The warmth from Edmund’s chest seeped into her as he pressed it to her own, which moved with her heavy breathing. Jada managed to work the belt off his pants, and Edmund quickly removed his remaining clothing. Jada slid her lace panties off, leaving them in a pile on the floor.
In moments, Edmund’s hand was on her face. He cradled her jaw so delicately, but she saw the control he was forcing himself to maintain reflected in the tension of his forearms. That control seemed to be hanging by a thread, Edmund’s posture on the edge of the bed very like if he were standing at the edge of a deliciously inviting cliff. His powerful legs pressed down into the bed as he covered her body. She was trapped between them and she didn’t mind in the slightest. For all Jada’s inner strength and stubborn behavior, Edmund was much larger and stronger than she was, and the thought that he was willingly giving her the power in this situation was unbelievably exciting.
Edmund was breathing hard and staring into Jada’s eyes with a sexy, lidded gaze. Jada watched as his gaze traveled along her neck, down to her breasts, and back up to rest upon her lips. She felt devoured by it, consumed by just his hungry eyes. The center of her flared, and Jada wondered if she would actually burst into flames.
Edmund shifted farther onto the bed as he continued to kiss her. He wants to be closer, she thought, so much closer. Jada’s mind was racking itself for reasons why he was moving so slowly, but the animal stare in Edmund’s eyes told her everything she needed to know. His gaze never left her face as he moved to touch all his body to hers. They were flat against each other now, but the contact was so light, and Jada wanted more. She wanted Edmund to take her, to use the immense strength of his muscles to possess her body in this celebration of their love for each other.
“Jada, I love you.”
“I love you too.” Jada rubbed herself against him. “Now, hush.”
Edmund growled in delight and lowered himself to meet her. The union created between them was again amazing, their movements a now familiar dance that always held a new step. It was a new ocean with waves yet to be explored.
They found a natural rhythm in moments and let the happiness of their engagement overthrow any thoughts that may have lingered. Their skin was hot, and Jada’s dark curls created a pillow for her head on the queen bed. Each time they came together like this, they grew closer and closer. The rain of kisses continued as Jada and Edmund matched their slow, yearning rhythm to the steady thud of their hearts.
Edmund slid a hand behind her head to pull her up farther, and Jada wrapped her arms around his neck as he used one arm to hold her close to him. The blue of Edmund’s eyes would always be a miracle she dreamed of seeing every day, and as they stared at each other in the bonds of their love, the joy of the future seemed endless. From where they had started to where they were now seemed light years apart. They had been through so much, but together they were becoming the people they’d always hoped to be. They were stronger as a pair than they ever were apart.
The rocking that moved them back and forth made Jada’s hair sway gently, and she felt her internal fire grow stronger because of this incredible man. The buildup was different to before, having been given a new level of joy thanks to the amazing proposal she’d received.
Between kisses, Edmund whispered, “I hope you liked tonight. I planned it for so long. I just…I love you, Jada. I really do.”
“I love you too. Tonight was amazing. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.”
The words spurred on a new roaring passion behind Edmund’s eyes, and Jada rode out the even more potent rhythm. They picked up the pace but maintained the tight connection between their mouths. Jada let tears of joy roll down her cheeks, and Edmund showered her with innumerable kisses. The room was a still escape in a world of noise and fury. Here, they could just be them. The sky was always blue and the moon shone full on them, each and every night.
As the sensations crested and took them to new heights, the lovers rode out the explosion between them with joy and love, dancing to an unheard waltz in their hearts.
Epilogue
A year had gone by since Edmund’s proposal, and Jada was still the happiest girl on the planet. They had taken to planning a real wedding like pros and loved the ability to share their news and joys with those closest to them. Even as their issues with the caterer and photographer played out, Jada was simply too happy to be marrying the man of her dreams to care much.
Jada had taken up a quiet, unofficial role in helping Edmund run the company. The changes he’d implanted had been accepted, the philanthropic side of the tech firm grew and grew, and honestly, Jada had never seen Edmund so happy. The Scrooge he’d once been had disappeared without a trace.
Jada enjoyed supporting her fiancé’s decisions when he felt stumped, though it didn’t happen often. Mostly, she enjoyed spending her time teaching and selling her artwork on her site. In the time they’d been planning, Edmund had even gotten her a gallery space at a local art show, and each weekend when the crowds gathered, Jada sold at least two of her paintings. The success was strange and amazing.
Edmund commented each day on how wonderful a silent partner Jada was, though she was never very silent in reality. She would laugh and playfully punch him each time, reminding him that he could have just let her teach.
“Never. You are a great foil to me. Your heart and personality balance out my logical side. Plus, as a direct result of your input, the company is doing better than ever!” Edmund had smiled as he’d spoken, and Jada felt her heart warm deep to its core.
“The big day is coming soon. Do you feel ready?” Jada asked Edmund one afternoon in his office.
“Completely. I have bit more I have to do here though. Want me to meet you at home?”
Jada nodded, and after a lingering kiss goodbye, she rode with Jacques to their home. Edmund had finally purchased a place away from the office, and the large house was certainly a home fit for a CEO and his down-home princess.
Jada walked through the halls to the master suite, humming “Walking on Sunshine” to herself. She truly felt as though she were. Their shared room had an amazing bathroom attached to it, and Jada started the taps in the exquisite tub. Once it was full, she submerged herself in warm bubbles, enjoying the relaxing soak. She’d taken the week off from work to prepare for the wedding and then the following two for the honeymoon.
Thankfully, no one at the school minded her absence, and the substitute they had found was a good fit. The whole thing was working out better than she’d imagined, and it was amazing to see that sometimes in life, things really did go right.
Edmund and Jada slept that night in a tangle of arms and legs, as they always did. The following day, they finished their preparations for the ceremony, and Jada finally received her henna. She and her female family members and friends gathered to apply it, and it was a joyous celebration with laughter and tales of embarrassing childhood pranks.
Her mother spoke to the room, “It’s said that the deeper the color of your henna, the stronger the bond between husband and wife.”
Jada let the henna dry for eight hours to ensure a deep, deep color that would last throughout the wedding festivities. Her favorite part was that the names of the bride and the groom were “hidden” in the artwork. Jada had watched as they’d been crafted into the images, and it was tradition for the groom to locate them. Poor Edmund was going to have a hell of a time.
The next morning, the big day had finally arrived. Jada had made Edmund stay at a hotel, so they would be reunited when he saw her in her gown for the first time. The tradition seemed a bit silly for people who’d been living together, but the night of the wedding would be all the more special because she’d be able to make such an impression on him.
The morning of the ceremony was joyful chaos. Jada’s family had all flown in to be there, including cousins she hadn’t seen in years. They were all joining her at her home to help her get ready and prepare for the day. Harry, the new
assistant Edmund had hired, confirmed with her that everything was proceeding as planned. The cake, the flowers—irises, of course—the photographer, the music—all of it was being prepared at the reception hall as they spoke.
Jada was thrilled, and as her family gathered around her in their traditional garb, she was so overjoyed that tears began to flow. Edmund had agreed that her Qaresman heritage should be represented at the wedding, and it was at that. The red and gold of her ancestral country were on nearly every surface, and traditional dances were set to take place during the reception, right after the couple’s first dance.
Edmund and Jada had even chosen a Qaresman-inspired design for the cake, which had several different flavors over four layers. As an added bonus, Edmund had gotten Jada a special strawberry rhubarb pie, since his fiancée had never been particularly fond of cake.
The wedding celebrations were so important to Jada, and especially to her mother, and Edmund had helped her arrange the entire thing to perfection.
The ceremony itself took place outside, and for once, the glorious San Francisco sun shone down upon them all day. The traditional fire set for the ceremony was beautiful and danced in the light breeze. Jada, alongside her mother and father, walked up to the canopy that was set up, and her parents handed her to Edmund in a symbolic gesture of unity between their families.
Jada had wanted to include some American traditions as well, and finally the time came for her to speak her vows, the ones she’d written so long ago.
“Edmund, we haven’t been together all that long, but it feels like we’ve known each other forever. I’ve watched you grow so much since I met you, and being by your side through it all has been by far the best experience of my life. You are always there for me when I need you, and even when I say I don’t. You make me feel safe and accepted, even for the crazy mess I am. You love spicy food and wandering downtown with me. You told me not long after you proposed that you’d finally finished The Hero and the Crown, and I cried like a baby. I never want to be apart from you, and I hope I can spend the rest of my life showing you new things and taking you on adventures.”
Edmund’s turn came, and his voice caught as he began to speak. “Jada, I never thought I would say that I owe my life to the Qaresman government, but today I can say it proudly. The circumstances that led me to you were in no way normal, but because of a law I tried to break, I am standing here today marrying the woman I love. What more could a government do for a guy, right?”
Everyone laughed.
“I know I’ve changed for the better because of knowing you, and I vow to work my hardest, not for my company, not to earn more money, but to keep growing and changing with you until we’re old and wrinkly and I can’t remember my own name. I know we’ll be there together at the end, and I know that even if I’m left a senile old fool, I’ll remember your grace and the way you came into my life and opened up a heart I didn’t know was shut behind a bolted door.”
Jada was balling at this point, and even Edmund let a few tears squeak out. The couple then moved to exchange rings and a garland—a gesture of acceptance of one another—as was part of Jada’s traditions. Towards the end of the ceremony, Jada was also presented with a necklace worn only by married women in her family.
The officiant proclaimed loud and clear that Jada and Edmund were now pronounced husband and wife. They kissed like she’d wished they’d done the first time Edmund had dipped her low, imitating the first time they had actually kissed.
Her family was surrounding them, and their sweet faces smiled and cheered so loudly that Jada was sure the next state heard them. There was hollering in joy, and her aunt screamed “iii-eee!” at the top of her lungs. Flower petals rained over them as they ran to the limo that would take them to the reception hall. The pair was smiling and laughing as their family ran after the car with more handfuls of petals. Jada was giddy, and her husband was so overjoyed that he couldn’t stop kissing her.
The whole world was a loud, booming celebration of love and family.
Jada’s eyes burned, tears streaking from the corners of her eyes. It was done; the beautiful ceremony was complete. In the eyes of both the law and her family’s customs, Jada and Edmund were husband and wife. Jada’s gown, which hugged her beautifully, was glowing in the limo’s light. The ceremony must have taken a while, but Jada felt like it had only lasted minutes.
She looked over at Jackson and couldn’t stand not touching him. His face was a perfect display of happiness, exhaustion, and revelry. He was staring back at her as well. Out the window behind them, Jada saw the nearby beach, the waves lapping raucously against the shore. She looked down at herself and the beautiful flowers she’d chosen. The stems were wrapped in a purple fabric, and little rhinestone accents fell in a sweet line down the center.
The was the most amazing day of her life, and Jada couldn’t have put into words how happy she was even if she’d tried.
The End
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Killer
And now, as promised, here is my previous book, Killer, in full.
Enjoy!
Copyright 2017 by Layla Valentine
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
This book was previously trial published under my other pen name, Evelyn Troy.
Prologue
Looking around at the people crammed into the gallery, all waiting with bated breath for the jurors to file in, Cassandra guessed that at least half of them were journalists.
She had had the feeling of swimming upstream ever since the defendant, Jack Hardy, had been arrested, and now at the conclusion of her assignment—the first big case she had followed in her career so far—Cassandra was torn between feeling excited that she would be the reporter covering the news for the paper, and feeling guilty her career had received a boost on the back of a woman being murdered.
“What do you think the verdict will be?”
Cassandra’s ears pricked up at the words of one of the other members of the gallery. She looked, to Cassandra’s eyes, to be a regular citizen—not a journalist, nor one of the family members or friends of the defendant or the victim.
“Oh he’s guilty, for sure,” the woman’s friend responded with a shrug. “I mean, look at the evidence against the guy.”
Cassandra made a mental note to ask a few of the non-press members of the gallery for their opinions—it would be a good addition to her article, which was due only a few hours after the verdict came out.
“They’ve been holed up for so long though,” someone else observed, joining in the conversation. “Maybe they think the evidence isn’t that compelling.”
“They just want to make sure they’re doing it right,” the second person, a man who Cassandra estimated to be in his thirties, said, brushing aside the concern. “It’s a murder trial; they don’t want to put someone away for life or potentially put him up for the death penalty if they’re not one hundred percent sure of their decision. I’d be more worried if they’d been in-and-out.”
“What do you think? Is he guilty?”
Cassandra noticed some of the other reporters listening into the hushed conversations; they were all interested in a bit of color for their coverage of the conclusion to the trial.
“Oh, totally,” the man said, shaking his head as if to deny there could be any doubt. “You saw the evidence against him. Besides, given his past…”
Before the conversation could get much further, the lawyers filed in, and th
e officers of the court took up their positions. Cassandra’s heart beat faster in her chest as she prepared herself for the moment she had been waiting months for: the verdict.
Cassandra watched, on tenterhooks, as the lawyers took up their positions, and the judge entered the courtroom. She rose with everyone else at the command from the bailiff, and sat down when the judge did.
She stole a glance at the defendant; Jack Hardy sat almost completely still at the table opposite the judge, his face perfectly expressionless as the formalities dragged on.
He was dressed sharply, as he had been every day of the trial, in a slate gray suit that fit as though it had been made for him. Cassandra thought that his defense team had had their work cut out for them, trying to convince the jury that the man on trial was innocent. Even his stillness radiated a kind of unspoken threat, a calm before the storm that only the most overconfident or ignorant people would ignore. Hardy was built like an oak tree: broad, muscular shoulders, a lean body, perfectly straight when he stood, rippling with power. His light brown hair was combed back from his forehead, parted on the left with laser precision.
Hardy looked brutal, and Cassandra reflected that in his usual line of work, as a professional bounty hunter, and even as a Navy SEAL that, it must definitely be an asset to him. In a murder trial, though, she thought his attorneys should have tried to get him to lose some muscle, to look a little flabby, a little scrawny. As it was, he looked as though he could kill with his bare hands and not break a sweat. Cassandra had glimpsed Hardy’s face up close more than once during the proceedings, and his bright blue eyes had looked out of his face without any trace of fear or remorse, like bottomless pools of deep, arctic ice.
Take Me - A Bad Boy Steals a Bride Romance Page 27