that morning, and stepped into the water. It felt amazing on my back and I sighed at the relief it was giving my poor muscles.

When it felt like all the kinks were worked out of my back, I poured a generous amount of white ginger infused body wash and began working it over my legs and over the rest of my body. I turned around and found that Callum was leaning against the wall, the shower curtain pulled slightly back so he could see me. His eyes looked faintly glazed over. I smiled innocently at him. He flirtatiously smiled back, the grin touching his eyes. He turned his head trying to stay cool and rid himself of his shit-eating grin.

“It won’t work,” I told him, making him smile even wider. He coughed into a fist and righted his expression only to lose it again, making me laugh. “You’re adorable.”

“And you’re sexy as hell, Harper. Please tell me you aren’t going to shave.”

“Not needed,” I told him. “I did that this morning.”

“Then what are you we still doing here?” He asked.

“I’m rinsing the soap from my body,” I teased, having more fun than I thought I’d ever have teasing Callum.

“You’re done,” he insisted. “You’re rinsed. If your back wasn’t so newly healed, I’d have already tossed you over my shoulder.”

“Callum!”

“Get out.”

“So bossy. Sheesh,” I teased. I stepped out of the shower and towel dried off. “Go back to your bedroom. Get comfortable. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He hesitantly obeyed me, walking backwards from my room. I shut the door in his face and almost laughed out loud at his stunned expression. I put on deodorant, spritzed myself with a little Wild Bluebell and paced slowly in front of my drawers. Don’t be a coward, Harper, I told myself. It’s for him, just put it on.

On my wedding night, Cherry had passed me a little discretely wrapped box through my overnight bag. When I unwrapped it that night, I blushed like a school girl at its contents. She’d bought me a sweet, little baby doll nightie. At the time, I was so incredibly embarrassed but now it seemed like the perfect thing to wear. Huh. Maturity. Who’d have thought.

I slipped it over my body, reveling at how soft it felt against my skin. I wrapped my robe around myself, shook my hair out, applied a little mascara and lip gloss and opened Callum’s door. Seductively, I leaned against the door jamb, preparing to shed my robe but he wasn’t there. Jeez, you’re bad at this, Harper. I closed my door and the room went pitch black.

Slivers of lit the frame of his bathroom door. I listened for a moment. The shower was running. Laughing, I slid my robe off and laid it across his reading chair in the corner of his room. I crawled over onto the bed, leaning my back against the pillows at his headboard, stupidly shifting my body this way and that, trying to decide which was sexier. Nothing was sexy enough, I’d decided and thought about surprising him in the shower.

I knee walked to the edge of the bed, trying not to make too much of an effort but just before I was going to spin my leg down and off the bed, Callum opened the door, steam spilling out beneath him. His hair dripped onto his broad shoulders. I sucked in a breath in total disbelief that the impressive specimen standing before me was actually my husband.

He stopped short when he saw me and his mouth dropped open, matching my own. “Oh. My. God.” He said, sauntering over to me, his towel still around his waist, and stood in front of my kneeling form at the corner of the bed.

He bent his head to mine and kissed the sense out of me. If you’d asked me my name, I’d have told you wrong. He had that kind of ability and he was mine, maybe it was because he was mine and because I loved him the way I did that his spell could cast itself over me with such ferocity. He moaned into my throat, causing a pool of heat to settle in my lower belly.

He gently laid me on my back, being careful not to bend me or put any strain on my back. Callum explored me with his hands and the heat that spread into my belly spilled over every inch of my skin, making me flush from head to toe.

Callum made love to me for the first time as husband and wife right there on those dark sheets, in that dark, cool room.

And it was the most amazing experience I’d ever had in my entire life. Both our pasts escaped our conscious that night. It was just the two of us, together, desperately in love with the other.

His body fit mine like a glove.

Callum was right. He was so worth the wait.

Epilogue

Believe

Six Years Later...

Harper

“Callum Tate,” the man announced over the loud speaker.

I watched my husband take the stage to receive his diploma and stood to cheer him with the rest of our group of friends.

Freddy and Sam sat a few seats to my right, spinning their noise makers and jumping up and down. I sat between Cherry and Charlie, a husband and wife now themselves. Charlie stood, whooping and hollering with me. I couldn’t really expect poor Cherry to stand since she was seven months pregnant with their second baby. She put up a good show from her chair, though. I smiled down at her. She beamed back up at me, her eyes glassy with hormones but mostly pride. I couldn’t help myself and bent to kiss her cheek, making her outright cry in happiness. Tie-Dye Tom, my closest friend next to Cherry, sat next to her crying like a little baby.

“I feel like a mama bird,” he said through choking sobs, making me laugh out loud. I could only shake my head at him when he smacked my cheek with a tear soaked kiss.

SO sat next to Tom, smooth as ever, though his moist eyes may have betrayed him a little bit, not that I’d say anything. He winked at me. Our secret, I told him without words. Ames sat next to Charlie, yelling at the top of his lungs Callum’s name, telling him how proud he was of him.

“I can’t believe it!” He yelled to me, eyes bright with happiness.

Kelly, Cross, Marty, Aaron, Nat, Jared and Josiah were all there as well, scattered in our row, shouting and dancing around like the goofs we all were. I studied the people around me, knowing they were my family made my heart nearly burst from happiness.

I was complete and very much unafraid. Unafraid because John Bell had been found dead two weeks after Callum and I returned home. He’d thrown himself off the pier, his body turned up on the shore after a two and a half month man hunt. Suicide. He took the coward’s way out. Not that that surprised me. He was an incredible coward. I barely thought of him anymore. Barely.

Callum turned toward the crowd after accepting, searching the sea of faces for mine. I stood on my chair and waved at him. He stopped, smiled and held out the hand sign for ‘I love you’. I sent it back to him along with a kiss. He caught it and pretended to put it in a little folded bag, stuffing it into a non-existent front pocket. “For later,” he’d always say. ‘I love you’, I mouthed, tears streaming down my face. He nodded and threw a fist in the air, making the crowd and our family especially go wild with excitement.

I had graduated with honors, thanks to my amazing Callum, four summers earlier and wrote several columns for a local paper. I worked from home which was nice, though I was forced to visit my editor once a week to catch up and go over whatever I was working on. It was the best job in the entire world but it could get better apparently because I had surprised Callum last night with the news that I earned a monthly featured column in a national magazine with a circulation of over two million.

Callum accepted an internship position the previous week at his first hospital of choice in the city. Yes, our lives were plugging away nicely in the direction of amazing. Nothing could make it better. Nothing. Well, almost nothing...

...If I could just get home to wrap his graduation gift.