Chapter Four

Anvil

 

I sweep my bride into my arms at the threshold of my apartment so I can carry her in. It’s cheesy as fuck, but this whole crazy night calls for it.

I’m married. What the hell? I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, yeah, I know I’ve been thinking with my dick all night. But if you’d have told me when I woke up this morning that I’d be somebody’s husband before I went back to sleep tonight, I’d have beat you into thinking straight.

It’s not sane, what I’ve done. This girl had plans. She’s going somewhere in life and she doesn’t need a bouncer holding her back. But she’s my kind of trouble. And when she said she was saving herself for marriage, well, my brain disengaged from my dick.

At least, I’m blaming this on my dick.

I want to take her right to the bedroom and drop her in the center of my bed. But she’s been getting quieter the closer we got to home, so I know her brain has started chattering at her. She’s probably running graphs and pie charts and statistics in her head about how insane this is. What we’ve done. The Bouncer and the Actuary doesn’t exactly sound like one of the Harlequin books my mom always had in her purse when I was a kid.

Mom. Hell. She’s going to love Sarah. But first, she’s going to kill me for getting married without her. And I don’t know anything about Sarah’s family, but I’m guessing this isn’t going to be their favorite news either. Funny how none of that occurred to me while I stood in front of her and promised her my future.

I ease her onto her feet. She immediately wraps her arms around herself. She’s stiff and uncomfortable. That’s not how I want this to go.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

Her eyebrows reach for her forehead. “What’s wrong? What isn’t wrong? What did we do? What are we doing?”

“We’ll figure it out as we go,” I promise.

“That’s not how I work, Anvil.” She lets go of her middle and starts pacing. “I don’t do this. I plan things out, each step. I don’t elope with strangers. I don’t go home with strangers. I don’t have sex with strangers. This is not who I am. I don’t even know how I caught your interest, but I think you’re going to be pretty disappointed when you figure out that the last few hours are not the real me.”

“Stop,” I warn. And she shuts up and looks at me.

“Nobody forced you to say I do, baby. You were right there with me. It’s crazy, I’ll give you that. But telling me that it isn’t you is a lie. Maybe you only detour from your plans once in a while, but it’s still you. And now that you’re married, you don’t have to worry about getting crazy and eloping with strangers again.”

She barks out a little laugh. “You’re crazy.”

I take her hand and lead her to the couch. “Yeah, probably. But if you’re worried about it, you’re the first time I’ve eloped with a stranger, too. I’ve never gotten close to an altar before, baby. I never thought I would get married.”

“So why me? I saw the way women look at you. I’m sure I’m not your type.”

I trace patterns on her hand and arm with my fingers. “I don’t have a lot of words for you.” She relaxes a little. “I’m not good at romance. I saw you, and then you were all I could see.”

“Oh,” she breathes out like she’s a little surprised. “That’s actually very romantic.”

“Why’d you pick me? We both know I’m not your type.”

She brings one of my hands into her small ones. I’m like a fucking giant near her. I don’t know how I ever got her to leave Billy’s with me, much less back to my house as my wife. She’s very serious now, studying my hand, stroking hers over it. Like she’s learning me. “I’m probably not much better at words than you are. I was starting to feel so restless and uneasy. I know I need organization and plans to feel good and safe. But I think I’m going too far. Or I was. I wasn’t living life, I was living a plan. I needed to shake things up. And then you came in, and I felt a different kind of restless and a different kind of safe. Like—I don’t know—like finally it was starting.”

“What was starting?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s crazy. I feel like I have stage fright, I’m nervous. But it’s a good kind of nervous. Like I’m doing something big.”

Yeah. She’ll be doing something big pretty soon. But I don’t tell her that.

“If we were smart, we’d stop this right now,” she says, and all the air is sucked from the room, from my lungs. “It will be easier to annul if I go home and we let a lawyer fix this.”

She dares to meet my eyes. I can’t tell what she wants me to say or do.

“Is that what you want?”

“It’s the smart thing to do. The way of less risk.”

“I didn’t ask that. I asked what you want.” I’m not a guy of tenderness and patience. I give what I deem to be justice at the time and take what I deem to be mine when I want it. She’s a virgin. Inexperienced. She was looking for a beer tonight, and I’ve changed everything.

I pull her across me so she’s straddling my lap. She gives a little mew and her eyes get real big and round. I pull her arms behind her, grasping both wrists in one hand so she has to lean forward to balance. She can feel my cock beneath her. No way she can’t. It’s hard as stone with her this close…and growing.

“Do you want to forget this night? Chalk it up to some crazy memory you have of college?” My other hand goes behind her neck, grasping her nape and pulling her face closer to me. “Or do you want to know how it feels to be my woman? Do you want my cock deep inside you? Do you want me to claim you? Make you come?” She squirms as she blushes, and the friction of her on my cock is delicious and painful at the same time. There’s little space between our faces now. She can see the scar up close, but it’s the intensity in my eye that’s causing her to shiver. “You need to decide, baby. I want to make you my wife. But you have to think like a woman, not a girl. You ready for that?”

“I don’t know.”

So I let go. She makes a whimper in the back of her throat as I sit all the way back against the couch cushion. She has to catch herself with her hands on my chest, the angle sliding her pussy against my cock again. Christ.

“Wait, don’t…don’t let go. Don’t give up on me,” she pleads. She rolls her hips and gasps. Yeah, I feel it too. Like a million volts of electricity arcing between us wherever we touch. “I’m just nervous. I don’t know what to do or how to act. I don’t even know where to put my hands.”

“You don’t need to be experienced as long as you’re enthusiastic,” I say. I slide my hand to the center of her back and push her onto my chest. Her head is resting above my heart. “But I’m not playing games. Either you want this or you don’t.”

She lifts her head. “I want this.”

“Tell me more,” I say. “Once we start, I can’t pull back. Not with you. I know it already. I won’t take what’s not mine, angel, but once you give yourself to me, I’m taking it all. I won’t stop. I won’t ever stop. You’ll be taking my cock any way I give it to you, wherever and whenever.”

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to warn me off you or seduce me,” she says.

“You’re still on my fucking lap, so I think you like it when I tell you what I want to do to you.”

She nods her head a little, her cheeks stained pink. “I think maybe I do.”

“Then tell me so I understand. What do you want, Sarah Cartwright?”

She places a soft kiss on my chest above my heart that almost kills me. “I want you. I want this. Make me yours. Wife me, Anvil.”