Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“Not until last night. The photoshoot took an extra day because of weather.” She stepped back. Her eyes flicked to Silas, then back to me.
“Oh, uh… right,” I began awkwardly. “This is Silas.” The remainder of an explanation died before I could form the words. How exactly did you explain to the person you proposed marriage to that you’d taken their rejection and turned it into a one-size-fits-all opportunity in Vegas?
She eyed him up and down before offering a chalky hand and a polite smile. “Nice to meet you. I’m Eden.”
I felt the tension coming off Silas’s body. Or maybe it was my own. Either way, the clearing in which we stood suddenly felt like a rusted, stifling cage.
And I was stuck in it with the woman I’d always imagined marrying and the man I’d actually married instead.
Silas shook her hand and responded just as politely. “Silas Concannon. I’ve heard good things about you.”
Thankfully, her climbing partner, Miki, joined us after removing her gear. “Hey, Way.” She gave me a fist bump. “You can let Kyle know this route looks good. We’re headed to check the route on Maude next.”
As I nodded and thanked her, Eden and Silas’s simmer seemed to come to a boil.
Before I could try to fix things—somehow—Eden turned to me with accusation in her eyes. “Is it true the two of you got married in Vegas?”
Sweat began to trickle down my neck. “Yes.”
Silas shifted next to me but didn’t say a word.
Eden tilted her head. “And?”
“And…” I glanced at Miki, who’d wandered back over to the pile of gear and may or may not have been out of earshot. It probably didn’t matter since Eden told Miki everything anyway. And while I’d trust Eden with the truth, I didn’t know Miki well enough to trust her. “We’re… married,” I said.
Eden’s eyes narrowed, and her voice lowered. “In Vegas. The day you literally proposed to me.”
I scrambled to figure out how to explain it when I suddenly felt the warm slide of Silas’s strong hand across my lower back. His touch centered me.
“Yes,” I said, standing up a little straighter. “We hit it off. It happened really fast, but…”
Silas stepped closer, moving his hand to rest on my hip. It was a calming touch… and a claiming one. “I talked him into it,” he said. “Got him drunk and convinced him to do something crazy.”
I glanced up at him. Though he didn’t look at me, I found on his face the same confident, dominating energy he gave to most things. The self-assured corporate leader whose word probably made lower-level assistants scatter to do his bidding. A person no one questioned.
Except Eden. “Way’s not the type to get drunk married in Vegas.” She folded her arms over her chest. “What really happened?”
I let out a bark of nervous laughter. “I promise what really happened was me getting drunk married in Vegas.”
She studied me, her eyes clear blue pools of sympathy. It was an emotion I wanted no part of. “Because you were upset I said no?”
“No,” I said firmly, knowing I spoke the truth. “Because there was something about Silas I couldn’t resist.” I glanced at him again, feeling nerves swell in my stomach. This time, his eyes met mine, their intensity lighting me up the way they always did. “Still can’t, to be honest.”
More truth.
Silas leaned in and kissed the spot right in front of my ear, letting out an almost inaudible rumble of pleasure that only I could hear.
When I looked back at Eden a moment later, her eyes were wide and focused on my jaw, precisely where Silas had kissed. “I don’t understand. Have you always been into guys?”
I opened my mouth to automatically respond to her the way I’d done for fifteen years, but when Silas’s body tensed again, I stopped. I understood Eden’s curiosity, but this wasn’t the time or place to discuss my sexuality journey, and on some level, it felt like a betrayal to Silas… even though I knew that wasn’t quite accurate.
“Tell me about the sponsor photoshoot,” I said instead, giving her a smile to soften the abrupt subject change.
Eden went along with it and described the various climbs and the nesting raptors they’d seen.
It was hard to concentrate on her words, though, because Silas’s thumb had snuck under the edge of my T-shirt and brushed light circles on the skin above my waistband.
I wanted to be alone with him, to turn and seek reassurance in his arms as if he were a true life partner. It was stupid of me to entertain those thoughts when our unspoken agreement was sex only and forging any kind of emotional connection was obviously a terrible idea.
It wasn’t like there was any kind of future for the two of us. Our lives were impossibly different. I had no desire to leave Majestic, and he couldn’t possibly want to leave the corporate world in New York. But there were moments like this one when I thought about it, and the thought brought a wistful “what if” feeling that was getting harder and harder to ignore.