It’s safe to say my proposal floors her. She cries again, and they’re tears of happiness. When we make it back to my room, I kiss them away, strip off all her clothes, then mine, too.

She’s naked before me, and it occurs to me that we’ve only made love once before without our clothes on. We’ve always been rushing, risking, tempting fate. The last time we were chest-to-chest, skin to skin, was on our first wedding night a few months ago.

And I don’t care what the courts say about marriages being dissolved. Not existing. Never happening.

We happened, and we’re happening again, so I join her on the bed. When I enter her, we both groan. Electricity shoots through me. It feels like pure bliss as I sink into her, savoring the way we fit. She moans happily and meets my gaze. It’s intense, the way we look at each other. The way we want to look into each other’s eyes.

“Can we do this every night?” she asks in a sexy purr as she wraps those gorgeous legs around my ass.

“Every morning, too,” I say on a thrust, and we move together. “Want to know why?”

“Why?” she asks, as she arches her spine, her lips falling open.

“Because I love fucking my wife,” I say with a throaty groan. “And I fucking love my wife.”

I’m rewarded with a wild cry of pleasure, then another, and it doesn’t take her long at all to fly high. Pretty soon, I’m doing that thing she loves—coming loud and hard. I might even roar.

I’d like to say we spend the night riding the rollercoaster or the Ferris wheel. But nope. We go horizontal again. All night long. It’s as perfect as a wedding night can be. And I’m not just saying that because we order an Oreo sundae from room service sometime in the middle of the night.

But that is good, too. And I do like Oreos.

Epilogue

The ladder rests against the bright white wall in our home. Natalie balances carefully on the top rung, hanging a sign. I suppose I could do this for her, but she insisted, and the woman really does love getting her hands on the tools.

She’s good with all of them, but she’s particularly good with one of mine, if you get my drift.

Anyway, here’s the ladder. See what I did there? I didn’t leave you hanging. I promised a dirty ladder story, and I’m going to deliver.

She’s on the ladder because she knows I like this view. Who am I kidding? I love this view. Perched on the edge of the couch in our living room, I savor the sight in front of me—my Natalie, in a little pink skirt that swishes around her thighs.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“It’s hard to tear myself away.”

She laughs then raises the hammer and taps, taps, taps until the new sign is up on the wall. We have a matching one in our office. It says Hammer & Hammer Carpentry & Construction. We changed the name. Yes, we. Because it’s ours. Everything is ours.

I’ve learned you need to give a little in a relationship. Or, I should say, give a lot. Natalie was willing to give up her livelihood for me. I couldn’t let her do that. Instead, I found another solution. She stayed, and we run the business together as husband and wife. I still do the building; I’m the carpenter, after all. But she’s the magic. She’s the glue. She’s made this business thrive. And it’s hers as much as it’s mine. We own it together. Sometimes, she slings on a tool belt and helps finish a job, but we’ve expanded finally, and we have employees who are reliable and show up for work.

Natalie manages it all. She makes it happen every day. “I’ve always loved this job. I never thought of myself as just an assistant,” she’d said when I pitched her on my proposal after our official Vegas wedding.

“You’ve always been so much more. You’ve made everything at our company better.”

“And I’ll keep doing that. But I’m still teaching my classes at night,” she’d said.

“I would expect nothing less from the woman who can kick my ass.”

Now, she turns around, facing me, one hand holding onto the top rung as she shows me the sign—our business, our marriage, us. “How does it look?”

“Like it was meant to be. I love everything about it, especially the way those two names go together.”

She has my heart, my body, my business, my home. Sharing the business with her barely scratches the surface of all she has given me—this unconditional love. Oh, and obviously Natalie lives with me now, which means Josie’s looking for a roommate, but that’s a story for another time.

For now, I’ve got my woman to tend to. I walk over to the ladder, climb a step, push up her skirt, and pull her panties to the side.

I kiss her and lick her and taste her until she’s moaning and groaning, and sighing sexily.

That’s my cue to keep her safe. “C’mon. Take my hand,” I say softly, and I guide her down the ladder, scoop her up, and set her on the couch, where she spreads her legs, and I devour her sweetness.

Look, ladders are fun for foreplay, but when you’re into risky sex, you’ve got to know which risks to take. Can’t have my wife falling off a ladder because I make her come so hard.

And that’s precisely what I do as she goes wild on the couch against my mouth. Then I make love to her.

Afterward, she smiles woozily at me and says, “Should we go get ready for our wedding?”

Yeah, we’re those people. We’re the ones who got married in Vegas, came home, and threw another wedding party for our friends and family. We like marrying each other.