Page 88 of Her Intense Protector

* * *

The debrief was taking for fucking ever. Ezio was ready to jump out of his skin. Kane looked over at him and smirked. The fucker knew he had a ring in his pocket. The whole damn team knew about it. He’d spent the whole damn time in California mentally going over his proposal, and Leo had finally called him on the fact that his head wasn’t in the game. So, he’d confessed.

Leo had howled with laughter.

“Told you that you were tagged and bagged like the rest of them.”

“Again, I want to reiterate, I do not like that term,” Asher had glowered at him.

So here Ezio sat in a conference room at Little Creek with Max droning on about something that he could care less about.

“…and Ezio could care less. Isn’t that right, Stark?”

“Huh?”

“You’re useless to me. Just get the hell out of here and propose to your woman.”

Ezio looked around the room and saw the entire team grinning at him. Max had the biggest grin of all. “I said get out of here. We know you have the ring. Get Samantha to say yes, so that next week you can be of some use,” Max admonished.

“You got it.”

Ezio double-timed it out the door, out of the building, and into the parking lot. Before he went home, he had one important stop to make.

* * *

Two minutes to go before the next batch of cookies were due out of the oven, and Samantha heard the garage door open. That was weird because Ezio always just parked out front and came in the front door. Who cared though?

He’s home!

She looked down at the Nineteen-Fifties style dress, pearls, heels, and white apron. Heck, she even had her hair up. Perfect. She grinned. She knew her man; he’d like this much better than a French maid costume, considering he always had a thing for June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver.

She pulled the cookie sheet out of the oven with the oven mitt and turned just as the kitchen door from the garage opened.

He stopped and his mouth fell open. “Holy fuck.”

“That’s not your line. Your line is, ‘Honey I’m home’.”

“Nope, I’m sticking to holy fuck.” He walked up to her. “You’re fucking gorgeous. Put down the cookies, Babe, so I can get a kiss.”

She put down the cookie sheet on the stove and he carefully pulled her into his arms. Ezio was still careful because he was still worried about her arm, the silly man. God, he looked so good, smelled so good, and then he started to kiss her. All reasonable thought went out the window.

Ezio seemed intent on devouring her. It was sublime. He parted her lips and he ravaged her mouth, his tongue thrusting. Her senses reeled. She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on for dear life as he took her to a hidden place of heat and desire.

He pulled back and looked at her, his eyes an intense green. She blinked and realized that she was sitting on the kitchen island and her hair was flowing all around her. The man had been busy. She gave him a contented smile.

“You like my outfit.”

“I fucking love your outfit,” he grinned. “You spoil me.”

“The cookies?”

“Everything. Every last thing about you. Who you are. Having you in my life has spoiled me rotten.”

“Well, that’s a good thing.” She smoothed her hands over his white T-shirt. “You spoil me too. Let’s go upstairs where you can really spoil me.”

Ruff. Ruff. Ruff.

“What’s that?” Samantha asked as she cocked her head toward the garage. “Wait a minute, I thought Tabitha went to the therapy dog trainer.”