Lovelight Farms (The Lovelight Series Book 1)

I’m going to love her in all the quiet ways, the slow ways, the loud and obnoxious ways. My heart has been moving steadily in that direction since she fell down the steps of a hardware store, right into my arms.

“Leaning on other people doesn’t make your achievements any less yours, La La.”

It’s perfect. She’s perfect. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Hoped for. Dreamed of. Her taste beneath my tongue is sweeter than that damned pumpkin pie left abandoned on the counter. The feel of her hot and wet and wanting is a god damned revelation. I don’t want to do anything else, ever.

“I want to wake up next to you every morning. I want to trip over boxes on my way out of the bedroom. I want to dance with you in the kitchen and I want—I want to keep holding your hand. Every day. I want to be your husband. Do you want to be my wife?”
The word sends a thrill through me. Wife.
But there’s another title that’s still my favorite. “Best friend, too?”
I feel him swallow behind me. His arms squeeze me even tighter. I cling back just as hard. His voice is rough when he says, “Always that.”

“I asked my mom for this ring two years ago. The same day you told me you loved me. I’ve been keeping it with the casserole dishes because I know you don’t even bother with those. Sometimes I carry it around with me in my pocket when we go out, just in case it feels right. But here’s the thing, Stella.” He blows out a deep breath. “It’s always felt right.”

“This isn’t what I had planned,” he says.
“You didn’t plan on hoisting me into a fireman’s carry for an evening walk?”
“Shockingly, no.”
I toy with the zipper of his coat. “I bet you had diagrams, didn’t you?”
Those lines by his eyes deepen. “I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of diagrams.”
“Spreadsheets, at the very least.”
“Oh, certainly.”

“We should have been doing that for years,” he murmurs, voice drowsy. He adjusts his position and groans. “Or maybe not. I’m not sure I would have survived it. I think you killed me. I’m dead.”
“You’ll be my favorite ghost of Christmas past, then.”

“Feels so good,” I mumble, wishing I could be more eloquent. Wishing I had the words to tell him how it feels like I’m breaking apart into tiny bits of stardust. I feel incandescent, iridescent, every fucking light on the Christmas tree blown out.

“It’s been like nine years of foreplay, La La,” Luka rises on his palms above me, arms flexing. “I don’t think once is gonna cut it.”

I reach up to the strap of my bra, ready to twist out of it and throw it in the general direction of my bedroom but he shakes his head, steps forward into the cradle of my legs and slips his forefinger underneath the delicate strap. It’s a plain, soft cotton, the same as the one I was wearing that night on the couch, but he looks at me like I’m in Italian lace.