Chapter 12
The season was warm enough that time of year to drive to Vegas with the top down and nothing but a thin sweater to keep Claire’s shoulders from the chill. She knew that this was insanity. Eloping in a Vegas wedding chapel was the kind of stupid shit she made fun whenever she saw it in the news. One of her high school friends had eloped with her sweetheart the week before graduation and was now divorced twice over. Nobody eloped with the expectation of staying together forever. Maybe they do, but deep down they know the truth. Even so, Claire knew that there was no time to plan a thoughtful wedding. They needed to beat her wedding date to Arthur. They needed to beat the baby’s arrival.
Their witness at the first nice chapel they found was a sweet old lady who declared them the most beautiful couple to come by in the past month. Turned out she was a “professional witness” who happened to live in the Vegas area. For twenty bucks, she would watch Claire and Jake say their vows and sign their papers. According to the owner of the chapel, this woman went up and down the street finding couples to witness for, and the money was a nice complement to the meager social security payments she received. On a good day, she would witness up to five marriages. The average was two, and Jake and Claire were the first on that random Tuesday.
The only fuss anyone put up was the lack of a decent dress on Claire’s part. She had rushed home to find the nicest white dress she still fit into, but the best she could do was a silver shift dress that looked more like a glittery sack than a proper wedding dress.
Nevertheless, she married Jake and became Mrs. Carter on a warm June day. Butterflies rose from her stomach and claimed her heart as they shared their first kiss as husband and wife. The little old lady clapped in the front row of the chapel pews. The man who married them brought forth the marriage license for them to sign.
It didn’t feel real. Not even when they hopped back into Jake’s car and headed straight to their honeymoon suite on the strip.
Jake promised his bride that they would have a proper honeymoon soon, but for now, they would spend the night in Vegas. Maybe they would take in a show if anything looked good. But Claire was perfectly content to spend the whole night in the suite with her husband.
She knew she would be married by the summer’s end. She didn’t think it would be to this man, like this.
“Any regrets yet?” Claire asked when the suite door closed. Evening had yet to fully set in Vegas, so the view of the strip outside of their window was not as lustrous as she hoped it would be. “Now’s your chance to get this annulled.”
“Never any regrets.” Jake took her hand and brought her to the window. “How can I regret marrying the woman I love, and the mother of my child?”
“I know I’m technically a mother now,” Claire said with a droll voice, as Jake poured himself champagne and her some sparkling cider, “but let’s not go there right now. I’d prefer you to see me as your beautiful bride and the sexy woman you fell in love with, first.”
“Who said I didn’t?”
“Not me.” Claire toasted to their future happiness, but could barely swallow her cider. “What are we going to tell our families, Jake? My mother doesn’t even know I’m pregnant. My mother! I’ve been hiding it from her this whole time…”
He took her drink and placed both his and her glasses on the table. “Let’s not think about that right now, Claire. Tonight isn’t supposed to be about our families. It’s about us. It’s about me being with the woman I loved enough to marry. And it’s about you… however you feel about me. Hopefully, nice things.”
It’s about me marrying the man who stole my heart and soul. And put a baby in me. It was still romantic, even when she thought about it. “What families?” she said. “I don’t have a family. Certainly not one I have to tell anything when I get home.”
“Exactly.” Jake brought her in for a kiss. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow on the way home. For now, let us simply be husband and wife. There is nothing shameful in what we’ve done.”
How nice was it for him to absolve her of guilt and shame! Because that’s what lurked deep within Claire’s heart even after she signed the marriage license. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with him. Not like this. She was supposed to have a proper, public relationship that turned into a nice, long engagement and ended with a lovely wedding attended by their friends and family. Instead, they eloped in secret. Can we still have a wedding one day? Claire would appreciate it. Even a humble ceremony with her family present. Some of her friends. His mother and industry buddies. Was it too much to ask?
Even after she was legally wedded, Claire still had her girlish fantasies. She supposed they never died. They would keep her forever young.
“I love you, Jake Carter,” she said, inhaling the starch of his shirt and the aftershave on his face.
“And I love you, Claire Carter.”
Damn, that has a wonderful ring to it. That sounded like an actress’s name. Funny. She had been adamant about not taking Arthur’s last name, but had no problem changing it after marrying Jake. It was the same name, yet held a completely different connotation depending on the man.
Claire hadn’t just married the better Carter, however. She had married the father of her child. A man who would live long enough to see his baby grow up and possibly be by Claire’s side as she forwarded through her own life. Those weren’t pipe dreams she could indulge if she married Arthur – even if she had loved him.
“You’re not afraid of what will happen tomorrow?” Claire didn’t only mean going back to LA and facing what they had done in front of their families – hell, the press! Their own names were mere footnotes in Hollywood, but Arthur Carter was a name that commanded the potential for scandal. As evident when a group of women knew they could bring him down a few pegs for what he had done to them. “Or the day after?”
Jake shook his head, hands pressing firmly into the small of her back. It brought her petite pregnancy bulge closer to him. “I’m not afraid of anything. I’m ready to face the consequences of our actions. Because I know it will be worth it.”
“You mean that?”
Their lips gently met between words. “Yes. I can’t imagine making a family with a worthier woman.”
“You put a lot of pressure on me to be worthy.”
“No pressure, since that’s how you already are.”
Claire shook her head, the top of her head brushing against his jaw. “I can’t believe this actually happened.”
“Believe it. Considering how the past few months have gone, I think it’s safe to say that it was meant to be.”
Claire sank into his embrace, their kisses lingering longer and longer until it was inevitable that they would end up in bed. Because even if everything came crashing down around them the next day, Claire would at least be able to say that she spent her first night of marriage making love to the only man she could claim to love.
Yes, it was lovemaking. For weeks, Claire had questioned whether what she and Jake had was real love or the ongoing lust festering between them, and nothing more. Circumstances and chance had brought them together. A baby kept them coming back to one another. Was it enough to base a whole marriage on for the rest of their lives? Or were they doomed as soon as the baby was born and their reputations were tarnished?
Like most couples, their conjugal nights often veered between hot and fast like in the closet, or slow and sensual, like the night Claire dropped by his apartment because she was lonely – and it turned out Jake had been missing her as well. If my baby ever braves asking how she was made, I’ll tell her it was that night. Or maybe this night, when Jake laid her down on the hotel bed and spent the next few blinks of an eye worshipping her body.
This is how I want to spend the rest of my life. No matter what she looked like or what she went through, Claire wanted to imagine this man always ready to kiss her, love her, hold her through the coldest nights and the warmest days. I barely know you, Jake Carter. She didn’t care. What she felt – beyond his tongue massaging the cleft of her nether lips and his gaze resting upon her breasts – was real. When Jake kissed her lips again, bringing with him his naked body and the strength it offered, Claire grew even more famished for reassurances that they hadn’t made a grand mistake.
“I’ve never felt like this for a woman before,” Jake whispered in her ear, his thighs pushing hers apart and opening her body up to his. “Even when I thought I was falling in love with someone before, it wasn’t like this.”
He said such lovely things, but his voice was laced in that aching need to be inside of her. Claire couldn’t say that she felt much differently. When we’re finally together like that, I’ll be able to forget everything plaguing my feeble little head. It couldn’t come soon enough.
Just like she couldn’t come soon enough.
Was it the pregnancy hormones elating her senses? Or was it the rush of love she felt now that she was married, and she no longer had to worry about a defunct engagement to a man she would never respect? Or maybe it was the thrill of the night. Here, in Vegas, a sinful city where silly couples like Jake and Claire ran off to make fools of themselves. It wasn’t something that would stay in Vegas – the baby made sure of that. Yet it was so heart-crushingly romantic that Claire didn’t think twice about welcoming her new husband into her body and making love until she screamed his name in ecstasy.
The lights were still bright outside of their darkened hotel room when she came down from her first climax of married life. Yet Jake was the one who was not finished. He made that known when he rolled his bride onto her stomach and surrounded her with his body that was coated in sweat, musk, and desire.
“You’ll never have to worry about a thing again.” His breath washed across her ear as the pillow swallowed her cheek and her hair pressed upon her eyes. Jake entered her from behind so easily that Claire wondered how such simplicity was possible, even when two people were so in love. “Your career, the baby, money… all of it. We’ll find ways to make it work. Don’t ever worry about a thing again, Claire.”
She believed him when he said that. How could she not, when everything she heard and felt was so good?
Jake was not gentle as he made love to her like that. Claire didn’t care. It was what she wanted – the arduous, passionate motions that had brought them into this mess back at that farce of an engagement party. She wanted the bed to rock. She longed to hear her husband groan in her ear and steel himself for his long-coming climax. She desired to know that she was the only one who could make him lose himself in a woman like this.
Claire wanted every night to be like this. If not every night, then every night she desired to feel alive.
She clutched his hand as he came, her body ready to accept him and everything he had to give. Yet was her heart? Her soul? Only time would tell over the months and years to come.
(Yes.)
“Oh my God,” Jake cursed into the crook of her neck. His thrusts had slowed, but the breaths coming from his throat were as powerful as they had been five minutes ago. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Me?” Claire giggled into her pillow as her husband cocked his weight off her. Jake still surrounded her, but Claire had freedom of movement if she so pleased. She didn’t. “You’re the one who was doing all the work for the past few minutes.”
“You really think so? Because I believe it takes two to come like that.”
Claire wrapped her arms around her pillow and spared her husband one sly glance that instantly relieved whatever pressure remained on his reddened countenance. “Believe whatever you want. I had the extreme pleasure of lying here and taking the good stuff.”
“It’s the least I could do for the woman carrying my progeny.”
“Are you kidding me?” The happy changes in her brain ensured that Claire laughed to hear that. “How can you say a word like ‘progeny’ one minute after coming like that?”
“Like what?”
I see your bet and raise you more money, Mr. Carter. They were in Vegas, after all. Some form of gambling was appropriate. “Does this mean you have to try again?”
He grinned. “Only if I’m the one who gets to lay down this time.”
“Why don’t you start with the lying down, and I’ll start with getting you ready to go?”
“Is this how you always are, or is it pregnancy making you so insatiable?”
“For all I know, you’re the insatiable one.”
“Two insatiable people in a marriage? This explains so much about how we got here.”
Claire tackled her husband to the bed with a flurry of laughter and sheets fluttering in the air. They shared two sweet kisses before she left a whole trail of them down his chest and to his hips.
The greatest wedding gift he could have given her was a night of forgotten fears and nothing but happy, hopeful love. That’s exactly what Claire received. Ten-fold.