Читать книгу Wear My Ring: The Secret Wedding Dress / The Millionaire's Marriage Claim - Элли Блейк, Ally Blake - Страница 15

‘ARE we a tad overdressed for this time of the morning?’ Gabe asked.

‘What do you think?’ Paige asked, before swallowing so hard the tendons on her neck looked about to snap.

‘I think you’re wearing a wedding dress.’ Even as he said the words a pulse began to beat in his temple. ‘Is it yours?’

After a long second she nodded, her eyes like those of a puppy who’d been kicked. As if she were the one who should be feeling hard done by, not the guy she was sleeping with who’d just come back from a week away to find himself staring down a bride.

Right. Okay. Think. Not an easy thing to do considering he was fighting against the unwieldy mix of raging lust and abject horror wrestling inside him.

‘And you’re wearing it because …’ You’ve been married before? You’re getting married today? You missed me that much …?

Wow. Had everything somehow been leading to this? No matter all the safeguards he’d put in place, had he been outfoxed again? Should he have paid more heed to Hitchcock’s warnings after all? He’d give her a minute to explain. Two at most. And if he wasn’t a hundred and ten per cent thrilled with the answers he was outta there.

‘The zip’s stuck!’ She turned, lifted her hair and flashed him an expanse of beautiful back. And creamy-coloured lace, and pearl looking things and—

Gabe lifted his eyes to the ceiling. ‘That’s not exactly … I meant why do you own a … you know?’

‘Took you long enough to ask.’

Gabe was fairly sure he’d only been at her apartment door for a minute but apparently he’d passed through the looking glass, so who knew? ‘Forgive me if my mind’s working at about thirty per cent velocity, but what the hell are you talking about?’

‘Oh, come on. You knew about the dress.’

Gabe shook his head, hard, hoping it might send him back to the right dimension. ‘What precisely am I meant to know about it?’

‘That it exists. That it’s mine. That I have a wedding dress in my possession.’

‘Paige, I’m on the back foot here, with the dress, and the accusations, and the … dress. But I can honestly, hands down, say, I’ve never seen it before.’

‘The day we met,’ she shot back, eyes flashing, arms crossed beneath her breasts until they loomed above the deep V of the dress. ‘I was carrying it in the lift.’

He opened his mouth to tell her she damn well wasn’t, because there was no way in hell he’d have made a play for an engaged woman. Who needed that kind of drama? Was she engaged? No. He couldn’t believe it. He shut his mouth, realising nothing good would come of any question he asked. And she didn’t look in the mood for an argument. In fact she looked pretty close to a nervous breakdown.

Not exactly what he’d imagined their reunion might be like. Sure, he’d imagined heat, he’d imagined sweat, he’d not even dared hope to come close to losing consciousness. But right then, the only thing keeping him from bolting was the fact that the terror in Paige’s eyes pretty much mirrored his own.

He tore off his beanie, unwound his scarf, rid himself of his jacket and threw them onto her kitchen diner. Then, hands shaking a little, he reached out, slowly, and curled his palms around her upper arms, careful not to touch the fabric wrapped lovingly around her body. Then he pressed himself inside her apartment and kicked the front door shut with his foot.

‘Paige. Believe me when I tell you this. I don’t recall you carrying anything that day.’

‘You told Nate I tried to shut the door on your hand, but you don’t remember me carrying a fluorescent white garment bag with ‘Wedding Dress Fire Sale’ in hot-pink neon writing slashed across the front of it?’

‘I remember fine.’ The big blue bedroom eyes. The rumpled blonde hair. The legs that went all the way up. The sparks bouncing off the walls. The instant intense stab of desire that had made a mockery of his efforts to sleep his jet lag away. ‘I remember you.’

At that Paige blinked. Faster than a hummingbird’s wings. And then she breathed out, long and slow, as if she’d been holding her breath a real long time.

At the slow rise and fall of her chest his eyes defied him and slid down, noting how well the … thing fitted her, dipping at the front, hugging at the sides, sloping down her beautiful hips. If a man in a rented tux ever got to see that walking towards him down an aisle, he’d have no complaints.

But he would never be that man.

He liked Paige. She was funny, smart, great company, breath-taking in bed. But if this dress was some kind of sign, she was signalling the wrong man.

He wasn’t a marrying man. Not even long-term-commitment guy. His priorities simply made it impossible. For as long as he could remember his ambitions had been clear-cut: to work hard and make his gran proud. After his one monumental hiccup, he’d poured all of himself into fixing that mistake. Never making the same one again.

And he wasn’t here. Was he? It didn’t feel as though he was, but, considering his track record, who the hell knew?

He pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing there was no going forward—to the apartment, to work, or dinner, or even to her bed—till they cleared this all up.

Gabe slowly removed his hands and tucked them into the pockets of his old jeans and took a small step back. He lifted his eyes deliberately to hers. Her eyes were all liquid-blue, her lush mouth down-turned. She looked so forlorn, so … unbridely, it was almost laughable. Almost.

He motioned with his chin to the small kitchen table. ‘Sit.’ She sat. Gabe sat too, though far enough away so as not to touch. ‘So do you want to tell me what this is all about so I can stop looking over my shoulder for the priest?’

‘Really?’

‘More than you know.’

‘Okay,’ she said, then after a big deep shaky breath went on. ‘So I’d been shopping with Mae to find her wedding dress the morning before we met, and I saw this dress and felt like I’d never breathe again if I didn’t take it home. Not out of some deep and abiding desire to get married. I’ve never been one of those girls who always wanted to get married. On the contrary. So we can clear that up.’

‘Okay,’ he said, feeling far from clear.

Then Paige looked down, a swing of fair hair falling over her face, all her usual va va voom seeping out of her as she stared at some unknown spot on the table. ‘Turns out Mae getting married has really thrown me. More than I’d realised until about half an hour ago. I’ve been completely out of sync since she got engaged. We’ve been in one another’s pockets for such a long time. And now she’s … not mine any more.’ She held out her hands as if she’d lost something then settled back into her slump. ‘I’ve been going through the motions ever since. With Mae. At work. Not dating.’ Her eyes slid to his, her long dark lashes all crazy and clumped together. ‘You’re the first guy I’ve seen since it happened.’

The emphasis on the word ‘seen’ brought a flare of heat to his groin. When he shifted on the chair Paige noticed, and her mouth flickered into the first smile of the day.

‘Mae had a theory about why I bought the dress,’ she went on, ‘and it was easier to believe that than to believe the truth. That I was jealous of her. Not the marriage bit, the happiness bit. So I kind of wished for you. And then a minute later you stuck your fingers through the lift door.’

‘I’m sorry … You wished for me?’

Sass put some sinew into her slump as she flicked her fringe off her face, and lifted one saucy shoulder. The flare of heat spread till it roared through his blood with the speed and intent of a bush fire.

‘Well, not you in particular,’ she said. ‘A man who … Well, a man. Mae’s theory for why I bought the dress was that I needed to get some.’

Gabe’s mouth turned dry at the thought … for about half a second. Then saliva pooled beneath his tongue and he had to physically press himself back into the chair so as not to go right ahead and give her what Mae thought she needed.

Paige slowly eased herself upright, leaned back in her chair, and looked him dead in the eye, and he realised she hadn’t been kidding. If any other man had walked into the lift at that precise moment she would have been sitting at her kitchen table sending some other guy hard with desire with those burning baby blues of hers.

No way. It wouldn’t have been the same. The way they fitted was chemical. One in a million. Thus worth pursuing to the edges of his limits. Clearly, or he wouldn’t still be sitting there while she wore a wedding dress.

He leaned forward, keeping her gaze connected to his. ‘And now that you have … got some, how are you doing?’

Paige tilted an eyebrow, before wafting a hand past her lace-covered curves. ‘How do you think I’m doing?’

‘Fair enough.’ Gabe rubbed his fingers into his eyes to clear the image that was making it hard for him to see straight. ‘And do you try it on every morning—? ‘

‘Good God, no! This was the first time ever. Don’t think I ever had any intention of you finding me like this. This is my worst nightmare. And I can’t fathom why you’re still sitting here and not halfway to anywhere else but here!’

She had him there. He’d help her get the dress off then vamoose. Go home. Go to work. Put some space between them so that he could think.

He shoved back the chair so hard it squeaked on the pale floorboards. He motioned to her with a flick of his fingers. ‘Come on.’

‘What?’

‘You said that thing was stuck.’

She nodded. ‘The zip. It’s caught on something. I tried tugging, and shimmying it over my head, but it fits like a glove.’

It did that. ‘Then let’s get you free of it, shall we?’

Paige stood, and turned her back to him.

Swallowing down the bile rising in his throat at the connotations of ridding a beautiful woman of a wedding dress, Gabe forced his eyes to move to the dress to find a paper clip had been bent through the eye of the zip.

His tension melted a little. At least now he could be certain she’d had a go at taking the thing off. As for the rest? Everyone had weaknesses, and if hers was for a combination of lace and pearly-looking things, then it beat smoking. Just.

‘Do you need me to move at all?’ she asked, lifting her hair away from her neck, the scent of her shampoo wafting past his nose for the first time in days. The interplay of muscle across her back made his fingers feel fat and useless as blood left his extremities to pour into his groin.

He reached for the zip, the backs of his fingers brushing across her warm skin. Her muscles twitched at even his slightest touch. A few strands of hair fell to slide against the back of his hand and, God help him, delicate shocks prickled down his arms landing with a rock-hard thud in his pants.

‘You want this thing off or not?’ he asked, his voice gruff.

‘I do.’

‘Then stop wriggling.’

She stilled. And there were a few long moments in which the only sound was the shuffle of satin on her skin as the hopeless zipper refused to budge.

‘I had an outfit,’ she said. ‘For tonight.’

‘Another one?’

Her laughter was husky, telling him he wasn’t the only one affected by the fact that he was, to all intents and purposes, trying to get her naked. The sound vibrated through him, morphing into a whump whump whump that pulsed through his veins.

‘Quite something, this outfit of mine. Red, sleek, no zip in sight.’

He swallowed down the lust rising from the bottoms of his feet all the way to the back of his throat. The phenomenal pull of desire he felt for her, despite the wedding attire, gave him one last pause.

Did he want her too much? To the detriment of his own sense? His own self-interest? He listened to his gut, and listened hard. But even his deeply scarred conscience couldn’t go there. She was habit-forming, but the hold she had over him was unintentional. And all the more dangerous because of it? Not so long as they both knew the score. He’d just have to make sure she never forgot it. Him either.

‘Careful,’ she cried out suddenly when the sound of over-stretched fabric rent the silence. Then like the collapse of a dam, the zip gave way. The dress tipped over her shoulders and she scooped it to her chest, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of a strapless black lace bra and a hint of matching G-string.

‘Oh, come on!’ she said, turning and staring down at the dress so that her breasts pressed together. ‘I’d been working on that damn thing for half an hour! It clearly hates me. Well, I hate it right on back. It’s so going straight to Good Will after this.’

‘Nah,’ he said, his voice rough as sand, ‘I have the touch.’

She glanced up at him, her chest pinking as she realised the direction of his gaze. And he was more than half hard. When their eyes met, her bottom lip was tucked between her teeth, and her naked toes curled over one another under the pool of material at her feet.

And Gabe knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

A half-second after he moved for her, she let the dress go and was in his arms. Clinging to him as he devoured her with his mouth. Tasting her neck, his tongue tracing the line of her jaw, teeth nipping at her ear. When he slid his hands to cup her backside it was to find the dress was thankfully gone, leaving him with her hot bare skin and a strip of lace.

When he lay her back on the table, atop his jacket and scarf, she was pink all over. A pulse beating fast in her neck. Her lips moist from his kiss. Her eyes so hot he could barely make out a thin circle of blue. She grabbed him by the belt-line, tugging him between her legs, wrapping her thighs about him as she whipped his button fly open with one rough yank.

With a growl he buried his face in her breasts. Drinking in the scent of her till his lungs were full. When he palmed her breast she arched off the table.

Lust filled him so thick and rich his vision was a pinprick. His focus concentrated on a bead of perspiration running down her torso. The jump of her muscles as his hands encircled her waist. Her gasp as he pressed a kiss to her navel. The grip of her hands in his hair as he sank his teeth into her hipbone. The way she trembled as he ran a thumb along the strip of soft black lace.

Holding onto the thinnest thread of control, he pressed her thighs apart and kissed her. She flung an arm over her eyes and let her thighs fall apart all the way. He tugged the slip of lace aside and took her in his mouth, tasting, bringing her to the edge before pressing soft kisses to her inner thigh. When she begged him to never stop, he never did, and when she came it was with such abandon he almost came right along with her.

Fumbling for his wallet, he took for ever before he found a condom. Sheathed, he hovered over her, waiting until her eyes found his, glints of fire, before he sank into her. Pressing into her velvet heat, deeper and deeper. The walls of her body gripping him like nothing else he’d ever known. One hand around the top of the round table, the other on his hip, she sucked in short sharp breaths. When pleasure gripped him from the inside out his eyes squeezed shut and he heard himself yell her name as he came.

As the world slowly came back into focus Gabe’s head cleared. And it was as if the hard and fast sex had knocked something loose.

He looked into her eyes, to find them dark, liquid, sated, making him hard for her all over again. Knowing it, she grinned, and stretched her arms over her head, letting them dangle over the edge of the table.

Willing himself to keep it together another moment, he asked about the one part of the morning that hadn’t made some sort of crazy sense. ‘All this time you thought I thought you owned a wedding dress, and you therefore believed that I believed you were possibly about to be married.’

She looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘Possibly.’

He braced an arm against the kitchen table. ‘And that was okay with you?’

‘Not normally. But remember I was a girl with not a lot of experience in happily ever afters who’d just bought a wedding dress. I needed to do something equally desperate to counteract the first act.’

Gabe blinked at her. A glint had made it through the sexual haze in her blue bedroom eyes. She was making jokes? ‘Hell, Paige. Consider what you’ve put me through so far this morning and give me the slightest break, okay?’

She lifted a knee to brace herself, her inner thigh accidentally sliding along the outside of his leg. Or maybe not so accidentally. He was fast learning the woman had hidden facets.

‘Gabe, I’ve dated guys who aren’t jerks and they’ve still jerked me around. So I figured dipping my toes back into the dating pool with a jerk there’d be no nasty surprises.’

‘Did you call me a jerk?’ Gabe pushed himself to standing, found his jeans and yanked them up, buttoned them, and ran a hand up the back of his neck. His head was starting to thud.

‘No. No!’ she said, bracing herself on her elbows, the long, lean, rumpled, semi-naked length of her draped over the table. ‘Honestly, there’s nothing about you that screams jerk. Or whispers it even. But, come on. You were all big and dark and stubbled and dishevelled from your flight. Could you blame me for not jumping straight to “Mr Nice Guy”?’

His default position, to get annoyed and stay that way, flickered to life. But the thing was she was right. She’d seen him at his irritable worst and thought him unapproachable. He had seen a leggy blonde and thought SEX! They’d both been spot on.

But, just in case, he looked back at her, right into her eyes, looking for something else. The opposite of what he’d always been most afraid of. A sign of hope. Of expectation. A sign that she was deeper into this thing than he was.