“You’re right. Let’s start now.”
He laughs, then smacks a kiss across my mouth that’s meant as a celebration. It soon lingers, then worships. I’m sucked back into a vortex of passion I can’t escape. I have a feeling that’s how it will always be between Hayden and me.
When I’m melting, panting, and red-cheeked, he settles his body between my splayed thighs and peers deep into my eyes. “The night you gave me that token, you said you’d be saving yourself for me. Perrie?”
I know what he’s asking. I swallow. “I’m a virgin.”
A smile softens his face. “I should have guessed sooner. You’re a girl who always keeps her word. You’re not actually engaged to Derek, are you?”
“No.”
“And you never have been?”
I can’t quite look Hayden in the eye. “He’s a really good friend. I do love him…but he’s like a brother to me.”
“So why did you come here and…”
“And pretend? Derek offered me a job at his new start-up in Seattle. Before I accepted, I had to come here and see if there was any chance that you could finally want me. He offered to help.”
“I always wanted you…even when I shouldn’t have. So this farce was for me?”
I nod. “I figured if it didn’t matter to you now that I belonged to someone else, it never would. Then I could move to Seattle and try to get on with my life.”
“You need to turn down his job and tell him to go to hell.”
I laugh. “He won’t be terribly surprised. He’s only flying back tomorrow because—”
“He’s not even fake marrying you at noon.”
I shake my head. “He’s not. He just needs to get his stuff and say goodbye.”
Hayden raises a brow. “If he wants to stay tomorrow and watch me marry you for real—just so he knows you’re off-limits—I’m all for that.”
“You mean…you and I get married? For real?”
“Why let a perfectly good wedding go to waste?”
I giggle, giddy with happiness. Hayden is giving me everything I could have wanted. Well, almost. I’m still waiting for him to join our bodies and make me his in the most primal way possible.
“I love it,” I murmur. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. In a few hours—if I can stand not being inside you—I’ll get the engagement ring I bought you out of my pocket and slip it on your finger. Then we’ll open that bottle of champagne and drink from the glasses I sent with it, the ones that say Mr. and Mrs.” He flashes me a self-deprecating smile. “I was thinking positive because there’s no one else I want to be Mrs. Hughes except you.”
“That sounds great. But right now…”
“Right now, I’ve got to have you. I feel like I’ve waited my whole fucking life.”
“Me, too.”
Then silence falls between us. Hayden lowers his head and takes my lips again in a kiss both solemn and passionate. His hands roam, outlining the curve of my waist, then he grips my hips as he braces himself and nuzzles my neck.
After tracing an erotic path over my pulse point, his lips drift to my ear while he aligns his naked cock against the entrance to my small, aching pussy. “Tell me you’re mine, Perrie.”
“I’m yours.” I close my eyes in anticipation.
I’m only seconds away from feeling that on a deep, visceral level.
“Open,” he insists. “Your eyes, your cunt, your heart. Spread them all wide for me.”
I lift my lashes with a flutter and part my legs wider under him. My heart is already open; it has been for years.
He pins me with a commanding stare that makes me shiver. “Tell me you’ll be mine forever.”
“I will. And you’ll be mine forever,” I insist.
“I will.” He speaks the words like a vow.
My heart pounds and traps my breath in my chest. Time slows. I know only this man. And I’ll remember the way he’s looking at me in this moment for the rest of my life.
Finally, he bares his teeth, growls, and shoves his way past the thin barrier of my hymen with one rough push. Even as he tears into my body and I gasp at his invasion, our joining mends the fracture he left in my heart four awful years ago.
The discomfort between my legs is a small price to pay for the feel of Hayden working himself inside me, inching and pushing, only to withdraw and sink in again, this time deeper, more insistent.
“Oh, god… I’ve never felt anything better, princess. Ever.”
I raise my hips to meet him as he slowly strokes downward again. Even though I feel packed full of him, he’s still not completely inside me. The stretch of my flesh to accommodate him burns and stings, but I welcome it.
“Deeper…” I moan.
He hisses as he balances above me, his dark eyes burning with both passion and the strain of holding back. “You’re so fucking tight. And it feels so different bareback.”