Unleash Me: Wedding (The Unleash Me Series)

by Christina Ross

  UNLEASH ME:

  WEDDING

  By

  Christina Ross

  Unleash Me: Wedding is the final book set in the Annihilate Me/Unleash Me universe. It’s an extension of the series with more than two million books sold worldwide.

  Although this new book can be read on its own, readers will likely enjoy it more if they start with the original Annihilate Me series, then the Unleash Me series, and finally with the Annihilate Him series, Ignite Me, A Dangerous Widow, Annihilate Them, and Annihilate Them: Holiday before reading this book, as it shares the same characters. The experience will be dramatically deepened.

  BELOW ARE THE US LINKS TO ALL MY BOOKS:

  ANNIHILATE ME, VOL. 1

  ANNIHILATE ME, VOL. 2

  ANNIHILATE ME, VOL. 3

  ANNIHILATE ME, VOL. 4

  ANNIHILATE ME, HOLIDAY EDITION

  ANNIHILATE ME: OMNIBUS

  ANNIHILATE HIM, VOL. 1

  ANNIHILATE HIM, VOL. 2

  ANNIHILATE HIM, VOL. 3

  ANNIHILATE HIM, HOLIDAY

  ANNIHILATE HIM: OMNIBUS

  ANNIHILATE THEM

  ANNIHILATE THEM: HOLIDAY

  Also by Christina Ross:

  UNLEASH ME, VOL. 1

  UNLEASH ME, VOL. 2

  UNLEASH ME, VOL. 3

  UNLEASH ME: BOXED SET

  UNLEASH ME: WEDDING

  Stand-alone novels

  CHANCE

  IGNITE ME

  A DANGEROUS WIDOW

  For my friends and my family,

  and especially for my readers, who mean the world to me.

  Your support has been unparalleled, and I appreciate it more than you know.

  Thank you for following the Annihilate Me/Unleash Me series into its final chapter. I’m crushed that it’s over—but also delighted for all that’s to come!

  Copyright and Legal Notice: This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state, and local laws. All rights are reserved, including resale rights.

  Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. No implied endorsement is intended by the use one of these terms.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

  First e-book edition © 2017.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead (unless explicitly noted) is merely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Christina Ross.

  All rights reserved worldwide.

  Author’s note: When it comes to officiating at a wedding, I’m no priest or minister. Going into this book, though, I realized I needed to know all the things a priest would say to Lisa and Tank as they got married. Clueless, I took to the Internet and found lots of sites that gave me a good idea of what is generally said during a wedding ceremony. In that process, I found that much of it seemed like a script to me, with few variations. Please know that to get this wedding right, I leaned hard on those scripts—sometimes literally using them word-for-word. Other times, I changed the words to suit the wedding in question. For reference purposes, I particularly used the following script, and I offer it to you here in full disclosure: http://bit.ly/2rr98Uv. Otherwise in this book, the words are all mine. I hope you enjoy the end of a series that has come to mean everything to me!

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Books by Christina Ross

  Email List/Social Media

  Many readers have asked, so! ;-)

  Here is the reading order for the Annihilate Me series:

  Annihilate Me, Vol. 1

  Annihilate Me, Vol. 2

  Annihilate Me, Vol. 3

  Annihilate Me, Vol. 4

  Annihilate Me, Holiday

  Unleash Me, Vol. 1

  Unleash Me, Vol. 2

  Unleash Me, Vol. 3

  Annihilate Him, Vol. 1

  Annihilate Him, Vol. 2

  Annihilate Him, Vol. 3

  Ignite Me

  Annihilate Him: Holiday

  A Dangerous Widow

  Annihilate Them

  Annihilate Them: Holiday

  Unleash Me: Wedding

  UNLEASH ME:

  WEDDING

  By

  Christina Ross

  CHAPTER ONE

  New York City

  Mid-February

  “You’re screwed.”

  It wasn’t my best friend, Jennifer Wenn, who’d said what I already knew in my heart to be true. Instead, Barbara Blackwell had spoken those words—not that their coming from her had surprised me.

  She was sitting opposite me—decked out in one of her many black Chanel suits, her dark plumb of a bob hanging stylishly over her right cheek, a solitaire diamond glimmering in each earlobe. She picked over her salad as if she didn’t have a care in the world, despite how dark my own looked at that moment.

  The three of us were having dinner at the Milling Room, a terrific restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that was the place to go. It wasn’t just the restaurant’s warm, stylish ambience that drew people in—the Milling Room had once been an old hotel lobby before it had been transformed into a chic tavern with gray brick walls, a domed glass ceiling, and dark wooden flooring that gleamed. It was also because its chef had a Michelin star, and the food was something to savor and seek out.

  Getting a table here was beyond difficult—never mind snagging a great table. But since Jennifer had decided the three of us needed to nail down the details of my wedding tonight, she had been the one to phone in the reservation. And because Jennifer happened to be Jennifer Wenn of Wenn Enterprises—a woman this city had come to champion as one of its own—we naturally had the best table in the house, which overlooked the entire dining area from the back far right of the room.

  Despite our beautiful surroundings, I sipped my martini with irritation as I watched Blackwell stab her fork squarely into the middle of a piece of cucumber before she lifted her eyes to me—and then leveled me with a penetrating gaze.

  “I mean it, darling—you’re screwed.”

  “Seriously, Barbara?” I said. “Screwed?”

  “Oh, please,” she said, her fork poised in the air as she waved the cucumber this way and that in front of my face. “As you know very well, all the best churches are booked for the month of June, as are the best places to have your reception. So, tell me—what don’t you understand? We have called literally everyone in this city, and despite our collective influence, it’s clear that nothing is available.”

  “It’s infuriating,” I said.

  “That’s because you’re still in denial. Lisa, you need to listen to me now and suck in this bit of information like the cold gust
of Arctic wind that it is—unless you want to lower your standards and choose less-desirable locations, such as a ghetto or an alleyway, you are not getting married in Manhattan in June. So, allow me to repeat—you’re screwed.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jennifer said to Blackwell as she reached for my hand and squeezed it in her lap. “Don’t be so hard on her.”

  “If Lisa and Tank had thought this through, they would have set a date the moment they got engaged—you know, over two years ago—and everything would be good to go at this point. We would have secured a church, and we would have had our choice of reception halls. But as far as I know, all Lisa and Tank have been able to book is a honeymoon in Bora Bora—and good luck when it comes to that, Lisa, because if this wedding of yours doesn’t come together, you’re only going there for a vacation and not a honeymoon.”

  “Ugh!” I said. “Fine. What am I supposed to do?”

  “The only thing you can do—move the date,” Blackwell said.

  “Move the date? I can’t do that to Tank. Everyone heard him on Christmas Eve—he sees me as a June bride.”

  “He does,” Jennifer said.

  “I mean, right? And because he’s so excited about the wedding, he’s taking four weeks off from work so we can not only have our dream wedding but also our extended honeymoon, where we plan to sex it up.”

  “How perfectly demure of you.”

  “Look, lady, just so we’re on the same page, I can tell you this—ever since Tank set a date, the sex between us has been amazing. I mean, just last night he was holding me off the floor as if I were as weightless as a rag doll while he kept pounding in and out of me. I swear to you, it was enough to turn me into an unhinged, screaming, wanton sex goddess.”

  “Another martini, ladies?”

  I turned my head and saw our handsome waiter standing at my left. How long had he been standing there? Long enough for me to finish my sordid tale of discovering new positions with Tank? I looked for signs that he’d heard what I’d just said, but I couldn’t see any.

  “Well!” Blackwell said. “How absolutely revealing of you, Lisa. Tales of sexual acrobatics even before we’ve had the tuna tartare. Tell me,” she said, looking up at our waiter, “is she the first one to defile this place? If she is, you can feel free to confide in me…”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Oh, I see,” she said in a low voice. “We’re talking in code right now, aren’t we, my dear boy? How very covert of you. How absolutely 007. That said, I have to wonder if those around us heard her—”

  I had to stop her from running her mouth, so I piped up and ordered another martini. “Jennifer? Barbara?” I asked.

  “One is enough for me,” Blackwell said. “Although I wouldn’t mind a glass of ice right now.”

  The man furrowed his brow at her. “Just ice? Would you like some mineral water or some—”

  “Just the ice,” Blackwell said with a wave of her hand. “Biting down on the cubes soothes me.”

  “I’ll join my friend and also have another martini,” Jennifer said.

  “But should you?” Blackwell said. “I mean—think of the calories alone, Jennifer.”

  “The calories?” Jennifer said. “I believe I’ve taken off the baby weight in record time, Barbara. It’s only been eight weeks since I had Aiden, and I’ve literally worked my ass off to get back to the size I was before I got pregnant. Tonight is the first night I’ve had the opportunity to go out with you and Lisa since I gave birth, so yes—I will have another.”

  As the waiter nodded and left, I watched Blackwell push aside her salad before she shot Jennifer a look.

  “How’s Helga working out?” she asked. “Still good?”

  “It’s only been a week since she agreed to be our full-time nanny, but as quirky as she is, I do like her. And Aiden has really taken to her. I hired her early to make sure she’s comfortable in the apartment and with Aiden before I go back to work—which is only four weeks from now.”

  “Excuse me,” I interjected. “Need I remind either of you that my wedding is only four months away? Can we please get back to focusing on that? It is why we’re here, after all.”

  “Look,” Blackwell said, “why even bother if you’re not willing to listen to reason? I’ve already told you that you’re shit out of luck when it comes to getting married in June in Manhattan. Either you agree to move the date to next year, or you need to work something else out. I don’t see another way around this, and because of that, I also don’t see why we need to keep harping about it if you’re not willing to bend.”

  “It’s not that I’m unwilling to bend—”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to honor Tank. He set that date, and that date is when we are going to get married.”

  “Then I suggest you broach the subject with him,” Blackwell said as the waiter returned with a glass of ice for her. As he placed martinis in front of Jennifer and me, I simply looked at Blackwell as she popped an ice cube into her mouth—and bit down hard on it. “Because if you don’t talk with him about this, Lisa—and by that I mean very, very soon, like tonight or tomorrow soon—you really are screwed. Because if he wants you to be a June bride in this city, we need to start planning your wedding for next June, not this one.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Later that night, when I returned home by cab to the brick-and-limestone townhouse Tank and I called home on Park and Seventy-Third, it was nearly ten o’clock—and I had a sinking sensation in my gut about our pending nuptials as I unlocked the front door and stepped inside the dimly lit foyer.

  I shrugged off my black winter coat, removed my black leather gloves, and put both into the closet as I heard Tank coming toward me from the living room.

  I knew my man. At this time of night, he was likely winding down by reading one of his thrillers. And so, when he emerged around the corner and stepped into the foyer wearing a white T-shirt, boxers, and his glasses, I knew that’s exactly what he’d been doing.

  “How are you?” I asked as I fell into his arms.

  “Missing you,” he said.

  “You don’t say.”

  “The house seems empty without you in it.”

  Just as my heart would be empty without you in it…

  “Have you been reading?” I asked.

  “I have.”

  “Is the book any good?”

  “Not nearly as good as seeing you right now,” he said, and then he reached out and held me tightly against him.

  Tank’s body was so fit and hard that hugging him was almost was like hugging a brick wall—not that I minded it. I loved the feeling of my cheek buried within the valley of his chest and the way his muscular arms slung low around my waist, his fingertips lightly brushing the curve of my ass. But most of all I loved how he smelled—masculine and earthy—and also how safe he made me feel when he held me like this.

  “How was your night out with Jennifer and Blackwell?” he asked, leaning back and brushing a few strands of hair away from my forehead.

  “Complicated.”

  “Complicated? I was expecting to hear that it was fun.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “How early do you need to get to bed tonight?”

  “It’s Saturday, remember? I’m off tomorrow, so if you need to talk, I’m good to talk for however long you need to talk.”

  “Then we probably should talk,” I said.

  “That doesn’t sound good…”

  “Have you had anything to drink tonight?”

  “Just water.”

  “Let me get you a scotch.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “I don’t know, Tank. We’ll see, I guess. Let me get us both a drink, and I’ll meet you in the living room.”

  “See you there in a minute.”

  When I joined him with our drinks—a martini for me, a tumbler of scotch for him—I saw that he had a fire roaring in the fireplace. It
lit the room with a flickering orange hue. He was seated in his favorite leather wingback chair, his Kindle and a glass of water on the table next to him.

  “Here,” I said, giving him his drink and a kiss on the lips.

  “Sit on my lap,” he said as he patted his thigh.

  I sat down and wrapped my free arm around his neck.

  “So, what’s going on?” he asked after taking a sip of his drink. “Was it something Blackwell said?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “Because it’s rarely Jennifer. What’s the problem? I have a feeling it has to do with the wedding.”

  “And you would be correct.”

  “Logistics?”

  “They continue to be an issue,” I said in frustration. “I’ve tried to involve you in as little of this as possible because I thought for sure that Jennifer, Blackwell, and I could hammer out the details while you focused on work. But it’s not that simple anymore.”

  “What’s not that simple?”

  As I sipped my martini, I knew I had no choice but to just tell him the worst. “We can’t get married in Manhattan.”

  “Because everything is still booked?”

  “Yes. You know I’ve tried everything, but I’m afraid that when it comes to this city, you have to plan a good year or two out to get what you really want. And what I really want is to become your June bride.”

  “You still can be if you want to, Lisa.”

  “But how?” I said. “Because it sure as hell isn’t happening here.”

  “Does it have to happen here? Because if it doesn’t, I have an idea.”

  “What idea? I thought you wanted to get married here.”