AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t remember saying anything about touching—”
“Ms. King,” he repeats. “Frankly, what has happened between us these past few days has made me realize one very important observation…” His hand cups my chin fully, his voice a low sensual rasp… his facial expression like the blank one someone being lobotomized might wear. “I cannot go on another minute… without ensuring that youaren’tused as a pawn in some scheme to circumvent me. So out of your own sense of self-preservation, will you do me the very real inconvenience of marrying me?”
I feel a cramp in my lips—they purse so hard. “Lovely. How very romantic.” Am I actually disappointed? The man can’t even pretend for five seconds to convey sincere emotion. Despite all that harping about “wooing,” he can barely let go of his checkbook for long enough to even try. Or… maybe the heart of the matter was that, despite being very capable of expressing himself physically, the man can’t even feign genuine human emotion. “The answer is no.”
I attempt to step away from him, but his body becomes a wall, pinning me in. His breath is on my neck before I even feel his teeth there, grazing the outer shell of my ear. “Shut up,” he tells me, and I swear I feel his teeth, nipping just once. “You know how good it can be between us. Adeep, satisfying connection.”
My breath catches, and I force my eyes to roll toward the ceiling. Of course, he’d reference sex.
“I don’t—”
“Forget the money. Forget the titles. Forget the whole bloody lot of it. Just simply picture me and you—there’s more there. You feel it. I feel it…” His voice takes on a gruffer baritone, more alarming than the growl. The same one I’ve only heard in his bed, or in some compromising position in another part of his suite, gritted into my ear or murmured into my skin. “You know no one understands you better than I do. That no one will ever understand me any better than you do.”
My mind struggles to find the obvious flaws in his façade—his broken, unsteady breaths, the way his fingers flex against the wall. How he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple flexing. I’m not used to this side of him. A man without his cocky, confident swagger to hide behind.
He’s being honest, and the realization scares the hell out of me. Even so, I can’t stop listening, a slave to every word.
“You feel it, every time I touch you.” He slides one of his hands down to my waist as if to reinforce that assertion. In response, my stomach tightens. My skin grows warm. Hot. “Every time I’m near you. Do you want to know why I didn’t want to get you a ring at first?” His thumb hooks beneath the waistband of my skirt, hauling it down before I can choke out a protest and slipping underneath. “This is all I need…” His fingers find my panties and pry the panel aside just enough for him to force one through the gap in the fabric and circle me. Once. Twice.
My entire body melts beneath the friction. The rough way he touches me. The sound he growls into my ear at the feel of me. “This,” he grates. “You at my fingertips. There’s no other proof I need to know you’re mine, Evelyn… Are you?”
His nearness does something to me—addles my brain to make the impossible seem… desirable. Graeme Bellamy all mine, to strangle—or more—at will?
When his lips graze my cheek, I can’t stop myself from choking out, “Yes.”
“Good.”
My mind spins as he draws back, withdrawing his hand from my skirt and wrenching the waistband up. His gaze is unreadable as he pops the offending thumb onto his tongue and slowly licks the pad clean. “Marry me,” he demands gruffly before letting that hand fall back to his side.
I can’t speak, but he’s already turning on his heel, storming off. I don’t even realize I’ve taken a step toward him until he pauses near the threshold of a doorway and glances back at me. “Before I forget…” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small black box that he tosses in my direction. “Here. The choice is yours, but you know where I stand.”
A part of me suspects what it is before I even open it—as he would say, abloody fuckingring.
CHAPTER37
evie
ONE WEEK LATER…
If I envisioned myself getting married, it certainly didn’t involve a billionaire still sporting a healing gunshot wound who paid off my brother’s debts with thousands of dollars of his own money.
And even if I’d had a fantasy—or perhaps a weird vivid dream—that entailed as much, I certainly wouldn’t imagine that I could actually care for the bastard. It’s ironic, in a way. My father used to say that my mother put the “moan” in matrimony, the few times he did talk about her. He definitely didn’t mean in the sexual sense, either.
No, he meantmisery, and I always swore to never willingly put myself in that position. My terrible relationship track record aside, I was well on my way to achieving that goal before this moment. It was one of the few promises I made to myself, right after the little one claiming I would never let Graeme Bellamy get the better of me.
Breakingbothof those vows at once proceeds a bit like how I imagine signing your soul away to the devil might—though albeit with less pomp and circumstance, and a little bit of excitement. In lieu of a fiery pit, I’m led into an office commandeered by a man wearing a suit who appraises us from behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“The judge,” Bellamy mutters to me. Somehow I’d managed to convince him to boil down our ceremony to a hasty exchange, but I suspect that Gloria is already planning something far more extravagant.
Given that Bellamy still has ownership of the club to work out with Adrian Riley and Alexander, only god knows what he might be talked into by her while distracted. For now, a courthouse wedding in relative privacy will have to do.
Once we take adjacent seats in front of the desk before him, the “ceremony” commences.
Foregoing any pretense, our vows apparently consist of a few lines of legal-sounding jargon.
“Do you solemnly swear to uphold this union?” the judge asks once the terms are set.
“I do,” Bellamy agrees before glancing pointedly at me.
