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He spoke to me like he wanted to know me. Like he wanted me to know him. He talked to me until the bricks I built were misshapen and porous. Until all that was left was a pathetic defense, half-formed and on a shaky foundation, one that would make it all too easy for me to fall even further for the man being forced to marry me.
I knew it was the type of thing that could be solved easily by a conversation. In almost any other circumstance, I would be the first to blurt out my feelings, to see if the other person felt the same way. I had usually made the first move in my (rare) past relationships, sneaking away with boys when my bodyguards’ backs were turned.
I never minded rejection, glad to have the truth rather than having to awkwardly stumble through the half-lies and omissions that took time I never had. Not when I knew nointeraction would last longer than a night, where I’d stumble out the door and usually directly into the arms of my bodyguards, who would fail to look me in the eye for the next two days. Not when any interaction I had with a man felt like a lie, so I’d eventually stopped altogether. Not until now.
But Dev wasn’t a stranger I could never fall for. And this wasn’t a middle school crush where rejection just meant hiding your face for a few weeks until the bruise on your ego faded. If Dev rejected me, admitted he didn’t find me attractive or had someone else he’d rather pursue, we’d still be stuck in a marriage. He’d made it clear that our wedding was something he’d go through for his friends’ safety, even when I gave him an out.
Not only would I hate having to spend the rest of my life by his side after his rejection, I didn’t want to put him in that position. I didn’t want to be the idiot who fell for the guy who only married her to protect his friends. I didn’t want to be my father, the one blind with love while their partner conjured up ways to leave.
So despite finally having the opportunity to share the whole of myself with someone I’d also like to see naked, I was unwilling to bridge that conversation until I had concrete evidence that he felt the same.
Chapter 13
Rory
I wasn’tsure how we’d forgotten to buy me a wedding dress over the past two weeks of wedding planning, but somehow it was the last thing on the agenda. Maybe because it was the one thing my wedding planner couldn’t do through Wren and Ames, the two of them putting in most of the footwork while I attempted to not fall in love with their best friend. Or jump his bones as he walked around the house shirtless, his muscles flexing as he did kind, mundane things, like make me chai or fold my laundry.
I’d hoped the more time I spent at his side - which was a lot, considering he was still on bodyguard duty until they tracked down who was after me - the less I’d want him. That the newness would fade, my appreciation for him saving my life would dull as he treated me like a charge instead of a fiancée, that his presence would become normal enough that it didn’t soothe the disquiet in my soul.
But two weeks at his side had only made me want him more, made me get used to his arm wrapped around my shoulders. Made me crave it to the point where I would shamelessly curl up at his side on the couch as we watched television. Where I’d fold into his arms as we walked outside, the chronic chill in my bonesonly relieved by his body heat. I even found myself leaving my door open as I worked, just so I could hear him move around the house.
It hadn’t helped that the last few books I’d worked on had all been romances, leaving me horny and sentimental by the time I’d finished editing. The only thing that had kept me firmly in my bed and out of his was imagining the embarrassment of rejection, the finality of my decision, the reminder that I wouldn’t be able to escape and lick my wounds in private.
But it was getting harder each day. Especially today, as Dev held my hand as he drove, grinned at me as he pulled into the driveway at Alex’s and Ames’s house, brushed a kiss across my knuckles before he parked the car.
So I was fucking relieved when the girls pushed him upstairs so that we could go shopping for my wedding dress in peace.
Dev frowned at their sudden assault, planting his feet so their shoves were ineffective. He opened his lips in protest, his eyes dropping to my mouth as the muscles of his face grew tenser. And even without him saying anything, I suddenly knew what he wanted.
“Wait,” I said to the girls as I wiggled between them, until my chest brushed Dev’s and my hands were on his shoulders. I used them as leverage to go onto my tiptoes, skimming my lips across the bottom of Dev’s jaw in an approximation of the kisses he pressed to my forehead every time we separated. “See you later.”
Dev’s frown dissipated, his resistance melted as he allowed Wren and Ames to renew their efforts against him.
“You two are harsh. Next time, let me kiss my girl goodbye first, yeah?” His voice held a tone of seriousness underneath his laughter as he ruffled the hair of the women at his side, but his brown eyes were molten and intense on mine as glanced at me one last time before heading up the stairs.
“That was hot,” Ames commented once Dev had disappeared into Alex’s office. “The way he looked at you?” She pretended to fan her face, and my cheeks reddened at her confirmation of what I’d seen in Dev’s eyes.Hunger.
It was the first time I’d been unable to deny what I kept foolishly hoping I saw in Dev’s face when he looked at me. When he wrapped his body around mine while we sparred or when he pressed his chest to my back, pulling me between his thighs as he fixed my form while I worked out on the machines or lifted weights. Every time I’d seen a similar emotion in his eyes, I’d chalked it up to tension or my own feelings coloring our interaction, but it was hard to argue with myself when Ames noticed it as well.
“Are you girls ready?” John’s interruption saved me from having to respond to Ames’s words. From having to acknowledge what was becoming harder for me to hide.
It also distracted Wren and Ames enough that neither pushed me further about Dev, a small reprieve considering the two women had attempted (and failed) to slyly ask me probing questions to get at the root of our relationship. Whether there was one underneath the agreement forcing us together.
John and Cian drove us to a local bridal store, which had promised plenty of off-the-rack options in my size. Dad had already commissioned a seamstress to meet us after I’d chosen a dress, so she could do all the alterations needed overnight. I’d somehow buried the date of our wedding in my subconscious, ignoring the countdowns the girls texted me until my wedding day felt like a hazy point in the future, not an imminent date. The date beingtomorrow.
“I need champagne,” I murmured, pressing my palm against my chest in an effort to slow my racing heart. I hated that my first thought was to call Dev, that I knew he’d be able to calm me down with his warm voice and soft words alone. But that wouldmean I relied on him for more than just physical safety, and I had enough self-preservation to avoid admitting that. To anyone but myself, at least.
I wasn’t sure my voice was loud enough to be heard, but Ames was already there, pressing a cool glass into my hand as she looked at me with eyes much too sympathetic to convince me she couldn’t see every emotion I felt written across my face. I gulped down my drink to keep from blurting out the riot of feelings in my chest, the bubbles fizzing in my throat enough to bring me back from the ledge of a panic attack.
By the time the bridal consultant led us to the back of the store, the alcohol had dulled my panic enough that the girls’ excitement had begun to rub off on me. The consultant led us to an area with a trio of mirrors surrounding a small platform in front of a few deep-seated cream couches. The five of us sat as the consultant stood in front of us, glancing at our odd group with a hint of curiosity.
“Welcome in. I’m Julia, the bridal consultant who will be working with you today. Can I ask who you’ve brought with you today?”
“My bridesmaids.” Wren and Ames waved at Julia with easy smiles. “And my brothers,” I said as I waved toward John and Cian. The lies came easily. I’d become familiar with introducing my bodyguards over the years with varied relationships and excuses. Brothers, uncles, coworkers, boyfriends. Cian, like Sean before him, was only a couple years older than me and John was in his mid-thirties, which had helped him to not stand out too much when they followed me to classes and the (rare) party in college.
I almost never introduced them as my bodyguards, because bodyguards were for people who were important. People that warranted extra interest. And that was the last thing I wanted. It was even easier for them to blend in now that Alex had spokenwith the two of them, informing them that the classic mafia-men-wore-suits stereotype no longer applied to them. It had gotten us plenty of looks in the past, enough that they’d had to abandon the suits in college so as not to stand out as they sat in the back of lecture halls, and I was thankful for the extra bit of camouflage once again.
“How sweet to help your sister shop for her wedding dress,” Julia gushed, and I couldn’t stifle my laugh as Cian and John flushed at the praise. “Well, let’s get started. I know you had said over the phone you weren’t quite sure what you wanted, so I figured I’d give you all free rein of the shop, find a couple picks you like, and we can narrow it down from there?”
