As I panted air back into my lungs, I croaked, “Could you untie me?”
He didn’t lift his head as he did it. Instead, he just reached over me and patted around until he found my wrists.
“Thank you, baby,” he mumbled as he tugged on the fabric he’d used to restrain me.
As I lowered my hands down and rotated my hands to ease out the kinks in my wrists, I noticed the diamond on my ring finger. The sly twat!
“If you’d already decided we were getting married, why’d you go to such lengths to get me to say yes?”
Lifting his head up, he smiled proudly down at the ring. “Do you like it?”
The truth was, yes, I did like it. In fact, I loved it. It wasn’t so big that it looked weird. It was just perfect.
“I love it. But not as much as I love you.”
Dropping his mouth back down onto mine, he kissed me lazily, his tongue lapping against mine. “Consider me your dirty love slave for life.”
I burst out laughing, the whole absurdity of it all finally tipping me over the edge.
That was until he said, “But we’re not having sex until after we get married.”
Chapter Nineteen
Bond
Three months later…
I was a stupid, stupid asshole. Why I’d demanded we abstain until we were married, I didn’t know. Actually, I did. I thought it’d be romantic. That it would help us focus on planning the wedding together with something special to look forward to.
And here I was, standing at the alter, with blue balls to match the pretty blue flowers interspersed with white roses in Nemi’s flower girl bouquet. And guess what the flowers were called? Morning Glory. Who named a flower that? It was way too close to home right now, seeing as how I wasn’t getting any morning fucking glory. The world was playing a sick joke on me.
Nemi was currently glaring down at the bouquet too, but for her own reasons. Like I knew what went on in a three-and-a-half-year-old’s head. Her presence was helping me ignore the persistent throbbing in my pants, though, so there was that. Like with her mom, whenever Nemi was in the room, she had my focus. How could she not?
When we’d told her we were getting married, our beautiful little girl had screamed and run around like a psycho. It’d been a relief to watch because, at the back of my mind, I’d been worried she wouldn’t want it to happen, but no, she was a happy girl. That was until we broke the news to her there were no pirates and no pirate girl costumes allowed.
Of course, she’d given in, dutifully going for dress fittings, and smiling sweetly when she was outfitted in a pretty white dress with some translucent panel over the top of it and with a blue ribbon around her hair. I think she’d lured her mom into a false sense of security on purpose, because the second she heard she’d have to walk down the aisle in front of Heidi, she’d put her foot down. Nope, she was going to stand next to me at the top of it, waiting for her mom to reach us.
My heart had tripped at how sweet it was and the fact she was signifying we were a united family, but I’d discovered ten minutes ago part of her reason for it when she’d joined me.
Yes, she was wearing the pretty dress and carrying the white and blue flowers her mom had organized, but on the top of her head was a Captain Jack Sparrow hat, complete with dreadlocks and beaded braids hanging down from it. To top it off, someone had made her eyes up to look like his in the movies and artfully shaded her jaw in to look like she had his scruff on it. My bets were on either Aunt Sayla, Aunt Jacinda, or Aunt Naomi. Then again, Mom wasn’t meeting my eyes, so maybe it’d been her?
I’d been about to tell her that her mom was going to go nuts when she saw her, but the mutinous look along with the determined set of her jaw advised me we were going to have to like it or lump it.
“She’s a trip,” Reid snorted, still laughing at the little girl currently glaring at the door at the back of the church, with her arms crossed in front of her.
“Well, well, well,” Hurst Townsend said, dressed smartly in a dark gray suit, as he joined us. “You’re the prettiest pirate bridesmaid I’ve ever seen. More people should dress like that for weddings.” Then, turning to his granddaughter, the only unmarried Townsend in Piersville, he called, “Take note. I want this at your wedding.”
Layla practically went gray as she sank down in her seat with her hand over her face. Across the aisle, Mark Montgomery couldn’t take his eyes off her. Like most people in town, we didn’t know what’d gone down with those two, but she’d left quickly, and he’d seemed to have the same lifestyle change I’d had soon after. Since she’d returned, no one had seen them together, and it actually looked like she went out of her way to avoid him at all costs.