We didn’t wait to see if Piper and her men followed. Eve was going to be mine—ours—and I wasn’t delaying another moment. Waking up this morning, I hadn’t expected to be married before dinner. Especially to a bespectacled bluestocking along with my brother.
CHAPTER FIVE
Eve
What had I done? I stood between two men, two strangers, getting married! I’d only met them earlier in the day and now I was vowing to spend the rest of my life with them. Them. Not one man, but two. How much whiskey had been laced in that cup of coffee? I either needed to stay away from liquor forever, or start drinking heavily.
But when I thought of Jed’s and Knox’s mouths on mine, how it felt to kiss them, I kept my feet firmly planted on the church altar. I had no other kisses to compare, but Jed was gentle and sweet while Knox’s mouth was insistent and potent. I’d felt hot all over, my lips tingled and my nipples had tightened into hard points. It felt… good.
I’d kissed them. Not the other way around. I’d been bold and wicked. Daring. I blamed it on the whiskey, but it had been me alone who had done it. I put myself before the town minister saying “I do.” Not the men. They hadn’t coaxed or lured me. They hadn’t demanded—well, at least not until Jed had tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of grain—or pushed me into it. They weren’t like Marina or Tara. They actually wanted me. They didn’t seem the sort to do something they didn’t desire.
That was why they stood like two tall pillars on either side of me, giving their vows, their pledges, to me. Me!
I was being kissed again and this time Jed and Knox were the initiators. This time, I felt no surprise in their lips, no hesitancy. This time, they took.
“Oh, my,” I whispered when both of them had finished their turn.
Knox grinned at me, the corner of his mouth tipping up rather wickedly. Leaning down, he whispered in my ear. “That’s just a kiss on the lips. Imagine what you’ll say, or scream, when my mouth is kissing you other places.”
Other—
I lifted my head to meet his pale eyes. He was so tall! I saw humor and heat there. He was not unaffected. Neither was I. From an academic standpoint, this interest in both Dare men made no sense. But it couldn’t be denied. I’d heard of the “head versus the heart” on occasion and I could understand it now. While I didn’t love Jed or Knox Dare, I couldn’t argue that I felt something for them. Something I wouldn’t find in any scientific book or primer. Instead, a dime store novel, where a heroine was swept away by a fiendishly handsome rogue held more value.
What an insane notion, but today, in my life, accurate.
Jed shook the minister’s hand as Piper came over to me. She had Lillian up on her shoulder, a knitted blanket wrapped about her. “Whatever you do, don’t let them be bossy.”
“Piper,” Knox warned.
She looked up at her brother, her face completely blank. “What?”
“We don’t interfere in your marriage—”
“Ha!” She laughed as she shook her head, countering his claim. “Don’t interfere?”
“In your marriage,” Knox repeated.
Piper pursed her lips, then shrugged her free shoulder. Her green eyes met mine. “Very well. Knox and Jed don’t interfere in my marriage. Before then, well, they were bossy.”
“Piper,” Jed chided, coming up to join us.
She held up a hand. “I’ve been warned. She’s new here. Knows no one, including her two husbands.”
“You didn’t know yours, who weren’t even really yours by the way, and she wouldn’t have known Melvin. Would you have meddled if he were still alive?”
I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t known Melvin Thomkins at all and I’d been wed to him. I had the proxy license to prove it. With that legal document, I’d had no choice but to be his bride, no matter my happiness. He could have been eighty years old or mean or a drunk. Anything, and I was his to do with as he wished. But he’d died.
I didn’t have to marry the Dares. If I’d said no to them, neither would have forced me. I didn’t know them well, but considered them to be honorable. Deep down, I knew. Perhaps it was living with three completely dishonorable women for so long it was easy to sense the difference. The men would have courted me, surely, but I’d been the one to catch them in the marriage trap.
I hadn’t given them a choice.
Oh.
“Meddled? Says the pot calling the kettle black,” she countered, the words laced with bitterness.
I heard her words, but my thoughts were tangled. I’d forced them to marry me.
“Precious, let them be,” Lane said, coming up behind Piper and gently brushing his big hand over Lillian’s head. Her blue eyes were open and she was looking at him intently. “There will be plenty of time to pester them after their wedding night.”