She laughed. “Smart vagina. I should have listened to it. It knows a thing or two about dicks.”
“I’m insanely jealous of that guy. Do you realize that?”
“Why?” she asked. “He’s just a friend.”
“A friend who fucked you before I did. A friend you loved before you loved me.”
Her eyebrows crinkled together as she stared at her plate and took several small bites.
“I’ll always love him, Eric.”
His heart wrenched in two.
“But it’s nothing like the love I feel for you,” she continued. “He’s just a friend.” She shrugged. “Apparently he was always just a friend and I wanted it to be more, not because I felt more for him, but because...” She tapped her fork against her plate, still not looking at him. “Because it made sense. It was a logical relationship, not a passionate one. I never felt as if my world would end if Isaac was no longer in my life. I never got giddy with happiness just looking at him. I never thought I’d die if he didn’t fuck me immediately. I never felt as if he completed me. Complemented me, yes, but he never completed me. Never made me feel whole, as if everything that was missing in my life was wrapped up in a perfect package and delivered directly to my heart.”
She finally met Eric’s eyes.
“Isaac never made me feel for even an instant the way you make me feel every moment since I met you, Eric. He’s not your competition, he’s lost somewhere in your shadow. So don’t be jealous. There is nothing for you to be jealous of. The love I feel for Isaac is friendship, that’s all it ever was. I just never realized what it was until I had real love. With you.”
“I’ll never be jealous of that douchebag again,” Eric said, too overwhelmed with emotion to say anything more meaningful.
Rebekah laughed. “Good.”
“But I am glad he’s leaving the continent.” Maybe a lion would eat him.
Rebekah rolled her eyes and shook her head. “He’s not a threat to you, Eric.”
“I know. I just like him better not being a threat halfway around the world.”
“You’d like him once you got to know him,” Rebekah said.
Eric doubted that, but he let it drop. He didn’t want to talk about Isaac. Now that his belly was full, he was ready to do a bit more celebrating with his bride. “Are you ready for dessert?”
“I’d love some cake,” she said.
“You’re having big hard sausage for dessert. Remember?”
“If I promise to be very good—having learned my lesson after your brutal spanking.” She smirked at him. “Can I have two desserts tonight?”
“Of course.” He slipped from his chair and leaned over to kiss her before taking their plates to the kitchen and cutting two mostly intact pieces of birthday cake.
When he returned to her, she was staring down at her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger. She had that expression on her face. The one of sad longing she wore when she thought about not being able to have a baby.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, slipping into the seat beside her this time.
She shook her head slightly. “Everything is perfect,” she said and smiled up at him.
“We’ll adopt a baby,” he said. “We can head to an agency right now if you want.”
She huffed on a half laugh. “How did you know I was thinking about babies?”
“You have a thinking-about-babies expression,” he said. “I’ve seen it frequently enough that I recognize it.”
“I was just thinking I’ll never be able to pass this ring down to my children,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Well, because even if we adopt a dozen of them—”
“A dozen of them?”
She patted his hand. “They won’t be blood.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “What’s more important? Blood or love?”
When she paused in reflection, he took her hand and squeezed it. “Love is more important,” he said. “Love. I have no blood ties, but I have you. It’s far more important.”
She nodded. “You’re right. I’m being foolish. I just… Sometimes I…”
He stroked the silky hair at the back of her head. “I know. You never have to say it. I know you feel you’ve lost something irreplaceable, but there are kids out there who’ve lost something irreplaceable too. They’ve lost the love of their mothers. You can give them that. It will mean everything to them. Trust me on that.”
She gave him a rather watery smile and wrapped her arms around him. “I love you,” she whispered.
“Eat your cake,” he said after a long moment.
“And then sausage,” she said with a giggle.
“You didn’t think I’d forget that, did you?”
He won a point in the living room, when Rebekah sucked her dessert into submission on the sofa. Rebekah’s point on the stairs came easily—literally—and they agreed to call their tryst against the tile wall in the master bathroom shower a tie. They hadn’t even started on the first of their six bedrooms when Rebekah called a timeout.
“Can we finish tomorrow?” she asked, leaning against the inside of the bathroom door, a fluffy white towel wrapped around her exhausted body.
“Are you giving up?” he asked.
“If I give up, do you win?” she asked wearily.
He rubbed the water from his sopping hair with a towel as he watched her. “Yep.”