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After that moment that it actually stopped.
She was here. She was going through with it. Anastasia was going to be my wife.
I hadn’t truly believed she would show. It had been hard to believe it would actually happen. My ultimate dream girl was walking down the aisle towards me.
Hell, she was anyone’s ultimate dream girl.
And she was about to be mine. For real. And tonight, I would finally get to hold her all night.
My body tightened up and blood started to pool in my groin. I was instantly hard, just from thinking about being with her.
My about-to-be-fucking-wife.
I watched as her cousins walked her down the aisle, then Alexei took her hand and put in mine. He grinned and said words I would never forget.
“If you hurt her, we will make you wish you were dead. For years.”
I nodded. It was a no brainer that they would make Ramsay Snow look like a nursery school if I fucked up. But they didn’t know one little thing.
Disappointing Anastasia was the last thing I would ever do. Every single second of the rest of my entire life was going to be geared towards making her as happy as humanly possible. She was an angel and she deserved everything good in the world.
I would never hurt her. I might disappoint her by not being the perfect man. But hurt her? Never.
I would die first.
I would sooner cut off my own arm than reach for another woman. As far as I was concerned, other women didn’t even exist, other than my brother’s old ladies, who were like sisters to me. There was no one on earth that compared to my Anastasia. She was brave, beautiful, strong, sweet, funny, and brilliant.
She was literally perfect.
How the hell she ended up with me was a mystery that only God could unravel. As I had a strong suspicion Preacher was about to start talking about. He would likely tell us all how undeserving I was. And I wouldn’t argue.
I watched my bride warily as he began the ceremony, suddenly realizing I should have warned her about Preacher’s, uh, unconventional marriage methods.
I was very glad in that moment that Cynthia had come along and tamed him. If the old Preacher had been performing the ceremony, the Aslanov brothers would have lost their damned minds.
And Preacher would have lost a hand. Or a tongue. Maybe both.
Medieval shit indeed. He might be a pain in the ass, but he was our pain in the ass. I wanted him here. Hopefully my bride found him amusing.
“We are gathered here today to watch this exquisite young lady tie herself to a disreputable, ornery, sad sack of a man. Vice got that nickname due to his long list of illicit vices and bad behavior,” he hesitated and I glared at him so hard that even he looked a bit nervous. And Preacher had balls of steel. “Vices which I will not get into right now. Leave it to say, it would turn your hair white.”
He gave my bride a stern look. She giggled. I stared at her, jaw open. She wasn’t in the least bit cowed by Preacher. Relief flooded me. I relaxed and squeezed her hand.
She squeezed me right back.
“You, my dear, would look lovely with any hair color,” Preacher expounded. “In fact, the only flaw I can see about you is your terrible taste in men. Now Vice, this is a man with flaws. Many, many flaws,” he added, looking at me with feigned look of disapproval.
I rolled my eyes at him. He was full of shit. Before he met Cynthia, he was by the far the worst of us. He drank, drugged, and womanized his way up and down the coast for decades. But now? He was practically a saint. And the old fucker loved to remind us of the fact.
“As imperfect as he is, Vice is also the bravest and most loyal man I know. He will lay down his life for those he loves. His brothers and the men he served with know it well. And now you know it too, my dear,” he said, and she nodded eagerly, looking so sweet and earnest it made my heart swell up in my chest.
“He can also cook a mean steak,” he added, waving his hand magnanimously. I heard the Aslanov cousins start to chuckle behind me. I just wanted to get to the end of this so I could kiss my woman, damnit.
And then take her straight to bed.
Preacher winked at me as he started to drone on and on about my marital duties. Then he spoke about the great cooperation between mother Russia and our proud United States. I groaned. He was definitely doing it on purpose.
Finally I heard the magic words.
“Now, if no one has any objects…” he let the offer dangle for a long time. Too long. Finally Cain coughed and gave Preacher an evil look. That did it.
