Sweet Sinful Nights(82)
She shrugged, happily. “I thought I did, too. But I never stopped loving you.”
“I never stopped either. Not once. Not once through all the years.”
Then it hit him, with the clarity of a thousand suns. There was life and death, and the thinnest thread separated the two, by the edge of a razor. Life was for the living, and for the loving.
He dropped down to one knee for the second time ever. He had no ring. No plan. No speech. He grasped her hand in his. “Marry me.”
She blinked, a look of utter disbelief on her face. “Are you proposing to me in a cemetery?”
“I am,” he said. Hoping. Praying. Wanting that yes.
“You’re crazy,” she said, but she was grinning wildly.
“Am I?”
“You might be. You did put your phone in a dishwasher. Was it dirty?”
“Yes. It was full of my filthy, dirty messages to you. It was about to combust from the hotness.”
She laughed loudly, clasping her free hand on her belly. “Brent, you’re ridiculous.”
“And that’s what you always say when I make you laugh. You say I’m ridiculous. That’s another reason why you should marry me now. Because I make you laugh, and I always will. Because I make you happy, and I promise to make that my greatest mission for the rest of my life. Because you make me so damn happy. Loving you is the best thing I’ve ever done. I love everything about you—your body, your heart, and your mind. I have been in love with you for more than a decade and I’ve barely spent any of those years with you. Let’s pick up where we left off and spend our whole lives together. Let's do what we were supposed to do ten years ago. Let's do it now.”
“Now?”
His eyes lit up with mischief. “Vegas, baby.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“Think about it,” he urged. “Everyone comes here to get married. We live here. This is our town, babe. This is our place. Let’s make it ours.”
She held out her hand and tugged him up. “Vegas, baby.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There were no flowers. There were no rings. And the bride didn’t wear white.
Neither one of them changed from what they already had on—her green dress, his blue shirt and jeans. It was a hell of a lot more fun to race over to the marriage license bureau and snag the paperwork. The bureau was open until midnight every day, and plunking down IDs was nothing short of thrilling.
He pulled up in her car to a drive-thru chapel, its orange neon sign lit and flashing. The officiant came to the window. Brent had called earlier to book a quickie ceremony, and that’s exactly what they got. No Elvis impersonator, no Johnny Cash stand-in, no Vegas theme package of mobsters, or starlets, or showgirls. At the end of the two-minute ceremony, the officiant said the words Brent had longed to hear years ago. “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
No one needed to tell him that twice. He laced his fingers through Shannon’s hair, and dropped his mouth to hers, kissing her softly at first, savoring the sweet taste of her lips, memorizing every second of the first kiss with his wife.
Mrs. Shannon Nichols.
The name played in his head, and it was so f*cking perfect, so damn sexy, and so everything he’d ever wanted in his life. In mere moments, the kiss climbed the heat scale as he kissed her furiously, and she tangled a hand in his hair, consuming his lips with her fire too.
He kissed her harder, even as the officiant clapped and cheered and wedding music played from the chapel.
Click.
Click.
Click.
He opened his eyes to see her cell phone held in one outstretched hand. He broke the kiss.
“I know you love selfies of us, so this is your first wedding present from your bride. Our first picture as husband and wife.”
“I love it, Mrs. Shannon Nichols,” he said in a low dirty growl in her ear. “Now, I need to f*ck my wife for the first time.”
“Then put on your seatbelt, handsome. I see a parking spot over there that’s got our name written all over it.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Nichols?”
“Yes. Those names,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Love those names.”
A minute later, he pulled into the farthest spot in the lot, away from other cars and lights. In a quick tango they’d practiced years ago in college, he moved to the passenger seat, lowered it, and lay back, bringing her on top of him.
He reached into his back pocket and proffered a condom. “Now I get why you’re so particular about them.”
“Some day I won’t ask you to use one.”
“Maybe someday soon. But for now, you should really ride your husband hard. Because we have ten years of lost sex to make up for.”
“We’re going to be pretty busy,” she said, her eyes sparkling with equal parts naughtiness and love, then with heat and want, as he hiked her skirt to her waist.
“My beautiful wife,” he said, as he brushed his fingertips along the front of her white panties. She trembled into his touch. He traveled lower, his fingers on a luxurious path to her center. Her mouth fell open in a sexy gasp as he felt the first evidence of her desire. “Hmmm. Seems marrying me turns you on.”
“Nothing has turned me on more,” she said, her breath already coming fast.