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“I will take that as a no, you are not married,” he replied, with a certain languid note in that voice of his that was even more insulting.Because how could you be?was the next question that he didn’t actually need to put into words for it to hang there between them.
Smoky and rude.
“I’m not sure that’s the issue I would be harping on if I was in your shoes,” she retorted. “I’m pretty sure we sawyourbride fail entirely to put up any kind of fight at all while being carried away from you and this wedding, friend.”
And she thought she saw a flicker ofsomethingin his dark gaze at that. But before she could press him any further, or dig her own grave any deeper, more like, he silenced her simply enough—by placing his hand on her upper arm and thereby urging her to walk with him back up the aisle.
Ushering her along as if she was the one being forcibly removed from the premises, with exactly as little actualforceas the previous bride had experienced on her way out.
Only they were headed in the opposite direction, not that she had it in her to care too much about that.
It was that hand, Geraldine told herself through the strange haze that descended. It washishand, or more precisely, that she could feel the wild heat of it. Not only where it gripped her upper arm, but all through her body.
As if the hold he had on her was nothing more than an ignition point, and everything else was ablaze.
She could feel the flames dance through her, licking this way and that along her arms and then all through the rest of her, finding every secret part of her body and setting it alight. One after the next, as if every step she took was from one bonfire to the next.
Her breasts felt heavy. And deep between her legs, something began to ache.
Then, before she knew it, Geraldine was standing at the head of the chapel’s surprisingly long aisle, staring at the priest who stood there—though she couldn’t seem to make sense of anything.
Not the priest as he began to speak in what she was certain was Italian this time. Not the rumbling sounds that seemed to come as much from the man beside her asthrough her, too, as if he was nothing short of an earthquake.
Except she was sohotwhen she had always imagined that, should she find herself confronted with the earth itself heaving about beneath her feet, she would be cold to the core, iced over with fear.
There were words exchanged, which she could understand even if she didn’t speak the language. And she was certain shetriedto object, but she couldn’t seem to make her mouth—or any other part of herself—act properly.
Especially when Lionel Asensio, that impossible creature, turned to face her and while he did, pulled her hands into his.
Then held them there while out of the corners of her eyes, the chapel seemed to spin a little drunkenly.
Geraldine tried not to pay attention, which was her usual policy with actual drunks, too.
That was just as well, because all she reallycouldmanage to do was gaze stupidly at him, because his hands were on hers and she couldn’t seem tobreathe, while he spoke rapidly. Almost carelessly, she might have thought, except the look in his eyes was intense.
Particularly when he slid two rings onto her finger, one after the next, then gazed at her when the priest spoke in his turn.
“You must reply,” Lionel said gravely, in English when the priest was finished. And the silence seemed to billow between them like still more smoke.
“But I...” she began. Her tongue felt too large. Her jaw too small. “I really don’t...”
“All you must say isyes,” he told her, again in that deeply serious manner.
And then, as she stared at him, fire dancing where it liked inside of her, one of his dark brows rose.
As if he was daring her.
And Geraldine was not adaringsort of person. The only thing she had done in the whole of her life that could be described as anything approachingdaringwas the fact that she’d come here, determined to make this very man take responsibility for what he’d done to her cousin.
Surely that alone should have had her stepping back and shaking her hands free of his, reclaiming herself from...whatever spell this was.
But his eyes were bittersweet chocolate, dark and rich. He gleamed like gold, though he was in no way blond. As if he, himself, was liquid gold from within. And that dark, aristocratic eyebrow felt like a call to arms.
She did not have it in her to do anything but whisper,“yes.”
Like the obedient soul she had always, secretly, imagined she was not.
And then everything seemed to speed up again. The priest was going on in Italian, Lionel was responding. Geraldine was beginning to frown as she stared down at her hand that no longer looked like her own—because there was now a great honking stone plunked down on her ring finger with another band, all heavy diamonds, next to it. It looked ridiculous in and of itself, a finger bedecked and bejeweled like that, given she had the sort of hands that were meant to dig fields rather than loaf about in Italian chapels.
