When she emerged, Leland’s even breath told her he’d succumbed to sleep. She stopped by the bed, gazed down at him. The sheet was draped low on his hips as he turned on his side, arm stretched out and palm on her side of the bed, as if he wanted to know when she returned to him. That hard twist of guilt came again as she thought about how short she’d been on the phone with him when he’d been dealing with the murder of two children. But he’d pushed that aside, had found solace in her arms. You’d make a hell of a cop’s wife, darlin’.
Since she was obviously having a crazy person moment, she let the idea fill her mind. A cop’s wife. What would it be like to be married? To be his, not just in words, but in fact? She didn’t want to wake him, but the desire to touch was too overwhelming. She bent, pressed a kiss to his shoulder, brushed her cheek against the back of it.
He mumbled something incoherent, acknowledging her, though his eyes remained closed, his breathing undisturbed. He really was exhausted, and he trusted her enough to sleep while she stood over him, as if even in slumber he knew it was her. She chided herself for the overly romantic thought. For as little as she really knew of the man, he might sleep through hurricanes.
She didn’t know details like that, but she understood deeper things about him that called to her. He’d had an inside look at her soul as well, and he hadn’t bolted yet. For some of us, it’s a single moment… Savannah’s words went through her mind.
None of this was making her any sleepier. Maybe Leland was right. Women might be vampires when it came to sex. She was wired. If she laid down next to him, she’d keep him awake with tossing and turning.
Drifting to the window, she looked at all the props intended to turn the spacious back lawn into a picturesque wedding venue in a few hours. It was then she noticed something different about the storage pod. Someone was sitting on top of it. Someone whose mind was likely gnawing on some of the same things hers was.
Sliding on her underwear and pajama bottoms, she buttoned Leland’s shirt over her breasts and added a pullover over it to ward off the night chill. Then she pulled a pad and pen out of her tote and left a note on the side table.
I’m safe. I went to see Ben on the lawn.
§
She was used to seeing him in his expensive suits, but tonight he was in faded jeans and T-shirt, sneakers with no socks. It made him look younger than his thirty-something age. Ben O’Callahan had a jump-me-now body and a face blessed by the gods, with piercing emerald-green eyes and dark hair falling rakishly over his high brow. She knew firsthand how strong he was, how ruthless a Dom, but his casual attire and the way he sat on the top of the pod, knees drawn up and arms clasped loosely around them as he tipped his face to the sky, made him seem approachable.
“Is this a private party?”
“Not at all. A good-looking woman is always welcome.”
He didn’t lower his gaze from the firmament, telling her he’d known she was approaching. He wasn’t the only one. The voice that came from behind her was low and relaxed, making sure she wasn’t startled by it.
“Let your fiancée hear that, and you’ll be limping to the altar tomorrow. Lot of activity out here tonight. Think I need to impose a curfew.”
She pivoted to face the man she knew had to be Dale Rousseau. Like Max, he looked every inch a SEAL, albeit a retired one. She was facing a man who’d put in twenty years of dangerous missions in places far from this one. She guessed him to be around fifty, his brown hair peppered with gray, the lines of his face and hardness of the fit body giving him a rugged appeal that would make him a head-turner for the next several decades at least. He wore a wedding ring, so some woman had the good fortune of having him in her bed on a regular basis. She hoped they’d both be at the wedding so she could meet her. If Dale was a close enough friend to be doing guard duty, she assumed he’d received an invitation. Which reminded her of her responsibility.
“Thank you,” she said, offering a hand. “I really appreciate you watching out for me.”
Dale closed it in his, a light-handed grasp, typical for a strong man. She’d noted Leland had the same tendency, though there were times when he wasn’t light-handed at all. Thinking of his grip bruising her biceps, at the pleasurable soreness of her sex now, she knew she loved his gentle side but craved his rougher side. She could still taste him on her lips.
“It’s my pleasure,” Dale said courteously. “That scumbag tries to reach you here, we’ll end any concerns you have about him. Plenty of marsh to dispose of a body.”
She had no doubt he meant it, and was greatly reassured as a result. “Mind giving me a boost up there?”
The lines around his eyes crinkled and he obligingly bent and cupped his hands together. Ben now had his long legs dangling over the side, so as she stepped into the stirrup Dale had made, he reached down to clasp her hand. The two men boosted her up and into a sitting position on the top of the pod. “Thanks,” she said.
Dale nodded to her, glanced at Ben. “I’ll finish my perimeter check now.”
“He’s going back to his nap,” Ben told her. “We woke him up. Old people can get cranky.”
Dale shot him an amused look. “Don’t push me, son. There’s more than one reason you could be limping up that aisle tomorrow.”
He moved away into the shadows. Leaning back, Celeste braced her hands on the pod’s metal surface and gazed up into the sky, wondering what Ben saw when he looked up there. “I think I’d listen to him. He looks like he could kick butt and take names without breaking a sweat.”
“And then some. But he and Max have that whole military discipline thing happening. I have to yank their chain. It’s what I do.”
“Hmm.” She noticed that his position on the pod, the direction he was facing, gave him a direct view of Marcie’s dark bedroom window. “Were you waiting for the opportunity to scale the wall, do a Romeo and Juliet thing?”
Ben shook his head, slipped a cigarette out of a pack next to him. The flare of his brass lighter showed a face that was pensive but not unhappy. He was just…waiting.
“You couldn’t sleep.”
A short nod confirmed it. He drew on the cigarette and blew the smoke over his shoulder, away from her.
She’d never experienced Ben this way. In the times she’d seen him since their night, he was typically charming, a man with an infectious sense of humor who made conversation easily with men or women. But his lack of conversation didn’t make her feel intrusive. On the contrary, it made her feel as if he was comfortable enough with her that he didn’t have to be charming, funny or engaging.
That night at Club Surreal had been more about Celeste, getting to the root of her surrender, of why loss of control was so difficult for her, but Marcie had been right. Celeste had seen something in Ben’s eyes. What’s more, he knew she’d seen it. His silence now told her so, a bond between them.
“You were the one who came to me that night, because you knew how I felt, in a way the others couldn’t,” she said. “You knew what it was to feel unwanted, like nothing, and want nothing more than to be…wanted. But it’s more than that. When you’re finally wanted, then you have to deal with that feeling, that weird, dumb-ass shit that tells you to push it away and run from it, though that’s the last thing that makes sense. You can’t explain it to anyone, not even really to yourself. Or worse, to the people you love.”
Ben drew on the cigarette again, his eyes on Marcie’s window. “I see you have a date for the wedding,” he said in answer.
“Yeah. I see you have a date for life.”
He slanted her an amused look. “So you think I’ll go through with it.”
“I know you will. Because you’ll break her heart if you don’t. As worried as you are about what kind of husband you’ll be, you know you have to step over the starting line. You’re way past the point of no return. The waiting’s the worst part.” She gave him an appraising look from head to toe. “So you’re doing the Zen thing tonight. Accepting your fate. Reall
y feeling it, and realizing it doesn’t suck at all. Not in the least.”
His lips did curve then, and she shook her head. “Fucking impossible.”
“What?” A silken black brow lifted.
“No man should be as sexy as you are. Tomorrow I bet you’ll wear some kind of perfectly cut tux, and every woman will be having fantasies about you.”
“Not every woman. Marcie will probably be thinking about Leland. She’s always had the hots for him.”
“Well, that ‘ho’ can just keep her greedy little paws to herself, or you two can limp up the aisle together.” Celeste bared her teeth.
“So it’s like that.”
“I don’t know.” She emulated his pose, staring up at the back of the house. The guest bedroom window was at the far end. “I never thought I’d feel that way. I met him barely over a week ago. He took me to a country bar and sang to me.”
“That bastard. He doesn’t play fair.”
She poked him in the side with her elbow, but kept her gaze on the house. What she wanted to ask, she didn’t think she could if she was looking at him.
“You remember the safe word you wanted me to use that night? The word you knew I needed to say, but it hurt too much.”
“I remember.” His voice was warm and reassuring now, a friend concerned about her care. As he crushed out his cigarette and braced an arm behind her, she found herself leaning against the inside of it, a comfortable companionship. She drew her knees up, locked her fingers around them the way he had his own earlier.
“When I look at Leland, I keep thinking of that ridiculous phrase, ‘Who’s your daddy?’” She gave a half chuckle. “If you tell him that, I will kill you.”
“I’m getting a lot of threats tonight. And I’m just sitting here, not bothering anyone.”
“I know. It makes all of us nervous. It’s so not you.” Then she looked up at his amused face and pursed her lips. “No. I take that back. You look…okay. Like you’re totally you tonight. Nothing added, nothing put on. It’s a good look for you.”
Reaching down, he tugged on the hem of Leland’s shirt, a good foot of the tails extending out from under her pullover to layer over her pajama bottoms. “This is a good look for you.”
“Oh, yeah. I plan to wear this to the wedding. Marcie will be so pissed that I outshone her.”
He smiled, but she saw the measured calculation in his eyes as he gazed at her. She tried to conceal the little shiver it gave her low in her belly, because it was undoubtedly his Dom look. “You’re not quite reconciled to it yet,” he decided. “Being who you really are with him. But you’re closer to it than you’ve ever gotten, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” she said simply. “Any advice so I don’t hurt him, or do something really stupid?”
Ben tilted his head, lifted a shoulder. “Just more of the same. Be who you are, Celeste. If he can’t handle that, he’s not the right one anyway. People like us, we spend a lot of time covering who we are, because we think that’s something no one will want. But the person who gets past all that not only shows us different, they’ll help you let some of that go, so you can finally accept you’re worth loving. And that, in turn, helps you live up to it. It’s funny, but when someone accepts you for everything you are, the good and the bad, you stop worrying so much about the bad and focus on strengthening the good. Matt and the other guys helped me with that first, and gave me enough of it I could accept the rest of it with Marcie.”
She met his gaze with a searching one of her own. “Does it help you believe it? Really believe it, the way they do?”
“Not all the time, but I’m closer than I’ve ever gotten to it. Else I couldn’t say it aloud like that. Therapy. It makes me say all sorts of shit, like a psychobabble form of Tourette’s.” He gave her a wry look.
She put her head on his shoulder and then, on impulse, hugged him, pleased when he put his arm around her and did the same, dropping a kiss on top of her head.
Ben’s male strength and masculine scent made her realize, tired or not, she wanted to be back beside Leland, holding on to him as he slept, feeling his arms around her. “I’m going to go back to my man, before someone looks out here and thinks the groom is having a make-out session with a sexy woman in flannel PJ’s and sweatshirt.”
“It’s all right. My bride is sitting in her window seat, so we have a chaperone.”
Celeste turned and looked. She couldn’t see through the sheers over Marcie’s window, but Ben apparently had better eyes than she did. Or maybe Marcie had had her light on earlier and he deduced she was still there. One thing Celeste had no trouble seeing was the quiet, fierce love in Ben’s eyes as he kept them fastened on that window. “I think she’s fallen asleep, though,” he said. “Curled up on the cushions.”
He turned his attention back to Celeste with a different expression, a different tone. The one that could make a woman’s knees weak, particularly if that woman had a good dose of sub in her makeup. She’d have cursed him for it, but she knew it was as natural and unassuming for him as breathing. “When you go back in,” he said, “go to her room and tell her I said it’s time to get in the bed and go to sleep. Make sure she does.”
“If she thinks you’ll come and see to it yourself if she disobeys, she’ll throw open the window and do the Macarena on the roof.”
He chuckled. “Any other night, I’m sure she would. Not tonight. Will you do as I ask, Celeste?”
“I don’t think you asked.” She tossed him a spirited look, just to show him he might be an über-Dom, but he wasn’t her Dom. Yet as she positioned herself to slide off the pod, he stood up and took her hands, lowering her back to the ground safely. Putting her hands on her hips, she looked at him, standing tall and formidable against the night sky. Christ, the man wore the hell out of a pair of jeans. “I’ll get her tucked in,” she promised. “How about you? Are you going to bed soon, or is this like some kind of knight’s vigil?”
His lips twitched at the irony, responding to the spark in her eyes. “If you like. See you tomorrow.”
“Good night.”
Chapter Fifteen
She’d been right. The Armani tuxedo Ben wore was charcoal black, perfectly tailored to his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped body. He had a matching vest beneath, a gray-and-black striped tie tucked into it against the white dress shirt. His dark hair was brushed to gleaming. And he was just the tip of the tasty man-candy iceberg.
Matt was his best man. The Italian-Texas parentage of the CEO of Kensington and Associates gave him the best of both worlds; he was over six feet, with rugged features, piercing brown eyes and burnished close-cropped hair. But it was the sheer presence of the man that made him unforgettable. Even when she was in the throes of her dislike for him, she couldn’t ignore the energy and intelligence that made him alpha pack leader in any situation.
Jon and Peter stood up as Ben’s groomsmen along with Marcie’s brother Nate, all in the same style of tuxedo. Jon had midnight blue eyes and black hair to his shoulders, his slimmer physique undiminished by the larger build of the other men. He was like looking at Michelangelo’s best work. Peter, the former National Guard captain who’d done two tours in the Middle East, lived up to that image. He and Max both had battle-ready musculature, dark blond hair and storm gray eye color, leading to a lot of inside family jokes, since Max was Dana’s regular driver.
Lucas was a groomsman as well, but he was currently absent because Marcie had asked him and Cassandra to walk her down the aisle.
The K&A men were devastating to female senses on a normal business day, so if one of them so much as smiled or flexed, female brain cells would lock up and hearts would stop. She hoped someone had thought to have a defibrillator on hand.
For her part, she felt mostly immune, because all her energy was occupied with staring at her date and trying not to be caught doing so. He’d worn a copper-colored suit with a black shirt and a tie striped with those two colors. The gold-and-black Semper Fi ring he wore, a gift
from his mother after his honorable discharge, was cool and hard under Celeste’s hand. He had their tangled hands on his thigh and she was leaning against his side, a comfortable intimacy between them.
“I can’t wait to see her dress,” she said. “Cass and Dana said it’s a knockout.” The hard part was going to be looking at the dress and Ben’s reaction to it without giving herself whiplash. Fortunately she saw they had hired someone to film the event. She’d be playing the friend card to get a copy of that, for certain.
“You don’t have to wait much longer,” he said, brushing his lips across her forehead. “It’s almost time to start. You look stunning, by the way.”
She doubted that. She’d brought the standard little black dress every woman kept in her wardrobe for such an occasion. Pairing it with stockings and heels, she’d fluffed up her hair and tossed on some silver jewelry, and called it done. Yet when his gaze coursed over her in lingering appraisal, she was aware of the mid-thigh hem and the way the neckline gave him a deep view of cleavage. She felt sexier than she’d expected to feel, hyperaware of his thumb sliding over hers with erotic promise. He put his lips to her ear.
“Tonight, I want to reach under your skirt and peel off those filmy thigh-high stockings. Make you spread your legs so I can stroke your panties and see how wet you are for me.”
Would he do something like that at the after-party? She’d said she wasn’t sure if she wanted to do anything more than watch, and he’d said virtually the same. But when his promise shot hard, hot desire through her right here in the middle of a hundred people, she wondered if any such inhibitions would become moot. Getting their hands on one another might become far more important than their privacy…or lack thereof.
Fortunately, the music had changed and the female attendants were starting to come down the aisle. To settle herself, she focused on that. Jessica and Talia, Marcie’s sisters, came first, followed by Savannah. Matt’s wife was arresting in a butter-colored sheath, a floret of white fresh roses and tiny green leaves on the gathered hip of the dress, the low back revealing her smooth shoulder blades. Her flaxen-blonde hair had been pulled up and secured with a matching floral barrette. Because she was a romantic at such events, no hope of denying it, Celeste glanced toward Matt to confirm his reaction. Whether today or fifty years from now, it was obvious no bride would ever compare with his wife.
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