Page 70 of Marry Me Not
He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t pull away either.
When the car stopped, a maid was already waiting at the front entrance. Cosimo greeted her and then looked at me. “The staff here are people I trust. Nancy will show you to your room.” A brief pause. “I’ve got work to do.”
I frowned. Work to do. Of course. Despite what had happened in the church, despite what he’d told me in the closet, I could already feel him retreating behind his usual walls.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He nodded and walked off.
Nancy offered me a soft smile. “Are you ready, miss?”
I smiled back, though something inside me sank. He trusted his staff enough to drop the performance the moment we’d walked in the door. There was no need to play the happy couple on our wedding night.
I followed Nancy up the stairs, feeling the full weight of the day settle over me.
Everything had changed for me.
For him, though… Perhaps he didn’t want anything to change between us at all.
CHAPTER 22
COSIMO
I waiteddownstairs until I couldn’t hear the sound of Nettle’s footsteps anymore. Only then did I trek up to my own bedroom, cursing myself for the fact that our rooms had a shared master bathroom between them. When the architect had proposed it, I’d thought it was a decent enough layout for when I had a wife one day.
Now, the thought of walking in on her while she was showering or taking a bath or even brushing her goddamn teeth made me inexplicably irate. It was like dangling a juicy steak just out of reach of a starving man.
Fuck.
The kisses had nearly undone me. In retrospect, my celibacy over the last three years had been a terrible mistake. Maybe if I’d fucked another woman in that time, kissing my wife wouldn’t have made me ache with need.
But it was what she’d said to me in the car on the way home from the airstrip that had gotten to me more than anything.“You can trust me.”
Something in me longed to believe her, even if I knew that would be a mistake.
I stripped off my wedding suit, agitated and excruciatingly aware of her body curled up just two walls over from me. There was no way I was going to sleep tonight.
But the moment my head hit my pillow, mercifully, I passed right the fuck out.
That was where the mercy ended.
I didn’t sleep. I dreamt. The kinds of vivid dreams that feel more real than reality. In the dream, I stood at the altar kissing Nettle in slow motion. A pull on her bottom lip stretched to fill an hour. A lick against her tongue lasted a month. I spent a year exploring the inside of her mouth as if it were an undiscovered land filled with enchanting treasures. When at last we pulled apart in the dream, I lived what felt like half a lifetime lost within her, not wanting to be found.
At that point, my confused consciousness blinked its eyes open inside the dream and put itself in the driver’s seat. The kiss began again, but the time distortion ended. I felt a sense of urgency, like I was existing on borrowed time. I pulled her closer, desperate to memorize every last aspect of her taste before whatever unknown bad thing happened, but she fought against my grip and broke the kiss.
“Enough.” Her voice was strained, breathy. “Don’t you know you’re dreaming? Stop wasting time, you fool.”
I understood what she wanted then. The altar was just like I remembered, but the chapel was empty. It was just us.
She pulled me down to the step where the priest had stood and climbed onto my lap, her hands desperately tugging her wedding dress up to her waist. “I want you. I want you. I want you…” She chanted that as I unbuckled my belt, as I pulled out my painfully erect cock, as I dragged my fingers through the sopping wetness between her legs.
“Oh fuck,” I grunted as she grabbed me by the wrist and pushed my fingers inside of her.
“There,” she moaned as I pumped my digits in and out. “That’s where I want you.”
I grabbed her by the waist and rolled us over, putting her beneath me. My body was buzzing all over, the pleasure and pain of anticipation pulsating against the inside of my skin.
I tugged my fingers out, grabbed my cock, and pressed the head right up against her entrance. Her cunt pulled on me, as if an actual magnetic force was yanking me forward.
