Overnight Wife

“Can we just not talk about it for a while?” I ask. “I’ll already have to start researching annulment procedures when we get home. I’d rather not ruin my whole day dwelling in the meantime. Especially when we need to get moving.”

Lea sighs. “Fun time is over, huh?”

I grimace at the clock next to my bed, all too aware that checkout is in less than an hour. After that, I’ll have to drive home, get cleaned up, and figure out how to start the rest of my life tomorrow. “I’m afraid so,” I mumble. “Time for the hard work to start.”

* * *

Monday morning rolls around all too soon. If I’m honest, I still feel a little fuzzy around the edges, but at least the blinding pain of the hangover has mostly faded, replaced by a vague gnawing hunger and even more nerves that I anticipated for my first day—which is saying something, since I already expected to be a mess of anxiety from the minute I walked through the studio doors.

Not to mention, I still can’t get this damn ring off. I tried everything. Coconut oil, running cold water over it… Nothing. It must be way too small for me. But it feels all right on my finger. It’s only when I try to tug it off that my finger swells up angrily and seems like it’s holding onto the damn thing to spite me.

Great. I can’t wait to try and explain that away to my new coworkers. “Oh, this? Just a joke ring from my not-husband, haha, yes…”

At least I found out how to annul this damn marriage. It didn’t take long last night, just a few google searches. The process is simple, but it does require both of our signatures. Which leaves me with my latest problem, one that only hit me, helpfully, in the car on my way in to my first day of work.

I have no way to contact my new husband. In fact, the only thing I really know about him is that he’s probably wealthy and his name is John. Not exactly a lot to go by. You can’t really search “rich John in Vegas”—believe me, I tried. The results are… not what you’d expect. Definitely not men like the one I slept with.

I hope, anyway.

But when I park out front of the theater and glance up at the big Pitfire Media sign out front, it feels like a weight is lifting off my shoulders, despite all my first-day jittery nerves. Because what matters is still on track. My career is in the right spot. This whole marriage thing is a blip, and a frustrating one, but I’ll solve it.

I’ll figure things out, and as long as after it’s done I never have to deal with my frustrating as hell one night stand again, I’ll be golden.

Yes, okay, so he was hot. And sexy. And he’s right, he did make me come more than I’d even realized was possible in a single night. And maybe I had a sexy dream about him last night, one that I couldn’t even tell if it was a hot memory or a creation of my dirty mind.

In it, he had me pinned across the bed, my hands above my head and clasped in his, while he teased me with his hand between my legs, toying with me right up to the edge of an orgasm, and then stopping, until I was bucking against the sheets, begging for his cock. When he finally slid into me, stretching my walls, stuffing me full of his fat cock, it was everything I’d begged for and more.

But I’m not ready to be a wife. Not to anybody, least of all to a cocksure asshole like him.

Right now, I am all about work. Work first, and everything else second.

That’s what I’m reciting in my head as I stride into the general meeting for new hires and find my seat at the back of the room, between a couple other interns who both flash smiles at me. I’m still reciting it as I take out my planner and organize myself on the table, ready to take notes.

But then the doors open, and he walks in.

And my stomach plummets all the way through the concrete floor of this bunkerlike office. Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I can’t focus on anything, least of all the carefully detailed notes I’d planned on taking.

Because there he is. My new boss, the CEO of Pitfire Media and head of the company I’ve wanted to work for ever since I moved to Los Angeles.

My new husband, John Walloway, I realize with a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Youngest CEO of a major media company ever, a veritable genius and a workaholic to judge by the tabloid reports—or lack thereof—about him. But he certainly didn’t seem work-focused last weekend when he was fucking me six ways from Sunday.