Chelsea taps her earpiece. “Alright, lovebirds. Off the set. We’ve got three more weddings to shoot today, and lighting waits for no one.”
And just like that, we’re being ushered out. Married. Bound. Filmed.
“What the hell did I just do?” The words echo in my head.
Everything is moving like a high-speed train and I’m not sure how to stop any of it. My heart is racing. My mouth is dry. My skin is buzzing because it hasn’t caught up to the rest of my body yet. I need a minute. Just one. To breathe and make sense of all of this. But that minute never comes.
We've stepped out of the chapel, wedding binder in hand, walking into the main hotel area where cameras are still trailing us like persistent mosquitoes. Hotel guests pretend not to stare while obviously taking photos of my pimp. It’s all too much.
That’s when Luca speaks and I can’t help but wonder how he is so…calm? Relaxed? “So,” he says, “Chelsea the producer says we’ve got thirty days to back out if we change our minds.”
It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about our marriage.
I blink up at him. “Thirty days,” I repeat.
“Trial run,” he says with a half-shrug. “Like Costco samples. But with vows.”
I suck in a breath. “Did you just compare our marriage to Costco samples?”
“Yes. And I happen to be quite the snack.”
I roll my eyes. But…facts. My husband is a beautiful man. That rich brown skin, cheekbones that could cut glass, and those eyes. A snack indeed.
“If I agree to stay married to you beyond the thirty days, will you promise to break out the pimp suit at least once a month?”
He grins. “Whatever my woman wants…”
Sweet Black baby Jesus. I don’t know what has gotten into me, but right then, the moment the words leave his mouth, I decide I like the sound of being his.
But there’s no way I’m letting him know that yet.
“I’m nobody’s woman, Chillmonger. So, if you’re going to treat me like property, we can end this game right now.”
He turns, closing the distance between us until his stare is fierce and unyielding. “As long as that plastic ring is on your finger, you’re mine. But I happen to like roleplay, so I don’t mind letting you feel like you’re in the lead.”
“Mmm,” I moan, the sound escaping before I can remind myself that I led the High School Crusaders for Christ ministry two years in a row. A girl like that isn't supposed to make sounds like this.
Normally, men don’t get to me. They don't affect me. I’ve spent my entire life holding the reins, or scaring men off with my harsh tone and confident voice. Yet, my knees are suddenly insisting on buckling for a man I met three hours ago.
It’s a specific kind of authority I’ve only ever seen in my father. He’s an effortless leader, even in the face of my mother’smeddling ways. He lets her be exactly who she is, never requiring her to shrink or shadow herself for his sake, but he always knows how to hold the line. It isn’t an aggressive, heavy-handed thing in an Ike Turner kind of way. It’s more like Malcolm X where all he has to do is look at you or point a finger in the direction he desires, and the world simply aligns.
Luca has that same gravity, but it’s heavier. Darker. And right now, it’s pulling me straight under and into him.
He’s the kind of man you don’t just look at. You feel him. In the sudden weakness of your knees, the frantic thud in your chest, and the heavy ache in your panties.
And I’m married to him. For the night, anyway.
I shrug. “Anyway. We'll wake up tomorrow, laugh about all of this, and head straight to get an annulment,” I confirm with him.
“Still plotting our demise, are you?” he asks, and Lord help me.
I’m not even a Bridgerton girl like that. I’m not the type who melts at a British accent or daydreams about princes and polite society. But this man’s voice is something out of a fairy tale—gritty and smooth, like silk with a hidden bite. It doesn’t just speak. It crawls over your skin.
“That is what we agreed to,” I remind him.
The only reason I even agreed to continue this ridiculous marriage experiment was because of a conversation we had back in the pods. Luca and I had laughed about the nearly identical promises we’d made to our friends—that for once in our lives, we would do something completely out of character this weekend.
With that in mind, we made a pact to just ride the wave and see where we landed. It was supposed to be a harmless adventure, a ridiculous story I could take back to Ms. Lilly to make her swoon over me being a temporary contestant on her favorite show. That was all this was ever meant to be.
