BO DRAGGED ME DOWN THE hall and shoved me inside the locker room before I could get into another brawl. I barely had time to look around before Noah had pulled me into his arms. His mouth was fastened on mine before I could draw another breath. Who needed air? I had Noah Jackson. As his lips moved ravenously against mine, thoughts of air and jerks in suits and even the fight were replaced with images of Noah taking me right here and now. I started climbing him like a tree.

When I felt him wince against me, the fight scene came back, and I immediately drew away. “Your face, Noah!” He tried to dodge my hands and come in for another kiss, but I wouldn’t let him. “Stop. Let me look at you.”

He stood there for a moment while I took an inventory of his injuries. A big cut across his eye had been glued together. There were bruises on both cheeks and his nose looked a little crooked on the end. He’d showered off the sweat and blood, but I could see bruises on his chest and stomach. I traced one finger over the dips of his ridged abdomen, stopping at the top of his towel, and he sucked in a breath.

“Oh no, did I hurt you?” I snatched my hand away, but Noah pulled it back against him.

“Baby, I’m so high on adrenaline right now, I can’t feel pain anywhere except right here.” He patted the tented towel. “I need you so bad.” He scooped me against him, rucking up my skirt around my waist. Neither of us cared that we were likely ruining the delicate fabric, nor did we care when tiny pings sounded as sequins hit the floor, torn away by the rough caress of his hands. He carried me to a table barely stable enough to hold a paper cup and rested my butt on top of it.

“Gotta have you,” he growled, his large, bruised hands fumbled with my panties. His fingers were swollen. I grabbed one of them and led him over to the lone bench in the room.

“If you want this, let me lead this one time,” I said softly. Noah nodded eagerly. He sat down, and the action caused the towel to fall from his waist. His erection jutted up, red and engorged. I swallowed thickly at the thought of him inside me. Pulling down my panties, I laid them next to him.

Noah picked them up and pressed them to his face, inhaling the scent of me. Another time I would’ve been embarrassed, but right now, it turned me on. Every action he exerted showed me how much he wanted me. It was my turn now to show him how beloved he was.

Pushing my dress up to my waist, I climbed on top of Noah, placing a knee on either side of his hips. Before I could make the luscious descent onto his erection, Noah paused me with a hand around my waist. “You hot enough?” He slid a hand between my legs to test readiness. Shuddering, I gripped his shoulders as he stroked me lightly.

“Y-y-es,” I choked out.

“Just checking.” He sounded smug, but then I didn’t I care what he was thinking because he cupped my butt with one hand and carefully lowered me onto him. We both groaned, the sound echoing in the empty room.

Noah pulled down the fabric of my bodice and my bra until one ripe, swollen nipple popped out. He bent down and latched on, sucking as much of my breast and nipple into his mouth. His unoccupied hand was busy lifting out the other breast until the scoop neck of my dress was shoved as far down as possible and both breasts were exposed, pressed together by the constraints of the fabric.

“God fucking damn, look at this,” Noah said worshipfully. He pressed his face into the deep valley between my breasts and then began tonguing them all over, the tops, the v, and the nipples.

His hands moved to my hips and started lifting me up and down on his hard member. He swiveled his hips slightly, pushing me up and then releasing me to slide down. I clenched him tightly so that I could feel every ridge and pulsing vein. The motion made Noah grit his teeth in an effort to not come.

Everything else from the uncomfortable bumps on the terry cloth towel to the hard wooden bench faded away as I lost myself in the sensation of Noah’s touches all over my body. I took up the stroking motion, and he rubbed his swollen hands across my back, up to my shoulders, and down around my butt.

One hand crept to the front, and his thumb found my clit. A cry of intense pleasure rang out before I could stop it. Not wanting everyone and their cousin to hear us, I bit down on the fleshy pad of my hand, riding him faster and harder. His grunts and the sounds of our flesh meeting each other were mingled with the creaking of the wooden bench.

“You’re everything to me, Grace,” Noah moaned against my neck. I was too far gone to say anything. With his thick, stiff dick rubbing against the front walls of my vagina and his thumb pressing against my clit, I shot off like a rocket, muffling my cries in my own hand. His own orgasm released right after mine, and I felt the hot jets of come coating me, which caused my own muscles to clamp down on him once more. He muffled the cries of his own satisfaction in my neck.

Knees weak, I collapsed against him. His arms came up like steel bands and locked me in place, and we rocked there silently for a few moments until I heard a knock on the door. “You guys should probably come out now,” Bo called, humor evident in his words. Apparently our attempts at being quiet weren’t very successful. Noah lifted me up and then set me back on the bench. He carefully wiped me off between my legs and then himself.

“We’re going to get pregnant if we aren’t more careful,” I mumbled.

Noah stilled in the act of throwing the towel in the corner. “Or we could just wing it.” His eyes glowed with a strong emotion that could’ve have been love or want or both.

“Or we could just wing it,” I replied softly. His return smile was brilliant. We’d handle whatever life threw at us whether it was bad professors, bigger fighters, or even unplanned pregnancies—because our love was stronger than all of those foes.

We dressed and Noah slipped the Christmas present I’d given him over my shoulders, covering my damaged dress.

“Is this why you accepted the gift without a fight? You figured I’d be wearing it most of the time.” I snuggled into the warmth, the scent of Noah surrounding me like an embrace.

He threw on his suit coat and pulled down the sleeves of his dress shirt so that the white cuffs just peeked out underneath the superfine wool. He looked utterly delicious.

“No, I accepted the gift because I’m done being a douche about the money thing.” He grabbed the lapels of the winter coat between his fists and dragged me close to him. “I’m going to get used to being a kept man. I’ll expect gifts regularly.”

From another person, this statement would sound avaricious, but from Noah it was a sign of his acceptance, not just of me, but of everything that I came from. It was a sign of his true surrender to our love.

EPILOGUE

Noah

Many years later

OUR PLAN TO WING IT lasted only until Grace’s senior year and that was kind of a minor miracle given how lackadaisical we were about birth control. Pills made her sick and I hated using a condom after being inside her without barriers. Some higher entity was probably protecting us from our own stupidity for a while. Professor Billings left Central after the spring semester following the New Year’s fight. Lana and I had come forward and that opened a floodgate of student complaints. He was out before spring break hit.

I was glad that I graduated a year ahead of her because ironically I had more time after I was done with school. I’d sold my franchises to the manager Grace had hired for me. While they turned a profit, they weren’t making enough passive money. My attention was better focused on my endorsement deals, my fighting, and my woman.

Between training and reading stock portfolios, I had time to walk a pregnant Grace to class and it was a good thing too because the rounder she got, the more easy she would cry. Everything tipped her off from commercials to greeting cards. One day on the way to class, she broke down because a squirrel was struggling with nuts. If I hadn’t been there, I think she’d have spent the whole day collecting nuts for the animal. Her doctor explained that her newfound teariness was due to the excess of hormones in her system. But tears were the last thing on Grace’s mind when she was birthing our first born, Nathan.

“I wish we were in the Octagon right now,” Grace bit out between pants of breath.

Wiping a cool cloth over her brow, I tried to soothe here. “Shh, honey, don’t talk. Just breathe.” And then I panted like we’d be taught in class and smiled at her.

She whipped her hand around so fast, it was just a blur of motion and plucked the cloth out of my grip. Tossing it aside the room, she gave me a look that would have killed a platoon. “You pant at me one more time and the next thing that gets ripped away from your body is your dick.” She ended the sentence with a high pitched scream of pain and then squeezed my fingers so tight I thought one of them might fall off.

My opponents in the cage had never inflicted as much pain as Grace did during Nathan’s birth. But it was all worth it, even from Grace’s point of view. So worth it she willingly had another kid. She’d never been sexier than when she was round and full our babies. We’d have had enough to field of baseball team if Grace hadn’t had such a difficult time in labor. She was too important to lose and I made her promise we would stop after Nicholas.

Marriage was full of compromises, big ones and little ones. The big ones were agreeing not to have more kids. Little ones were me taking control of Grace, Josh, and Lana’s trust funds when they turned twenty-five. That combined Bo’s money and his girlfriend, AnnMarie’s sharp mind, we formed Freedom Funds, a hedge fund that started out with ten million and grew to a billion dollars in a little over ten years.

I’d bought that house on the North Shore not too far away from where Grace grew up but ours was much smaller. That was another small compromise. Initially I wanted the biggest house with the biggest lawn and the biggest dock until she convinced me that no one was doubting the size of my dick anymore except, maybe, me. So we had a smaller house but my boat was still massive, as was my dick.

But with my family around me, I knew that even if I had only two cents to rub together, I’d still be a rich man. It wasn’t the lack of money that made my life miserable growing up. It was the lack of love. My dad had lost his Grace and because of that, his whole outlook on life had been snuffed out and he hadn’t been strong enough to pull himself together for his son.

Huffing a bit, Grace slid into the seat beside me. I tucked her under my shoulder and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “All set?” I asked.

She nodded, tears pooling in her eyes as the wedding march started. We stood together, hands clasped. Everyone else watched the bride walk down the aisle, but I looked at my two strong sons standing side by side at the altar. My heart nearly burst with pride at the sight of them and tears pricked my own eyes as I saw the love shining out of my eldest son’s face as he watched his beloved come to him.

We’d never had a little girl of our own so Charlotte, Bo and AnnMarie’s daughter, had become the girl of our hearts. And today, Charlotte would become a legal part of our family. It was worth shedding a few tears over.

Need more Noah and Grace? Read how they first fell in love in Undeclared. Even better, sign up for the Jen Frederick newsletter to read the love story of Charlotte and Nathan.

About Jen Frederick

Jen Frederick is the USA Today Bestselling author of The Woodlands and the Amazon #1 Romantic Suspense title, Last Hit, written in collaboration with Jessica Clare. Sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on all your favorite characters at http://jenfrederick.com. You can also find her on Twitter @JenSFred or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJenFrederick.

Read on for an excerpt from Unspoken, Book 2 in The Woodlands series. Unraveled, Book 3 in The Woodlands series will be released on January 20, 2014.

Unspoken Excerpt

Copyright © 2013 by Jen Frederick

All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Chapter One

BO

“TAMPONS SLOWING YOU DOWN THIS morning?” I taunted the young businessman who’d volunteered to spar with me this morning. We’d been dancing around each other for the last five minutes. I wasn’t here to carefully gauge the length of his reach or the power of his jab. I wanted him to hit me, and I wanted to hit him back.

My smear on his manhood worked better than a fist to his gut. He jerked out of whatever fantasy he was concocting of being the next king of the Octagon and rushed me. I waited, slid slightly to the side, and then kneed him in the ribs. As he was bending over from the impact, I brought up a left uppercut and then a right punch. He crumpled like a tin can at a recycling center.

As he lay face down at my feet, it occurred to me I’d made a big strategic error. My third of the morning. I was a slow learner. I looked up to see Noah Jackson shaking his head at me. Noah was my best friend, Marine battle buddy, and roommate. He knew me better than anyone else.