Married. Married? I can’t be married. Not possible. “How? We don’t have a marriage license.”
“It’s New Hampshire,” he says. “We don’t need a license here.”
“Fuck. Fuck.” I start to pace across the room. “We can get out of this. We can get an annulment. No way were we in our right minds last night. It’ll be easy. It’s not too late to fix this.”
“You’re right,” Asher says. “It’s not too late.” He stands, also naked, standing proudly and so fucking distracting. My husband.
He’s staring at me now, and for the first time, his eyes aren’t kind. What just happened? All the energy in the room has shifted and I feel cold and like I should cover myself up.
Asher crosses his arms and stares me down. “I’ll happily give you an annulment, Rose Brandt, if you stop trying to ruin my business.”
My stomach falls through the floor and all the way to the center of the earth. I never told him my last name. Which means he knows who I am, and he knows why I’m here, and I am so, so royally screwed.
6
Asher
Rose goes entirely pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. But we both know that it’s not the truth.
I step into her space, so close that I can feel her still-naked skin. “You know what happened last night? I made you scream. On my tongue and on my cock. If I remember right, there might even have been some screaming while your pretty lips were wrapped around my shaft. If you think that you can lie to me after that, think again.”
She swallows. “I wasn’t trying to ruin your business. I swear.”
“Then you have some explaining to do.”
“How did you know?” Rose wraps her arms around her chest and looks cold. She’s still beautiful, and now she’s my wife. I’m not prepared for the urge to pull her close and warm her up.
No. Not a traitor like this.
“Your wallet fell over while I was bringing your clothes to the dryer yesterday. Your last name is different from the one on your booking. So if you aren’t trying to ruin Blue Mountain, then what are you doing? And don’t try to tell me that you were going to book a girls’ weekend.
“No,” she shakes her head. “I wasn’t.”
The look on her face surprises me. Rose looks uncomfortable—scared? Why would she be scared? Does she think that I’m going to hurt her?
Revulsion rolls through me along with a surge of deep protectiveness. Even after all of this, I’m so fucking attracted to her that I’m getting hard. And she can see it. Not only that, but I don’t want her to hate me. Or fear me.
I shake my head. “Get dressed. I’m going to make breakfast, and then you’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on and why you’re here.”
“Okay.”
We’re standing close enough that the chemistry that drove all of this is sizzling in the air around us. She might have been too drunk to remember last night, but I wasn’t. And all of it was real. Making her moan and come over and over was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Not to mention that the sight of Rose on her knees, sucking my dick like it was a lifeline is not something that I’ll soon forget.
I force myself to step back away from her and grab a pair of pants, pulling them on as I walk to the kitchen. Oatmeal. That’s something I can do. Quick. Easy. Won’t take my full concentration.
There’s a part of me that wants to impress her—my wife.
Fuck.
Did I make a mistake doing this?
Yesterday it seemed like the perfect plan, given that Edward was a minister and could do it. Nothing like a bit of blackmail to get people to do what you want them to do. But that look on her face—the flash of terror—won’t leave my mind.
Putting water on the stove, I swear that I’m going to get everything out of her and figure out why the fuck she’s scared. I get the sense that I just walked into something bigger than I realized. Pouring the oatmeal into the pan, I hope that I didn’t make a huge mistake.
7
Rose
Married. Married?
The word keeps echoing in my brain. What the fuck?
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
That’s how drunk I was last night? That I let him marry me without a second thought?
I’m never drinking again. My head is still pounding, and I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that I’m married.
To Asher.
The fucking sex god walking who made my body sing over and over. That much I remember.
I didn’t think that he would find out who I was. Granted, I hadn’t gone to really extraordinary lengths to hide it, but bad luck that he literally just tripped over the fact that I was lying.