Work In Progress (Red Lipstick Coalition #3) - Staci Hart Page 0,42
words like love and honor and forever.
And the girl in the mirror did the same.
My hands rested in his as the officiant closed the ceremony, and electric warmth spread from my rib cage out. My eyes were on his. His were on the officiant. And then the words were said, the words that could be my undoing.
“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride.”
He turned to me with a smile, shifting everything—his body, the universe—his big hands slipping into my hair, cupping my neck, thumbs on my cheeks. The warmth of his body radiated through his beautiful suit, through the lace of my dress. And I closed my eyes, felt his breath on my parted, waiting lips only a heartbeat before his lips pressed to mine.
The shock of sensation from the point of contact shot my lungs open in a draw of breath that breathed him. How could his lips be both hard and soft? How could they demand and submit in the same motion? How did he taste so sweet, so male, so succulent? How could it be that, with the simple brush of his mouth against mine, I could find myself boneless and breathless in his arms?
I had no answers. I had no thoughts of the past or the future, of my fate or the world, or anything beyond Thomas Bane’s lips and hands and arms.
The kiss ended, catching me unaware—I lurched forward fractionally at the loss of his matching force. My lids peeled open to find him smiling down at me, his smile sideways and roguish.
I smiled back, drunk and reeling from nothing other than his presence.
He took my hand and hooked it on his arm, ushering me down the aisle. I hadn’t even noticed several photographers. The sight of them sobered me.
It wasn’t real. I knew it. I did. It was just that it felt so very real. The dress. The flowers. The chapel. Tommy. Part of me, the part that still believed in fairy tales, felt a deep, aching, irrational loss that it wasn’t.
I wondered in earnest if our pretense wouldn’t blur the lines between us.
But it was too late to wonder, too late to back away. Because the pen was in my hand, scrawling my name on a marriage certificate. A contract, legally binding me to the man at my side.
And as I watched him sign as I had, I begged my heart to let my head handle the arrangement. My head would build the fences, the boundaries. It would maintain the separation.
I only hoped my heart would listen.
Challenge Accepted
Tommy
I stood at the bar in our suite before two crystal glasses and a bottle of scotch, wondering just what I’d gotten myself into.
The lights were low, the vast majority of illumination coming from the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Bellagio’s fountain and the strip beyond. And Amelia took a seat on the couch somewhere behind me in a whisper of tulle and a quiet sigh.
I’d been in dozens of fake relationships, tens of public fights and breakups, and even a handful of accidental public hookups in the name of publicity. But never had I considered involving someone who didn’t benefit mutually from the deal.
My offer to her didn’t seem like enough, not in exchange for what she’d done for me.
The thought made me feel like a crook, which set a blazing instinct to protect her flaming in my ribs. She’d entrusted me with her care and safety, and that was not a responsibility I took lightly.
Watching her walk down the aisle, the picture of loveliness, of absolute chaste purity, of sweet innocence…she had disarmed me, stripped me to the bolts. It was inexplicable. I told myself it was merely the illusion of it all—the dress, the chapel, the words spoken that bound us together. There was some magic in those words. Once spoken, they’d invoked a bond I felt in the very depth of my heart, something unshakable, some sorcery or spell cast that entwined her fate with mine.
I brushed the thought aside as I poured the scotch, picked up the glasses, and turned to face my bride.
Her eyes were on her phone and fingers as she typed. So I set her drink on the table in front of her and took the armchair.
Amelia glanced up, her eyes colored with trepidation and relief, a strange and beautiful combination on her. She picked up her glass and cupped it in her hands.