Page 61 of To Dance with a Devil

“I like the sound of that very much,” she whispered, her eyes full of everything he wanted to see there. “And I love you too, Jerome. I have from the start, as you well know. But….”

Jerome waited, wondering anxiously what came after that but.

“Can we concentrate on the lots of children, please?”

He grinned down at her, relieved. “Now, you mean?”

“Of course now,” she said, sliding her hand under his trousers.

“Bonnie,” he groaned as she caressed him. “You’re wicked, and insatiable, and I will be a husk of a man if you keep this up.”

“Oh, you’ll survive,” she said with confidence as he grew hard once more beneath her touch. “And you love me for my wickedness, you just said so. You can’t take it back.”

“I do, and I wouldn’t,” he admitted, sighing and closing his eyes in bliss before opening them again with a start. “Oh, God,” he said alarmed.

Bonnie’s hand stilled. “What?” she asked, staring down at him. “What is it?”

“Oh, good Lord,” he groaned. “I’ve just realised. We… we might have daughters… like you!”

Bonnie snorted with mirth at his obvious consternation.

“It’s not funny,” Jerome objected. “They might get caught up with… with—”

“A wicked fellow like you?” Bonnie suggested. “Perhaps,” she said, her tone soothing as she pushed him back down again. “But I’ll make sure any daughter of mine knows how to deal with such a troublesome creature.”

“That is not reassuring,” he grumbled, as Bonnie moved over him and kissed his neck and his jaw, working along to his mouth.

“They’ll be fine,” she soothed him. “Because they’ll know they are loved, that they belong, and that their papa will murder any man who dares to treat them unkindly.”

“I would,” he said, meaning it, and feeling a swell of emotion at the thought of a daughter, with laughing green eyes and dark, lustrous curls like her mama. “And I will. I love you, Bonnie.”

“I know,” she said. “I love you too, with all my heart.”

And she made a point of showing him just how much that was.