“I realize this is kind of a weird question, but…” My tongue felt thick in my throat. “Did we get married last night?”
The man stared at the ring. Then at my face. Then, his gaze traveled down to his own left hand, where an identical gold band wrapped around his ring finger.
His eyes popped open, confused and brown and disarmingly warm.
I was right, then. He didn’t remember what happened any more than I did.
Then something changed. His shock disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, replaced by something that looked almost like... calculation?
“I suppose reintroductions are overdue, then.” He offered his right hand like we were meeting at a conference or a job interview, not standing mostly undressed in a hotel suite, discussing the fact that we were—apparently—married.
“Hello, wife. I’m Ronan. Ronan Black.”
4
INTRODUCING MRS. BLACK
RONAN
“Ronan? Or Roman?”
Her voice was surprisingly husky but melodic, like the call of a loon through the fog that sometimes settled over Boston Harbor. Beautiful, yes. But also making it hard to focus when she was wearing nothing but that sheet.
Honestly. What kind of justice was it for a man to wake up with a woman who looked like a nearly naked Greek goddess to have zero memory of what he’d done to get her that way?
There were a few flashes. The show she put on for me at Naxos. The kiss and touch game we played at the bar. Making out like teenagers in the back of the Rover.
Poor Mac. I hadn’t made him wear headphones in years.
After that, I had little more than a few patchy flashbacks of togas and splitting a truly obscene portion of pancakes at my favorite Vegas diner before my memory cut straight to morning.
Was this the first time I’d woken up in this suite with an unnamed naked partner and no memory of how we’d gotten there?
Admittedly, no.
Had any of my previous partners had an ass like hers?
Not even close.
Have any of them turned out to be my wife the next morning?
Not a chance in hell.
But before I’d been able to wake the girl up properly, I’d been pulled away by Liza Kelly, knife-sharp CFO of Blackguard Holding, mother to my best friend, and probably the only woman whose calls I took before noon. But though Liza had just dropped two A-level bombs, I struggled to recall either once the goddess entered the room and announced we were fucking married.
I’d only caught a glimpse of her face, half buried in pillows while she slept. Even then, she was beautiful. But right now, tousled with sleep and clearly nursing her own wicked hangover, she was a fucking knockout. A face my palms itched to frame, olive skin dusted with freckles, and petal-pink lips swollen from a night I’d sell my soul to remember.
And then there were those eyes, fathomless and sea-green, the color of the Aegean Sea at sunrise, begging me to dive right in. Or at the very least help her remember what the hell had happened last night.
Married. Fuck me.
I cleared my throat. “My name is Ronan. It, ah, means ‘seal’ in Irish. Although being named after a man who murdered his brother to found the largest empire of the ancient world would be kind of fitting. Fratricide is only mildly encouraged in my family, but my father might actually love it if we were nursed by a she-wolf and then one of us killed the others for control of our empire.”
I was starting to ramble. Covering my discomfort with bad jokes about my father. Honestly, after what Liza just told me, I wasn’t that far off.
No. I wasn’t going to think about that fucker right now. Not when this girl’s brow was furrowed so adorably and that sheet was begging to be torn off.
“Don’t tell me your name is actually Ariadne,” I tried again. “The universe wouldn’t actually fuck with me like that, would it?”
