Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
“Agreed.” A smile spreads across his face, slow and rich, like spilled honey.
“Not you. Obviously.”
“If you say so.”
Urgh. Why does he have to be so bloody annoying. And so bloody hot.
“Why don’t I remember?” I murmur to myself. “I’m not hungover.” Apart from a sore head, but even one or two vodkas almost always give me a headache the next day.
I sense the weight of Fin’s gaze and glance up. His expression makes me feel like I’m being dissected.
“Do you remember any of the night?” he asks, his tone no longer flippant.
“Not much. I have some memories,” I admit. “Flashes mostly, but nothing concrete. I do have the sense that I enjoyed myself.” In other words, I know instinctively somehow that I wasn’t taken advantage of—that none of this is on him. “I have the sense I was happy, and you were . . .” like a dream come to life. The reason I know is because I’ve spent months dreaming of him. “You were . . . Fin? What happened to your hair?”
“You like it?” He lifts his arm to rub his hand over his head, his kiss-swollen lips fighting a grin. Not that I’m paying much attention, because, holy mother of biceps! And are those teeth marks?
He angles his head to look, and my stomach swoops.
Urgh. Whatever is responsible for last night is also to blame for my having said that aloud.
“Huh. So they are.” His gaze lifts, his gray eyes sort of silver in a shaft of sunlight. “I think that was the outcome of our pet name conversation.”
“I bit you? While we were having a conversation? About pets?”
“Pillow talk might be a better description.”
“Pillow—” I fold my lips inward and start again. “What pet name conversation?”
“We were coming up with terms of endearment, I guess. Names to call each other during the week so we don’t use our real names. You didn’t like my suggestion,” he adds in a low rumble.
“Wifey?” I retort. “What a surprise.”
“That was your choice. It was sugar tits you took exception to.”
I gasp and clutch the sheet tighter, and Fin’s gaze drops very deliberately from my face.
“I’d say it’s a little late for modesty,” he purrs, the backs of his fingers a tender caress to my arm. “Given I know how you taste.”
Between my legs begins to throb like it’s trying to send me a message in Morse code. A really angry message.
“Why was I holding hair clippers?” The question falls from my mouth as a flicker of memory escapes my hippocampus.
“You honestly don’t remember?”
My mouth works like a ventriloquist’s dummy as another image hits. There was a bucket! In the dark, he almost tripped over it.
“Poor Fin kicked the bucket,” I spluttered through a giggle.
“There are worse ways to die.” I can almost feel the memory of his large hands curling around my hips as he pressed my back to the wall.
“Worse than in here?”
The smell of bleach and disinfectant. The hiss of fabric as he slid down my body.
“I’ll find heaven between your legs.”
The hot look he sent me before my dress fell like a veil over his head.
“Were we in a cupboard?” I ask, ignoring the continued sensory element of this remembrance.
“The janitor’s closet.” His mouth tips up at one side. “On our way back to the suite, you decided we should relive our first meeting.”
“I wouldn’t—”
The velvet brush of his tongue. His hand on my stomach, holding me there. “Oh, God. Fin, yes!”
We danced and we kissed under a sky of black velvet sprinkled with diamonds. Happiness and pleasure twining and twirling between us like a ribbon of sweet connectedness. I had the most amazing pretend wedding, and it seems I loved every minute of it. Every minute of my wedding night too.
“Mila?”
I nod and swallow a mouthful of words I can’t say, let alone process. I was supposed to get married yesterday. For real. We’d booked historic Islington Town Hall for the ceremony, and I’d bought my wedding dress in the Christmas sales. Knee length and cute, it came with a matching bolero jacket. I’d even ordered a jaunty pillbox hat with a half veil. No princess gown for me, not for the low-key day we’d chosen.
But did we choose it, or did I just go along with Adam’s plans? It’s hard to be objective after seeing myself in Evie’s gown. Maybe I sold myself short when I settled for an old-fashioned double-decker bus as transport to our wedding breakfast. In Adam’s favorite pub, beer toasts in the place of champagne.
Fin reaches for my hand, but I pull it from his reach. “None of this explains why you cut your hair.”
“You didn’t like the color. Said that it didn’t suit me and that it didn’t matter if it was just temporary, because it had to go.”
“So you shaved it all off?” I splutter, incredulous.