The captain and five high-ranking officials craned around to stare at them as they stepped out.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Carter said, touching Faith’s hand, which still gripped his arm. Her skin was warm and much softer than he thought it’d be. “We’re happy you could be here.”
“Are you kidding?” Captain Rich said, extending his arms wide. “One of our enforcers is getting married today! We wouldn’t miss it.”
Smiling tightly, the other officials turned and made their way onto the wide-sweeping balcony outside a set of glass double doors. Although the rain had let up, the wind didn’t get the same memo. It blew fiercely over the balcony, and as Carter led Faith outside, he staggered back from the force. A balding minister waited at the balcony’s ledge, his silky black robe swirling and tangling around his legs.
Holy son of a preacher man, this was really happening.
Now or never.
If he jumped off the ledge, would he live?
“Carter?” Faith said, shaking his arm. “The minister asked if you’re ready.”
“Oh. Yes.” He shook his head as an icy gust of wind whipped around the edge of the building, leveling into them. Which ledge had he been thinking about again? “Of course I am—we are.”
The captain and the other officials stood back against the windows, waiting. Watching with suspicious looks marring their faces. Simon had been right: Nate must’ve told the members of the bureau about his doubts.
As Faith took her place on one side of the pastor, Carter faced her. She was cute in her snow gear, puffy and warm. She was closer to a fluffy rabbit than the abominable snowman. She tried to cover her scar, but with the wind thrashing around them like this, her hair wouldn’t stay put. The fading purple line started at her left ear and traveled down her neck, disappearing into the obnoxious fur lining her collar.
But obnoxious had suddenly morphed into…adorable.
He bit back a laugh as the minister droned on about what marriage means and how to keep love alive. At the mention of the L-word, his hands got clammy. He swiped them on his pants and focused on Faith. On her chestnut hair swirling around her face. On her button nose and heart-shaped lips.
She was giving all of this up for him, he realized, as the minister babbled on. She’d wanted a real marriage filled with love and laughter. She’d wanted a forever bond.
Guilt nailed him in the gut.
He’d already found his mate. He couldn’t give that to her.
“Do you, Carter Grif Griffin,” the minister went on, “take Faith Alroy Hamilton to be your wife?”
“Alroy?” Carter whispered, suppressing a laugh.
“Grif Griffin?” she fired back, voice low.
“Touché.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth and that beaming smile. “And I do.”
The minister turned to Faith. “Do you, Faith Alroy Hamilton, take Carter Grif Griffin to be your husband?”
His breath caught as doubt filled the space in his chest.
She cocked a brow. “I do.”
“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Let no man separate what God has brought together.” The minister spread his arms between them as the captain and officials clapped wildly behind them. “You may now kiss your bride.”
Carter’s stomach dropped to his knees. He’d completely forgotten about the kiss. This was not going to go well. Sure, Faith’s lips looked soft and plush, but there’d be nothing behind it. Nothing to make his cock rock-a-doodle-doo. Would the council be able to tell that there was no spark? Would they see through this?
Faith took a step closer, eliminating the space between them. Her body radiated warmth, even through the ginormous layers of down.
Snaking an arm around her waist, Carter slowly drew her against him. He caught her gaze and held it as he lowered his mouth over hers. She sucked in a sharp breath of air. He caught her mouth as her lips parted.
Fireworks.
Her mouth was supple and yielding. Luxuriously sweet. She moved against him as if she’d kissed him a thousand times before and knew exactly what he liked. He should’ve pulled back, but against his better judgment, his hold tightened.
As he squeezed the arm behind her back and bent her into him, she gave a little whimper from the back of her throat that made his stomach wrench. He nearly growled as he stamped another, hotter, kiss on her lips. He nudged her lips apart—
The world crashed down around him.
With the force of a gust of wind, Carter remembered where he was, who was watching, what had just happened. And whom he was kissing.
He pulled back so quickly his knees nearly buckled. Faith looked shocked. Scared and pale, her lips a kiss-smudged shade of pink. He touched two fingers to his lips. They were still buzzing, burning from the memory of her mouth.
That kiss…it changed everything.
He’d liked it.
Really fucking liked it.
So much so that if there weren’t multiple sets of eyes trained on them, he just might’ve slammed sweet Faith Hamilton against the wall and kissed her until he blew her snow boots off.
Chapter Thirteen
They’d kissed.
More than that…they’d kissed as husband and wife.
And it was better than Faith could’ve imagined. She could still taste Carter. His mouth had been warm and gentle as his lips brushed hers. But the kiss burned deep, tingling her legs with white-hot currents of electricity.
Had he felt it, too?
All the way to their room, Faith had wondered what the Elopement Package Honeymoon Suite would look like. Turned out they got a bed fit for a mammoth, a Jacuzzi bathtub, a bottle of British Columbia bubbly, and views of Victoria and Inner Harbor that stole Faith’s breath away.
It’d be awfully romantic if she and Carter were a couple who were actually in love.
When this was over, she could find the love of her life and they could come back here for their honeymoon. A real one. Or maybe she and Carter could fall in love and spend their anniversaries here.
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
Faith shoved a miniature candy bar into her mouth and smooshed it around in her cheeks. She’d skipped dinner—not smart considering that all that was up in the suite was a fully stocked bar and baskets stuffed with chocolates from France.
“Alroy, huh?” Carter said, flopping into the middle of the king-size bed covered with red rose petals. They went scattering over the floor. He shooed the rest off the bed with his hand. “There’s a story in there somewhere.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to share it,” she said, and yanked a pair of yoga pants and a WSU sweater out of her bag. She wasn’t going skiing anytime soon, so she jetted to the bathroom to change. “Want to talk about Grif, Griffin?”
“Hell no,” he hollered from the other room. A long pause, and then, “Do you feel any different as Mrs. Carter Griffin?”
“I’ve got a killer headache. Do you think that’s on account of taking your name?” She couldn’t help but laugh, and watched her expression change in the gold-rimmed bathroom mirror. Her dark eyes were lightened with amusement and her skin was glowing.
She was married.
To Carter.
She changed quickly and joined Carter in their honeymoon suite. He’d changed too, into a pair of flannel pajama pants and a white cotton T-shirt that showed off the intricate designs on his arms. Maybe tonight she’d get to see those tattoos up close. His pants were slung low on his hips, as he always wore them, showing off his sexy backside. The shirt clung to his chest, his pectoral muscles bulging through the fabric as he adjusted himself on the bed.
He was such a sexy male specimen, she couldn’t look at him long before drool formed on her lips and warmth spread between her legs.
“There are no new releases that I’d want to see, but they’ve got the most recent Star Trek movie,” Carter said, flipping through the channels. Did he know he could grace the cover of
Home Magazine? He was effortlessly model material. Even casually punching remote buttons had become erotic. “We can watch it for the small price of our unborn child.”
Faith drew back the curtains and looked out over Inner Harbor through the rain battering the glass. If the temperature plummeted tonight, it just might snow. She touched her hands to the glass, hoping they’d cool the heat blooming over her palms.
“Do you have any children?” she asked offhandedly. The mention of an unborn child got her thinking about it. “I’ve never thought to ask.”
It certainly was a possibility, considering he’d been mated before.
“I would’ve told you by now if I did.” He punched buttons on the remote and squinted at the screen. “My ex-wife and I could never get on the same page about that.”
Faith nodded. “She wanted children and you didn’t?”
“Flip it and reverse it.” He slid back to the center of the bed, fluffed the pillows behind him, and leaned against the headboard. “I wanted children and she didn’t.”
Her stomach twisted. “Really?” It wasn’t that Carter wasn’t the fatherly type, but he…wasn’t. He was covered in tats, said whatever came out of his mouth without thinking about it, and was insanely work-driven. With the promotion he’d been fighting for, when would he have time for a family? Was work something that he settled for because he couldn’t have the wife and children he’d always wanted?
He cleared his throat awkwardly. “My marriage wasn’t all that it seemed.”
The words replayed in her head over and over again until her feet moved to the bed of their own accord.
“What do you mean?” She sat on the edge and leaned back into the mound of pillows he’d built.
“My wife and I weren’t happy,” he said simply.
She frowned. “But when we first met, you said you two were fated. You’d found your Luminary.”
Weren’t fated mates supposed to be happy?
He bought Star Trek on instant video and went silent as the opening credits rolled. It wasn’t until Captain Kirk’s sexy face pulled into a perplexed frown for the third time that she curled her feet beneath her and turned to Carter. He stared at the screen, a vision of closed-off male.
If he was too stiff to open up, she’d rattle him until he did.
What were friends for, anyway?
“Want to play a game?” she asked innocently.
“What?”
“A game. Want to play?”
His eyebrow quirked. “Depends on the game.”
“Every time someone calls Scotty by name, we take a shot—and if Spock gives a statistic, we have to share something personal about ourselves.”
“I’m down with the shots.” He hauled himself off the bed and popped open the mini-fridge. “But I’ll pass on the sharing.”
“Come on,” she said, getting more comfortable beneath the sheets. “We’re married now. I’m sure there is a ton we don’t know about each other, and it would cover our backs if the members of the bureau ask us something personal this weekend.”
“Fine, but I choose the liquor.” He threw two mini-bottles of tequila onto her lap and another two onto his side of the bed. “Let’s roll.”
Shit, tequila was poison. She’d be on the floor in two drinks, three tops.
Within minutes, she’d tossed back her two-swig limit. They’d shared everything impersonal that they possibly could. She knew the names of his parents and friends, where he’d gone to school, what he’d wanted to be when he grew up. It didn’t surprise her that he’d wanted to be a detective since he was a teenager. They’d talked about their first transition—Carter’s during adolescence and Faith’s the first full moon after she was attacked—and how they handled it.
As Spock rattled on about the carbon monoxide-to-oxygen ratio in an unknown planet’s atmosphere, Carter cursed.
“My turn, first?” He crossed his feet at the ankles and sighed. “I was up for promotion once, for the same position I’m vying for now. I applied twenty-five years ago, around the time my wife died. They thought I might have been too unstable under the circumstances of losing my Luminary.”
“Were you?” Geez, her lips were getting loose. Now if they would simply press against Carter’s lips, the party would jump from mediocre to stellar.
He shook his head and frowned. “Your turn.”
“I’m not really brunette,” she said, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. “I’m a redhead.”
“Really?”
“The color gets mistaken for dark brown anyway, so it’s not a harsh change.”
“Hmm…” He tilted his head, as if imaging her with a different hair color. “You’d look like—never mind. That’s for another Spock moment.”
Smiling from the corner of his mouth, Carter diverted his gaze.
She was about to ask him to finish when Captain Kirk screamed for Scotty to beam him up. Faith took a nip from the second bottle and waited, watching the screen for the next statistic.
When Spock babbled about significant results again, Carter turned to her. “My first tattoo was the white hawk soaring across my chest.”
And it was drop-dead gorgeous. Unbelievably detailed. She’d only gotten a glimpse of it as he was chopping wood or mowing the lawn shirtless. What she wouldn’t give to have a close up look…
“No wait,” she said, “what were you going to say I looked like?”
“I don’t have to share what you want me to.”
“But you said—”
“I said I’d wait for another Spock moment.” He turned back to the television. “It’s not this one.”
Hmph.
She deflated into the pillows, her shoulders slumping. For a second she thought he might’ve said she looked beautiful. But women with curves weren’t his type, she reminded herself. He liked boring, board-straight figures with very dry personalities and impossibly long legs.
“You didn’t share anything,” he said after a beat. “Don’t think your pouting fit will get you out of it.”
She smacked him playfully across the chest with the back of her hand, the way she always did. This time, he caught her arm. Gasping, she tried to jerk it back. He didn’t budge. The longer his skin touched hers, the more a delicious blush bloomed across her skin.
She was either very drunk, or very turned on. In all likelihood, it was both.
“It’s your turn,” he prodded, his gaze burning hot.
“I want you to let go of my arm.”
“That’s not nearly revealing enough. I can tell you want me to let go from the way you’re twisting your wrist around.”
From the television, Spock ordered Scotty to put more power into the ship’s engines. With her free hand, Faith took a hearty gulp. Her dizzying fifth. Carter did the same, tossing it back with a smooth head bob.
“Okay,” she said on a throaty sigh. “My middle name is Alroy, after my mother’s father. He moved the family from Ireland when my mother was a young girl. She said he changed her life and that I would do the same.”
He dropped her arm. “Seriously? That’s fucking sweet.”
Snorting laughter was brought to the romantic moment by Jose Cuervo.
Thirty minutes later, another statistic had Faith whooping, her arms flying above her head. Her insides were deliciously warm and her head was fuzzy.
“You’re up, husband!”
“The explanation for Grif Griffin…I know you want it.” He crossed his hands behind his head and slid beneath the covers. “But the story behind it isn’t nearly as good as yours.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell me.” She faced him and got up on her knees, waving her hands in front of his face. “Divulge, man, divulge!”
He shrugged, looking too much in control of his body. He wasn’t drunk enough, not by a long shot. “My father had a sense of humor,” he said. “No story to it.”
She gawked. “That’s it? Carter Grif Griffin was supposed to be funny?”
&nbs
p; “People name their kids worse things. Hollywood couples have some great examples.” He nudged his chin at her. “You’re up.”
She let the liquid courage flowing through her system have control over her mouth. Probably a bad idea, but whatever. It wasn’t like she hadn’t made a poor decision yet today. She’d eaten double the amount of Weight Watchers points that she should’ve, downed way too many swigs of the devil’s drink, and married her friend so her little brother could go to Yale.
Chocolate, tequila, and no sex guaranteed for the next few months. Oh yeah, she was mother-effing brilliant.
“When you first moved in,” she forced out, feeling tipsier by the second, “I had a crush on you.”
His eyes tracked across the bed more slowly than usual. “You did?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t last long.” Chills gathered at the base of her spine as the lie left her lips. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that would mess up our friendship.”
He stared, his hands lying still in his lap. Man, what she wouldn’t give to be able to read his mind.
“You mean something like get married,” he said, and kept his eyes trained on hers.
“We didn’t do this because we love each other. I’m helping you out and you’re helping me out. Friends help friends, don’t they?”
He nodded slowly, his gaze focusing on the television. “They do.”
Scotty beamed up two members of the ship. They thanked him. By name.
Faith and Carter took a long gulp in silence, and then before she could wrap her head around what was happening, his hand found the back of her neck, and his lips were on hers. His grip was forceful, his hands rough.
Their kiss during the wedding ceremony had surprised her. It was sweet and tender with undercurrents of heat that melted the skin over her bones. This time the kiss was intense, pure and simple. Fierce and scorching hot.
The man knew how to kiss. He was an expert, no doubt from all the women he dated and ditched.
Why am I thinking about them?
So I Married a Werewolf (Entangled Covet) Page 9
