Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

Rose

Something has happened to my brain overnight. It has turned into Jell-O. If I move, I’m scared that it will start oozing from my ears and nostrils and leave behind an empty skull that pathologists will scratch their heads over in the days to follow.

I crack open an eye and quickly close it again. Sunshine. Too bright. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth like the Jell-O thing happened while I was crossing the Sahara Desert.

Okay. I force myself to breathe, in through my nose, out through my mouth. I recall the mindfulness practice of focusing on my body, starting with my toes and working my way up. What can I feel? Silk sheets, firm mattress. Where’s my other foot? I’ve lost my foot! I send an instruction from my liquid brain to the tips of my toes and realize that one foot is on the floor.

What the hell?

With some difficulty, I drag it back onto the bed and waves of nausea crash through me. I roll onto my side, retching, praying that nothing will come out. My brain is back, and someone has taken a hammer to it. Thump, thump, thump.

I cling to the side of the bed, and poke about in my memories of the night before.

Elvis.

The chapel.

Champagne, confetti, and laughter.

I crack open one eye again, and there it is: the tacky gold band on my wedding ring finger, looking totally at odds beside the Tiffany solitaire.

I squeeze my eyes closed, heart racing, nausea crashing about inside me like a tidal wave. What did we do? I vaguely remember calling Brandon a coward again and demanding that we find Elvis. But when I try to recall his response, it all goes fuzzy.

We found Elvis—he was wearing the iconic white pantsuit with gold tassels. He had the fake snarl, and I think I tried to touch it, pulling the same facial expression myself while encouraging Brandon to take photos. Elvis sang ‘Love Me Tender’ in the chapel, serenading us.

The chapel .

I sit up too quickly and hold my head in both hands to stop it from rolling away and bouncing across the floor. When the world stops spinning, I turn my head slowly, a fraction at a time, and stare at Brandon, the sheet only half covering his naked body.

Heat floods my cheeks. We barely made it back to the room before we were fucking like wild animals.

I need to get up.

“Slowly…” I mutter under my breath.

The room slides out from under me when I stand, and I lean against the wall for support. I take a tentative step, and my left foot gets tangled up in my dress. I spot a shoe on the floor. My purse. It’s a miracle I still have it.

I make it to the walk-in shower, trembling, the hammer still knocking my skull into shape, and stand under the shower head with my eyes closed. I don’t know how long I stay like that, the hot water hitting my face, the billowing steam protecting me from the rest of the world. Five minutes? An hour?

Gradually, the water revives me enough for me to start feeling other things. I’m sore. I focus on my nipples and realize that they’re stinging.

Brandon was biting them, nibbling them between his teeth before he turned me around and pressed me up against the window of our room, naked, while he fucked me from behind. His breath was hot in my ear. “Does it turn you on, knowing that everyone in the other tower can see us?”

“Yes.” I remember breathing the word, twisting my neck, my lips desperate for his. He had one hand around my neck, and the other was inside me, his fingers rubbing against my clit as his cock slid in and out.

“Fuck.” My mouth fills with hot water, but I can still taste him. My lips are bruised and cracked, but I want to go back into the room and kiss him some more.

I peer down at my body. My breasts and abdomen are flushed, and there’s a faint rash around my nipples from Brandon’s stubble. I feel a tingling sensation between my legs and instinctively touch myself, my fingertips recoiling from the swollen flesh.

Eyes shut, the images just keep on coming.

Brandon forcing my legs apart, watching me while his tongue probed and licked. Slowly at first, long hard licks, teasing until he found the right spot and my back arched, pushing myself onto him. He opened me up with his fingers so that he could get his tongue deep inside, and I heard myself making noises I never thought I would make because they were for other women. Women who enjoyed being heard.

He stopped before I reached an orgasm. “Do you want me, Rose?”

“Yes.” Panting. Unable to stop the twitches wracking my body.

“How badly?”

“Lick me, Brandon.” My cheeks flush and my heart races as I replay my own voice in my head. “Now!”

Brandon forced my legs backwards, my knees touching my ears. He pushed two fingers inside me and stood up so that he could watch me writhing on the bed, my hands tangled in the sheets. “Deep enough for you?”

I could only pant in response—I was so close… So close .

“Rose, is it deep enough for you, or do you want more?”

“I … want … more.”

He removed two ties from the drawer of his closet, and bound my ankles to the headboard, exposing my dripping pussy. He kissed me, smothering my mouth until I couldn’t breathe, and I kissed him back because it was the craziest, sexiest thing that had ever happened to me.

He kissed my neck, my nipples, my belly button. Teasing me. Keeping me teetering on the edge of my orgasm. My butt was raised above the mattress, my legs trembling in their restraints above my head, and still he kept me waiting. Brandon spread my butt cheeks and licked me with long, tantalizing strokes, while his fingers penetrated me slowly.

He was back, his finger in my mouth, while he whispered, “Taste yourself, Rose,” and I obeyed. “Do you like it?” I nodded. “That’s you, Rose. That’s how fucking sweet you taste.”

Then his tongue was back inside me and I exploded all over him.

I towel-dry my hair, slide my arms into one of the fluffy white robes provided by the hotel, and walk slowly back to the room, my head still spinning, the swollen flesh between my legs chafing.

The sliding doors are wide open, and Brandon is sitting on the balcony, buttering a slice of toast. Lavish room service breakfast. He smiles when he sees me and rises to pull out a seat for me.

“How are you feeling?”

Sick. Sore. Like I got hit by a truck and dragged from the wreckage by a billionaire with commitment issues.

“Rough.” I fill a glass with freshly squeezed orange juice hoping the vitamin C will re-energize me. I take a sip and track the cold liquid through my body.

“It was the champagne.”

I raise my eyes to meet his. How does he look so chilled and … alive? “We had champagne?”

He smiles and fills two cups with steaming black coffee. “Try this,” he says, sliding a cup towards me. “The caffeine will make you feel better.”

“Nothing will make me feel better.” I sip it anyway, grimacing when I realize I forgot to add sugar.

“How much do you remember?”

“Bits and pieces.”

I keep my eyes on the steam drifting from the top of the cup trying to stop the tingling between my legs. If he pulled the robe off me now and fucked me right here on the balcony floor, I’d wrap my legs around him and beg for more.

“Did Elvis live up to his reputation?”

I force myself to swallow another mouthful of coffee, the gold wedding band catching my eye.

Why is he acting like nothing happened? Or have I got it all wrong and the ring is just a joke? Oh my god, I’m such an idiot, panicking over a tacky fake ring because we spent the night fucking all over the hotel room.

I slide it off my finger and place it on the table between us. “Where did you even get this?”

His eyes narrow briefly. “We bought it from the chapel shop.”

“The chapel shop?” I want to smile, but my lips are not cooperating. “What else can you buy in there, fake wedding certificates? Oh my god. Did we buy a fake certificate? Your mom will see right through it, you know.”

“You don’t remember.” He sits back in his seat.

“Remember what?” The nausea is back. I shouldn’t have drunk the coffee.

“You dared me to marry you. You said, and I quote, ‘You want the wolves off your back, so prove you’re not a coward and marry me, for fuck’s sake.’”

“I-I said that?” I flinch.

“Uh-huh. We have Elvis as a witness.”

“I thought Elvis was the one who was supposed to marry us,” I quip before I can stop myself.

“Oh, he did that too.”

I close my eyes and fight back the bile rising in my throat. Why won’t the room stop spinning? “So, this is real?” I pick the gold band back up.

“It’s real, Rose.”

He’s watching me, and his gaze is too intense. Does he remember what happened when we came back to the hotel room? ‘Course he does. I just don’t understand why he’s sitting there so calmly, or maybe it’s all down to my jellified brain cells.

“Can we… Can we get the marriage annulled once this is all over? I mean, we’re probably not the first couple to have gotten drunk in Vegas and tied the knot.”

He looks away and peers over the balcony at the plethora of glitzy original hotels along the strip. When he faces me again, his expression has changed. “If that’s what you want.”

“What I want?” My voice rises a notch. “Isn’t it what you want, too?”

He rotates his shoulders and cricks his neck from side to side. “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind, Rose. I’ll get it sorted once this is all over as you so eloquently put it.”

Confusion collides with the queasiness wracking my body, and I stand up, gripping the edge of the table to keep me upright. “Excuse me. I don’t feel great…”

I clamp a hand over my mouth and stumble to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before the contents of my stomach empty into the bowl.

I’m on my knees on the cold tiled floor, my cheek resting on the side of the ceramic bowl, when cool hands smooth the hair away from my face. My eyelids flutter open to find Brandon kneeling beside me.

“Stay there. I’ll get a cold cloth.”

He disappears for several moments, and I hear water splashing into the basin from the cold faucet. Then he comes back and cleans my face in a gesture that’s so tender, so paternal almost, that tears spill from my eyes as sobs erupt from somewhere deep within.

“It’s okay, Rose. I’m here. It’s just the alcohol leaving your body.”

My shoulders heave with the effort of trying to contain my sobs. Why is he being so nice to me? I forced him to marry me in front of Elvis, and here he is, wiping bile from my chin when he could be eating breakfast on the balcony with the sun on his face and a cheap wedding ring on the table.

At the thought of the ring, fresh tears trickle off the end of my nose. “You can go. I’ll be fine.”

“Can you stand?” His warm hand closes around my icy fingers.

I haul myself onto my feet, lose my balance, and lean against him for support.

“That’s what I thought.” He places an arm around my shoulders and leads me back to the balcony, settles me in my seat, and pours me a fresh cup of coffee. Then he spreads butter on a slice of toast and hands it to me. “It’ll soak up whatever’s left inside you.”

I chew and swallow, chew and swallow, my mouth so dry, the food sticks in my gullet going down. But he’s right—it does help.

“Rose, I have to make a trip to Idaho today,” Brandon says when he has finished his breakfast.

“Idaho? Aren’t we supposed to be on our honeymoon?” It comes out before I even realize what I’m saying. “Sorry.”

“I can’t get out of it.” He inhales deeply, and I can see that he’s already back in work mode. “I’ll be back in time for Rod Stewart tonight.”

I call Jess from the balcony after Brandon has left.

“How’s Vegas?” she asks.

“Tacky. Glitzy. Crazy. And Elvis is alive and kicking.” I chew my bottom lip, psyching myself up to deliver the good news. “I got married, Jess.”

Silence.

“Oh my god, you crazy bitch. Was the Tiffany diamond ring not enough for you? What the fuck, Rose. I mean… What the actual fuck?”

“I know. I was drunk.”

“Isn’t that how all good Vegas stories start?”

“I wanted to see Elvis.”

“You didn’t have to get fucking married to meet Elvis. There’s one on every corner in Vegas.” Jess’s voice rises as she processes the information.

“I don’t even remember that part.”

“So, what happens now? I mean, you’re not going to stay married, are you?”

“We’ll get it annulled when everything settles down, and then I’ll never have to see him again.”

Jess goes quiet again. “How does he feel about it?”

“I don’t know.” I thought I did, but then his reaction over breakfast caught me unawares.

“Don’t you think you should ask him?”

“Maybe.”

“And people always thought you were the sensible one. Look, Rose,” Jess says, “you need to keep your head together, okay? Don’t let him get to you.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good girl. And lay off the champagne.”

I smile as I end the call and peer back inside our sumptuous room. I can’t even begin to imagine how much this trip must’ve cost with first-class flights too, but Brandon takes it all in his stride. He wasn’t even impressed by the gondola. How is this so commonplace that he barely notices his surroundings?

I go back inside to get the sunblock from the bathroom, and spot Brandon’s pants and shirt tossed casually over the arm of the plush couch. Getting his laundry done by the laundry fairy must be something else he doesn’t need to consider. I’m about to walk past when I notice one of his devices on the coffee table.

Did he forget to take it?

I move closer and stare at the Apple logo on the front. He never mentioned Idaho until today, not that I expect him to discuss business with me. But it must be important to drag him away from our engagement trip.

Without thinking, I power up the device and find the lock screen. I wonder what his password would be. I don’t want to pry into Weiss Petroleum’s finances, I only want to find out what’s going on in Idaho. I try several combinations of his name, his parents’ names, and add various number sequences, but no luck. I try Bweiss and his date of birth, and still nothing.

Then I think of Kelly and type in her name with trembling fingers.

Three attempts later and I’m in.

The iPad Pro opens directly onto Brandon’s emails, and I sit down heavily on the couch and read the one that he left open. It’s from Sam, the guy who came to Ruby Island to speak to him. I read the information gleaned from CCTV footage at a warehouse in America Falls and my hand instinctively reaches for my throat.