by Kasey Krane
“I hope this is some kind of joke. Either way, I’m not laughing right now.” I could feel a film of sweat forming on my forehead as I looked around aimlessly. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Maybe an escape route out of here. This had to be a bad dream. That was the only explanation.
“Okay, just calm down, just because we went out and bought a bunch of balloons and some rings from a gas station doesn’t mean we’re actually married.”
Married.
That word made me wince. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of that.
But yeah, he was right. None of it meant there was any legal action taken. Right?
But then what were those memories about? Of walking down the aisle and the people standing at the end of it, waiting to get us married.
He got off the bed while I stood there, literally shaking.
He had a hard-on, and I hoped it was just an involuntary morning one, because there was nothing sexy about our situation here.
Thankfully, he barely looked at me so I didn’t have to get sucked into those deep green eyes.
“Come on, just help me look. Let’s see if we can find any other evidence that this wedding actually took place,” he said.
At least one of us knew what to do.
“Is this evidence enough for you?” I asked, holding the papers up.
They were marriage registration papers I’d found under the bed. It didn’t take long. Just a few minutes of searching around the room had yielded them.
He stood up straight, staring at the papers in my hand. He looked as upset by them as I felt, which was kind of insulting but I decided to ignore that.
It was bad. It was disastrous.
I wasn’t prepared to view it as a bad joke. Not yet. Right now there was nothing funny about it.
Getting drunk and marrying a random stranger wasn’t a life plan I had in mind.
What if someone at the precinct found out about it? Could I become any more of a laughing stock over there?
Maybe it was the hangover that intensified all my feelings—but in that moment, I felt like my life was over. I’d spent so many years making the right choices, doing the right thing, and in one night—I’d brought it all down around me like a wobbly house of cards.
My cheeks burned as I met his eyes.
Colin.
Yeah, that was his name.
His attention had drifted from the papers to my face now, but I didn’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to come up with a plan for getting rid of me. The quickest and surest way of making this all go away.
Well, at least I hoped he had a plan because I was panicking and losing control.
Still naked, and exuding strength and control—Colin stepped towards me. He caught my attention again.
“Hey, Marley, just relax, okay? I can take care of it. There’s no need to panic.”
I didn’t know why, but there was something about him that made me trust him.
I did my best to resist the feeling.
Eight
Colin
My head throbbed viciously like it had a personal vendetta against me. I could barely function, let alone try and make sense of what was really going on here.
To top it all off, this girl just wouldn’t sit still. She had taken it upon herself to pace around the hotel room like she was getting somewhere. It made me dizzy.
I covered my face with both hands and groaned behind them.
How did this happen? How could I have acted so irresponsibly?
She was hot as fuck. That much was obvious. Even despite her messy hair and the smudged makeup on her face, I knew why I would have lusted after her. She had a body with the kind of curves any chick would be jealous of.
But through my drunken haze, did that body seem good enough to marry? What was I thinking?
I smirked when I pulled my hands away. In a few days, or when I told my brothers about this—it would seem funny.
But right now, she wasn’t laughing.
“I can’t be married.” I heard her murmur under her breath as she continued to pace around.
It seemed like she was lost in her own world. Like she’d somehow forgotten I was even in the room with her.
She rubbed her fingers on her temples like she was trying to erase a memory.
“Why is this happening to me?” she murmured again.
I wasn’t smirking anymore.
Sure, waking up married to a stranger was irritating. A result of a stupid decision. Something I’d managed to avoid all my adult life no matter how drunk I got.
But the look of panic I saw on this girl’s face right now seemed to suggest it was more than just a nuisance. To her at least. Waking up married was as good as a nightmare.
I clenched my jaws, focusing on her body pacing. I tried not to stare at the way her ass moved in that tight black dress she was wearing. I had a sudden flash of an image of her on the dance floor in that dress. The way she moved her body was the most seductive thing I had ever seen.
Was that the first time I saw her?
It was obvious she cast a spell on me.
I cleared my throat loudly, forcing her to snap out of her daze and look at me again. She looked lost, and I had the feeling of wanting to protect her.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said.
Her nostrils flared and she clutched her neck with one hand.
“Maybe not to you, to me it is. I never wanted to get married,” she replied.
“Neither did I fucking plan on getting married,” I snapped. I noticed the irritable sound in my voice.
Why did I take personal offense that this chick didn’t want to stay married to me? It wasn’t what I wanted either.
She sat down with a thump on the edge of the bed, like she was completely exhausted.
“I just wish this was a dream,” she said with a sigh.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“How? How will you take care of it? What are you, like the king of the world?” she snapped.
Our tensions were running high.
“So I guess we’ve skipped past the honeymoon stage and gone directly to being an old bickering married couple,” I said. That made her smile, but only momentarily. She turned away from me.
It was comical—the way she resolved to sit with her back turned to me.
“When I said I’ll take care of it, I will. Getting our marriage annulled shouldn’t be a problem. I just need to get back to New York and I’ll have the lawyers deal with it.”
She looked over her shoulder at me now. There was curiosity all over her face.
“The lawyers? You say it like you need the services of your lawyers often.”
“Not me personally. We run a family business,” I replied.
Marley ran her fingers through her hair. At least we were talking about something else now.
“What kind of business is it?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure how much I told her the previous night about myself. If I was drunk enough to marry the girl in a shotgun ceremony, what else was I drunk enough to do?
“We’re not really married. I don’t have to tell you everything.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Well clearly, this isn’t the most transparent marriage in history, is it? I don’t think I know anything about you,” she continued.
“It’s probably for the best, right?” I asked.
Marley met my eyes and slowly licked her luscious lips. That was when I remembered kissing her in the dark alleyway at the back of the bar. Her face was lit up by the florescent lights of a sign. That kiss was something else…
“Yeah, probably for the best,” she replied.
The more I stared at her, the more I remembered. Her body underneath me on this bed, her hips rolling when she was on top of me, riding my cock hard, coming on me, making me come. Her tits bouncing over my face, my tongue curling as it sucked on her rosy nipples.
Despite the hangover and everything that was fuck
ed up about this morning, I felt my cock coming alive.
Bad timing.
She was staring at me too. Her face was blank but there was something in her blue eyes. Maybe she was thinking the same thing I was—was the sex worth getting married over?
It was definitely good.
The best lay I ever experienced?
A sharp knock on the door snapped me out of it.
Marley gasped like she was terrified of being found in my room.
It was Brendan.
I’d slipped my jeans on before I answered the door but I blocked him from coming in with my body.
Marley had looked absolutely terrified when he knocked on the door.
“What’s going on? Where have you been?” he asked, trying to peer over my shoulder. He obviously noticed I was shirtless, and I was sure he’d clocked how terrible my eyes must have looked too. But he didn’t comment on it.
“Where do you think I’ve been? Trying to sleep off a hangover.”
“You disappeared from the bar last night. We kept calling you.”
“Yeah, my phone was on silent.”
“Where the fuck did you go? Killian and Aidan said you saw some chick you wanted to bang.”
I clenched my jaws tightly. I was sure Marley could hear it. Not that it mattered. She and I both knew what the point of last night was.
I pushed my hands into the pockets of my jeans.
“Yeah, and I got caught up,” I replied.
“Got caught up in her? Do you even hear yourself?” Brendan chuckled.
I didn’t often want to punch any of my brothers in the face, but right then I did.
He must have noticed the look on my face and he dropped his voice low.
“Is she in there?”
I didn’t reply.
“Fuck off. You’ve got a girl in there? She spent the night?” He brought a clenched fist up to his mouth and tried to hold back the laughter. “The others need to hear about this.”
“Why are you here, Brendan?” I growled at my brother.
He tried to look over my shoulder again before he gave up. I was pretty sure Marley was hiding. Probably under the bed.
“We’ve all been waiting on you. You missed the fuckin’ breakfast buffet. You’re the one who planned this weekend, so what’s next?” Brendan genuinely looked a little impatient now.
Also, he had a point.
This was supposed to be about Killian. And even though I made last night about fucking Marley, I needed to get my head screwed back again.
“Yeah, I know. Fuck. Give me an hour. I’ll be down.”
“An hour? It's noon. You know how Aidan and Nolan get around lunchtime. Also, you look absolutely terrible.”
“Which is why I need the hour. Now get out of here and keep your mouth shut about everything else.”
Brendan snickered because he could see how annoyed I was, and how hungover.
“Fine, yeah, I’ll hold the fort for an hour. After that, you owe the rest of them an explanation. Have fun,” he said as he walked away. From the smile on his face, it was obvious he was sure there was a chick in my room. I couldn’t deny it.
I locked the door and turned to find Marley in the corner of the room, trying to mesh into the wall because she didn’t want to be seen.
“This is such a mess,” she murmured.
And she wasn’t wrong.
Nine
Marley
Why did he have to look this freakin’ hot? His eyes smoldered as he stared at me with his hands on his hips, his shoulders wide and strong. He had the most chiseled torso I had ever seen. Six pack abs and a flat stomach. No wonder I’d spent the night in his hotel room. I couldn’t even blame my drunken self for getting married to this guy. At least I picked a sexy one.
I couldn’t recall most of the previous night. The memories came in flashes and then disappeared immediately. The sex was good, that much I remembered—or was it just my drunken haze?
He stood near the door, glaring at me.
I hadn’t heard any of the conversation he had or with whom. I didn’t even know what he was doing in Las Vegas when he said he was from New York.
“Do you think you’re feeling better now?” he broke the silence.
I felt a rush of anger rise and then fade. I was trying my best to be mad at him—the same way I was mad at everyone at the precinct. After all, he was just a man like the rest of them, right?
Except, I couldn’t stay mad at him. There was something about him that calmed me right down. Maybe he knew it too. This was a guy who was self-confident in his own charm.
“I just want this to be over. I have a lot of…shit going on in my…personal life.” I tried to be as vague as possible with him. The truth was, I didn’t want to deal with this disaster in the middle of having a mental breakdown at work.
Moreover, I wasn’t lying when I told him I never wanted to be married.
That had always been one of my life-rules.
Colin walked towards me, and immediately, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. His proximity did that to me. All I could think about right then was how hot it would be if he pushed me against the wall and took me.
But he didn’t.
Sex wasn’t on his mind. And it shouldn’t have been on mine either.
“Why don’t you go have a shower. It might help you relax. We can take it from there,” he suggested.
Damn. That was an excellent suggestion. Why didn’t I think of it?
At that moment, having a shower felt like the best idea. Maybe I’d be able to think straight after it.
I nodded and he even smiled. I wasn’t expecting his smile to have that effect on me, but a part of me wobbled. I could have stared at him smiling like that forever. He was just too handsome. Those tattoos on his chest were too sexy. What was happening to me?
Since when did I allow a man to control me like this?
I really needed to get a grip on myself.
I’d already done too much damage.
I lost track of time in the shower. It was so comfortable in there. The water was the perfect temperature, and under the steady stream, I was able to zone everything else out. The reality of our shotgun wedding seemed distant now. I was able to wash it all away, and it felt like maybe I’d be able to emerge clean.
I didn’t hear the bathroom door opening or Colin’s footsteps as he approached the glass cubicle.
It was only when he slid the door of the cubicle open that I turned to him with a start, gasping and spluttering water. He just stood there, staring at me, examining my naked body while I tried to cover my breasts and pussy.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded over the roar of the shower.
“Making sure you’re all right. You’ve been in here for close to twenty minutes.”
“I like long showers, okay?” I snapped.
Colin smirked. He was still only in his jeans, but there was a part of me that wanted to see him naked again.
“Is this one of your habits I’ll have to accept and get used to, for the sake of a peaceful married life?” he asked.
I switched off the shower with a jerk.
“You need to stop making jokes about this. We’re not an actual married couple.”
“We have papers that state otherwise,” he said, undoing his jeans.
My heart slammed against my chest.
“What are you doing?” I demanded again as he pushed his jeans down.
His big hard cock greeted me. I nearly lost my breath. The spot between my legs throbbed with desire. This was not how I was supposed to react to him.
“I need to have a shower too and you’ve taken too much time.” With those words, he stepped in.
I pasted myself to the wall. It wasn’t a small shower cubicle, but suddenly it felt very cramped with him in there.
He switched on the shower and ran his hands over his hair.
What was going on? Why didn’t I move? I could have stepped out of the showe
r at any moment. It wasn’t like he was physically holding me back. But that’s how it felt. Like I was magnetized to the spot.
Colin kept his back to me as he washed and rinsed himself. I saw the muscles moving on his back. His hard and perfect butt.
He looked over his shoulder at me with that same devilish smirk on his face, like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“There has to be some perks to being married,” he said, turning to me.
I quivered, standing in the splashing water. I didn’t even have a response for him. I was tongue-tied with desire.
“Even if the marriage was a mistake,” he continued.
He came closer, towering over me while I remained pinned to the slick glass wall. I had to tip my head back to look at him. I hadn’t realized just how tall he was.
Colin hooked a finger under my chin, angling my face the way he wanted to look at me, staring right into my eyes.
I threw myself at him before I could stop. Our mouths met and I sighed with relief. His mouth on mine was exactly what I needed.
I wrapped my legs around him as he held me up. The shower fell like torrential rain all around us while he kissed my neck, my chin and earlobes. I clung to his hard muscular body, but he didn’t let me slip. Not even once. He was so strong.
Then, he swung me around and pinned me to the opposite wall of the cubicle. It was like we were dancing. Except, we were both sucking each other’s mouths.
My breasts were pressed to his chest and I reached for his cock. Big and hard. He was ready for me and I guided him in.
He felt big inside me as he pushed in, inch by inch.
Immediately, I remembered how good it had felt last night. How natural it had felt to have him inside me. Even though I was drunk out of my mind and may not have known what I was really doing—that feeling was real.
We started moving together. His body slammed into me rhythmically and he grunted with every thrust. I loved hearing the sound of his growl in my ear. I liked knowing that he enjoyed this. That he lost control.
