Page 22 of Reluctant Bride

“You’ve got a real gift for hospitality.”

“My mother would agree with you.” I holster my own gun, check the gate latch one more time, more for my hands than for the latch. “For what it’s worth, most men don’t get their wedding night interrupted by a possible hostile surveillance operation.”

“Most men don’t marry into one.” She says it light, an edge of real nerves underneath the joke that she doesn’t quite manage to hide. “And for the record, when I asked for a photo two hours ago, this isn’t what I meant. I wanted abs. You sent me a stalker on night vision and told me to lock my door. That is, and I cannot stress this enough, not the same category of picture.”

“I panicked.”

“You do not panic. You’ve never panicked in your life. You executed a tactical redirect.”

“Fine. I tactically redirected you away from my body and toward a home invasion.”

“Very romantic. I’m still thinking about it.”

We walk back to the house close enough that our shoulders brush twice, and the heat from it travels straight past every rational thought I’ve got and settles low, my cock twitching against the fabric of the wedding suit pants I never bothered to change out of. Thank fuck it’s dark out.

Inside, she disappears upstairs to change out of the nightgown-under-jeans situation, and I check the exterior feed twice, walk the ground floor once, set the alarm to a setting Erin’s system calls Paranoid, which feels correct. By the time I’m satisfied the house is as locked down as I can make it without sitting up all night with a rifle across my knees, it’s a few minutes past midnight, and the adrenaline that got me through the gate check has nowhere left to go.

I stand in my kitchen with my hands flat on the counter and remember, too late, that she wanted abs two hours ago and got a stalker instead. Seems only fair to fix that now that the house is locked down and she’s safely upstairs.

I unbutton the rest of my shirt standing right where I am, forearm braced on the counter, nothing staged about it. I take the photo and send it with one line under it.

Did you think eight years took these off me?

Her reply takes four minutes. Long enough that I check the screen twice to make sure it delivered.

Finally. Worth the wait.

Though technically I already had visual confirmation yesterday, courtesy of your shirtless victory lap past the porch. This is just the notarized version.

I laugh, alone, in a kitchen with a possible intruder somewhere past the fence line I just walked.

Notarized.

A woman likes documentation, Dawson. Verbal testimony only gets you so far in a court of law.

Then let the record show I’m happy to keep supplying evidence.

Careful. I might start requiring it nightly. Surprise me next time.

I’ve never once in my life turned down a dare from this woman, not at twenty-four and not now, and I’m not starting tonight.

I send her a second photo. Lower. My charcoal grey dress pants open, waistband pulled down half an inch, nothing explicit, just enough to make a point.

The three dots appear immediately and disappear twice before her answer comes through.

Oh.

Oh, that’s cheating.

I said surprise me, not incapacitate me.

You started this, I type. I’m just better at finishing things.

We’ll see about that.

Her next photo takes longer, long enough that I pour a glass of water I don’t drink and read the same line of a security log four times without absorbing a word of it. My phone buzzes once in the middle of it, not her, Tate this time, three words with no context. Still working it. I don’t need him to say more than that. Somewhere out past this kitchen the rest of tonight’s other war is still grinding forward without me, whatever it is, while I stand here half undone by a photograph. I set the phone face up this time instead of face down, because I won’t let myself forget both fights are running at once, even now.

When her photo finally comes through, it’s her hand, just her hand, pressed flat against bare skin low on her stomach, the edge of black lace barely visible at the corner of the frame, the kind of thing a woman puts on for a wedding night, not for an empty room and a phone screen.