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“Well, we’ll just get it annulled,” he states to me, as if he isn’t standing in front of me wearing nothing but a towel and a scowl on his face.
Harper snorts as she reaches the door. “Uhh, I don’t think you can do that.”
“Why not?” he asks, incredulously.
I follow her eyes as they settle on the nightstand beside the bed. “Well, it looks like this marriage was already consummated. Twice.” Her laughter spills into the hotel hallway as she leaves our room.
The silence is heavy as realization sets in. Oh yeah, there was definite sex here last night. Twice. It comes back to me piece by piece, in vivid Technicolor. The wall, the shower, the vanity, the couch, the bed. We may have only used two condoms, but we pretty much christened every surface in the room until we were both exhausted.
There’s an ache between my legs as I recall how we spent our morning as husband and wife. My eyes glance up and connect with the bulge, the one barely concealed behind thick terrycloth, and my body starts to hum with anticipation and need.
“What are you looking at?” he asks, glancing down to his growing erection. Yes, it’s growing. And growing and growing. Yes, definitely a grower. Apparently, Samuel has been hiding a Louisville Slugger behind his formal suit pants on a daily basis that even I couldn’t have been prepared for.
“Nothing,” I reply, trying to avert my eyes, but I can’t seem to look away. My nipples start to tingle.
His sigh fills the hotel room. “Listen, Freedom, I don’t know what happened last night. I never drink hard liquor, let alone that much. Everything is very…well, it’s missing. I don’t remember anything after a certain point.”
“What do you remember?”
Samuel comes over to the bed and has a seat on the edge. His back is…ripped. Holy shitballs, his back is fucking cut like a diamond, but that’s not all. There are red welts in long streaks. I lean forward, my face burning with mortification as I realize they’re scratch marks. A lot of fucking scratch marks, actually.
He lowers his head, only making those damn marks on his back stand out that much more. “I remember drinking before our dinner was served. Your hand—” he starts, but cuts himself off.
“My hand what?” I press, recalling exactly where my hand was. I was surprised he didn’t push it away. Instead, he let it sit on his upper thigh, dangerously close to his groin. I had done it to settle him down. He seemed to get a little worked up when the shots arrived, refusing to take one in celebration. So I set my hand there, which seemed to work. He calmed down and took the shot, and for some unknown reason, I left it there until our dinner arrived. Okay, fine. I know the reason.
I liked touching him.
He clears his throat. “Nothing. Never mind. The point is, I drank a lot, and I never let that happen. This is why.”
“Because you wind up married in Las Vegas?” I quip, a smile on my face. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot worse things in life than being married to the man you’re secretly in love with, right?
Yes, you heard me right.
It’s a carefully guarded secret I’ve carried with me a while, surrounded by locks and chains, guard dogs, and an electric fence. How my bestie figured it out, I have no clue because I’m pretty sure my acting skills have been on point.
“No, because I wind up doing something stupid,” he states, the edge of his words striking my heart like a sword.
“Ouch.”
He turns around to face me, lifting his leg up on the tussled bed. Of course, when he does, things…dangle out from where the towel is gathered. My eyes are drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and I’m not even embarrassed.
If he feels the breeze, he doesn’t adjust, just keeps talking, trying to let me down easy. “Listen, Freedom, I don’t know what happened last night, but the bottom line is we can’t be married.”
“And why is that?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“I… I can’t be married, Freedom.”
“Why? Do you have another wife somewhere?”
He scoffs at my comment. “Of course not.”
“Well, I’m not getting divorced,” I tell him, turning until we’re face-to-face.
“What?” he huffs.
