Beautiful Beginning(28)

all the time.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t have been in your face all the time if you didn’t

call me into your little hellhole of an office for every little thing.

‘Miss Mills, I can’t read the handwriting on this expense report. Miss

Mills, I specifically asked that these documents be collated by ascending

date, not descending. Miss Mills, I’ve dropped my pen, perhaps you could

bend over and retrieve it from the floor near my chair because I’m a giant

f*cking pervert!’”

“I never said that last one!” I shouted.

She got right in my face, breasts pressed to my chest and eyes full of fire

as she met mine. “But you thought it.”

Fuck yes I did. “I also thought about firing you about seven hundred and

fifteen times. Let’s hope I made the right choice not acting on that

instinct, too.”

“You are such an egotistical *,” she growled.

“And you’re still a man-eating shrew!” I shouted back. And God, this was

so familiar and felt so f*cking good, it was exactly what we needed. I

wanted to throw her down, pin her to the sand, and tear through her clothes

so I could bite and mark the skin underneath.

I pushed a hand into her hair and she knocked it away, gripping the fabric

of my shirt instead to pull me down, kissing me too hard and for too long

and with way more tongue than was appropriate considering where we were. A

fact I’d only become aware of as the sound of catcalls and horrified

apologies began to float around us.

“Oh, my,” I heard someone say.

“I think . . . I think they’ve had a lot of stress in the past few weeks,

” my mother murmured.

“Jesus this is awkward,” said someone else.

“Are they just going to have sex right here or . . . ?” That one was

definitely George.

“Who called today?” Henry asked. “Will? Was it you?”

By now, Chloe had wrestled me down to the ground and was starting to climb

onto my lap.

“Okay!” My father’s voice cut through and I straightened onto one knee,

trying to disentangle my hands from Chloe’s hair and hers from my belt. “

I think we’re good here. Kristin? The cars should be out front; it’s time

for the rehearsal dinner. Let’s go, everyone!”





Chapter Five



I felt like my skin was going to ignite. Bennett sat beside me in the car,

scrolling through emails on his phone, as calm as he’d ever been in his

life. After the rehearsal exploded into chaos and dry humping at the altar,

I’d gone upstairs to change, splash some water on my face, and take a few

minutes to collect my sanity. But once I was back beside him, I wanted to

find something else to yell at him about. I wanted to get into another

huge, knock-down, drag-out fight. Unfortunately for us, fighting meant sex

and we’d both agreed to the stupid f*cking abstinence rule.

Instead, we sat in heavy silence, the memory of the disastrous rehearsal

sitting between us like a thick fog.

He cleared his throat and without looking at me, asked, “Did you bring

your pills?”

I looked over at him and smacked his hand holding the phone. He slid it

back in his pocket, chastised.

“What did you just ask me?”

“Your birth control pills,” he clarified. “Did. You. Bring. Them.”

I turned in my seat to face him, fire and ice sliding into my arteries and

pumping into every part of my body. “Are you f*cking kidding me right now?

”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“I’ve been taking the pill for ten years without your help, traveling

almost half of every week for the past year and a half, and managing to

pack them for every goddamn trip without the Bennett Ryan Checklist, and

you think you need to verify on how responsible I’m being now?”

He blinked away, pulling his phone back out of his pocket. “A simple ‘yes

’ or ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

“How does a ‘f*ck off’ sound?”

Turning his head to me, he said very quietly, “It sounds like you might be

playing with fire, Miss Mills.”

Heat slid down my torso and up my thighs, meeting at the juncture between

my legs as I realized he was intentionally provoking me. No matter how calm

he looked, he was just as worked up as I’d been. I shifted in my seat,

hissing, “Controlling ass.”

“Temperamental bitch.”

I leaned in, punctuating each word with a jab of my index fingertip to his

chest. “You. Imperious. Overbearing. Tyrannical. Prick.”

My back hit the floor of the limo hard enough for my breath to escape in a

gust, and Bennett’s weight was on me fully, his cock pressing into the

neglected space between my legs. Shoving my skirt up my hips, he rocked up

against me hard, his mouth covering mine and forcing my lips apart so he