40. Christian

40

CHRISTIAN

Her phone hits the path with a clatter. Her eyes widen, zeroing in on me as I close the distance, bend to pick up her mobile, and hand it back to her.

I smile because I can’t not. She’s here. Her brother deserves a medal for telling me where to find her, and for keeping her in one place until I could arrive. She takes the phone, drops it in her purse, and blinks. “You’re here?”

“I’m here.”

“Why?”

I step closer, cup her cheek, and run my thumb along her jaw. “I came here to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Her voice is like a feather.

“My brother doesn’t have a clue how I feel. Well, now he does, since I set him straight.”

She nibbles on her lip. “What did you set him straight about?”

“I do like you. He was right about that,” I say, since a part of me can’t resist having fun with the woman I love. “But he was wrong about the rest of it.” I raise my other hand and hold her face in my palms, taking a moment to gaze into her beautiful brown eyes. They shine with a look that feels so familiar—because it matches my own heart. “I am in love with my wife.”

She gasps and shudders at the same time. “I’m in love with my husband.”

And this, right here, is why I flew across an ocean. Why I took this chance. Elise sneaked up on me. I thought we were only fun and games when we started, but then, unexpectedly, she took my heart. She can keep it. She’s the only one who gets to have it. “Then, I really should kiss my bride.”

She laughs and whispers, “Yes. Please. Now.”

I kiss her softly, brushing my lips over hers, savoring what feels like a first kiss. Taking my time, I breathe her in. I linger on her mouth. I want to remember this moment, when everything has finally been said. Our kisses, our touches have always felt real, but now we’ve sealed our kisses with words.

She kisses me back with such desire, such love that it erases any earlier concerns I had about whether this trip would be worth the risk. She is worth it. She is the risk and she is the reward—the reward I want every day of my life.

When we separate, I press my lips to her forehead. “I thought you were going to break my heart.”

Laughing, she wraps her arms around my waist and tilts her face to me. “Why would you think that?”

“Maybe because I wanted you so much from the start. You nearly did break me. I thought you wanted it to be over.”

“God, no,” she whispers, desperately.

“Yeah?”

“I thought you didn’t feel the same.”

“Because of my brother?”

She shrugs and nods. “Yes.”

“He meant well. But he didn’t know the truth. The truth is I’ve been falling in love with you since the day you agreed to marry me. In fact, I’m pretty sure the first time we slept together, I was already making love to you.”

She trembles, and a flush crawls up her neck. It’s so alluring, and I want to kiss her all over. “When you came back from London . . .”

The memory of that night blazes before me. “The club, you mean?”

She nods. “I knew it then. I felt it then. That night, our connection—it was the most intense thing I’ve ever felt.”

“Me too, and it wasn’t just the sex.”

She nods and dusts her lips across my jaw. “I know. It was so much more.”

“It can be more. It can be more forever, Elise.”

She pulls back and gives me a quizzical look, and that’s when I finish what I came here to do. I drop down to one knee and take the box from my pocket, flipping open the lid.

She shrieks and clasps both hands to her mouth.

“Will you stay married to me?”

Her answer comes swiftly. “Yes.”

She joins me, pushing me to sit as she climbs on my lap, wraps her arms around me, and smothers me in kisses. “I want to be Mrs. Elise Ellison for always.”

I laugh as I tug her close, pressing kisses along her neck. “You never took my name, sweetheart.”

“I will now.”

I pull back to meet her eyes. “You will?”

She nods. “I want to.”

“Do you want your ring?”

“Yes, please.” She holds out her hand, and I slide a diamond ring next to her wedding band.

She sighs, and it’s a beautiful sound. It sounds like happiness. It sounds like everything I never expected from this marriage of convenience that’s now like air to me. Her.

“I love it, and I love you, and I want you to read my blog,” she says.

“You wrote a blog post?”

She nods, grabs her phone, and shows me a post from fifteen minutes ago. As I read it, my smile can’t be contained. I point to the screen. “You posted that as I was walking over to you?”

She nods and grins like a fool. “I did.”

I give her a look. “Elise, admit it.”

“Admit what?”

I point from her to me. “This is fate. We’re fate.”

She laughs. “Yes. I believe in fate. But mostly I believe in you.” She plants a searing kiss to my lips that makes me want to do very dirty things to her.

I grip her hips, lift her off me. “Let’s go to your hotel.”

We leave the park and hail a taxi.

“By the way, how did you find me?”

“I tracked down your brother’s number and asked him to find out where you were. He seemed quite eager to make sure you’d be here to meet me.”

She laughs. “I’m so glad it was you instead of him.”

I run a finger over the hollow of her throat, touching her new Eiffel Tower charm. “We need to get you a necklace for the gardens now. You don’t have one. Do you need a flower charm?”

She shakes her head and holds up her hand. “I have a diamond instead.”

We waste no time when we reach her room. Clothes come off at record speed, and our bodies become reacquainted with each other. It’s only been a few days since I’ve seen her, but it’s been too long since we’ve touched.

When I climb over her, and she raises her arms to loop them around my neck, I look into her eyes. “I want to make love to my wife.”

She doesn’t say yes. She doesn’t say, “Make love to me.” Instead, she says, “Consume me.”

And I do. That’s how I make love to her. Like there’s a fire inside me, and the only way to quench it is to have her. To take her. To bring her to the edge of pleasure again and again.

I lose track of time. I lose track of her orgasms. She twines around me, her skin hot, her eyes glossy. My hands tug on her hair, and my lips crush hers, my teeth nipping at her neck, her earlobe, her jaw. The sounds she makes send me into another realm. My mind is a blurry haze of desire and love and passion.

And at last, after we come together one final time, I pull her close and whisper in her ear, “I love you. I’ve wanted to say that for so long.”

She runs a hand down my chest. “I love you. And I feel like I belong to you, and you belong to me.”

“That sounds about right. There’s something pretty spectacular about falling in love with your wife.”

A little later, after I rummage through the hotel fridge, I announce that we must go out to eat. “I’m starving, and I can’t subsist on peanuts.”

We dress and head outside on a summer night in Manhattan. “Show me around New York City, Mrs. Ellison.”

She does, and we extend our trip, staying for the weekend, enjoying the sights. I introduce her to Oliver since he’s back in the States again, where he lives. He takes us all to a fantastic bar in Chelsea. Gin Joint is jumping, and Oliver seems to have commandeered an entire corner with his friends, and one of his cousins on the other side of his family, a bloke named Jason who’s from London and works here now. It’s a veritable crew of Brits and Americans, but Oliver quickly loses interest in us when the pretty blonde walks in.

He waves her over. “Summer, I thought you were ghosting us.”

“Ghosting you? Never,” she says, then introduces herself before she sits next to him.

Pretty soon, he’s enrapt in some conversation with her about whether the fries from this place are, as he puts it, last meal worthy, and she’s laughing, and telling him he’s crazy.

I lean back in my chair, put an arm around my wife, and whisper, “He has no clue that he’s mad about her. But I bet he’ll figure it out so very soon.”

“I bet he will too,” she says.

Then, I kiss my bride.

The next day, I meet her brother and his wife and kids, as well as her parents, since they’re back in town after a holiday. We get along fantastically.

So well, in fact, that I make sure they know that when they’re in Paris next month, we want them at our wedding.