Lynne was first. She whispered in my ear, “I told Alex it was time to pee or get off the pot.” Justin came and kissed me on the cheek and then introduced me to his wife Anne. I was right about her. She looked utterly serene with baby Josh in her arms. Natalie, Anne’s sister came and said shyly, “Welcome to the family.” Hunter’s little girl Madeline toddled around the room, finding and grabbing her daddy’s leg. Liz came and kissed me. “You’re a wonderful addition to this family,” she said warmly. I knew that she meant it.
Amelia had waited until her brood had given me their congratulations before she stepped forward. “I’ve been waiting for this day a long time. I thought that boy would never come to his senses. Thank you for not giving up on him. He’s not an easy man. But he’s a good man and he’s like his father. He’ll love you till the day he dies.”
I wondered if she knew what had been bothering Alex. I thought perhaps she didn’t. No need for her to know, really.
We decided to get married between Christmas and New Year’s. No reason to wait. I only had my parents… and the Cameron family preferred to keep their weddings private.
I found a dress, a simple gown in white lace with cap sleeves, a sweetheart neckline and a flared overskirt. Lynne agreed to be my maid of honor and we found a lovely blue dress in a similar style for her.
Justin played the guitar for Lynne and me to walk down each side of the double staircase in the Cameron mansion. Inside the sitting room, a fire roared in the fireplace while I took my place beside Alex in front of the clergyman. Alex looked long and lean in his black tux. Justin stood next to him, looking every bit as beautiful with his blond hair and easy body.
Alex’s dark eyes flashed over me and they were full of admiration…and promise.
We vowed to love each other in sickness and in health. I kept my gaze steady on him when we said these words. Then it was time for Alex to slip the simple gold ring on my finger and say the same words that men and women have been saying to each other for hundreds of years, with this ring I thee wed. And we kissed. We were husband and wife.
Amelia planned a wonderful sit down dinner, but I was too nervous to eat very much. Justin gave the toast, something along the lines of “it took you forever brother, but here you are with the one woman in the world who can put up with you.”
When the dinner was over, and we’d said our goodbyes to everyone, Alex grabbed my hand. I picked up my skirt and we raced up the stairs like a couple of kids.
We entered his bedroom where our traveling clothes had been laid out. He turned me around and discovered a corset looking affair with lacing and a tie. He gave a heartfelt groan. I laughed. “It’s just for show.” I drew down a zipper at the side of the dress. I said, “I’ll do this. You get busy on those cuff links.”
“I thought you’d want to do them.”
“Takes too much time. I want to get on that plane to the Caribbean,” I said.
“And she says I have no romance.”
“I’ll show you lots of romance when we get to a place where it’s warm and we can get naked.”
At that, he began to undress quickly, all the while keeping one eye out to enjoy the sight of my dress coming down and me standing in nothing but a thong and my white thigh high stockings.
“I can’t even touch you?”
“Sorry. No.” I knew what would happen if he touched me. We’d fall together on that huge bed of his and we’d never make it to the Caribbean.
“I don’t like being married already,” he grumbled.
I would have felt sorry for him but I had the antidote. “Didn’t you say this place on St. John’s of Hunter’s was so private we could walk around without any clothes on?”
“Good point.” He went to work on his formal gear and was out of it almost as quickly as I was dressed in shorts and a flowery top. Now I was looking at him, long, lean with an erection poking his boxers. With great glee, he said, “No touching.”
“Such a vindictive man.” He dressed, we grabbed coats and suitcases and went out the door. Down at the bottom of the stairs the family waited to tell us goodbye. “Oh, Alex, just a minute.” I ran back into my room and picked up my bridal bouquet. The top stairs landing was a marvelous place to do the traditional bridal toss. I took aim and threw it deliberately at Lynne. She stepped aside, and my bouquet went plop on the floor. Lynne shot me a dark look as if I deserved it. Puzzled, I turned to Alex. He just shook his head. “Don’t ask.” Amelia stepped out from the back of the family grouping and took Lynne by the arm into the study while the others told us goodbye and gave us hugs.
I wondered what was going on with Lynne. Alex didn’t seem to want to discuss it, and even though I was his wife now, that didn’t mean I had the right to pry. Sitting beside me in the plane, he gave me a deep probing kiss, and I forgot about Lynne, my body tingling in anticipation for what was to come.
It was night when we reached the villa. The house sat tucked back into a hill with banana trees, palm trees and greenery all around. There wasn’t another house in sight. We dumped our suitcases in the bedroom and went out to the living room, all white and island flavored with wildly flowered upholstered seats and backs in turquoise, yellow and red on wicker furniture. Alex said, “There’s supposed to be champagne chilling.”
He found the lovely bottle wrapped in gold and poured out two glasses. We touched the delicate flutes and drank. He set his glass down deliberately. “I remember someone…oh, yes, it was my wife…saying something about walking around without any clothes on.”
His wife. How lovely. I was his wife. “Liz and Anne were telling me about it when they were helping me get dressed.”
“Well?”
If he thought I wasn’t going to rise to the challenge, he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did. I pulled my top over my head, stripped off my bra, stepped out of my shorts and thong. Then I took the champagne flute and never taking my eyes off him, I dribbled some of the cold liquid over my breasts. Then I turned my back on him and went out into the night to stretch out on the cushioned lounger in the lanai. In two seconds he came to me, stripped of his clothes, as nude as I was.
The night was magical, the stars so close and bright, the insects chirping their mating rhapsodies. In the distance, the ocean rose and fell in sighing waves.
“It’s beautiful here,” I said, raising my glass to him.
“Very beautiful,” he said, his eyes on me.
I wanted him so much I ached. I thought he was going to lie beside me, but instead, he came over me and settled on his knees, straddling me. Still holding his glass, he leaned over and licked me where I’d poured the champagne. “Um. Tasty. I think I’d like some more.” He poured his champagne on my abdomen to pool in my navel. I gasped at the coldness of it, contrasted with the heat around me. He lapped the tiny bit of liquid out of my navel. When he relaxed back, I took his hand with the glass and poured champagne on his tip. Then I leaned over and licked him all around. When I flicked my tongue over him, he grabbed me and pushed me back. “No more. I need to be inside you.”
“How lovely. That’s exactly what I want.” By now, I was throbbing with sexual hunger.
He set the champagne glass down on the concrete floor. Then he hesitated. “Shall I go get a condom?”
“No,” I said, feeling as if I were dying. I guided him to the place where he belonged. When he was inside me, so lovely, so full, I cried out because I had needed this for so long, Alex inside me with nothing between us. I came almost instantly, throbbing around him. He arched back, trying to hold onto his pleasure. We found our rhythm and as I had orgasm after orgasm, he came with me.
Afterwards, he lay beside me, running a questing finger over the tip of my sensitive breast, my abdomen, my navel. “Shower?” he said.
“Not yet. I was thinking about the pool.” The house had its own private pool and the water shimmered in the starlight. “I don’t want to go inside, it‘s so lovely out here.”
“Very lovely,” he said
, cupping my breast in one hand. I was astounded to feel the heat, the need rising in me again.
“Alex.”
“Yes?” He sounded so innocent.
“Unless you have recovered, you need to stop doing that.”
“Not quite recovered, love, but no matter.” His hand wandered lower to my mound. “I have other ways of satisfying you.”
His fingers slid inside me and I convulsed immediately. I half rose up with the force of it. His dark eyes watching me, his hand still inside me, he moved on top of me. “You are…mine,” he said and slid into me. “I’ll love you all my life.” I couldn’t believe there was anything left of me. But Alex found it. We shattered together. For me there was no more dancing in the dark. I was complete.
We spent a whole lovely week, swimming in the pool, making love under the stars. I hated to think of going back, but I knew Alex was starting to feel the need to return and pull his weight with his brothers.
On the plane ride to wintery Rochester, I said, “Alex.
“Yes, my love?”
“You’ll have to hire a new assistant.”
He looked at me blankly. “Why?”
“Well, I just thought…if I became pregnant…”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, I’m not going to lose the best assistant I’ve ever had just because I happen to be married to her.”
It thrilled me to think he really didn‘t want to replace me. “But if I have a baby…”
“We’ll bring the little bugger to work with us. He…or she…can learn the business from the ground up.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious. Susan, you know you love working. And I love having you work with me. The company needs you. I need you. As far as nursing the baby and changing diapers in the office, about that part I don’t know. You probably wouldn’t want to do that. Maybe you’d take a half year’s leave. I don’t have all the answers. We’ll just make it up as we go along.”
I‘d always known Alex was a wonderful man. And he‘d just proven how right I was about him. My pirate man, Mr. Regular Black had just handed me the world. “Yes,” I said, thinking if I were any happier, I wouldn’t need this plane to fly. “We’ll make it up as we go along.”
Thank you for reading the third book in the Cameron Family Saga. I hope you enjoyed it. Please write a review. It would be appreciated.
About the author:
Shirley Larson (also known as Shirley Hart) read her first romance several years ago. She fell in love with the romance genre. Now she has written over thirty romances. She loves every minute of spinning her tales of romance (well, almost every minute) and she hopes her readers enjoy reading them. You can write to her at [email protected]
Books by Shirley Larson
All books available at Amazon and Kindle.
The Cameron Family Saga
Wanting Hunter Book 1
Wooing Justin Book 2
Winning Alex Book 3
A Cowboy for Lynn Book 4
Other books available from Amazon and Kindle
Branded by Passion
Smokin’ Hot Cowboy
I’ll Never Say I Love You/ available in print only
Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind is a sequel to the above book.
The Secret of Jamie’s Summer
Historical Romance
Deception by Moonlight
Forbidden Love, Forever Love
In ebook only
That Black Stallion
A Cowboy is Forever
The Medieval Knight a Time Travel Romance
This Love will go on
Can’t Get You Out of My Mind is a sequel to the above book
Winning Alex: The Cameron Family Saga Page 10