Page 11 of Professional Liar
“Hey, that’s your wife you’re talking about.”
He leaned in and kissed me, not gently like the ceremony. His hand curled around the back of my neck, and he ravaged my lips with all the pent up energy of a man starved. His teeth scraped my own. His tongue took control of my mouth, dragging me in deeper. Every bit of fear I’d succumbed to only an hour ago drifted away.
Pierce, my Pierce.I fell into him, let him grind me in by the hips with his free hand. Despite his ferocity, he handled my dress carefully, and it chipped another chunk of ice loose in my chest. I broke the kiss and sat back into the cradle his hands created.
“We are getting out of the car in ten minutes. We need to be presentable for the pictures,” I said, a little breathless.
“Do we have to do pictures?” His tired puppy face made me smile.
“The three thousand dollars we paid the photographer says we do. Besides, this marriage needs to check out, or else the attorney might not release my inheritance.”
He tensed, and his face blanked like the slow descent of shades over a sunny window. “This marriage is real.” He said it flat. Dead. Empty.
I knew I couldn’t backtrack from my big mouth, so I kept moving forward. “I know this is real. I just meant, people get pictures, so we need to get pictures too.”
“Normal people,” he echoed, face still carefully clear.
I wrapped my hands around his neck and rested my forehead on his. “You know what I mean. Please don’t make my words more than they are. I haven’t eaten anything yet today, I can barely breathe in this corset, and I don’t have the energy for a fight.”
He tilted his head back to meet my eyes. “Corset?”
Heat tracked up into my cheeks. Fun lingerie hardly pinged on our risqué radar, and yet, the quiet innocence of the question burned my ears. “Yes, corset, and if you’re a good boy, I might let you see it.”
He started sifting under layers of fabric, and I slapped his hand. “Not now. Pictures, remember?”
The limo stopped, and he groaned. “More people.”
Our mutual distaste for people as a collective was something I always loved about him.
The car door opened, and the driver stuck his hand in to help me climb out. There wasn’t much give in the tight confines of my skirt, so exiting wasn’t graceful. Pierce stood on the curb buttoning his jacket when I finally got upright.
Once I stood with a huff, he held out his elbow. A distinctly gentlemanly behavior for a man who was decidedly not. I curled my hand around his arm, and he led me to the reception hall’s garden for pictures.
The photographer was a plump woman in her mid-thirties. She wore a black dress and a variety of straps around her neck. She stepped forward, clutching a serious camera in her hands. “Ready?” she asked brightly.
I stopped at the edge of the dew-strewn grass. I barely had time to formulate a plan for the dress when Pierce lifted me easily and continued walking. I grabbed his neck, praying he wouldn’t drop me, knowing he wouldn’t unless I said something stupid. The snap of her camera began as I peered up at him. The hard lines of his jaw, the gray-black swirl of ink tracking up his neck. Once he reached the cobblestone in the middle of where she wanted us, he put me on my feet, balancing me until I nodded.
“I like the shoes,” he whispered as he turned to smile at the camera.
The black Louboutins didn’t match the creamy off white of my dress, and neither did the red soles, but they were my mothers, and I couldn’t fathom wearing anything else on my wedding day.
The photographer came around, moving the train of my dress, positioning appendages and faces in an indifferent and efficient manner. It didn’t take long for her to announce she’d finished. Pierce picked me up again and carried me back over the grass. More camera clicks as we walked away. He didn’t put me down this time, but held me all the way back to the limo.
The driver shut the door behind us and wandered off down the sidewalk. I shifted, leather creaking, to face Pierce. “Shouldn’t we be getting inside?”
“I think we have a few minutes.”
“Oh?”
“We need to discuss a few things.”
A knot tied my lungs together, simultaneously robbing me of air and instilling a pang in my chest. “Sure, what did you want to talk about?”
He ran his thumb down the edge of my cheek. “You are so beautiful.”
The knot loosened slightly. “Thank you. So are you.”
“My family can be difficult. I felt I should warn you. Once they start drinking, it will get worse. If anyone fights, I’ll have my guys throw them out. Just ignore them.”
