Pure Lust: The Complete Series Box Set

by Parker, M. S.

  “I'm never going to find it!” I scowled, dropping on to the elegantly padded chair as Kendra passed over the dress to the flustered looking attendant.

  “We’ll find you something.” Kendra studied another one the attendant had brought us and I watched as she put it immediately on the oh, hell no, rack. I trusted her judgement so I didn’t even look. She might not have been happy about my marriage, but she wasn't going to let me go down the aisle looking anything less than perfect.

  “Maybe I’m being too picky.” I started to lift my thumbnail to my mouth only to stop, staring at my hand in consternation. I’d broken that habit in high school. That woman was going to drive me back to biting my nails again. No. No way.

  “If a woman is ever expected to be picky about anything, it’s her wedding.” Kendra picked up another dress and then groaned, putting it down. Then she spun and faced me. “Do you trust me?”

  ***

  “Diana is a genius,” Kendra said as she opened the door and gestured me into a tiny little shop that look more like a hole in the wall than anything else. I had to admit if I'd been walking by here on my own, I wouldn't have even given it a second look. But as the door shut behind me, I found myself catching my breath.

  It was like the fairy godmother’s magic dress shop.

  Taffeta gleamed, faux diamond tiaras sparkled and sumptuous silks all but begged to be touched. My fingers started to itch and for the first time that day, I felt the hum of excitement burning inside.

  Maybe I needed to start looking beyond the surface of things.

  I heard a squeal from the back of the small shop and looked up to see a petite redhead rushing at us. Kendra moved forward with the same enthusiasm and the two of them hugged. It was an interesting sight because the redhead, Diana I assumed, didn't even reach the middle of Kendra's chest. She couldn't have been any taller than five feet while Kendra, in her heels, stood well over six.

  “We need a wedding dress.” Kendra made this announcement with the same easy casualness she did just about everything else in life.

  When Diana's eyes opened wide, Kendra shook her head, laughing. “No, not for me. Her.”

  The phone in my hip pocket started buzzing just as Diana beamed at me. I nodded as she offered her congratulations. Distracted, I pulled my phone out and grimaced at the sight of the name on the phone.

  I almost answered just so she would quit calling me, but I wasn't going to let Claire ruin my day. She hadn't said anything about needing to meet today and I wouldn’t let her run my life.

  I'd pay for it tomorrow, sure. But I’d deal with that then. Putting the phone on silent, I looked back at Diana and gave her a genuine smile. “Kendra tells me you're a genius.”

  Within a couple hours, we'd gone through different dresses, different styles, different materials. We were currently surrounded by a sea of tulle, taffeta, silk and lace. Some of the dresses were so lovely, they made my breath catch and my heart pound. But none of them were right. Not for me, at least.

  Kinda like my life, I thought glumly. I’d been so sure I’d find it here. There had been a few with promise. Maybe I just needed to relax a little and stop being so worked up.

  While I was brooding, Diana disappeared into the back of the shop and now she came into the large, open fitting area. There was a door behind me that opened into the private, closed-off room where brides could try on dresses in privacy, but this room was surrounded by mirrors so potential buyers could see all angles of a dress.

  All I saw were all angles of my disgruntled face and slumped shoulders.

  “How about this one?” Diana suggested.

  When I glanced up at her, I saw the sympathetic gleam in her eyes and part of me wanted to just storm out of her shop, but what good would that do? It wasn’t her fault that I felt like my life was as out of place as I was in this sea of beautiful perfection.

  Shoving to my feet from the padded stool where I’d been sitting, I looked at the dress she was holding. I was going to make the best of this. I was shopping for my wedding dress, right? Girls dreamed of this day.

  At first, I didn't think much of what I was seeing. Compared to everything else I'd seen, it looked plain. But as Diana came closer, I saw the material better and it seemed to glow in a way I’d never seen before. Lustrous and iridescent, it went from a soft white to a delicate pearl to the palest of peaches, all with the shifting of the light.

  Hesitant, I reached out and touched it, watching the soft rainbow of colors hidden in the material.

  “The colors are amazing,” I said softly.

  “Yes.” Diana stroked a hand down the delicate material. “Do you want to try it on?”

  I nodded. Disappearing into the changing room, I locked myself inside and held the dress up. From outside Kendra called, “Do you need some help?”

  “I'll let you know.”

  I didn't end up needing her help.

  For the first time since the day we had told Edward's parents we were getting married, something felt right. The dress. I couldn't decide if that was a good sign or a bad one.

  When I emerged, Kendra gasped. “Oh, Gabs. That's the one. Please tell me that's the one.”

  Not yet speaking, I moved to the mirror and stood there, studying the lovely, simple dress. An elegant column, it was nipped in at the waist with ruching that emphasized the curves of my breasts, waist and hips. Seed pearls were scattered all over the bodice and down the left side of the skirt.

  Beyond that and the way the dress’s color seemed to shift in the light, there was no decoration. It didn’t need it. It was beautiful in its simplicity.

  I could see me walking down the aisle wearing this stress. The purple, the plums, the oranges and golds that I had selected for my wedding colors, they’d all work together beautifully. I could almost even see the bouquet I would use.

  Yet over all of that was the enormous, over the top formal affair that Claire was making out of my wedding. My wedding. The formal dinner, the seating plans, the string quartet she was still insisting on, the dresses she demanded were proper for an event of this caliber…it was a wedding I had no desire for.

  Would the wedding suit this dress?

  I didn’t know.

  Would the wedding suit me?

  I didn’t know.

  But the dress suited me.

  It was the one thing that seemed to fit, and I wasn't going to let it go. Smoothing a hand down my hip, I smiled at my reflection and then glanced at Kendra in the mirror.

  “This is the one.”

  Chapter 11

  I understood cell phone addiction. I really did. I was pretty attached to my phone myself. Especially Twitter. I loved Twitter. I also loved some of the photography social media sites. I couldn’t take a picture worth anything, but I loved to look at other people’s work. It wasn’t a bad way to come up with ideas for writing.

  Now, I wasn’t all up with the business world and it was true that I wasn’t in charge of running a family business that was worth more money than I could imagine, but that didn’t mean my fiancé had to be attached to his phone and laptop non-stop.

  If Edward didn’t put his phone and computer aside, and soon, I was going to do something drastic.

  We were supposed to be addressing the invitations for the wedding and his eyes were glued to a screen. Worse, he was giving me monosyllable answers in response to my questions and had even said, “That sounds terrific” when I told him I planned to die my hair purple in keeping with our wedding theme.

  Sigh.

  I tried the subtle approach first. Taking one of the stacks in front of me, I put it over closer to him and offered another sheet of address labels. “Do you need more?”

  “No.” He smiled at me and held up a half-full sheet he’d been using for the past hour. “I’m good.”

  I relaxed a bit after he added a few to his pile although it was still decidedly smaller than mine. But five minutes later, his phone chimed, signaling the receipt of an email hitting
his inbox. He put down the labels and went back to dealing with whatever it was that had him so distracted.

  It was business, I assumed. I ignored the dark part of my brain that wanted to insist that it was someone else. Someone like Stacia Vanderbilt, the gorgeous white-blonde socialite who had the kind of breeding of which Edward’s mother, Claire Bouvier, approved. I reminded myself that Edward couldn’t stand Stacia and only put up with her because their families were old friends.

  I put up with it for another twenty minutes, but I was getting more and more frustrated. I loved Edward and I was going to marry him. He was absolutely gorgeous. He was also sweet, protective and an amazing lover. Not to mention he was rich and had the kind of athletic body that made me hot. The kind of man that any woman would consider herself lucky to have. And I did consider myself lucky. He was amazing for a million different reasons, but the fact that he couldn’t seem to think about our wedding for more than a few minutes was still pissing me off.

  When he paused to get up for a drink, I took the laptop and phone. He turned around just in time to see me carrying them over to the desk on the far side of the study.

  “Sweetheart,” Edward said, his tone patient. I could feel his eyes drilling into my back.

  “I asked you if you would be able to free up some time this evening so we could do this. Together.” My heart raced madly inside my chest as I turned to look at him. The look in his eyes was one of confusion and he glanced at the invitations, the wine we’d been sharing and then at me. With my hand braced on the edge, I swallowed the knot in my throat while a war waged inside me. I loved him, but I was feeling very much like I was taking second place.

  “But we are doing it together,” he said, still looking confused and taking a hesitant step toward me.

  “No.” Shaking my head, I stared at the middle of his chest instead of into his ice blue eyes. I got lost when I looked into them. “We’re not. Our wedding is coming up in just over two and a half months, Edward, but I’m handling everything alone. Well…I’m handling it with your mother and the wedding planner, and that’s a handful by itself. You won’t offer any input or help, no matter how many times I ask you what you think or what you’d like. I wanted to do this one thing with you and you’re working.”

  “I’m trying to take care of things so I have more time to spend with you after the wedding.” He raked a hand through his light brown, sun-streaked hair and then gestured between us. “I am here…we’re together.”

  “Being in the same room doesn’t mean we’re doing this together.” Feeling silly, I turned my head and stared out the window. The reflection I saw there was the same as it’d always been. Auburn hair. Deep brown eyes. A tall figure that was a bit curvier than average. A pretty enough face.

  She could’ve been a stranger.

  “Sweetheart, what’s this about?”

  I could hear the honest puzzlement in his voice and I turned to look at him.

  “I told you,” I said quietly. “It’s not my wedding. It’s ours. And lately, it feels like it’s your mother’s…and Estelle’s.”

  Edward frowned. “Who’s Estelle?”

  Weakly, I laughed. “That just proves my point. She’s the wedding planner your mother insisted we use. She’s the only reason I’m getting the wedding colors I wanted, because your mother was trying to insist on simple black and white with silver accents, and that was pretty much the only time Estelle stood up to your mom. Your mother is trying to insist on a string quartet when I want a band. Your mother is demanding a formal sit-down dinner although most of the caterers who can handle that are already booked and it’s not what I want, but she doesn’t care.” I could hear my voice rising and struggled to keep it down. “Your mother is taking over our wedding and the only time I get my way on anything is when the wedding planner decides I have an idea that intrigues her. I told them I wanted to take care of the invitations myself and they laughed.”

  I was suddenly tired. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared at the floor. “I wanted an evening that was just us, so we could talk about the wedding and spend some time together and you’re working.”

  He was quiet for so long that I finally had to look up at him to see if he was even still in the room. Maybe he’d gone back and grabbed his phone to check emails while I was whining.

  He was still standing there, watching me.

  “Gabriella,” He started and then stopped, sighing. “Look, I’m sorry about my mother. I’ll talk to her. I do need to get things settled at work, but I should have let it wait. It’s just…” He frowned as he looked at the invitations. “If you want to spend time together and talk about the wedding, we should. But why do you want to do something as mundane as address the invitations? That’s why we have a wedding planner.”

  He went to reach for me, a familiar look in his eyes, but I slid to the side.

  “That’s not what I want!” The words tore out of me in a fit of frustration and I threw up my hands. I hadn’t realized I was this frustrated, but now that it was spilling out of me, I wasn’t sure I could stop it. “You don’t get it. It’s my wedding—our wedding. But it doesn’t feel that way. I’m having to fight for every little thing, mundane or not.”

  I started to pace, the thick, padded carpet giving way under my bare feet. Edward was still in his highly polished Italian leather shoes, but me, the sooner I got out of my shoes, the happier I was. At least he’d taken off his suit jacket and his tie.

  “I told them I wanted to have the invitations sent to me, that I wanted to handle them and they laughed at me, like I was some overly ambitious child.” The sound of it still rankled me. “So the day after we agreed on them, I called to check on the order. I had to change the delivery address because they’d totally ignored me. They were sending them to Magnifique instead. Even something as simple as that and they didn’t even respect me enough to talk to me about it.”

  I reached the far end of the room and spun around to glare at Edward. Holding up a hand, I started to tick off the list of things that had been building up inside. If he’d been around at all, he would have known about some of these things, but he hadn’t been there. Sure, he’d come running home if I broke a fucking vase, but not take a few hours to know anything about his wedding.

  “Your mother hates the dresses I love for the bridal party. She continues to shoot down the colors I chose even though we’ve already started ordering favors and decorations.” I ticked off two fingers. “She hates the music I want, she doesn’t like any of the food choices I’m going with and she’s talking me out of half of the things that I’ve always wanted.” Two more fingers and my thumb.

  I took a step toward him and jutted up my chin. His face was impassive, impossible to read.

  “When we started talking seating arrangements, I told her how many in my family I’d be having and she had the nerve to tell me to ‘make sure your family understands this is a formal affair, Gabriella. Suits are required for the men. The women need to wear dresses. Suitable ones, if you please’.” I mimicked her snotty tone to the best of my ability and watched as Edward’s mouth tightened slightly.

  Good, I’d gotten a reaction.

  “She insults my family and me at every turn and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of dealing with it by myself and I shouldn’t have to!”

  I paused, finally, to suck in a breath and the adrenaline that had spurred my frustration drained out of me.

  Edward lifted a hand as if to touch me and I backed up. “No…I…I need a minute.”

  I’d just totally lost my temper and Edward looked vaguely shocked.

  It was the first time he’d ever seen me really mad, so I guess I could understand. I’d always held back with him. His younger brother, Cody, had told me that weeks ago, but I’d known it before then.

  Swallowing, I moved over to the window and leaned forward, resting my forehead on the glass as I waited for my pulse to level out and my breathing to calm.

  Edward wasn’t interested in givi
ng me a minute though. He came up behind me and rested his hands on my hips.

  “I had no idea she was making you so unhappy, darling.” He pressed a kiss to a bare spot on my shoulder. When I didn’t protest, he gently tugged me back against him and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that so I just nodded.

  After a moment, I lifted my head and craned around until I could look up into his gentle, understanding eyes. “I shouldn’t have unloaded on you. It’s not your fault.”

  “In a way, it is.” He cupped my cheek and stroked his thumb over my lower lip. “It is our wedding as you said. If you want me to be more involved, then I will be.”

  He grimaced. The look in his eyes told me he was thinking about something, trying to figure out how to explain it. Even though I had a bad feeling that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say, I waited to let him say it.

  Finally, he said, “This isn’t something I’ve ever done before. My thing is business. Anytime there was ever any sort of social event, my mother handled it. Usually by hiring a party planner, like this Estelle. I assumed you’d be happy to handle it the same way. I should have talked to you.”

  “We’re talking now.”

  “Yes.”

  As his head lowered to mine, I caught my breath. His lips were warm, firm against mine. Turning to face him, I leaned against him, curling my arms around his neck as he deepened the kiss. My stomach warmed as our tongues slid alongside each other.

  We were both breathless when he lifted his head a moment later and looked down at me. His eyes were hotter now, gleaming as he slid a look over at the piles of invitations left to be addressed.

  “I know you want to get this done, but can it wait. Like maybe an hour or so? There’s something else I’d rather be doing.”

  To emphasize his point, he slid his hand between my legs, cupping me through my jeans. As he started to grind the heel of his hand against me, I whimpered.

  “It can…” My breath caught and hitched when he pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the center of my chest. “Wait.”