Beautiful Beginning(45)
may kiss your groom.”
I did a little dance at this small victory. Bennett gave a little growl of
defeat but then leaned into me as I stepped on my toes, shoeless and inches
shorter than my husband—my husband!—and pulled him down to me.
I didn’t care that there were people watching.
I didn’t care that the expectation was that we would give a small kiss now
and enjoy many more, deeper kisses later.
Right now, as of this moment, this man was my f*cking husband, and I needed
to make sure everything felt the same.
I relished the way his arms tightened around me so intensely I lost my
breath. I relished the firm press of his mouth on mine, and the parting of
his lips, the gentle slide of his tongue across mine . . . once, twice,
three times, and the last time just a little deeper until I could feel the
vibration of his sounds and practically taste his urgency. His breaths came
out shallow and uneven on my tongue and his quiet words—ah, f*ck, Chlo,
and need to get you alone—finally made me pull away before I started
stripping off his tux right here at the altar.
Breathless and grinning like idiots, we turned and faced a lawn-full of
guests with hands suspended in the air, prepared to clap but wearing
expressions of shock frozen on their faces.
Apparently we’d been a little wild in our first kiss as husband and wife.
“Go on girl, get yours!” George shouted, just as Judith yelled, “Now
that’s how you kiss a woman!” breaking the spell and the whole group in
front of us broke into roaring applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge shouted above the mayhem. “It is my
pleasure to introduce Bennett and Chloe Ryan!”
Chloe Ryan?
I turned and had just aimed my harshest glare at Bennett and his widening
grin when chaos erupted all around us. Sara’s arms swallowed me, and then
Julia’s and George’s and Mina’s. I felt my father’s hands on my face
and his giant smooch to my cheek. I was hugged by Elliott and Susan in
tandem, lifted by Henry and Max in turn, kissed on the cheek by Will, and
then I felt Bennett’s smooth, warm hand wrapping around my arm and pulling
me with him down the aisle, away from the tight press of the wedding party.
We ran, tripping through the mud, leaving wet footprints all along the
patio. Inside, Bennett pulled me into the kitchen, where the caterers
stopped what they were doing; the clattering of pots and dishes, the
roaring of commands and replies went completely silent as Bennett turned
and slammed me into the wall, his mouth on my neck, my jaw, my ears, my
lips. He ran a hand up my side, gripping my breast through my wedding dress
and I felt him begin to harden against my stomach.
“Tonight,” he growled, returning to my neck. “Tonight I’m going to
consummate this marriage so f*cking hard you’re going to walk with a limp
on that beach in Fiji.”
I burst out laughing, wrapping my arms around him as his mouth slowed and
eventually simply kissed a path from my shoulder to my cheek. “Promise?”
I asked.
He sighed, kissing my lips once. “Promise. Now, how many hours do I have
to play nice with our crazy family before we can leave and I can put my
hands all over your naked skin?”
I looked over his shoulder, searching for a kitchen clock, but all I saw
was at least twenty faces, all staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed at us. One
waiter was so stunned by Bennett’s display that a stack of plates slowly
slid from his grasp and shattered on the floor.
Following the deafening crash of porcelain on tile, the kitchen finally
returned to motion: people running for brooms and dustpans, the head chef
barking out orders again. Bennett and I apologized quietly and ducked out
of the kitchen and to the edge of the veranda, watching our guests begin to
collect near the disaster of the lawn, taking appetizers from passing
waitstaff.
I stretched to reach Bennett’s ear and said, “We just got married. That
means you’re legally my manservant now.”
His long fingers dug into my sides, tickling me as he reached with his
other hand to grab a flute of champagne from a tray and handed it to me. He
took one for himself and quietly clinked my glass. “To us, my wife.”
“To us.”
We watched the wedding party begin to assemble for the photos and Max waved
at us to come join them. Sara turned around, laughing at something George
said, and I caught a full view of her dress.
Bennett must have seen it at the same time as I did, because I heard him
suck in a huge breath. He took my hand and began guiding me to the area
where the photographer had set up the tripod.
“About that,” I began.
“Yeah,” he said glumly. “About that.”
“What the f*ck happened, Mills?”
He slid his eyes to me at the use of my last name and said, “Apparently
the van door was open when we left the cleaners.” He smiled at the