by Nikki Logan
Only weeks ago she’d sat on the flight out of London and scrunched herself as close to the window as she could to avoid even pressing her hip against Drew’s arrogant brother in the tight confines of the aircraft seating. Now she was fantasising about making babies together.
How it would feel.
How Flynn would feel.
Her abdomen coiled and she straightened and shifted away from the window where she’d been staring off down the same gully she could see from Flynn’s place. What was wrong with her?
‘That’s better,’ Alice murmured, approving. ‘A bit of colour in those porcelain cheeks to replace the nervous blanch. Whatever you were just thinking, keep it up until the ceremony.’
The rogue thought had sneaked through in the first place; she certainly wasn’t walking down a carpeted aisle with visions of strong, binding limbs and slippery, sweat-drenched muscles swilling through her mind.
Denise took her hands and warmed them between her own. The heat—and the gesture—soaked straight to Bel’s soul. Kind brown eyes twinkled at her. ‘Time to go, eh? Before you make yourself sick with nerves.’
Bel glanced sideways at the full-length mirror in Alice’s room in the grandparents’ wing of the Bradley household. Her filmy dress was simple—one she’d packed from home, expecting Australia to be sizzling hot and in case she had need of something vaguely formal. Something that could expand with her. Ironic that she’d be one of few twenty-something women these days who could genuinely wear white at their wedding, yet she’d be in a pale blush. A dress that toned unusually perfectly with her neon hair.
Alice had woven sprigs of tiny white flowers into the twisted braids that Denise had spent hours creating; it was about the prettiest she’d ever seen her hair. Both were simple in their execution and perfect in their intent, and so close to what she would have chosen for herself the sight brought a prickle of tears to her eyes.
This was all such a sham …
‘No, you don’t, missy. Not with all that eye make-up on …!’
Alice spun her away from the mirror and gathered her hands in front of her before letting her eyes grow unusually sombre. ‘Belinda, you look like something that truly belongs in a fairy forest. Oberon himself could not have wished for a more transcendent bride. When you walk down that aisle, Flynn’s heart may just stop.’
Something in the truth of Alice’s words stilled Bel’s breath. And in that moment she knew she wanted Flynn Bradley to look at her as if she was his bride—the woman his heart would stop for—even if he didn’t mean it. Just for those moments she wanted to stand before him in her fairy forest wedding dress and look at the man waiting for her at the altar and pretend that they were truly, madly and irrevocably in love with each other.
Because—for the first time—the person she really wanted to lie to was herself. She’d earned a tiny moment of denial and it might just be the only wedding she was ever going to have.
She lifted her eyes and smiled at both women. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
She turned and walked down the carpeted landing of the Bradley homestead calmly and graciously—exactly as she planned on moving down the aisle towards Flynn.
As it turned out, there was not so much an aisle as a set of steep steel stairs that plunged like a gangplank deep into the bowels of the earth. Her dress colour changed with the artificial lighting hidden amongst the rocks of the cave system until it was impossible to know what colour it had originally been, as she moved a couple of hundred metres through a series of dramatic underground caverns flanked at the rear by Denise and Alice and at the front by a formally dressed guide.
The humidity rose and the temperature dropped as they followed the cut deeper into the primary cave system and then through and out into the secondary ones until Bel’s skin almost sparkled with the zillion tiny droplets that clung to the translucent hairs on her skin.
Her breath came in tight puffs but it was awe that shoved her nerves aside, practically gaping at everything as Bel moved through one spectacular cavern and into the next. Their guide unlocked a chained-off walkway and sealed it up behind them and then drew them through a darkened low-point until they emerged on the other side into a towering maw.
‘And here we are,’ the guide announced quietly as Bel’s eyes adjusted to the natural lighting that suddenly flooded the cavernous opening. Her breath rushed back in an unexpected gasp. She was standing in a natural fissure what had to be halfway up a cliff face, opening out onto the most stunning natural view Bel had ever seen. A lake, other-worldly in its intense blinding blue and flanked on all sides by deep, green, foreign Australian bush.
‘Bel …’ Someone nudged her from behind. Denise? Alice? It didn’t matter. Her watering eyes flicked left, along the steel walkway until she saw an unmistakable shape silhouetted against the bright outside light.
Flynn.
And a few paces to his left two dark shapes she assumed were Bill and Arthur. Standing for their son and grandson.
She started to tremble. She’d begged Flynn not to choose a church for the ceremony so that she could look God in the eye later despite what they were about to do, and he’d chosen this … The closest thing to nature’s birth place she could imagine.
So utterly, awfully perfect.
The guide nudged her onward.
Left and right of the walkway, giant ancient spurs stuck up like fangs from the gums of the earth and acted as silent sentinels for what was about to take place. Warm air rushed in the fissure opening and met the cool air of the cave system, and caused tiny eddies that blew dry the damp curls about her face.
The rock base of the cave slowly rose to meet the platform until she stepped off and trod the same granite mound that Flynn waited on.
Waiting for her.
Her pulse began to hammer in earnest.
The blue lake stretched out behind him but Bel couldn’t take her eyes off the man standing before her. It wasn’t a tux or even a formal wedding suit, but it was dark and imposing and all shoulders and totally suited a man one might find in the belly of the earth. His hair was neatly groomed and the collar of his crisp formal shirt gaped like the cave mouth to reveal just a hint of dark hair against a tanned throat.
And his eyes as she stepped closer … Her heart thumped. Had they always been the colour of tarnished pewter?
He brought her gently closer to him and murmured low, ‘I thought you might have backed out.’
She studied his expression for disapproval but only saw caution. ‘Am I late?’
His lashes dropped to look down at her. ‘You’re shaking. Are you okay?’
Bel knew without looking that all eyes were on them. She forced her lips apart into a parody of a smile. ‘I … It was cold, coming through …’
Great. Now she was officially lying to everyone here.
‘Not long and we’re done. Remember, try to make it convincing.’
Her nostrils flared. As if she hadn’t been trying all this time …
Their guide stepped forward and picked up a folder from a small cloth-covered table Bel had only just noticed and stepped before them, his back to the amazing outlook, his kind face to them.
‘You’re a celebrant?’ Bel croaked.
‘All legal and binding,’ the man said quietly. ‘We do weddings all the time.’
Binding. In the real world, maybe. But two people here knew this was only for now, not for ever.
Flynn reached across her and took her hand, turning her towards him. Her pulse kicked up. This was it … The moment of no return. Once Flynn had her signature on the wedding certificate he’d have equal rights under the law. Equal family standing and equal marriage status. Equal chance of taking Gwen and Drew’s children.
Her lashes fluttered shut and something shifted deep inside her. The same something that thought standing here with this man felt so right.
Flynn had every right to contest the decree. He was full uncle to these babies as she was full aunt. He was just fighting for them,
too.
‘Bel …?’
Whatever came, they would face it together. It might not be conventional togetherness but it was the first time in years that she felt as if she had someone to stand with her. To understand.
She opened her eyes and locked onto Flynn’s and, for the first time in months, she spoke the truth. ‘I’m ready.’
He turned them both back to face the celebrant-guide. The man composed himself with his folder nice and high and met both their eyes in turn.
‘Please take each other’s hands …’
The vows weren’t traditional, a small mercy. Bel wasn’t sure she could have stood straight through all that loving and honouring and sickness and health. They were untraditional, like their venue. Like their marriage. Flynn had even thought to use only first names in the ceremony so that there were no awkward Rochester/Cluney moments.
Thank God one of them was thinking.
All Bel could do was drown in the celebrant’s words and cling embarrassingly to Flynn’s hand. Even though it was also the hand twisting hers into this marriage. There was no one else here she could turn to for understanding, no one she wasn’t already going to hurt with her lies. And so she shielded herself for brief moments in the poetry of the vows and dreamed of how it might feel to be truly standing here with a man she loved.
‘… and let this sacrifice bind you …’ the celebrant said, pouring a half-glass of what smelled like champagne into the earth ‘… and hold you, as you hold each other.’
Flynn added a second hand to the first and she struggled to ignore how secure his fingers felt wrapped around her shaking ones. He’d been watching her closely since the start of the ceremony, presumably waiting for any sign she was going to lose it.
She took another deep breath.
She would not lose it here in this underworld. The earth demanded her strength. Her eyes lifted to Flynn’s and she let herself be consumed by the grey depths. Was it coincidence that the celebrant had spoken of sacrifice? They were both giving up their freedom for the children she carried.
‘Let family keep you …’
She blinked with confusion. First sacrifice and now family. Was someone trying to make a point?
‘… and the earth sustain you.’
Okay … She glared at Flynn pointedly. He just smiled, fast and tiny. The celebrant moved between them and put his hands on their joined ones.
‘The rings?’
Arthur stepped forward with two white gold bands on a thread of ribbon. One delicate and fine and minutely engraved with swirls, the other larger and thicker. He’d thought of rings. For some reason, she hadn’t expected a ring. Given she’d be returning it in a few months.
Flynn slid his hand around beneath her left one and lifted it. He concentrated on getting the delicate white gold band safely onto the tip of her ring-finger and then lifted his blazing eyes to hers and held them as he slowly slid the ring down the length of her finger. Until it could go no further.
As if it was never coming off.
The heat in his gaze threw her. He picked now to suddenly be angry with her? She searched his expression.
The celebrant cleared his throat meaningfully.
Oh … She took the remaining ring in her tremulous fingers and forced them to be steady long enough to get the ring onto Flynn’s. She’d not seen his nails this clean since London. The ridiculousness of that observation made her almost giggle.
Flynn narrowed his eyes—was he waiting for her to turn hysterical?
The celebrant spoke again. ‘And so, in the presence of your family and of each other, it is done. You are husband and wife.’ They both stared at him and, for a moment, he looked at a loss. Denise and Alice burst into excited applause and under the screen of their excitement he quietly hinted to them, ‘You may kiss.’
Kiss? Bel flicked her focus urgently between the celebrant and Flynn. ‘Uh … Is it still …’ she whispered. ‘Can it be legal without …?’
A deep frown cut the celebrant-guide’s moderate face. ‘It’s legal, yes … but …’
‘She’s kidding,’ Flynn cut in, glaring at her meaningfully the moment the celebrant looked down at his folder. ‘And shy.’
‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘How about I just prepare the certificate …?’
And then he was off, leaving just the two of them perched high in the opening of the earth, with his family and all her lies on one side and a two hundred foot drop to an ancient frigid crater on the other. And a belly-full of babies, which meant there was really only one way she could go.
‘It’s just a kiss, Bel.’
Panic surged through her on painful pulses. ‘I don’t … We don’t … Your family’s watching …’
‘Exactly. How will that look? We’re supposed to have made children together and you won’t even kiss me?’
I don’t care how it will look. I care about how it will feel. How I will feel … Her heart hammered furiously in her chest cavity. ‘You said you don’t kiss in public.’
‘This is going to have to be an exception.’ He slipped his hands from hers and slid them up to frame her face. ‘They’re all waiting.’
Oh, God …
He inched closer, towering over her, and the excited chatter from his family warped into a high-pitched drone in her ears. She could feel Flynn’s pulse beating as powerfully as hers into her lower lip as he dragged his thumb gently over it, learning its shape.
The tingles she usually felt on contact with him had dressed up for the occasion, too. They zinged, live and sharp as electric current down into her body and caused what little air remained in her lungs to escape on a shocked breath.
His eyes flicked down briefly as her mouth fell open, but then he returned them to hers, studying her for the slightest reaction, his own lips parting as he lowered his head. And then their lips touched—his, warm and soft and encouraging; hers, cool and startled and non-participatory.
She physically jerked at the first touch, but the fingers curled around the base of her skull meant she couldn’t go far. He lingered for a heartbeat before shuffling half a step closer and tilting her face for a better angle. They pressed more firmly against her and his breath warmed the deathly cool of her flesh while her head swam with the earthy scent of him. It felt as if he were stealing her soul through her frigid lips and he slid one hand down around her middle to keep her upright. That brought her hard up against his torso and triggered an uprising in her already struggling heartbeat. It surged so forcefully through her veins … he’d have to feel it pulsing in her lips.
She broke the contact long enough to suck in a breath and that would have been the time to step back, to end the kiss and this farce of a wedding. But those full, sweet lips were only millimetres from hers and still so warm and inviting, and the body held against hers was so intriguingly masculine, and all the rogue thoughts from Alice’s bedroom came flooding back. Wondering what it would be like to touch Flynn for real, imagining him pressed down on top of her, buried in her kiss, buried in her …
Even though that was a bad, bad, bad idea.
Her fingers closed around his jacket. Escape was just a gentle push away.
But escape was in the other direction, and Bel’s body stretched back up to close the distance between them. Flynn’s eyes flared briefly as she pressed her mouth back against his but the shock didn’t slow him for long. He forked his free hand around beneath the complicated twists of braids in her hair and realigned his mouth to fully seal them together.
A proper kiss. A killer kiss.
His lips nudged hers into movement, opening them wider and dragging back and forth across them. And then his tongue joined the party and Bel was lost in the hot, wet, hormonal haze. Her chest squeezed for lack of air and when she finally breathed in it was mostly Flynn’s exhaled breath.
He pulled her up harder against him. Hips to hips. Hard to soft. She clung to him hopelessly as the bowels of the earth spun madly around them.
Behind them
, someone cleared their throat tactfully and Bel came screaming back to reality. She tore her lips from Flynn’s and fought to focus her cloudy gaze on the politely averted eyes of his family.
Drew’s family. He should have been here, too.
Flynn stiffened up immediately. He didn’t release her far, but he tucked his lips down to her ear and whispered thickly, darkly, ‘Wrong brother, Princess.’
As he pulled back, Bel stumbled at the glacial ore burning into her where, moments ago, such heat had been.
Oh, God, had she said that aloud? She glanced at the sharp line of Flynn’s jaw and knew she must have. She blushed furiously at her error and Alice clapped her hands with delight, misreading the colour flooding her cheeks. The whole family joined in, celebrating the newlyweds. Bel took advantage of Flynn’s firm hold and leaned into him since her knees weren’t quite up to the task yet. He at least had the good grace not to drop her on her face.
Still, no one else had heard. She fumbled to make good. ‘Flynn—’
The look he shot her would have stilled an earthquake but he disguised it by escorting her to the signing table and waiting while she tremulously signed. He added his own distinctive mark to the document, taking care to position one hand carefully so that neither of his parents saw Bel’s true surname as they signed their witness. They were too excited and emotional to notice.
She was still not quite steady from his kiss. She tried again. ‘Flynn—’
‘Forget it,’ he gritted, not quite meeting her eyes and pulling her closer to him as Arthur took a few photographs on his ancient camera. He released her the moment it was done. ‘I’m sure you weren’t the only one wishing my brother was here.’
‘I wasn’t …’ How could she tell him he’d blown all thoughts of anyone else from her mind with that kiss? Until she’d turned and seen the Bradleys surging towards her and remembered exactly why they were here … Why she had a ring on her finger. Gwen and Drew. She couldn’t. Not without sounding ridiculous. And he really didn’t need any more ammunition in that regard. Besides, this was all just a ruse to him. What did it matter what she’d blurted?