by S. K Munt
‘Maybe…’ Leigh watched him work the fabric off his biceps with an accelerating pulse. ‘But they’d probably opt to cut off their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear me talk books first…’
Ryan chuckled, and Leigh’s breathing hitched. The firelight was doing that thing where it tossed shadows against his rippling physique, shadows that seemed to get snagged between his muscles and cling. He wasn’t huge by any means, not bulging or thick- merely broad and long and devoid of any body fat in the areas that mattered the most. His shoulders tapered down around his squared off pecs and then slanted down to a long, lean waist that could have been mistaken for slender or lanky, until he twisted and showed the depth of his obliques and the prominent muscles of his back. There was a dusting of hair just beneath his belly button which cast a shadow down to where their bodies met, the same fine, dark hair which fuzzed his forearms and legs, and Leigh slid her fingers down that path now and then was so overcome that she allowed them to drift over her sex.
He was perfect. Even his flaws were perfect- his smile was a touch too wide to be considered balanced, his eyes way too blue to feel at ease around and his equipment formidable to the point of being off-putting, and now that he was in full glare of the fire and angling his arms out of his shirt, Leigh could finally see the damage from his fall and even they were beautiful in their own, eerie way. They weren’t the thick, ugly sort of scars she’d imagined when Bruce had first told her about how messed up Ryan had been, but there were multitudes of them- pale black shadows crisscrossing against his skin, almost like an artist had taken a charcoal to him and done a bit of cross-hatching. She reached out and stroked his left oblique, and confirmed that none of the scars were actually tactile, but Ryan followed her gaze and frowned.
‘I use this special oil every day to fade them… ’
Leigh lifted her eyes to his face. ‘Why? You can barely see them.’
He smirked at her. ‘That’s because I’ve been using a special oil every day to fade them.’ He rubbed his head. ‘There’s a bad one on my scalp and the hair only just grew enough to cover it, so you can probably see it a bit now that I’ve had a trim, and one on my butt and a long one down the back of my thigh…’ he raised an eyebrow. ‘And with the way you constantly check out my ass when you think I’m not aware of it, I’m surprised you can’t sketch them by now.’
Leigh giggled and he panted, stilling her hips and closing his eyes. ‘Whoa- you felt that?’
He opened his eyes. ‘It’s so sensitive at the moment that I could feel a cloud passing over the sun from in here…’ he worked his shoulders out of the shirt and then lifted his arms over his head, practically turning himself inside out and Leigh grabbed the shirt and tugged. It gave easily at that angle, sliding off his forearms and into her hands and Leigh bundled it and breathed in his scent.
‘Mmm.. that I feel..’ she opened her eyes and smiled at him, heart fluttering at the sight of him completely naked now. ‘Do not even tell me that you’re self-conscious about your scars, Mr Weaver. If a guy like you gets body hang-ups, the rest of us are fucked.’
‘You are fucked.’ Ryan bit his lip and thrust into her a little and she gasped, pressing her face into his shirt then moaning as she was reminded not only of his length, but how her body had began to get very, very attached to the feeling of him inside her. ‘Only not half of what you’re going to be by morning.’
‘Oh god…’ Leigh closed her eyes as her senses sizzled in response to him, and then he was kissing her lower stomach and it felt like tiny little fists were inside her and punching out wildly, making her womb twitch and contract.
‘It’s not the scars that bug me, but the knowledge that I was suicidal…’ Ryan tongue tickled her belly button and then the underside of her left breast. ‘I love life so much that I want to fade that part of me…’ he fondled her breasts with both hands, making her tighten around him again. ‘And every second I spend with you fades it that little bit more…’ he pulled the shirt from her hand and tossed it. ‘You make me light, Leigh. Lighter than air…’ His hands slipped under her back and flung her up and against him. She gasped as he rocked into her, impaling her deeply, and pulled back on her hair so that he could slide his mouth down her throat, raking his teeth gently to her pulse and then suckling so hard that Leigh cried out and rocked against him, feeling that dull, hollow ache opening up between her hips again, and knowing that only his length could take it away. Ryan growled and pulled back on her hair harder, clamping his hand down around her breast and using it to force him down on her and then lift her up and Leigh cursed as the friction of her clit against his downy hair made her nerves spasm hard enough to breach the ache.
‘Yes!’ she cried out, breathless as he rocked into her again and again. It wasn’t so much the way he felt inside her that had her body reacting with jubilant pulses, but the way she felt in his arms- utterly possessed. When he smiled at her and whispered ‘I love you’, he did funny things to her heart, but when he narrowed his eyes and slammed himself up and into her, he dominated her entire nervous system.
‘You like this, Honey?’ he demanded, holding her in place while he knelt and slammed himself up and into her. Fingers drifted down between their bodies and burrowed into her flesh, triggering each pulsation now with perfect aim. ‘Do you like being my girl?’
‘Yes!’ She arched away from him, needing to escape the pleasure before she got buried under it but it only gave him more access to her and he began to wildly rub it with all four fingertips until Leigh could no longer tell where one throb ended and the next began.
‘Think you’re going to like being my wife?’ He pressed into her with more urgency and she felt part of her relax while other parts clenched in anticipation. ‘Think you can handle this inside you every damned day? Because it’s going to be every day, you know. I’m going to wake you up by licking this sweet little pussy until it’s good and wet for me, Honey, and then-’
‘Oh…!’ Leigh called as she imploded internally, and for a moment, her mind went completely blank, shutting down so her body could process the convulsions rocking her. But more prominent than her pleasure was that yawning chasm growing inside her and she bucked wildly, as though she could push the waves of satiation into her core where it was still so sorely needed.
‘Oh… my baby girl… fuck… ’ Ryan’s hands were now sliding all over her sweat-slippery skin, and his thrusts up and into her had grown more impatient. ‘Honey you make me wild, you know that?’
The dirty talk against the sweetness of her name was too much. After years of being infantilized by that name, Ryan had brought it back to life by saying it with his husky voice, by crying it out as he entered her and filled her and now, she heard her voice- her throaty, womanly voice- begging him to go deeper and harder, and the world blurred as she was flipped onto her stomach and then had her hips hoisted up. Her mind spun but her knees held and when Ryan spanked her ass playfully and whispered: ‘You asked for it,’ the void inside her became a disaster zone- she was going to tear the world to shreds unless something filled it- and then he did, parting her thighs, taking her hair in his fist and then grunting as he slammed his length into her with as much desperation as she felt for him to do so.
This time, the rumbling starting from the inside and then rocked from her epicenter out in white hot flashes. Again and again he filled her and withdrew, found her and then let her go- until her poor, inexperienced body crumpled beneath him in a heap. The blackness descended over her limp body and it was a beautiful thing, and when Ryan pulled her against him and spooned her, still inside her, still whispering his love while his fingers worked her from the front, Leigh closed her eyes and pulled the cover shut on her new favorite love story, and for the first time ever, it held her tightly back.
Twelve
‘Good morning, my love!’
Leigh awoke to what she suspected could have been the brightest smile in the world- but the pure sunlight sheeted across the curtain-less window w
as so obnoxious that she groaned and pulled the blanket over her head, resenting the smile for adding to the glare despite the flurry of snowflake-light feelings his face evoked within her.
‘Go away…’ she groused, rubbing her face into the pillow beneath her cheek and shaking off Ryan’s hand when he attempted to pull it back. ‘I hate mornings. I hate sunlight, and right now, you’re not impressing me much either. What is it, like seven a.m.?’
‘Actually, it’s six thirty. But that’s a pretty good guess!’
Leigh yawned into the comforter. ‘Yay me.’
‘Naw… that’s not much of a morning after glow. Did you fake all of those orgasms?’ The comforter was yanked off her and Leigh shivered, curling herself into a naked ball and wriggling down the bed, seeking the warmth of the top sheet but finding nothing but air. She winced as the frosty, Canadian chill embraced her flesh and brought her attention to the way she was aching all over- inside her organs, on her skin, within her muscles… there wasn’t a place that didn’t burn from Ryan’s stubble or feel swollen from his touches, and dealing with them wasn’t half as fun as receiving them had been. She balled up more tightly, pressing her face into her knees. ‘I’ve had two hours sleep Ry! So have you! How are you bouncing around like a cocker spaniel?’
‘Because it’s our wedding day, duh. And for the record- I haven’t slept at all.’ Lips pressed against her cheek, and she felt them across her heart. ‘I didn’t want to dream. Anything compared to reality would have seemed like a nightmare…’
Leigh hated him for saying the kind of shit that was guaranteed to actually get her brain whirring away, when all she wanted to do was fall back to sleep and dream about warm, sexy, less talkative night-time Ryan. She cracked open one eye and stared him down through her squint. ‘It’s our what?’
Ryan flopped down on the mattress beside her, looking absolutely fantastic and more bright-eyed and awake than she’d seen yet. He curled himself around her, like Yin and Yang, and kissed her chastely. ‘Our wedding day- and if we’re going to make this work, we have exactly half an hour to wake up and get out of here. So-’ he reached around and smacked her bare ass. ‘Shower, now.’
Leigh stared at him, lost. ‘You want me to shower, so we can get out of here in half an hour- in order to get married?’
Ryan nodded, his expression gentle and yet resolute. ‘Yep. It’s a two hour drive to the airport in Ottawa, and we have to allow time for passport checks and stuff, considering that it’s an international flight…’ He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the ring he’d slipped onto her finger the night before. ‘If that goes smoothly, and I pray it does, we’ll board at eleven and get there at about four, Vegas time.’ He squeezed her hand, smiling encouragingly as though everything he was saying made absolute sense. ‘I’ve already pre-registered us online, and we made it through, so after that it’s just a matter of getting to the place where we pick up the license and-’ he inhaled a big breath and then exhaled, looking incredibly pleased with himself. ‘We can pick our chapel and become man and wife!’
Leigh could not believe what she was hearing, which was fitting because she couldn’t believe a single thing he’d said or done to her over the course of the past four days. ‘M-man and wife…’ she stuttered. ‘You mean; guy who’s gonna get arrested for trying to border cross without I.D- and wife, right?’
‘No.’ He sat up, propping his lovely jaw on his hand and stroking her hip. His face was slightly pale from lack of sleep- she saw that now- but it only served to make his eyes pop more beneath his dark brows and lashes. ‘I have papers now, thank to Imogen- I found them last night when I was packing your stuff up.’ His finger slid up along her ribs. ‘You’re going to have to call me Ardos in front of anyone official, to avoid that whole arrested thing, but I had a guy at the bar check them over last night and he swears that they’re not even forgeries- everything is legit. So long as I don’t mind using an alias until I can get the documentation changed… I’m free to leave the country, use an ATM… and marry the love of my life.’ He smiled a splendiferous smile and leaned in, nuzzling her nose with the tip of his. ‘And I can’t fucking wait.’
Ardos? What sort of a name is Ardos and how does he have it? Who was this Imogen woman, a secret agent?
Leigh sucked in a breath. ‘You’re serious about all of this? The documents, the wedding…?’
‘It’s all booked, Honey, and it’s been booked since I found those papers last night.’
Leigh’s mouth fell open. ‘How did you even find the time?!’
‘My gig didn’t start until nine and I got home at six.’ Ryan wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. ‘The moment I realised that I had a name to give you, I knew I had to do that. And the moment I realised that marrying you was possible, I decided that the whole seduction thing was imminent, so I put my evil plot into motion.’
‘It took me three weeks to plan the bus tour that would take me to Prince Edward Island en route to Niagara Falls!’ Leigh squeaked. ‘And I can use the Internet!’
Ryan laughed. ‘I live in a tourist capital of the world, remember? Can’t swing a cat without hitting a travel agent or tattoo parlor.’
Leigh made a face at him. ‘I’m gonna go on a limb and assume that the travel agent and tattooist ready to drop everything to get your personal information and touch your face were women, yeah?’
Ryan cocked his head to the side. ‘Yeah… how’d you know that?’
Leigh leaned in and kissed him adoringly. ‘Wild guess…’ she sighed when Ryan kissed her more eagerly than she’d expected, wrapping him around her and pulling her on top of him as he rolled onto his back. ‘Ry… I’m so happy that Imogen arranged papers for you, but what you’re suggesting is insane! I’m half asleep, you haven’t slept at all… and you want to drop everything to elope to Vegas?’ She ran her hands through his hair, her blood heating at the feel of it silky and washed between her fingers. ‘And why Vegas? They have wedding chapels here.’
‘Chapels whose staff know me well, because I’ve played at quite a few ceremonies,’ Ryan said softly, brushing her tangled mane over her shoulder. ‘They’ll know the papers aren’t mine, Leigh. And besides…’ he smiled bashfully. ‘Getting married in Vegas is one of those rock star dreams, you know? And as a reader, you can’t be completely impervious to the allure of it all…’
Leigh sighed wistfully. The truth was that getting married in Vegas sounded pretty incredible, but it wasn’t a dream of hers, because she’d only ever dreamt of her parents’ ideal wedding day, never taking the time to picture her own. She’d shot her parents’ fantasy to hell now, of course, so a shotgun wedding was fine, but still… the fact that he was so anxious to get it over and done with was what was worrying her the most.
‘Ry… I love you so much, and I really appreciate the hell out of all the effort you’ve gone to arrange this but…’ she looked down at their interwoven fingers. ‘But if you’re feet are gonna get cold, they’re gonna get cold next week and the week after… the fact that you will already be married won’t make you any less miserable when reality kicks in.’ She cocked her head. ‘I said I’d marry you and I meant it- but I said that I’d make love to you first, no strings attached. Shouldn’t we wait and see if your memories come back before we do anything official? No one’s holding a gun to that incredible head of yours.’
Ryan groaned, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. ‘You are so….’ His forehead creased, the little ring in his eyebrow shifting. He breathed in, then exhaled, and slowly opened his eyes. ‘I don’t want to get married today because I’m afraid I’ll back out if we wait for the afterglow to wear off, you silly, frustrating woman!’ He cupped her face. ‘I want to hurry because if we get married by 2am- you would have lost your virginity on your wedding day!’
Leigh’s heart swelled to twice the size as he dangled a: ‘Get out of parental guilt’ free card in front of her. ‘That’s why?’
‘Yeah.’ He smacked her bum again
and she blushed. ‘I know we went out of order but Leigh, I never would have laid a hand on you, if I hadn’t intended to marry you... don’t you get it? When I said no the other night, I meant it. There was a moment or two of weakness of course, but as soon as I knew that you loved me and I loved you… I knew I wouldn’t be able to live another day without knowing that you, and that body, were mine to keep.’ He smiled sheepishly, biting that juicy, incarnadine lip she’d practically swung off the night before. ‘I wish I could have waited until after the ceremony of course but, well…’ he leaned up and kissed her, and she could feel that he’d already shaved. ‘What your parents don’t know…’
Leigh shivered deliciously, her nipples stiffening in response to the soft cotton of his shirt brushing against them. ‘You’re serious about all of this?’
‘Yeah…’ he leaned up and kissed her again, sliding his hands down her bare back. ‘If you actually listen to me and hurry, we can be married by nine o’clock, Vegas time, which will be about one o’clock, our time.’ His tongue slipped between her lips and Leigh heard an aeolian sound leave her mouth. ‘I know it’s a bit shady but hey… the date will be the same…’
Leigh felt like she was being swallowed by a fog. She closed her eyes and kissed Ryan’s eager mouth back, her heart fluttering wildly to know that he’d gone to such lengths to keep her ideals in check, despite her best efforts to squash them. His hand glided back down over her backside and she moaned and Ryan’s grip tightened.
‘Really…?’ She panted, dropping her neck to kiss his neck. It was warm and she wanted to burrow into him and stay there forever. She was feeling light-headed again, still half-asleep but exactly like she was dreaming. ‘We have to rush…?’
