by C. Morgan
He worked my shirt over my head. I giggled as it got caught up around my hair. He struggled to free me and we both blamed the alcohol and fatigue for making simple tasks seem much more difficult. Finally, he succeeded and moved on to undo my pants. He yanked them down and stripped them off my ankles. Next came my panties which joined my other clothes on the floor. My bra promptly followed.
I sat up to start undressing him but Rylen had other ideas. He pushed me back down on the bed and gave me a stern look to stay where I was. Breathless and excited, I did as he silently requested. He stepped off the end of the bed and dragged me to meet him so that my ass was almost hanging off the edge of the mattress. He leaned over me and I reached for him while he ran a hand over my hip and down between my thighs.
His touch shot a bolt of pleasure through me. He rubbed me in slow circles and maintained the pace while he kissed me. I whimpered against his lips, desperate for more, but he resisted and kept me suspended there, right on the brink of something explosive.
My thighs began to ache as the muscles tightened in preparation for a release. My breath fluttered and my heart raced. I reached over my head to try to grasp something but found only smooth bedding pulled flat and tucked under the mattress. My nails whispered across the duvet cover and my fingers went searching for something else to grab hold of.
They found Rylen’s hair, the back of his neck, and his shoulders. I yanked his shirt off of him and dragged my nails down his back. Rylen’s shoulders rolled. His muscles bunched and flexed. The feeling of muscle coiling and relaxing under his skin turned me on even more.
He continued rubbing me in slow circles.
“Please,” I whimpered. “Please. I can’t.”
He silenced me with a kiss that tasted like scotch.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
I grabbed his belt and flicked it open. He smiled as I pulled it free of his belt loops. My pussy ached as I unzipped his pants and tugged at the waistband of his boxers.
“I want your cock inside me,” I said hoarsely. “Right now.”
Rylen pulled a condom out of his pocket before he dropped his pants and stepped out of his boxers. I watched, hungry and empty, as he rolled the condom on. He pulled me a little closer to the edge of the bed until I thought I might fall off. To keep me where I was, he stepped in close between my thighs and pressed down on my clit with his thumb. I moaned. He lowered his hips and pressed his cock inside me. I was so swollen and tight and aroused that he felt bigger than ever.
I gasped as he stretched me. He rubbed me in slow circles as he filled me up. My thighs trembled. He must have felt them because he gripped them hard and squeezed my flesh until his fingers left white impressions. He pushed my legs back and looked delighted to see how flexible I really was for a fuller woman.
He drove in hard and deep.
Here in this hotel, I didn’t have to worry about being quiet for once. I let my freak flag fly as he brought me to the brink of climaxing. Rylen bowed his head and fucked me hard as I cried out his name. My toes curled and my thighs shook. I dragged him down to me as he fucked me harder, deeper, and faster. The pulled-tight sheets began to loosen and gather beneath me.
Rylen wrapped an arm around both of my thighs and pulled them tight together. He held them there by my knees and pushed back. His cock hit an untouched, glorious spot deep inside me. My eyes rolled back in my head. He gave it to me until little stars popped behind my eyelids and I came again. This time, no sound escaped. I strained beneath him until I came undone and he simultaneously gave in to his own orgasm.
Afterward when we were both panting and damn near delirious from the sex, booze, and lack of sleep, he collapsed on the bed beside me and muttered something about how we should take a shower together.
“I think we have a rain shower,” I breathed, unable to keep my eyes open.
He put a hand on my thigh. “You go start it. I’ll meet you in there.”
I smiled. “Nice try, buddy. If you stay here, you’re going to fall asleep.”
I glanced over at him and found the lines of tension he usually carried on his face were gone. The crease in his forehead, the furrow between his brows, the frown lines at the corners of his mouth. He looked peaceful and relaxed like the weight of everything he’d been carrying for the last two years had finally been lifted.
I wanted to believe I was the reason for that.
I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair. His blue eyes fluttered open and met my gaze.
“We can sleep soon,” I promised before rolling into him for more kisses, taking his hand, and leading him off the bed toward the bathroom so we could shower.
Chapter 30
Rylen
Natalie frowned as she looked from the map on her phone and back up at the street signs at the corner of the intersection. She turned to the left, then the right, and promptly to the left again with a decisive nod. “I think we have to go that way. A few blocks up and then to the right will take us right to Notre Dame, right? If we follow the river…” She trailed off as she grew uncertain.
One thing about traveling was it was guaranteed to expose flaws in people. Natalie, despite her savvy business ways, her confidence, her boldness, her wit, and her charm, had a weakness.
Directions.
Thinking nothing of letting her guide our way this morning after we left the cafe in our hotel (where we’d indulged in French pastries and French press coffees), she’d gotten us completely turned around on our hunt for the old cathedral that was high on both of our must-see lists. We knew it wouldn’t be in the same shape that we’d seen it in the history books when we were in school or any of the architecture magazines I used to have at the clinic because of the fire in April, but that didn’t mean we didn’t want to see it.
However, at this rate, two hours into wandering aimlessly around the city, I wasn’t sure if we would ever make it there because Natalie had us completely turned around.
“Maybe we should ask a local,” she muttered.
I held out a hand. “Can I see?”
She placed her phone in my palm and gnawed at the inside of her cheek while she continued looking around, as if she could orient herself in a foreign city if she stared at the street signs long enough.
I looked from the phone in my hand to her. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m hoping to see something I recognize so I can pinpoint where we are on the map.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You don’t need landmarks when we’re at an intersection with street signs. We can find our intersection and work from there.”
I studied the map while Natalie abandoned our course of action and tried to catch a local on the street to ask for directions. Nobody wanted to stop and talk to her. She cursed foully as she returned to my side and grumbled about how the people here were rude if you didn’t speak French.
“I think they probably just don’t like Westerners.” I chuckled.
She pouted. “Tourism is good for economies.”
“Doesn’t mean the locals have to like us. We get in their way.” I finally oriented myself on the map. “Aha! Okay, I see where we are. Here.” I pointed to our intersection on the map and re-centered it so that when I pointed ahead, the street on the map ran in the same direction to avoid confusion. “We’re actually much closer to the Louvre Museum right now. Do you want to go there first and then make our way to Notre Dame? We can take a taxi from there to the Eiffel Tower after.”
Natalie nodded eagerly. “Works for me. I just want to see something other than street signs and people walking their dogs. We have all that at home.”
Chuckling, I offered her my arm.
We made our way through the streets of Paris. It was truly a beautiful city—and an old one at that. San Francisco had its heritage sites too but they were nothing like Paris. Some of the buildings here were eight hundred years old and still impressive standards of architecture. Natalie and I admired the stained-glass windows of chapels
, the masonry and stonework of homes, universities, and official buildings.
As we explored, the impending wedding was a mere flicker of a thought in the back of my mind.
Last night after a nap in the room, I’d gone down to the hotel bar to order Natalie and me a specialty cocktail. While I waited on the drinks, I’d bumped into Mona’s twin cousins, Suzie and Shannon, who had spared little time in striking up a conversation so they could get the goods and ask me if the rumors were true. Had I brought my new fiancée to Mona’s wedding?
Resisting the urge to grin like a fool, I’d confirmed that yes, my fiancée was with me. At that very moment, the bartender handed me my two cocktails and I’d lifted them as if in toast to the twins and announced that I had a woman waiting on me in my room before slipping away.
To say it had been satisfying to see the look of surprise on their faces would have been an understatement.
There was no doubt in my mind that every guest who had arrived in Paris and checked in to the hotel knew Natalie was my fiancée. She and I had shared some laughs about it over our coffees this morning while we planned out our day of exploration. Natalie had been all over it and spearheaded the operation. She knew I needed the distraction today.
At that very moment, Mona was out with Cora and her bridesmaids getting their hair and nails done in preparation for Saturday. Logan was most likely smoking cigars in a fancy French lounge somewhere with his boys. Family reunions were spontaneously taking place in the hotel either outside in the heated pools, in the bars, lounge, or lobby, where a grand fireplace offered a cozy place to sit with a drink.
Natalie and I had taken to the chilly streets. The snow and the cold wouldn’t stop us from sightseeing. We’d come prepared with winter parkas, boots, scarves, and gloves. Natalie had little handwarmers which she’d cracked when we left the hotel and given to me. We put them in each of our pockets to keep our hands warm and they helped immensely as we strode through the streets and little flurries of snow began to fall.
Natalie sighed. “It’s like we just stepped into a painting, isn’t it?”
I glanced down at her as we stopped at a crosswalk.
She smiled. Her cheeks and nose were rosy from the cold. “The Christmas lights. The snow. The buildings. Paris at Christmastime feels exactly how I thought it would feel after looking at so many paintings and pictures of it and wishing I could be here. Thank you for bringing me, Rylen. I know I put up a fuss in the beginning but—”
I cupped her chin and kissed her. “There’s nobody else I’d rather see the city with.”
Her cheeks turned an even deeper shade of pink.
It took us about twenty minutes to reach the Louvre Museum. The glass pyramid rose up out of the snow like a diamond emerging in frost. Snow crunched beneath our boots and the place felt eerily quiet despite how many tourists were there snapping pictures. Natalie and I explored and went inside, where we quickly overheated and had to strip out of our layers before putting them back on some two hours later to brave the weather again.
It had stopped snowing when we went back outside in search of a place we could sit and have lunch. We found a charming eatery adorned in wreaths and gold jingle bells where we got a small table near the window and enjoyed hot chowder while talking about everything we’d seen so far. Natalie was over the moon with the first half of our day and she hadn’t even seen the main events yet. Her enthusiasm was contagious.
Before we left the eatery, we reached out to coworkers back home to make sure everything was going smoothly at my clinic and Natalie’s office. After sending said emails, our phones returned to our pockets only to be used to snap pictures or refer once more to the map, which we would have to use to make our way to Notre Dame next.
The chilly air swallowed us up as we left the warmth of the eatery. We strolled a couple blocks down the street before I paused and drew Natalie toward a storefront window. She giggled and shook her head at me outside of the Swarovski crystal store.
“We already bought a wedding gift,” she said, tugging at my arm. “Let’s go find Notre Dame.”
I shook my head. “We have to go in.”
“Why?”
“Indulge me.”
I pulled her into the shop where we were greeted in French. Natalie spoke a few words to the saleswoman. Her French wasn’t spectacular, but she knew more than me, and she knew enough to earn us a smile from the woman behind the counter, who shifted to English for my sake.
“Is there something I can help you find?” the woman asked. Her French accent was elegant, just as she was—just as most French women were, I was realizing.
I found the case with rings in it and peered through the glass.
Natalie stepped up beside me and frowned. “What are we looking for, Rylen?”
“You’re going to need a ring if we want to convince people you’re my bride-to-be,” I said.
“A ring?” She began to fidget with her gloves. “I don’t know.”
I pointed at a dazzling crystal ring with a halo cut nestled on a blue velvet display. “That one. Could we see that one, please?”
The saleswoman pulled the ring out and set it on the counter. She asked for Natalie’s hand and slid the ring on her left hand. “It suits you,” she said.
Natalie swallowed hard and looked at the ring. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s yours,” I said before nodding at the saleswoman. “We’ll take it.”
Natalie tried to back out of it. She didn’t want me spending more money on her. But Swarovski rings were not nearly as expensive as one would think, especially in comparison to a real diamond, and I wanted her to look and feel the part of my fiancée on the wedding day. The ring was the only missing piece.
Truth be told, I liked the way it looked on her, and based on the way she grudgingly put her gloves back on after we’d made the purchase, I suspected she liked how it looked too.
On our walk back to Notre Dame, she told me the ring was too much.
“My fiancée deserves the best,” I teased.
She smiled but didn’t say anything.
After another walk in the snow, Notre Dame rose up seemingly out of nowhere before us. Cranes stood tall around it, making the church seem a little smaller in stature than it actually was. It was drowning in scaffolding while construction was underway, but even though the historic landmark was bruised, it was still magnificent.
So magnificent that it brought a tear to Natalie’s eye.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulder as the snow began to fall once more and we stood across the street gazing up at the church.
“It’s so much more beautiful than I imagined,” she breathed. “I can’t believe I’m here. I remember when I saw the fires on TV. It broke my heart and I couldn’t understand why because I’d never been here. Never seen it myself. But I cried anyway as I watched it burn.”
“Because you have a big heart,” I told her. “Because you knew the pain Parisians were going through.”
Natalie rested her head on my shoulder and sighed. We stood there for a long time before she tilted her head back and looked up at me. “Are you ready for the wedding?”
I let my gaze roam over the scaffolding and the empty places in the sky where the spires should have been. “I’m more ready than I ever thought I could be because I have you with me.”
Chapter 31
Natalie
Rylen knocked on the bathroom door while I leaned over the counter to apply my lipstick up close and personal with the mirror.
“Two more minutes,” I called.
I had to stop swiping the red lip stain on because Rylen’s grumbling on the other side of the door made me smile.
I stuck the wand back in the tube to pick up more color. “You can handle two more minutes, Rylen. Beauty takes time.”
“You could show up in jeans and a T-shirt, and everyone in the room would still think you were beautiful.”
“Buttering me up won’t speed this along.”
“Plenty of time.”
“Is it?” he asked dryly.
I finished with my lip stain and stepped back. I’d pulled out all the stops this evening because it was going to be the first time Mona and I met, and Grady and Rylen had paid for the full-meal deal. I wasn’t going to disappoint. I was going to put it all on the line.
My dress was one I’d owned for almost a year now. As soon as I knew I had to go to the rehearsal dinner as well as the wedding, I knew this sexy little number would be coming with me. It was a deep shade of forest green, my favorite color. It was so dark in fact that in certain lighting it appeared almost black until the light caught it and the silky green fabric gave off a metallic luster. It draped over my curves, the neck dropping low but not too low. The hemline hit right at my knees, a sophisticated length, and the sleeves were full length and made of sheer lace the same shade of green as the rest of the dress.
I felt like a fairy tale character in it.
I’d curled my hair and brushed it out so the curls hung in effortless, shiny waves. Gold earrings winked in my ears, a stack of sparkling bracelets drew attention to my wrist, and then to the ring on my finger. My shoes were strappy black heels, and a sparkling anklet rested on my left ankle. There was no such thing as too much glitter in my world.
I looked my reflection in the eye. This is it. Knock ‘em dead, Nat.
When I opened the door and emerged from the bathroom, Rylen had his back to me. He was working to do up his tie. From the back, he looked like a snack in his perfectly tailored black suit.