by Penny Wylder
I’m buried in a fluffy comforter and there’s a heavy, warm arm draped over my body. Oh my fuck, everything about this hangover sucks. My head is pounding. It’s so bad that I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t thrown up. I’ve had hangovers like this before. After every single one of them I swore that I would never drink again. And every time I don’t listen. This time I hope that I will.
But Asher’s drinks didn’t feel like I was drinking that much, given how tasty they were. And I wasn’t exactly complaining when he swept me back here and fucked my brains out.
I ease out from under Asher’s arm and creep to the bathroom to splash water on my face. The water is warm, and that feels good, so I do it again. But this time I notice in the mirror that there’s a red string tied around my finger. That’s weird.
Must have been some sort of drunk game that we played last night. All I remember is being so fucking happy, that’s the only memory I have. And right now, I desperately need coffee. Maybe the caffeine will take the edge off the hangover. But I should probably just go back to sleep.
There’s the soft sound of movement from the bedroom, and Leo’s rough morning voice. “Good morning.”
My body reacts instantly, skin tightening and shivers running across my skin. Another memory from last night—his voice growling raw, dirty words in my ear while he fucked me. Making me come over and over again.
“Morning.”
It’s not fair how good he looks for just waking up. I could snap a picture and send it to a magazine and they would slap it into an ad without a second thought.
“How’s your head?”
I groan. “Not good. I can’t even believe I’m standing up right now.”
“Then don’t stand up.” He reaches for me, snagging me by the hand and pulls me down into the bed with him again. In one smooth motion he has me on my back and is over me, pinning me to the bed with his body. I can’t say that I mind. His now-familiar weight is delicious and I’m already wet, body recognizing what this means. Even with the headache.
Asher is sexy as fuck, and he makes me feel good. It’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone at all, let alone someone that thoroughly enjoys giving me pleasure.
Slowly, Asher takes my wrists and pins them above my head with a sly smile. “I like this view.”
“You can have as much of it as you want,” I tell him, wishing that my voice wasn’t such a giveaway. I sound like I’ve run a marathon, and it’s really fucking clear that I’m affected by him.
“Just one question,” he says.
“Mm?”
He glances at my hands. “Why did you take your wedding ring off?”
I blink at him, and my body goes cold. “My what?”
Asher weaves his fingers between the ones of my left hand and pulls it in front of me. “Your wedding ring. The string on your finger.”
I stare at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He looks innocent, and the false surprise isn’t remotely convincing. “What am I talking about? You don’t remember? We got married last night. Edward, our guest, is an officiant, and he married us.”
I scramble out from underneath him and off the bed before remembering that I’m completely naked and it doesn’t exactly help the situation. Panic is clawing up my throat, and combined with the pounding in my head, I feel like I can’t breathe. “Why would we do that?”
Asher leans across the bed casually, smirking. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And you were extremely enthusiastic about the idea of a honeymoon with me. Can’t say I blame you. A week of fucking like last night would be heaven.”
Married. Married? I can’t be married. Not possible. “How? We don’t have a marriage license.”
“It’s New Hampshire,” he says. “We don’t need a license here.”
“Fuck. Fuck.” I start to pace across the room. “We can get out of this. We can get an annulment. No way were we in our right minds last night. It’ll be easy. It’s not too late to fix this.”
“You’re right,” Asher says. “It’s not too late.” He stands, also naked, standing proudly and so fucking distracting. My husband.
He’s staring at me now, and for the first time, his eyes aren’t kind. What just happened? All the energy in the room has shifted and I feel cold and like I should cover myself up.
Asher crosses his arms and stares me down. “I’ll happily give you an annulment, Rose Brandt, if you stop trying to ruin my business.”
My stomach falls through the floor and all the way to the center of the earth. I never told him my last name. Which means he knows who I am, and he knows why I’m here, and I am so, so royally screwed.
6
Asher
Rose goes entirely pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. But we both know that it’s not the truth.
I step into her space, so close that I can feel her still-naked skin. “You know what happened last night? I made you scream. On my tongue and on my cock. If I remember right, there might even have been some screaming while your pretty lips were wrapped around my shaft. If you think that you can lie to me after that, think again.”
She swallows. “I wasn’t trying to ruin your business. I swear.”
“Then you have some explaining to do.”
“How did you know?” Rose wraps her arms around her chest and looks cold. She’s still beautiful, and now she’s my wife. I’m not prepared for the urge to pull her close and warm her up.
No. Not a traitor like this.
“Your wallet fell over while I was bringing your clothes to the dryer yesterday. Your last name is different from the one on your booking. So if you aren’t trying to ruin Blue Mountain, then what are you doing? And don’t try to tell me that you were going to book a girls’ weekend.
“No,” she shakes her head. “I wasn’t.”
The look on her face surprises me. Rose looks uncomfortable—scared? Why would she be scared? Does she think that I’m going to hurt her?
Revulsion rolls through me along with a surge of deep protectiveness. Even after all of this, I’m so fucking attracted to her that I’m getting hard. And she can see it. Not only that, but I don’t want her to hate me. Or fear me.
I shake my head. “Get dressed. I’m going to make breakfast, and then you’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on and why you’re here.”
“Okay.”
We’re standing close enough that the chemistry that drove all of this is sizzling in the air around us. She might have been too drunk to remember last night, but I wasn’t. And all of it was real. Making her moan and come over and over was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Not to mention that the sight of Rose on her knees, sucking my dick like it was a lifeline is not something that I’ll soon forget.
I force myself to step back away from her and grab a pair of pants, pulling them on as I walk to the kitchen. Oatmeal. That’s something I can do. Quick. Easy. Won’t take my full concentration.
There’s a part of me that wants to impress her—my wife.
Fuck.
Did I make a mistake doing this?
Yesterday it seemed like the perfect plan, given that Edward was a minister and could do it. Nothing like a bit of blackmail to get people to do what you want them to do. But that look on her face—the flash of terror—won’t leave my mind.
Putting water on the stove, I swear that I’m going to get everything out of her and figure out why the fuck she’s scared. I get the sense that I just walked into something bigger than I realized. Pouring the oatmeal into the pan, I hope that I didn’t make a huge mistake.
7
Rose
Married. Married?
The word keeps echoing in my brain. What the fuck?
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
That’s how drunk I was last night? That I let him marry me without a second thought?
I’m never drinking again. My head is still pounding, and I can’t seem to
wrap my head around the fact that I’m married.
To Asher.
The fucking sex god walking who made my body sing over and over. That much I remember.
I didn’t think that he would find out who I was. Granted, I hadn’t gone to really extraordinary lengths to hide it, but bad luck that he literally just tripped over the fact that I was lying.
My dress and bra from yesterday are dry, and I pull them on. Even without underwear, it feels like armor to wear my own clothes. I’ll take what I can get.
In the kitchen, there’s the vague smell of fruit and baking bread. He’s standing at the stove in nothing but jeans. Even after seeing him in all his naked glory, the sight is as distracting as hell.
I shouldn’t be attracted to the man that married me when I was too drunk to remember. But my body is, and reminds me of the exquisite pleasure that he can offer. But that doesn’t matter right now. I have to remember that.
I also know that even though he’s fucking pissed at me, he still wants me, too. Before he left the bedroom he was hard. It’s a little comforting that I won’t be the only one struggling to keep control of myself. My…husband.
I can’t believe that’s real.
I can’t believe I did that.
If and when I actually get married, I hope my husband is as sexy as Asher. If he is, I would be lucky. There’s a sadness in my chest when I think about getting an annulment, and I can’t quite place why. I can’t be married. Marriage means responsibility, and I can’t have that yet. I want the career that I’ve chosen. I want to follow my dreams.
No part of me wants to be a wife now.
“I hope you like oatmeal,” Asher says, pouring some from a pan into a bowl and setting it on the table in the breakfast nook.
“It’s fine.”
He sits in the chair across from me and crosses his arms. “Talk.”
I take a bite of the oatmeal and dare to meet his eyes. “I’m a student. Journalism. I had a scholarship, but it’s disappearing because the school is reorganizing and there’s less interest. I’m not exactly sure why, but there’s no more money there. So for my last year, so I asked my dad for money.”
“Your dad is Gary Brandt?”
Fire burns my cheeks. “Yeah.”
“Keep going.” He shakes his head.
“You know my dad?”
“Finish first,” he says.
I take another bite of oatmeal to give myself a couple seconds to breathe. “He said he’d give me the money for tuition if I worked for him this summer. There are worse deals, so I agreed.”
Asher doesn’t look angry right now; he’s just listening intently.
“All this summer I’ve been going wherever he tells me and taking pictures. All these places that he thinks are doing things wrong. But he’s…he’s getting frustrated because none of the pictures I take ever really show what he wants them to. Either I don’t take a picture of the right thing, or they’re just not doing what he thinks they are.”
A dark laugh comes from across the table. “Yeah, I kind of thought as much. Rose, your father isn’t a good guy.”
I blush again. He’s not perfect, but I’ve never heard anyone call him a bad person before. Misguided, maybe. Asher didn’t say it with any unkindness. He said it gently. “What did he do?”
“He’s been harassing me and the other owners of Blue Mountain to come over to him and be his client for our insurance. We’re happy with our current insurance, so we keep telling him no. And every time we do, he gets angrier.”
“But…why?” Asher stares at me and I rush to clarify. “I’m not close with him. He left my mom when I was little, and by the time my mom died I was an adult, so I’ve never lived with him. He’s always been distant, but he’s never seemed shady. Not really. I felt kind of weird about what I was doing, but I didn’t think his intentions were bad. And if they are and I’m supposed to be a fucking journalist, I must not be very good if I couldn’t see it.”
“On the contrary. Family fucks with your head. Even family you’re not close to,” Asher says, leaning forward onto the table. “You didn’t have a reason to think he was doing anything shady, but there’s also a reason that we keep telling him no.
“When your dad first came to us, we did our due diligence. He has a history of selling insurance to clients that have had to use it and then have all their claims denied. Not exactly a good sign, so we passed.”
He looks a little uncomfortable having to tell me this. But not sorry.
Asher sighs. “If he’s sending you around to take pictures, he might be trying to falsify insurance fraud.”
“What?” I gasp. “How?”
“By showing that the businesses aren’t holding up the standards they agreed to keep. If you manage to prove it, it can be…lucrative. I hate to say it, but maybe that’s where he was planning on getting the money that he promised you.”
I feel sick. That’s not—that’s not even close to what I thought was happening, but now that he says it, it all seems so fucking obvious. “I’m so sorry, Asher. I didn’t know.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I feel so stupid, and I would never intentionally try to destroy Blue Mountain. Or any business. That’s not what I want.”
“Good,” he says. “I’m glad.”
My heartbeat settles, and I feel calmer. “So you’ll give me the annulment?”
Asher studies me for long, silent moments, eyes taking me in in a way that’s not entirely appropriate. In his gaze I see last night and the time before that. Just the memory of it brings blood surging into my cheeks.
Then one side of his mouth turns up into a smile. “No.”
8
Asher
What the fuck am I doing?
I should say yes. Yes, I’ll give Rose the annulment and let her go.
She clearly made a mistake. I can’t fault her for trying to do the one thing that could save her education. Blackmail isn’t needed here.
And yet, there isn’t any part of me that’s about to let her—my wife—walk off this property yet.
It’s that deep protective instinct that I felt earlier. It’s wild and feral and won’t take no for an answer. Rose doesn’t deserve to be taken advantage of. At all. I want to save her from that if I can. Gary is a pain in my ass on a regular basis, so I can only imagine what it must be like to be his daughter.
And then there’s another part of me that doesn’t quite want to let her off the hook. Not all the way, anyway.
I’m not sure if that’s because I’m still fucking pissed—which I am—or if it’s because I still desperately want her—which I do. But one way or the other, Rose Brandt and I are not finished with each other.
There’s something about this chemistry that I can’t let go of yet. I try to tell myself that it has absolutely nothing to do with the way her skin feels under my hands or the subtle scent of fruit in her hair or the way that she tastes. But I’m lying.
It has everything to do with those things.
She’s looking down into the oatmeal now, eating silently, absorbing my declaration that I’m not going to dissolve our hasty marriage yet.
“Show me the pictures that you took?”
She blinks at me. “I have no idea where my bag is after last night.”
I press my lips together in an attempt not to smile, but it doesn’t work. My mind is currently filled with the way that we crashed through the door, pawing each other like we were teenagers on prom night. We barely made it to the bedroom. “It’s on the couch.”
Rose grabs her phone and opens to the photos that she took yesterday. I flip through them. At least now I know why she was taking what I thought were weird photos. I’m such a fucking idiot.
But the photos she took don’t prove anything. Because we handle our business. We’re relentlessly careful about safety, especially since the accident with Diana. There was a very real chance that she could have died, and we weren’t going to take that chance again. It
’s my job specifically to make sure that everything we do is safe and develop the procedures to make it that way.
Enough is enough.
The plan comes to me all at once, and I smile at my new bride. “I have an idea. I promise that I’ll give you the annulment and make sure that you have money for school, if you help me.”
“How?” The look of hope on her face is enough to break me. And then her face falls. “Even if we’re married, I can’t stay here forever, Asher. My dad knows where I am and he’s going to want those pictures sooner rather than later.”
“I know,” I say. “I want a list of all the places your father has had you go this summer. And then we’re going to give him the pictures that he wants. Keep a record of everything. We’ll prove once and for all that he’s trying to set us up, and my hope is that it will get your dad to stop harassing us and set you free of having to help him.”
Rose paces across the room, arms wrapped around herself once again. She’s got that goddamn infernal sun dress on that makes me want to do nothing but tear it off her. And since I already destroyed her panties, I know that she’s got nothing underneath.
“So you’re blackmailing me into helping you?” She finally asks. “By making us stay married?”
I stand and cross the room, making sure to enter her space in exactly the way I already know throws her off balance. “You didn’t seem to have any complaints on our wedding night.”
“I barely remember our wedding night,” she says, anger turning her words into a hiss.
She turns a beautiful shade of red. It could be from embarrassment or anger, but it looks fucking gorgeous on her. “You know, that color is exactly the one you turned when you were breathlessly riding my cock.”
Anger flares hot in those crystal blue eyes, and I fucking love it. Angry I can work with. It’s good. I’m angry too. We can be angry together.
