“Can I put it on you?”
She’s crying so hard that I almost miss her nod as she lays her head on my shoulder.
I twist, pulling her into my body, remove her glove, then take the ring and slide it on her finger. “You are my reason for living,” I repeat over and over. “I will love you like no man has ever loved a woman before, and promise to give you everything your heart desires.”
I lean in to kiss her gently, tasting her tears and hugging her close. She winds her body into mine, deepening the kiss, as the familiar heat and energy starts to buzz through my body. Her hips grind against mine, and my cock jumps to attention. She doesn’t miss the bulge and teases me by wrapping her legs around my waist.
“Babe,” I say against her lips. “We need to stop.”
“Don’t want to,” she moans into my mouth. Her thighs tighten as she continues to swivel her hips.
I break away, running my lips along her jawline to her ear. “You keep moving like you are, I’m going to come. I prefer to be inside you when that happens, hearing my fiancée scream my name.”
She whimpers but stops moving and loosens her hold. Her head rests in the crook of my neck, her breath warm against the skin when she sighs softly. “Fiancée has a majestic ring to it.”
“I hate to do this, but there’s a house full of people at my parents waiting for us. We’ll do three hours tops. Friends, family, pictures… then it’s you and me.”
“Okay.”
“For days, Presley… I’m keeping you naked and in my arms for days.”
“Promise?” She leans back and looks at me with a gleam in her eye.
“Oh yeah, the thought of you wearing nothing but my engagement ring has the potential to kill us both.”
“Death by sex with Finn Black… I think that’ll look great on my tombstone.”
“Make fun now.” I shove off the ground and take her up with me. “But when you can’t move on Monday, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I look forward to every bone-chilling, heart-pounding, mind-boggling, toe-curling second of it.”
Epilogue
Presley
“Who does this? Presley Chambers, that’s who!” Reese runs around my bridal suite like a lunatic, looking for God knows what.
Ember stands in front of me, touching up my make-up, and we both roll our eyes at her dramatics.
“Would you please calm down?” My request falls on deaf ears because Reese is in full tizzy mode.
“No! Who kicks their bridal party out of the room one hour before their wedding? Who can’t tell their overbearing, possessive, certifiably crazy fiancé that he has to wait to see her walk down the aisle? Who lets this said fiancé maul her after hours of hair and make-up, so now the maid of honor must run around collecting shoes and missing earrings like a madwoman???
“You! That’s who! Where the hell did your sense go? Don’t you remember the whole ‘don’t see the bride before the wedding’?”
“Reese, we told you this from the beginning, then last night, and again this morning. We don’t believe in that superstition. And besides, it’s Finn’s birthday. I had to see him to give him his birthday present.”
She mumbles under her breath while Ember fluffs my hair and places the last jeweled clip on the side.
“I think it’s wonderful, if you ask me,” she says, low enough crazy Reese can’t hear her.
“Me too.”
When Finn and I started planning our wedding, a few dates stuck in my mind, all of them with sentimental meanings. But when we looked at a calendar and discussed it, I insisted on April tenth. I would have preferred April eleventh, but it was a Sunday. This date was significant because it was the date of Finn and Robbie’s accident in Iraq.
The date has haunted Finn for so long because it fell right after his birthday, but I vowed to him that this day would forever carry happy memories going forward. This gave us a little under four months to plan our wedding, but we didn’t care.
Reese panicked in the beginning, telling me I was insane and shorting myself the whole ‘bridal experience’. But she sucked it up and took her role as maid of honor seriously, helping with every detail of the planning. I thought she was going to lose her shit when Finn squashed her bachelorette party plans and instead planned a joint party at our new house. I had to depend on Tripp to help talk her down from that snit.