The Proposal

by Kitty Thomas

  Lily sighs in her sleep and snuggles in against me, her tiny hand splayed on my shoulder.

  “Livia, if you could go back in time, knowing everything you know now, would you have said yes to our proposal?”

  She arches a brow. “I wasn't given much of a choice.”

  “I know, I know. You've been a pampered and spoiled hostage practically living in a castle, but seriously, knowing how things have turned out, would you have said yes, voluntarily?”

  She stands, and stretches like a cat. She's still got the tiniest bit of post-baby bump which I secretly hope she never loses. I like that last small reminder of her finally carrying my child. In a way I'm glad I was the last to conceive with her because this final form she has taken... it's all mine.

  She leans down and kisses me in an echo of my earlier action, then she whispers, “I guess you'll never know.”

  31

  Livia

  The First Dance

  Two weeks ago. The Wedding Reception.

  The first dance of the bride and groom as a couple is announced, and Soren guides me out onto the dance floor. I glance over to the table where the wedding party sits to find Griffin and Dayne watching me and Macy watching Griffin. The men each watch me so intently I worry other guests will notice. But all eyes are on me and Soren as he expertly sweeps me around the dance floor. Spinning me and dipping me.

  We hear “Woo hoos”, from the guests and glasses clinking as they try to get us to kiss during our first dance. Soren finds a moment and does just that. He is so charming, and everyone in this ballroom is under his spell, even me—even knowing all that I know about him and fearing all that is to come. Even with this secret we carry with us—this secret that weighs us all down and makes a happy ending feel so impossible.

  I was surprised two months ago when Soren actually agreed to meet with a wedding dance choreographer to learn a dance to go with our song. He doesn't talk to me during the dance, but I don't think it's some Machiavellian strategy on his part, he's just trying to remember our choreography.

  I miss a step because I'm so caught up in my head, but he rescues it, leading me so flawlessly through to the next part of the dance that I know no one noticed. They are all too taken with him to notice. Everyone on my side thinks he's the best thing that ever happened to me, and everyone on his side thinks he's a lucky son of a bitch.

  And I know in this moment, they are forming opinions about the passion between us. With that kiss at the altar that brought shocked gasps from some of our guests, with this dance, I know they imagine we heat up the sheets with the ferocity of lightning splitting an ancient oak.

  Everyone assumes we're already sleeping together. They have no idea just how traditional this wedding really is in that way. The song ends, and everyone claps. Three tables full of fraternity brothers offer loud wolf whistles. Patrice announces that everyone is invited now to join us out on the dance floor.

  Soren smoothly passes me off to Griffin who has appeared out of nowhere to take his place. And I realize not only is this song another love song that could easily pass for a first wedding dance song, but it's one of the songs that played on my first date with Griffin on the riverboat.

  I glance around to see if any of our guests find it odd that the best man is dancing with me right after Soren. Will Dayne be next? How will that look? The dances with the parents haven't even happened yet.

  I haven't been to that many weddings, but I'm sure this isn't normal. Still, everyone seems so caught up in the day and the party and drinking that no one seems to be paying much attention.

  “What about the dances with the parents?” I ask Griffin as he pulls me in probably closer than he should in public, even for a slow dance.

  He leans closer to my ear. “Patrice scheduled it this way. She set it up so you have the first dance with Soren, then all the guests can dance, and then the band will take a break. When they come back, the parents dances will be announced.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I wonder who told Patrice to schedule it this way, and it makes me even more suspicious that the wedding planner from hell—someone who somehow knows Soren—is probably privy to far more details of our arrangement than I would like. Though maybe it's only my imagination. After all, Soren can be persuasive without offering any details or explanations.

  “But what about the parents? Surely they think they've been skipped over?”

  “Patrice told them about the schedule and how we're doing things. She made up an excuse that it allows the guests to get out on the dance floor sooner and get the party rolling and that right after the band break is the perfect time for the other formal dances.”

  Does the bride dance with the members of the groom's wedding party? I don't know. I feel like it's something I should know. Macy would know.

  I wonder if Griffin got me next because of some hierarchy the men have fought out amongst themselves or if it's so Macy doesn't get to him first.

  I glance over to find Macy dancing with Soren. So maybe it doesn't look too weird. He's dancing with the maid of honor. I'm dancing with the best man.

  Griffin notices my nervousness about this and leans close to my ear to whisper, “It's perfectly normal for the bride to dance with the best man and the groom to dance with the maid of honor. Relax. And Dayne is next with you. Soren will dance with Cheryl while he's with you. No one will notice anything. No one will think anything we don't want them to think.”

  But we know why the dances are happening in this odd order, because all three of my men take precedence over any of the other dances, and it's been smoothly organized to make it so. All the guests are crowding the dance floor so no one can take too strong of a notice of the chemistry between me and Griffin or me and Dayne for that matter.

  “Why wasn't I told about this?” I ask. At no point during the wedding planning was any of this mentioned.

  “We didn't want you to be more stressed out than you were,” Griffin said. “Anyway, you knew you'd be dancing with us at the reception.”

  That's true, but it didn't occur to me that they would get me first right after Soren. But I agree it's best I wasn't told. I would have been a nervous wreck worrying someone would notice or figure something out. But everyone is too distracted and in their own worlds. No one seems troubled by the way this is organized, so I settle and relax into Griffin's arms.

  When the song ends, Dayne cuts in. Griffin goes to dance with Macy, and Cheryl dances with Soren.

  Once again the song playing is another romantic love song that could easily be a couple's first wedding dance. But it's a more upbeat song everybody knows: 500 Miles. Dayne and I didn't really have a song we thought of as “us”, or a song that played on our first date that would be an appropriate first dance. And he came into this arrangement much later, so I didn't know him as well as Soren and Griffin when everything changed. I haven't had much time to ask why Dayne would commit to this, and to me in this permanent binding way when he dated me for a much shorter time. Why was he so willing to jump in?

  And this song tells me so much about the things that lie under the surface with him. Plus it's probably the greatest song to ever come out of Scotland and Dayne's family comes from Scotland—he has a family tartan and a clan and everything—it fits him.

  It isn't a slow song, so it doesn't have the opportunity for closeness that the other two dances allowed. But Dayne isn't troubled by this. The next song is a slow dance, and he pulls me closer, unwilling to relinquish me to anyone else.

  “I haven't had as much time with you,” he whispers, sending a shiver down my spine and echoing my own thoughts. I've tried to suppress it, but there is something very romantic to me about the speed of his certainty, how he was on board with so little time with me when Soren seemed so resistant and thought I was trying to trap him.

  By this point I've stopped caring about what everyone else is doing and who is watching what. We're lost in the middle of a sea of people, surrounded by other couples who are caught up in their own
love stories. I relax a moment too soon because Dayne takes the cover of the slow dance to speak low in my ear.

  “Griffin and Soren may think they are above me in the pecking order, but just know this, silent background power is still power. It isn't loud like Griffin's, and it isn't outwardly demanding like Soren's, but you should never underestimate me.”

  I swallow around the lump forming in my throat as he holds me closer, tighter. I look around again self-conscious, wondering where Soren is, where Griffin is, if anybody is watching Dayne and I on the dance floor right now.

  He leans in again, his voice guttural and commanding in my ear. “Tonight I'm going to put twins inside you. I haven't jerked off for a week, and I've abstained from listening in on Soren's nightly calls for that same time to avoid temptation. I am ready for you. I will win this race. Count on it. Mine will be the first born.”

  When he pulls back from me his dark gaze is fierce and knowing, filled with supreme confidence. And he's right. I'm at the right place in my cycle that I could get pregnant tonight. Dayne could definitely win this race. I wonder if he's been tracking my cycle just like he quietly watches and tracks everything else, waiting to make his move.

  I remember what Soren said at the pre-nup about twins running in Dayne's family, and I shudder. He strokes my back, slowly, gently, as if to comfort me about the impending reality of twins growing inside me. When the song ends, he drifts back into the throng of guests without another word to me and pulls Cheryl into a dance.

  Now Soren is back as if he never left my side.

  “What's wrong?” he asks when he pulls me in close as another slow song starts.

  I shake my head, “Nothing.”

  “We're cutting the cake after this song,” he says.

  Everyone seems to know the reception schedule but me.

  32

  Epilogue

  Soren: The Wedding Day

  Two weeks ago. Just before the wedding.

  I'm standing at the front of the church with Griffin and Dayne at my side in front of two hundred and fifty of our closest friends, family members, and business associates. We're about to lie to all of these people. These decent, polite, pretty people think that Livia Fairchild is about to marry her prince. Her fantasy happily-ever-after is about to happen.

  The maid of honor keeps looking over at Griffin. I'm not sure if he's noticed her schoolgirl crush or if he's intentionally ignoring it. I glance over to Dayne. He's holding the ring at the moment. I've noticed how he's rubbed his finger over the inside of her wedding band what must be a thousand times, as though imprinting the engraving of our three names on his sense memory permanently.

  I never thought we'd all bind ourselves together in this way. There's a part of me that's angry we can't just be open about it, that society is structured in such a prudish bullshit way. Why should only one of us get to call Livia our wife out in the open? Why should only one of us get to entangle ourselves and our relationship unnecessarily with the state and wear a shiny ring to tell the world of our love?

  I'm not sure if we can call it love, not the way we did this. But I would do it again. Exactly. Like. This.

  Livia is mine. She is ours. And I don't care what the fuck that says about me. No one says no to me, least of all, Livia Fairchild, our new toy, the girl who played with fire and lost.

  Pachelbel's Canon in D begins. The guests stand, and Livia begins to walk down the aisle to lock herself formally into this unholy union with us. She looks like she might bolt at any moment, and I swear if she runs, I will chase her down like a fucking lion, pin her to the ground, and fuck her breathless in the open air in front of anyone who dares to follow us outside. She better hope she doesn't run from me.

  The animal inside is close at the surface. Right now she is the most gorgeous creature I've ever seen, and I would move heaven and earth, break every law and rule of polite society to have her, to claim her, to sear her soul to mine in the most permanent and brutal way.

  When she reaches me, I see the fear in her eyes and something dark inside me calms in response to it. Anyone else would think this is just wedding day nerves, but I know it's more. She glances over to Griffin and Dayne so briefly no one but me could have possibly noticed. I'm not even sure she realizes she did it.

  I take her hand and help her up the two small steps. I hold her gaze in mine, drinking in her fear and uncertainty, imagining all the ways I'm going to break her, ruin her, destroy her, remake her, rebuild her, cherish her, punish her, and worship her.

  I stroke the back of her hand, reassuring myself that she is real, she's standing here, she's not going anywhere. Everything has gone exactly to my plan, and I am finally claiming my prize. We're all finally claiming her.

  I don't hear a single word the priest says, though I somehow manage to hear Livia's soft voice as she promises to honor and obey me. I swear an audible gasp rises from the assembled witnesses, and I am filled with a visceral, male pride at these words I've somehow managed to get her to say in front of so many people.

  There's an exhibitionism in these words, but I don't care. It was in the official traditional vows for hundreds of years, and I wanted it, and Livia submitted to it.

  Despite being lost in her, I manage to say the words I'm supposed to say when I'm supposed to say them. We exchange rings. He pronounces us officially legally bound. I grip the back of her neck and pull her in for a possessive kiss, giving her a preview of what's coming in a few short hours. She shudders against me.

  When I pull away and look into her eyes, I'm satisfied she's gotten the message that she is mine and there's no going back now.

  Welcome to your fucked-up happily-ever-after Livia Fairchild. I hope it's everything you ever dreamed it could be.

  I hope you enjoyed THE PROPOSAL. If you're new to my work, please consider joining my newsletter. In exchange you'll get a free novella available exclusively to subscribers: https://kittythomas.com/free-book/

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  GUILTY PLEASURES:

  She was a bored housewife until she was taken and trained for the pleasure of the highest bidder.

  Vivian Delaney leads a life of privilege, but behind closed doors she feels isolated and trapped in a gilded cage. Unable to achieve sexual pleasure with her husband, she finds herself in the capable hands of Anton, a massage therapist intent on awakening her to her full sexual potential. By any means necessary.

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  Kitty ^.^

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the following people for their help with Proposal:

  Charisse Lyn beta reading. Thank you for your eagle eye on this book when I needed it!

  Robin Ludwig Design Inc. Cover design. Beautiful cover as always. This may be my favorite one, but I say that about every book.