"I'm crying on the inside, where you can't see it," Mike said without missing a beat, rolling his bright blue eyes as he wandered deeper into the house. Once upon a time Dahlia Palmer had been the beauty of their high school, the one every guy sprayed jizz across her yearbook picture. That face, that body. She'd been the rich bitch queen of the scene and to Mike, she'd begun as a conquest. He'd bragged to his buddies that he could nail any girl in school and for the vast majority of his point they knew he was right; despite being poor white trash, Mike got laid more than anyone else they knew. But Dahlia had fallen to his charms just like everyone else, after a little work and some fine-tuning on his part, and they had been a hot, if controversial, couple in high school.
Her parents had loathed him, and Mike was sure if her folks knew how to go about hiring an assassin he'd be dead already.
He'd stayed with Dahlia while he put himself through the trade school for an automotive repair degree, had stayed with her even to the point of putting a ring on her finger, because after a year or so he realized it was more than fucking and after two years he realized he ought to know a good thing when he saw it. He loved her, something that surprised even him.
And now here they were. Years later and still perfectly happy together almost all of the time.
"Lemme guess, they want you to come by and have some sweet potatoes but my invite got lost in the mail," he drawled, draping his arms around her hips when he was within reach of her. She'd kept her figure, something that still sort of surprised him if he was honest, and he bowed his head to give her a proper kiss, slow and welcoming and possessive. Everything Mike did involving Dahlia had that unspoken undercurrent of mine, that sense of urgent need and protectiveness that bordered on the edge of unnervingly intense.