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“You’re not going to starve. They’re going to bring you a plate.” He made a big show of taking a bite of chicken and chewing slowly. “Mmm,” he groaned. “This chicken is delicious.”
She shoved at his arm, and he chuckled as the waiter appeared and set a covered plate in front of her, lifting the cloche and offering her some freshly cracked black pepper before disappearing again. It smelled divine, and her stomach growled. She’d been too nervous to eat anything today.
Watching him out of the corner of her eye while she cut into her steak, she was prepared when his hand snaked over to steal his own bite, and she smacked him with the flat of the knife, making him jump.
“I have three brothers,” she said as he wiped butter off the back of his hand, “and catlike reflexes. If you’re not sharing, neither am I,husband.”
“You can have some chicken if I get to feed it to you.”
She choked on her wine, coughing and shrugging his hand away when he reached up to pat her on the back.
“I don’t want your food that badly, Callahan,” she rasped, taking a sip of water. “You can keep it.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll make a great photo. And people are watching,” he added, inclining his head to the guests who’d looked up at her coughs. “Do it for the fans.”
She pinned him with a hard stare when he speared a bite of chicken and held it up to her lips. There was no good way to refuse now, not with people watching them and the photographer hovering just at the edge of her periphery.
Smiling sweetly, she wrapped her lips slowly around the chicken and drew it into her mouth, giving herself a pat on the back when his eyes dropped to her lips and lingered there as she chewed. He reached up to brush at an invisible crumb at the corner of her mouth, and Viv could hear the click and whir of the camera to her right. It was all an act, she reminded herself. It meant nothing.
As the evening wore on, Viv was convinced Aidan had, at some point, read a wedding magazine or something because he insisted on doing all the traditions she and Evie had decided to skip.
They cut the cake and fed it to each other, she tossed her bouquet into a crowd of single women, and when he reached under her skirt to remove her garter, his fingers grazed dangerously high on her thigh. She counted herself lucky that she’d talked him out of retrieving it with his teeth.
She should have been exhausted when they finally left the reception hall to cheers and the fizz and pop of sparklers, but the more he touched her, on her back and her arm and her shoulder and her fingers, the more electric she felt.
They took a limo to the hotel in silence, and the front desk staff congratulated them on their wedding before showing them upstairs to the sprawling two-room suite. It hardly seemed necessary for a single night, but it looked good if anyone ever asked where they stayed. Another part of the act to make it all look real.
Someone had already dropped off their bags. She could see them on the couch in the living room. Aidan thanked the bellhop and slipped him some cash, and when she heard the door close with a soft click behind her, she let out the breath she’d been holding and willed her heart to stop trying to pound its way out of her chest.
ChapterSeventeen
When she didn’t hear any movement behind her, she turned to find Aidan reclined against the door, arms crossed over his chest, watching her. She pressed a hand to her stomach. Why was he looking at her like that?
He’d been staring at her all day like he couldn’t wait to remove this dress, and now he wasn’t even doing anything. Maybe he’d changed his mind or was trying to calculate the best way to get this over with as quickly as possible.
“I say we go for missionary. Quick and easy.”
His eyebrow slowly lifted, but he didn’t speak. He pushed away from the door, and she forced herself not to take a step back. When he stopped in front of her, he reached up to run his fingertips over the chandelier necklace she wore. The rubies and diamonds sat heavy against her neck.
His finger slid down her chest, tracing along the skin just over the top of the draped neckline of her dress, sending heat through her as his finger moved from one shoulder to the other.
She should want quick and easy because she was in very real danger of losing herself if she gave in to everything she wanted from him. It was stupid to want him this much. But she didn’t seem to be able to help it.
His hand wandered lower, stroking the side of her breast, and she let out a slow breath.
“Is that what you want, princess? Quick and easy?”
She shivered. When had that stupid nickname he had for her become a caress instead of an insult? When she didn’t answer, he circled his thumb around her nipple but didn’t touch it.
“No,” she admitted when his eyes met hers.
As soon as the single syllable left her lips, his hands were on her, roaming over her body as if he couldn’t figure out where he wanted to touch her first. He skimmed them down her back and over her ass, squeezing before he circled them up around her hips and stomach to her breasts, palming them as he finally, blissfully, dragged his thumbs across her nipples.
He canted his head, skimming his teeth across her jaw and using his fingers to tilt her head so he could drag his tongue across that sensitive spot behind her ear he liked to rub with his thumb. Her legs wobbled at the contact, and he wrapped his arm around her waist to hold her tight against him.
“I have been imagining all the ways I want to fuck you tonight.”
“Have you?" she wondered, breathless, hands braced on his chest.
