“He’s not coming?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I sent him to Oahu a few hours early,” I say. “Now, you don’t want to waste this wedding I planned in an hour, do you?”
“You want to marry me?”
“Of course I want to fucking marry you,” I growl. “Now hurry up and say I do so I can kiss you. Or do I need to carry you out to that car and remind you that you’re already mine?”
“What about never wanting to be tied down?” she asks. “And the crew girls…”
“No crew girls, ever,” I say, fury knotting inside me at what Lennox put her through the last year. “And you said it yourself, that one day I’d want to be tied down.”
“If I remember correctly, you laughed at me when I said that.”
“Turns out you were right,” I say. “So here I am. Tying myself down for you. Tying myselftoyou. You’re the tether that can keep me grounded. My refuge.”
“Okay,” she says, biting back a smile. “I’m ready.”
“About fucking time,” I say, then tip my chin at the priest. “Go on. Make this little girl my wife before I run out of patience and desecrate your altar with every sin of lust known to man.”
He glowers at me and turns to Rae, but either she remembers what happened to the tattoo artist or she really does want to marry me, because she tells him to go ahead.
We repeat our vows, but when he asks for the rings, we just blink at each other.
“Guess we should have gotten those tattoos after all,” I say.
Rae stares at me a second, and then she laughs. The sound echoes through the church, the second sweetest sound to ever come out of her mouth. I grab her and kiss her, hard, holding her head between my hands and crushing her lips with mine until I taste blood.
We’re both breathless when we pull apart. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips shiny, and she’s never looked more fucking perfect, and more perfectly fuckable.
“I do,” she says, smiling up at me.
“Me too,” I say. “Of course I fucking do.”
Then she’s laughing, and I’m laughing, and our friends crowd around us. I keep an eye on the Crossbones in the audience, but even they won’t shoot a guy inside a church, and I brought backup. We leave out a side door, forgoing tradition. In the parking lot, I pick Rae up and throw her over my shoulder, running through the rain to the El Camino. I dump her into the seat and slide in, pushing her across it.
“Holy shit,” she says, laughing and flustered, her hair all a mess. “Did we really just do that?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We really fucking did.”
“We just got married.”
“We did, little girl,” I say. “But I’m not going to the reception with all those Crosses, so pull up that dress and let me have dessert here.”
“I guess, if we won’t be having cake,” she says, smiling with a tease in those hazel eyes that makes my cock stir in my jeans.
I slide over and pull her into my lap. “Are you really mine?” I ask, not quite believing it myself. I have to keep touching her to prove it’s real, that she’s mine to touch.
“Are you mine?” she asks, looping her arms around my neck. “I thought crows couldn’t be tamed.”
“Maybe not tamed,” I say. “But they can build nests, if they find a tree that welcomes even the darkest omen in her branches.”
“The darkest,” she whispers before pressing her lips to mine. “But only if you come down to visit me on solid ground on occasion.”
“As long as you fly with me on occasion,” I answer, sliding a hand around the back of her neck to keep her close. “See, I think there’s a crow girl in there somewhere. She’s just hiding in her nest right now. But I’ll get her to come out, and then we can take that flight together.”