“Ari!” the bride-to-be yelled when she’d spotted me. Leaving her family behind, she came racing up and hugged me tight before shooting Tristan a quick, appraising glare. “Are things good between you two crazy lovebirds?” she asked.
“We’re very, very good, actually,” I replied, my fingers instinctively reaching for the silver ring lying hidden in my cleavage.
“Good. Then I suppose I can be nice to Tristan.” She grabbed him and pulled him in for a bear hug, but instead of wrapping his arms around her he patted her back in a half-assed, semi-cold embrace. No doubt he was recalling their last meeting, when Clarissa had threatened to kick his ass if he ever treated me badly again.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked when they’d pulled apart. “I mean, I feel pretty guilty about being the most useless bridesmaid of all time.”
“Not at all. Just come stand up front with Maria and me, and pretend you’re wearing your special fancy dress. Tristan, you can sit in a pew.” Clarissa gestured dismissively in the general direction of the left side of the church and I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d never seen anyone treat my lover with such casualness; in New York, everyone—including the most powerful shifters—treated him with reverent respect.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, turning and throwing him a smile. He gave me a look that said You SO owe me one and took off for the back of the church, probably to tuck himself away in the most inconspicuous corner he could find.
He was right; I really did owe him. I’d always known human weddings weren’t his comfort zone, but now it had become screamingly obvious. Well, since he was being such a good boy about it, I’d have to make it up to him later with a patented Ariana-style mouth-to-cock massage.
The rehearsal only lasted an hour, and mostly consisted of a minister saying things like, “Okay. You stand here. No, here. No, a few inches to the left. That’s right. Don’t forget it; it’s crucially important. If you move at all, the entire wedding will be ruined. And when we’re done with this part, the small child who’s carrying the ring will carry it down the aisle in a perfectly straight line then hand it over, because as we all know, small children do everything they’re told and—wait, are you saying they don’t? Excuse me, I thought I told you to stand here.”
Clarissa’s groom-to-be, James, seemed unfazed by the whole thing. But the bride and I exchanged about eighty eye rolls before the ordeal was over, at which point the entire wedding party breathed a sigh of relief when it had finally concluded.
“Ready to head to the restaurant?” Clarissa asked everyone when we’d finished. “It’s just down the road by the hotel.”
I nodded along with the cheers of approval that reminded me that I probably wasn’t the only person here who hadn’t eaten much today.
The only person who didn’t react was Maria, the maid of honor and Clarissa’s older sister. Apparently she was too busy staring towards the back of the church at something utterly fascinating. When I followed her gaze, I almost burst out laughing as I realized she was gawking at Tristan. For a moment I contemplated asking her why she didn’t just take a picture. But as if she was reading my mind, she whipped her smart phone out of her purse and held it up, snapping a long-distance photo.
“Maria!” Clarissa scolded. “What are you doing? That’s Ari’s man.”
“I need new material for my private time with Mr. Vibrator.”
“Seriously?” Clarissa asked in tone that was more than a little disapproving.
Maria shrugged. “He’s super-hot,” she said.
“I’m well aware,” I said, showing my claws just a little. “As your lovely sister pointed out, he’s also super-taken.”
I should have been used to it by now—women fawning over Tristan, throwing themselves at him like they couldn’t wait to get him naked. When we’d first met I’d been insecure enough to assume that he slept with every woman who so much as hinted that she desired him.
But now I knew better. He was mine. He was loyal—more than I could imagine any human man ever being. We were bound to each other by far more than promises. He was my mate, and I was his.
Still, I wanted to smash Maria’s damned phone to pieces.
When I’d wandered over to tell Tristan that he no longer had to hang around in an appalling church, we headed down the street to the restaurant. It was a dark affair lit by narrow, modern light fixtures. Apparently James and Clarissa had rented the whole place, which was completely empty aside from the wedding party and close family.
Clarissa was seated in the middle of a long table, James at her side. I beamed at her from across the table, proud and happy to see my best friend so settling into the life she’d always dreamed of.
Maria was sitting on her other side. Like Clarissa, she was blond and pretty. But unlike her sister, she spent the entire evening staring at Tristan, who was seated to my left, his hand occasionally slipping onto my thigh and squeezing gently, as if to make sure I knew he was still there. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was him or me who needed the most reassurance. All I knew was that neither of us could wait to get up to our suite and forget about everything and everyone else for a few hours.
I watched with amusement as Maria found new and interesting ways to pretend to converse with the best man or the bride’s mother while eyeing my lover. Occasionally she’d even get up from her seat, march around the table and sweep by him, her fingers just barely grazing the backs of his shoulders.
“You have a fan,” I told Tristan. “In other news, I’d like to punch her in the face.”
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed the horny woman with the roving eye,” he whispered back, gripping my thigh like he was pleading with me. Let’s get out of here.
“Like you can’t smell her pheromones from a mile away.” I looked at his impassive features and laughed at his attempt to look innocent and naive. “This happens to you everywhere you go, doesn’t it? You’re so used to it that it bores you.”
His mouth dropped open in an attempt at feigning shock. “What? No! Never. I’m a wallflower. Now that I’m committed forever and ever, I’m all but invisible to the fairer sex.”
“Liar.”
When he pulled my hand to his lips I was reminded that nothing mattered. Not a pretty woman eyeing him. Even another woman taking off her clothes and begging him for sex would probably have had little impact on him. As far as I knew, he’d only ever loved one other woman—and she’d been dead for centuries.
“If women notice me,” he whispered, “I shut it out. There’s only one female who interests me, and when we get back to our room I intend to refresh her memory as to how much I enjoy spending time with my tongue deep inside her.”
“Mr. Wolfe,” I said, “you’ll make me blush.”
“Damn it, Ariana, why didn’t you wear a skirt tonight?” he asked, slipping his fingers up my thigh. “It’s driving me insane not to be able to touch your skin.”
I shrugged. “Sorry. I suppose I wanted to tantalize you.”
“More like torture. But I’ll live.”
The evening turned out to be fairly painless. Mostly it consisted of a few speeches from friends and family taking credit for Clarissa and James’ meeting, for the wedding that hadn’t yet happened, and even patting themselves on the back for Clarissa’s good looks, in the case of her mother.
All I could think the entire time was how much I missed staring at my engagement ring. How much I wished I could tell the world that as much as I was happy for my bestie, nothing mattered except for the fact that I would soon marry the man of my—and apparently every woman’s—dreams.
As the final speeches wrapped up, Tristan and I exchanged relieved smiles.
“I need you back in our suite,” he whispered, leaning close to me. “It’s an emergency.”
“Oh?”
“Your breasts in that blouse are doing terrible things to me, and my cock is threatening to split my fly open.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” I said, sliding m
y hand up his thigh just enough to pull a quiet moan from his lips.
“Cruel woman,” he said.
I smiled. When I got back to the hotel, I intended to spend the night wearing nothing but the engagement ring and my wolf shifter.
Chapter 5
I woke up at nine the next morning and stretched my arms over my head. My engagement ring shifted between my bare breasts, still dangling from its chain. I hadn’t dared take it off for fear of setting it down somewhere and losing track of its whereabouts.
I smiled when I took it between my fingers, pulling it up to take in its beauty and reminding myself of everything that its glimmering gems symbolized. Love. Happiness. Tristan’s commitment.
For the rest of my life.
I peered over to see that he was still asleep, his back facing me.
Good, I thought. You have a lot less preparation than I do for today’s insanity. At least one of us should get to relax.
I’d always envied men their ability to roll out of bed, shower, slightly muss up their hair and head out for the day. Men’s lives had to be about seventy percent more efficient than most women’s—especially on days like this.
To be fair, I was a pretty low-maintenance chick. Most days I slapped on a little makeup before heading out, but my hair was pretty well always a laissez-faire kind of deal. Sometimes I’d pull it back into a pony tail, others I’d leave it down. Tristan didn’t seem to mind either way; I got the impression that his favorite thing about my hair was that he could grab handfuls of it when we were in the throes of passion.
Today, though, Clarissa had hired some professional makeup artist to paint our faces and spray our hair into some sculptural masterpiece, so I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.
When I’d showered and grabbed the garment bag that was hanging in the closet, I left a quickly-scrawled note for Tristan.
At the church. See you soon. Don’t worry—I’ll make sure they wrap this thing up quickly.
xo, your future wife.
Garment bag slung over my shoulder, I took the elevator to the lobby, grabbed a takeaway cup of complimentary coffee and made my way down the street towards the church. I was dressed in ratty jeans and an ancient gray shirt that may or may not have had paint splatters on its sleeves from my time building sets at the theater.
As I strode along, I felt light and happy. The fears that had sunk into my soul in New Orleans and reemerged yesterday seemed to have largely disappeared. Now, under the warm Chicago sunlight, nothing seemed to matter but enjoying the day ahead.
Don’t think about potential disasters, or mortality, or any of that crap, I told myself, sipping the mediocre hotel coffee and smiling. Today of all days, you should be focusing on happier things.
“Ari!” Clarissa yelled when I popped into the alcove where a stylist was pinning up her locks. She leapt to her feet, raced over and locked me into a bear hug that would have intimidated even Bahal, the head of New York’s bear shifter faction.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her far enough back so I could see her face. “I want to tell you that you look amazing, and you do—but you also look a little—”
“I may have had a little too much champagne with my orange juice.” With that, she hiccuped so violently that I half expected tiny bubbles to float out from the top of her head.
I strode over to a nearby table, grabbed a bottle of water, and unscrewed it before handing it to her. “Well, you look do look beautiful,” I said, eyeing her wedding gown for the first time. It was a perfect Clarissa dress. The skirt was full and roundish at the bottom, bubbly like her personality. The bodice was fitted and elegant, embroidered with tiny pearly and silk thread, and showed off her lean frame perfectly. Two tasteful satin spaghetti straps held the whole thing up. “Really,” I told her with tears threatening to well up in my eyes, “the gown is perfect on you.”
“I wish you’d been with me to pick it out,” she said. “I really mish…mist…I miss you!” she belted out, her lower lip drooping into an exaggerated pout, and for a second I thought she was going to start wailing.
“I miss you too. Now drink,” I told her, pointing at the water bottle. “You don’t want to slur your vows.”
Clarissa chuckled and took a long swig.
“Careful!” I chastised. “You’ll get it down the front of your dress.”
“Oopsie,” she laughed, but somehow she’d managed not to spill.
She pulled back and eyed me up and down for a moment, narrowing her eyes in an attempt to focus. “That’s a terrible dresh…dressss,” she said.
“These are jeans.”
“Oh. I knew that.”
“As for the dress,” I said, zipping open the garment bag that I’d laid on the nearby table, it is pretty horrible. Some cruel woman is making me wear it because apparently she fucking hates my guts.”
Clarissa eyed the garment and let out an amused snort. “I picked it out for you myself. I wanted to look good next to you guys in your purple grossness.”
I laughed. “Clar, you don’t need me looking like a frumpy idiot to make yourself look beautiful. You should know that by now.”
She cupped my cheek in her hand and threw me a shit-eating grin before slumping down into her chair. The stylist, who was some kind of saint, patiently resumed her duties fixing the bride’s blond hair into a stylish up-do, complete with the occasional daisy tucked into its twists.
I turned away and pulled my dress out of its bag, draping it over the table in preparation.
“Hey, Ari?” Clarissa said from behind me.
“Hmm?”
“Should I really be doing this?”
I pivoted to look at her. “Doing what? You mean getting your hair done?”
She shook her head and set the water bottle down on the table in front of her. “Getting married.”
“Of course you should!” I said without a moment’s hesitation. “Why would you even ask that?”
She looked away, serious for the moment. “I see how you and Tristan look at each other. You laugh. You have fun. But you also have all these, I don’t know, secrets between you. It always looks like you’re about to run off somewhere and have wild sex, too. Like you two are constantly horny for each other.”
“You’re thinking that’s what marriage is supposed to be?” I asked, letting out a snicker.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I can tell you that Tristan and I have had our share of knock-em-out fights over our short time together,” I said. “Fights you can’t even imagine.” I thought back to the night when Krane had shown up at the Midsummer Ball. To the night we’d been in Colorado and Tristan had refused to let me in on who he was, and I’d nearly lost my mind thinking something was going on between him and Kara. Then there were all the times I’d thought we’d broken up, only to discover that somehow our relationship had lived to fight another day. It was amazing that either of us was still standing at the end of it all.
“I wish James and I fought,” Clarissa moaned. “At least it shows passion for each other. We just…get along all the time. Isn’t that boring?”
“Fighting isn’t that much fun, trust me. Besides, you guys are perfect for each other.”
“Really?” She looked up at me with hopeful doe eyes that were only slightly pink from alcohol, emotion, or both.
For the first time I was beginning to understand my role as bridesmaid. I wasn’t here to do anything in particular, other than help my friend get through what would probably be the most stressful day of her life. I’d forgotten that weddings were all fun and games in the planning stages, but when you got down to it, the actual day was fraught with self-doubt, freak-outs and potential disaster.
“Really,” I said.
“Thanks, Ari.” She blew me a kiss, then waved her hand at the air, summoning a thought. “Oh, hey, by the way—I think Maria wants to fuck Tristan.”
“Yeah, I sort of noticed that,” I laughed. “You can tell
her she’s going to have to get in a very long line.”
“Does he have a brother? Maybe she could seduce him instead.”
“Are you kidding me right now? A brother?” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
“What? Was that a funny question?”
“If you only knew, Clarissa. If you only fucking knew what his brother is. He’d eat Maria alive.”
Literally.
Chapter 6
Four hours later, the minister announced to the guests that Clarissa and James were officially a married couple. With her usual perky flair, Clarissa raced back down the aisle towards the church’s exit with her new husband in tow, shouting, “I bagged a cardiologist!” as the rest of us applauded her achievement.
Tristan, who’d tucked himself away by the most remote side exit, grabbed me as I was about to follow the bride and groom out the front door. Without missing a beat he planted a kiss on my lips, his tongue finding mine in a move that most certainly broke at least three commandments. “I missed you,” he said, pressing his forehead to mine, his breath tight.
“I missed you too.”
“I liked watching you, though. You looked so sexy up there,” he said.
“In this?” I asked, grabbing a handful of the dress’s horrifically enormous skirt.
He nodded and shot me a sly smile. “It’s so…synthetic. I just want to take a lighter and melt it right off your body, if you know what I’m saying.”
I chuckled. “Clarissa’s idea of a hilarious own,” I said. “I have to admit, she has a point. If you make all the bridesmaids look awful, you can’t help but be the center of attention.”
“Well, I only had my eyes locked on you the whole time. You’re the only bride who matters in my world. Though honestly, I would have preferred you naked.”
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