Fools Rush In

by Lilliana Anderson

  “I guess so,” I whispered, ducking my head so I was looking at my feet, shrivelling back inside myself.

  It was then that Sam’s hand moved to the back of my neck and his fingers pressed lightly.

  “Let’s get you fed, peaches. We’ll worry about the rest of this shit later.”

  Looking up at him, I took a breath and nodded, feeling added strength and sobriety from his touch. He smiled and I melted like the pathetically lonely thing I was.

  Taking my arm, he guided me into the hotel’s restaurant while I walked on unsteady feet, my mind worrying.

  I think I need another drink.

  Chapter Three

  My Exorcist Impression

  “Water.”

  Did someone put sand in my mouth? I moved my tongue around, trying to produce some sort of moisture. I felt awful. So awful that the deady-bones—as we in the funeral industry respectfully called our deceased clients—probably had a better pallor to their skin. What the hell happened to me last night?

  “Steady.” I didn’t recognise the deep voice at first. It spoke quietly somewhere to the side of me, and felt kind of good in contrast to the screaming in my brain. When I forced my eyes to open, memories came flooding back to me.

  “Oh. That’s right.” I closed my eyes again. “I’m married.”

  Sam chuckled. “Why don’t you drink this? I don’t have any painkillers, I’m sorry.”

  “There should be some in my handbag,” I rasped, my throat scraping with each word. I took the offered glass and sipped at the water. At first my stomach refused, but I persisted and got a few mouthfuls down. At least my mouth felt better.

  “Here.” Sam returned from my bag and handed me two Panadol.

  “Thank you.” I took them and swallowed some more water before he took the glass from my hand. “What happened last night?” I croaked, lying back on the soft pillows and pressing my hands against my throbbing temple. The movement caused the sheets to rub against my body. My naked body.

  “What?” I grabbed the sheet and peeked beneath it. I was starkers. Naked as the day I was born. “Did… did we, um…?” I didn’t feel any different down there, but still… no clothes. I met Sam’s eyes and cleared my throat. “Why am I naked?” I clutched the sheet beneath my chin to preserve what little modesty I had left.

  “We didn’t consummate our vows, if that’s what you’re asking. You drank way more than you could take, then threw up on your dress and passed out while I was cleaning you up. It was easier to put you to bed naked than to try and dress an adult-sized rag doll.”

  Oh dear. I dragged the sheet over my face, my whole body burning in humiliation. Just once I’d love not to feel so stupid. Insipid. Ashamed.

  “I ruined our wedding night,” I groaned. “You should just leave me here to die alone. It’s what I deserve. Marry your pretty blonde girlfriend instead. She’ll make you happy and probably manage to keep the towels even in the bathroom.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Sam pried the sheet from my grip so he could see my face, laughter in his voice as he spoke. “There’s no pretty blonde girlfriend, Alesha. And I don’t know what even towels are. Does that mean they’re folded the same?”

  “It’s when the designs match when they’re hanging on the rack.”

  “Why would anyone care about that?”

  “Because everything is supposed to be perfect.”

  Laughing through his nose, he placed his hand on the top of my hair, his thumb brushing the skin on my forehead as he shook his head. “You’re a little bit crazy, aren’t you?”

  I pressed my lips together in a withering smile. “Sorry you married me yet?”

  Still smiling, he shook his head. “Shockingly, no. Not yet. I’m kind of partial to blushing brunettes with no filter and gorgeous brown eyes.”

  “You actually like that stuff about me?” My eyes about bugged out of my head. “Wait. You are talking about me, right?”

  He laughed again. “Yes. I like you, peaches. I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I didn’t.”

  Pressing up on my elbows, I sat up, keeping the sheet tight around my chest as a deep furrow etched between my brows. “But you haven’t even kissed me. Well, besides the wedding… and a few times on my forehead.”

  Sitting back, he met my eyes with a serious expression. “You’re shy. I don’t want you to feel pressured.”

  “Pressured?” I laughed. “I was given the choice to marry into your family or face the consequences. There isn’t much more pressure than that.”

  “Precisely. That’s why I’m not going to force myself on you. As it is, you’re flipping between blurting whatever’s on your mind and cowering like someone hit you. Let’s spend time together and when the time is right, things between us will happen naturally.”

  Things will happen naturally. My experience with the opposite sex was limited to a single awkward moment in the back of a car that happened over a decade ago while we were both so drunk we could barely string a sentence together. I didn’t have any experience within a relationship. I had no clue what to think when guys made comments like that. It sort of sounded like a stalling tactic or a brush-off to me. I mean, I was no expert, but what kind of a man didn’t want to have sex with a woman he was supposedly attracted to? He was either some sort of saint, which we both knew he wasn’t, or he was lying. I might’ve been naïve when it came to the inner workings of the male mind, but that didn’t mean I was stupid and would fall for any sort of line he fed me.

  “I’m kind of partial to blushing brunettes with no filter and gorgeous brown eyes.” Right.

  He couldn’t say he liked me in one breath then tell me he wanted to wait in the next. It felt like a paradox to me. If he didn’t want me, he’d just have to come out and be honest about it. That way I could put any hopes I had in a box inside my mind, lock it up tight and work with what was right in front of me. Honesty was the only real language I spoke and understood.

  I took a deep breath, summoning all my courage so I could say what was on my mind. “I wouldn’t feel pressured,” I whispered, dropping my gaze so I didn’t have to see the reaction in his eyes. I had a horrible feeling he was going to laugh at me. He was so beautiful, and I was so basic.

  There was a pause before he spoke, one that stretched far longer than I was comfortable with. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I looked back up and found him studying me intently.

  “Have you ever been with a man before, peaches?”

  My already crimson cheeks heated to a scarlet red. “I…I, um, sort of. Yes.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I’ve, um, I’ve fooled around. A little.”

  “So, you’ve been kissed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Touched?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Um….”

  “Your breasts?”

  Swallowing, I nodded.

  “Any lower?”

  Our eyes locked as my heart stuttered in my chest. “I don’t want to have this conversation anymore,” I said in a rush, gathering the sheet around my body as I scrambled to get off the bed. The moment my feet hit the ground, I rushed for the bathroom, only to be jolted to a stop when the damn sheet wouldn’t disconnect from the bed. “Why won’t this work?” I growled, tugging harder and leaning back to put the weight of my body into it.

  “Alesha. Stop.”

  I continued growling and tugging.

  “Alesha. It’s OK.”

  “No.” Tug. “It’s.” Tug. “Not.” Rip. The sudden release of the sheet sent my body in a spin, my toes teetering like an uncoordinated ballerina before I lost my balance and landed on the hardwood floor with a thud.

  “Ow.” I coughed, the air having been knocked from my lungs when I suddenly became horizontal. On the plus side, the ceiling was quite pretty.

  “Can you breathe?” Sam’s beautiful head came into view as he stood over me, surveying the extent of my injuries.


  “Yes,” I responded, digging my elbow into the floor so I could sit up.

  “Whoa, whoa.” He quickly crouched beside me, his hands at my arm and my back to assist me. “Is your neck OK? Your back?”

  I pulled away. “I’m fine. I’m just….” I groped for the sheet around my chest but only touched skin. “Sitting here with my tit out. Oh God, look away!” I placed one hand on the side of his face to push him away while the other hand adjusted the sheet.

  “Peaches, there isn’t a single part of your body I didn’t get an eyeful of last night. And I’ve got to tell you, if I weren’t such a gentleman, I would’ve done a hell of a lot more than just look.”

  “Maybe you should have. It’s what husbands do with their wives, isn’t it?”

  He looked at me like I’d just spoken Klingon. “What? No. How were you raised? Husbands don’t fuck their unconscious wives, especially not when that wife is a virgin. There has to be consent, Alesha. Sex is something to be enjoyed by two people, not taken by one.” His entire face seemed upset with me. “No, Alesha. Just… no.”

  Seeing his features scrunched up, directing his disgust towards me, caused my stomach to twist and lurch. Once again, my mouth had preceded my brain and I’d put my foot in it, but even worse, Sam just called me the V-word. How did he know?

  “I need the bathroom,” I gasped, scrambling to my feet and rushing through the door. I had just enough time to slam it closed and lock it before I launched myself at the toilet and wretched into it. Everything was coming apart. He wasn’t supposed to know, wasn’t supposed to find out. It was embarrassing enough to be thirty-two and yet to be deflowered without having the one guy who was supposed to be obligated to do that deflowering find out and put the brakes on the physical side of our relationship. Does that mean he’s freaked out? Or that he thinks I’m a freak? I hated this, hated that I was so pathetic and so inexperienced and clueless and everything else that was wrong with me. I hated being me.

  Just as I flushed, a light tap sounded on the door before Sam spoke through it. “I’m sorry, peaches. I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

  I stood in front of the mirror and splashed cold water on my pale face. I didn’t trust my mouth not to offend him again. It would be better if I just stayed silent.

  “Are you OK in there?”

  Silence.

  “Alesha?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Will you let me in?” When I didn’t respond, he let out a sigh. “Fine, we’ll do this through a locked door, then. What you said back there, about me… doing things to you while you were passed out drunk. I need you to understand that I would never touch you without your OK or do anything to you that you weren’t comfortable with. That’s not what I’m about. And I really hope you’ve never been treated that way yourself.”

  “No,” I replied.

  “No, what?”

  “I’ve never been treated that way.” I’d never been treated any way. Drunken kisses and groping at my breasts were as far as it got before my date puked and passed out. That was the entirety of my sexual experience.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good.”

  Is it? As far as I was concerned, it was humiliating.

  “How did you know?” I said over my shoulder.

  “About what? You being a virgin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a fair idea, but you confirmed it last night.”

  “I told you?” I had never told anyone. Not even Holland knew. It was my most closely guarded secret. I wasn’t even planning on telling Sam, figuring I’d just fake it until I didn’t have to anymore. What possessed me to blurt that information out?

  “Yeah.” A slight chuckle bounced along with the word. “You kept slapping my hands away when I was undressing you.”

  “Oh God. I want to crawl into a tiny hole and never come out again.”

  He laughed more openly at that. “It wasn’t that bad. It was kinda adorable, actually.”

  Adorable? Adorable? Kittens and puppies were adorable. Vomiting women, not so much.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK. I didn’t mind taking care of you.”

  That wasn’t what I meant. “I’m sorry that I’m not the kind of woman you’re probably used to.”

  “Alesha.” I could hear the pity in his voice by the way he drew my name out.

  “I need to shower. I’ll meet you in the dining room for breakfast.”

  He started to speak, but when I flipped the shower on, the pounding water drowned out his words, along with his pity for his thirty-two-year-old virgin bride.

  I’m never going to be enough.

  Chapter Four

  Oh My My

  “Hey.” Sam stood from where he’d been sitting and pressed his palms against his jean-clad thighs. “You OK?” He placed one hand on my waist and pressed a soft kiss on my cheek.

  Instead of answering, I looked around the hotel dining room, noting the large table he’d selected that was vacant except for him, his coffee and an open newspaper. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “No one else is down yet.”

  “Maybe they all had fishbowl cocktails too.”

  He grinned. “Possibly.” Then he pulled me a little closer and inhaled. “You smell good.”

  My breathing hitched as my hands landed instinctively against his chest. “There’s mango in the shampoo.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to look into his eyes and see any sort of remnants of our previous conversation.

  “I like it.” Then, before I could do anything else, his mouth connected with mine, his hands shifting from my waist so his arm was wrapped around me, holding me up as he kissed me so passionately that I arched my back. For a moment, I wondered if I should kick my leg up in the air to put on a show for the other patrons, but all I could really do was hold on and kiss him back because man, could he kiss. He kissed me like the heroes do in books and in movies—with everything he had. Well, that’s how it felt anyway. I hadn’t been kissed enough times to know if it got any better than that.

  When he set me back on my feet, I felt a little light-headed. “Wow,” I whispered.

  Looking into my eyes, he held my face in his hands. “I love the fact that I’m going to be your first.”

  “Can we please not talk about this,” I said, trying to pull away from his grasp and avoid any further embarrassment. I mean, who in this day and age was still a virgin at thirty-two? I didn’t want to address it. I just wanted him to pop my cherry and get this awkwardness over and done with. Devirginise me, dammit!

  “Don’t run away again.” He caught me around the waist with one arm and held a finger under my chin to keep me from looking away. “Don’t look away either.”

  “Can’t we just forget that you know?”

  “Why? Are you embarrassed that you’ve saved yourself?”

  “Well, it’s not like I did it on purpose. I just never had the opportunity.” Having an overbearing, uber-religious father on top of being socially awkward—someone who worked well with the dead—hadn’t exactly created windows of opportunity.

  His grip around me tightened, and the finger under my chin shifted to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I think you’re perfect,” he murmured, his ocean blue eyes drinking in every feature of my face. “You’re pure, innocent. A ripe peach, untasted and ready to be picked.”

  “Yes,” I gasped, wanting badly for him to pick me and taste me and do any number of things that men and women were made to do together. I wanted it all. With him. Now would not be too soon.

  He grinned, then leaned forwards and sucked my bottom lip between his teeth teasingly. “Women like you are a gift, and I want to take my time unwrapping you. Can you let me do that, peaches?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. Now I totally understood why he gave me that nickname. I didn’t really know what I was agreeing to, but being unwrapped by him seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me.

  “Good,” he whispered, kissing me softly. “I’ll t
each you everything I know.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said back to him, my knees weak and my body aching with wanting. There was years’ worth of anticipation inside me. I wasn’t delicate and really didn’t want to wait at all.

  “You gave me your word!” The strong voice interrupted the hormone-induced, lust-filled moment and caused the entire dining room to speculate in quiet murmurs.

  “What the…?” Sam frowned, squaring his shoulders as he released me and looked towards the sound. Two men were arguing.

  “Is that Nate and Abbot?” I asked when I heard another voice say something about “not touching her”.

  Touching who? Has something happened to Holland? To Jasmine? I hoped Holland wasn’t in trouble again.

  “You were supposed to keep her safe.” The words weren’t spoken as much as they were growled. I thought it came from Nate, but I didn’t know him well enough to pick his voice yet. Then I gasped when something hit a wall and someone grunted.

  With a quick glance at each other, Sam and I rushed towards the sounds, the sense that something big was going down overtaking me. We arrived in time to find Nate slamming his fist into Abbot’s face.

  Oh my Lord! I gaped in horror, watching blood run down Abbot’s chin. Sam’s arm went straight around me as he pulled me against his chest protectively, keeping me a safe distance from the ruckus. But not before I saw Nate punch Kristian in the face too. Poor Kristian! Nate’s eyes looked wild as he practically foamed at the mouth.

  What is going on?

  “What are you doing, brother?” Sam demanded, his voice stern but even. I’d never seen anything so frightening in my life and turned away, burying my face in Sam’s shirt.

  Nate didn’t respond. Instead he turned his attention to Jasmine and growled at her. “If you lay another fucking hand on my wife, I’ll forget you’re a woman and make you pay like a man.”

  Oh, now I know what this is about. When we were getting dressed for the wedding. Holland made some drunken taunting remarks to Jasmine, which was when Jasmine backhanded her. Nate must’ve seen the bruising, or perhaps Holland dobbed Jasmine in. Either way, this was insane. Nate looked ready to attack his own mother.