“Hold still,cara mia,” he murmurs in my ear.
A shiver goes through me. I liked it better when I was cuffed to a bed and he was calling me hellcat. I was so much safer.
I force myself to freeze, to look at the lens.
“One more,” Elizabetta chirps.
I’m amazed she can’t hear my heart beating from where she stands.
“Perfect.” She straightens and grins at us. “Viva gli sposi!”
Then she turns away, leaving me with the man I was forced to marry.
“Do you always smell like sunshine and ripe berries?”
His curt question takes me by surprise. I turn toward him, which is a mistake. He’s closer than I realized, our noses almost colliding. My stupid brain drinks in every detail of his handsome face. The dark stubble on his jaw, the sensual lips, his eyes glistening in the lights strung overhead. He’s still bent over me, and I feel slightly dizzy. From the wine, from him, or the lateness of the hour, I’m not sure.
“You don’t like my shower gel and shampoo?”
He doesn’t answer me, just straightens and extends his hand. “You ready?”
I eye the hand like it’s a snake poised to strike. “For what?”
We’ve done the awkward couple’s dance. There was no traditional father/daughter and son/mother dance because my father is long gone and Scorpion hates his mother.
“To go to the guesthouse.”
It’s as if all the air disappears. I knew this moment would come. That at the end of the planning and ceremony and partying, there would be only two of us. I prepared myself for it. But now, I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.
I lick my lips, trying to buy time. “Now? I was just going to go get another glass of wine.”
He frowns. “Do you need one?”
Absolutely. Anything to numb this inconvenient attraction I have to him. It doesn’t matter that he’s my husband now. The last thing I can afford to do is lower my guard and give in to anything he makes me feel. All I want to do is get out of this marriage as quickly as I can.
“Yup,” I say, seizing my empty glass. “I’ll just go to the bar.”
Like the photographer and DJ, the bartenders are still here, no sign of an end to the festivities.
But when I stand suddenly, I’m a little wobbly on my feet. It’s so unlike me—I’m poised, elegant, and in control for a living—that I can’t catch myself. My balance is off-kilter. The next thing I know, I’m falling toward Scorpion.
He catches me and whisks the empty glass from my fingers. “There’s wine in the guesthouse. You can have some there if you want.”
Of course there would be. No detail of this wedding has been overlooked, from the food to the music to the flowers. Even I have to admit that whoever put it together in a week’s time did a fantastic job. It must have cost the Andrianis a fortune.
Priest even has a guesthouse on the estate, which is where Scorpion and I are supposed to spend our wedding night. I’ve intentionally been avoiding thinking about spending the night there all day.
“The music’s still playing,” I protest.
“Let it.” His hands are on my waist, a possessive hold that keeps me anchored to him so that I can feel every inch of his lean, muscled strength pressing into me. “It’s been a long day.”
It’s going to be an even longer night.
But I don’t say that, because I’m falling into Scorpion’s eyes, spotting the striations of gray in his irises I never noticed before.A lock of hair has fallen over his brow, and for some reason, I reach out, brushing it away. My fingertips graze his skin, and then I stop, a jolt of awareness shooting straight to my core.
For a second, neither of us moves. We stand there at the bridal table, wrapped together, the thump of the music’s bass and the cool air of the night surrounding us. A sky of stars glistens behind him, the kind you can’t see in the city because it’s perpetually aglow.
Then he gently disengages and pulls me to his side like it’s where I belong. His cologne blends with the scent of the massive bouquets lining the table. He slides his arm around my shoulders. “It’s this way.”
