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While I had a crush on Jamie, Luke had one on me.
“Because moments after I buried my father, I was supposed to be drowning in grief and yet one look at you, and I felt...joy. You ruined the saddest day of my life…all because I wasn’t prepared to see you. I wasn’t planning on you…and then there you were.”
“You’re a tragedy in your own way, just hanging around in my chest like a poison, slowly infecting my heart.”
“I hope you forgive me for being selfish tonight, Pen. Because this day is about to end, and while it has been the shittiest day of my life, your taste is the only thing I want to remember.”
“I hate when you do that. You’re too beautiful to lower your face, Pen. It’s a shame to hide it in any capacity at any time.” Why did he have to be so sweet? He’d just broken my heart.
My midnight ruin. Starlight eyes, burning flesh and bone. A bruised heart, crushed by all our good intentions.
His brown eyes tracked my movement, that smirk I loved so much tilting his lips, only in the corner. As if he wouldn’t allow himself to fully give himself over to the way he wanted to smile.
He was warm sunshine on a lazy summer day. Heat soaked dirt and fresh grass. He was peace. My peace. The one steady thing I’d clung to for half my life.
“Penny, come with me.” Harris showed up from behind Brick, holding out his hand. Jameson let me go, while keeping his eyes on the two men. I rushed off to the older Stone Rider without a second glance. Harris ushered me out of the house, but I heard the gunshots on my way out. I steadied my breath as I crawled on the back of Harris’ bike.
Her hips bucked once more, but I held firm. “Jamie, please.” “Let me fuck you with my fingers, Pen. You want to fuck my hand, then you need to come at least once for me then you can move, shift, and fuck as deep as you want. You can use me however you want, baby. Fuck, I’ll even let you climb onto my lap and use my cock if you want, but you’ll let me do this first. Just relax.”
“Show me you swallowed it all like a good girl, Pen.”
No one would understand that my obsession for you comes from under the skin, down in my marrow. A sunlit backdrop to my turbulent life. You are the hope I always feel when things feel hopeless, and your smile feels like it has a rope tethered from it to my heart.
“Your mother would be proud, sweet girl. I may not have known her, but I know she would have cried seeing how beautiful you look.”
while I planned to walk down the aisle alone, Harris was suddenly standing there in a black suit. He wasn’t wearing a tie and his beard hadn’t been trimmed in the slightest, but he was there…smiling at me, with those warm brown eyes. “Penny, it would be my honor to walk you down the aisle…if that’s okay with you.”
Like everyone in the world was waiting on us, but time was ours to waste.
“May not be all the things you hoped for, but you look beautiful and this right here, this moment doesn’t determine how your marriage, or your life will look. Plenty of people been together for fifty years and never even say a single vow, others had expensive weddings with all the pricey options and didn’t last a year. Life is what you make of it, Penny. This is your life, that peanut’s and now, Jameson’s,” Harris whispered as we walked then squeezed my arm tight before we came into the ceremony area.
Still, I smiled and let each word soak into my soul, branding it with things I wanted to keep. No one had to ever know that these words weren’t really for me, or that I’d keep them forever as if they were.
One day Jameson would walk away from me, but until then, he was mine to keep, and I wanted every single piece of him.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be outside at night, under the stars, and preferably in a field of wildflowers. Your mom was supposed to be there and my dad…and it was supposed to be years ago when I had you all to myself. I take the blame, Penny. I always will, but you’ll have to agree to take my name and give me time to fix all of it. Because I promise I will, Pen. I promise that I’m in this until the end.”
His words were dusted hope clinging to forgotten places. Dried, smashed wildflowers doused in wishes. Love so blinding and hopeful.
“It’s always been you, Jameson. Always in the back of my mind at night, in my chest, expanding with my lungs in the morning, when the sun would warm the earth. You were always in my dreams when I thought of forever. However long you give me, I will happily accept.”
“Penny, it’s your wedding day. Regardless of your reasons, you’ll remember this one for the rest of your life. It’s worth creating a beautiful memory out of it.”
“I don’t know if you’ll ever have another one, but as far your first goes, I hope this honeymoon makes you happy.”
Now she was here and I could touch as much of her as I wanted. Now she was my wife.
“From now on, you will tell me if you’re aching. If you need relief, it will be me who gives it to you, do you understand?” Her eyes found mine from over her shoulder. My fingers came out of her, glistening under the lights. I brought them up to my lips and sucked while she watched. “You taste like you’re finally mine.”
It was a ruined story without a happy ending from the very start. Anything we did now would just confuse us both.
“Don’t know what all we need to clarify in this relationship, Pen, but this...” He stroked me gently. “This right here isn’t complicated…it’s mine. No one else gets to touch you while you’re my wife.”
I felt like a meal, served on a platter. He was seated as if we were about to eat, and here I was spread out for him, naked, dripping all over the table.
“Perfect, Penelope. So goddamn perfect. And mine. You have my name on your lips as you’re coming apart, my tongue in your cunt, my fingers as you clench around me. Now let go and come, I want to see you drip onto this table.”
“What else would you like to do with me, husband?” Dark eyes met mine while he slowly got to his feet. “Endless things, I’d need to keep you forever in order to fulfill every fantasy.”
“I never thought it would be like this,” he whispered, staring down at me. Even knowing I was covered in his release, I smiled up at him and asked, “like what?” “Perfect.”
“I had them cut out a third of the lights, so we could see the stars,” Jamie said, ducking his face as if it embarrassed him that he’d thought of something so considerate.
“You mean while you were ignoring me?” He didn’t answer, but his back felt as if he’d stopped breathing under my palms. When he finally did respond, his voice was quiet. “I was never ignoring you, Pen.” “Then what were you doing?” I leaned back to see his eyes, because the answer to one of my deepest questions that had plagued me for years would surely be resting in them. His brown eyes flicked over my face, landing on my lips.
“Surviving.” The scoff that left my chest was all pain. Agony over losing the one person who had become like my best friend. The one who I had always secretly loved, but never felt good enough for. “Surviving what? A life without me, because it sure seemed like you were happy out there on your own, away from me.”
“I want to correct my fuck-up and ask.” “Ask what?” I was so hesitant, my heart reaching for something I had begged it time and time again not to hope for. Jameson was notoriously bad with leading me on and then crushing me. He searched my face, brushing a rogue strand of hair off my face. “Everything.”
“Besides, have you tested his full name if you do Cruise?” I nodded and said, “Cruise Pruitt,” right as Jameson said, “Cruise King.” We stared at each other, and Jameson’s face flushed. “Sorry, of course you’ll give him your—” “No!” I interrupted him. “I just didn’t realize you’d be okay with me giving him your—” Jameson watched me with a familiar look, the same one I’d seen that night he’d devoured me on the table in the hotel. “I am.”
These rings on our fingers were like boomerangs, eventually he had to come back to me.
“Get on all fours, show me that pussy, Mrs. King.”
“You’re mine, Penny. For fucking ever. I don’t want to annul anything. I want to keep you. My filthy bride. I want you, for always.”
“And now...” I pulled my hips back and then gently rolled them forward, fully sheathing myself inside her. “You are officially...” I moved again and her fists clenched the comforter. “My motherfucking wife.”
“you thought I didn’t want to fuck this cunt, Pen? You honestly thought I didn’t want to slip inside you every fucking night?”
“All I think about is how badly I want to claim you and be inside you. You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life. Your lips get me hard just from parting when you need to breathe or speak. You walk past me, and I want to slide your pants down and fit my cock in between your ass cheeks and find that soaking center to slide into. God, you grip my cock so well.”
“You’re always dripping for me, baby, aren’t you? My dirty wife, fucking desperate for this cock.”
Fuck, I was crazy about her. “Turn around, Penelope.” She was on her knees, but obeyed, and faced me. “Spread your knees and show me the mess I made.”
“Good, obedient wife,”
“You wanted to know why I didn’t fight for you.” She slowly turned on her toe. “You were this beautiful dream that just walked into my life when I was thirteen, too young to know what to do with it. You were as out of reach to me as the stars. I’d watch you and you were imprinted in my mind, running through it at night, claiming every waking moment in the morning. I’d see you in school and I’d miss what the assignment was, or what the club had asked me to do. You were always watching me, and I could feel this pull between us, and I knew…I knew if I gave in to it, then you’d become part of the
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“You stole my first kiss.” Her lips barely moved on a whisper. “That was inevitable. I wanted you to remember me.” A tear gleamed in her eye as she gave me a half smile. “But refused my virginity.” “Would never have let you go if I took it. If I touched you, had you like that…there’s no way I’d ever let you go.” “And now that you’ve had me?” Her hands came to my chest, hovering over the feathers branded into my skin. “Now, no one else ever will.”
“Let me do this, please.” She nodded. “Okay.” I knew she was worried, so I added in a whisper, “we promised each other.” That had her eyes snapping up, and her mouth parting. “When?” I smiled. “When you took my last name and became my wife, Pen.”
I just kept adding things to the cart, and with each thing, I saw Pen’s face begin to brighten, as if an invisible burden was suddenly being lifted.
Silas was shaking, his eyes kept moving up to the top of the stairs. “I just saw her, Silas.” I attempted to help, but it didn’t seem to matter because he stepped forward and then yelled at the top of his lungs. “Caelum!” I winced at how loud it echoed. Max began barking from upstairs. Wes walked toward Silas, telling him to get the fuck out, when there was suddenly someone running down the stairs. I assumed it was Max, but it was Natty who barreled past me. Her eyes were wild, her hair flying behind her.
