Under His Influence

“They’re serving up the main course—come back in.”

“Not fish, is it?”

“No.” Anna laughed. “Sorry, I forgot your fishyphobia. It’s chicken. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

Liam exhaled. “Yes. Yes, chicken is good. Come on then. Let’s face the poultry.”

The speeches were short. The best man, John’s brother, James, had never met Anna and seemed disinclined to spout endless anecdotes of childhood and youth, presumably having done that oration not so long ago. There was no father of the bride, and John had nothing to say beyond exhorting everyone to drink in Anna’s beauty and charm and drink to her happiness.

“Sass’s parents are spitting chips,” murmured the guest opposite Mimi, a well-dressed woman whom she guessed to be a long-standing social contact. “Have you seen them lately, Henry?”

“No, must admit, I’ve been kept busy. They take a dim view then?”

“Very. Think John’s desecrating Sass’s grave, not to put too fine a point on it. And who is this girl? She doesn’t seem to have any people.”

“We’re her people,” Mimi said with a steely-sweet smile. “Anna’s parents were killed in a car accident when she was a child.”

“Oh, I see. How awful,” the woman replied dispassionately, but the look she exchanged with Henry spoke volumes. Gold digger. Penniless nobody looking for a father figure.

Mimi reached for the wine bottle to displace the anger heating her face and heart, to hear the sound of tapping glass, signifying some further development. Cutting of the cake or something, she supposed.

But John stood and invited all the guests to have a wonderful time drinking at the free bar and dancing to the band. He and Anna intended to retire early.

Ribald laughter greeted this statement at first, but as the bride and groom made their way out of the dining room, the amusement turned to bemusement. This was extremely irregular, wasn’t it? A bride and groom leaving their own party before it had really begun? And they didn’t even have to rush off for a plane or a ferry—they had a suite in this very hotel.

“What’s that all about?” Liam addressed the question to Anna and John’s receding back view, scarlet and grey, heading for the sweeping staircase that led to their room.

“I don’t know.” Mimi succeeded in pouring that extra glass of wine this time. “But I know I don’t like it. Really don’t like it. At all.”

Anna’s point of view was as far removed from Mimi’s as it was possible to be that afternoon. She did like it. A lot. In fact, she loved it.

She especially loved it when John gathered her up into his arms and carried her over the threshold of the hotel suite, whirling her round and round on the deep pile carpet while through her spinning head she took in the rose petals on the bed and the luxurious pink-and-whiteness of it all.

“Mrs. Stone!” he declaimed, throwing her on the bed so that she lay amidst the crimson velvet petals in her scarlet silk dress, bringing a lush deep darkness to the blindingly light room.

She laughed, gathering petals between her fingers and letting them fall, thinking of the confetti that had been strewn on the steps of the Register Office earlier.

“I can’t believe it. I’m a married woman! John, do you think we should have stayed? It’s a bit naughty to sneak off like this.”

“Who’s sneaking? I announced our departure.” John loosened his tie and sat down on the bed beside her, lifting her fingertips to his lips. “And besides, you said the soup made you feel queasy. You didn’t want any wine. We won’t be missing anything.”

“The dancing—”

“Oh, the dancing. We can do that here. That way you don’t have to dance with any of my boring work colleagues or cousins. Shall we?”

Anna giggled. “What about the music?”

“I can do music.” He pulled Anna to her feet and began to lead her in an up-tempo quickstep, swinging her around as if she weighed nothing.

“There may be trouble ahead,” he crooned, not untunefully, “but while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance, let’s face the music and dance.”

“Trouble ahead!” Anna caught her breath long enough to squawk the protest. “That’s nice, for your wedding day.”

“It’s just a song, Anna,” he soothed, hushing her up by placing a hand on the back of her neck and dancing her into the first real kiss of their married lives. Anna felt her heart, trapped against his chest, beating like a captured bird’s, and she dissolved into him, feeling herself a part of him now, conjoined forever.

Caught up in the sudden tempest of his desire for her, she let him unhook her dress and walk her, still fused at the lips, backwards towards the bed in her luxuriously scanty new underwear from Agent Provocateur. She scrabbled at his collar, ran manicured nails through his short hair to his scalp until she was tipped back and pinned down, her arms arched above her head, her teeth still clashing with John’s, his tongue probing her mouth with possessive force. His pelvis landed on hers, and the rude lump beneath his trousers made her open her silk-stockinged legs to accommodate it. She bent her knees and let her feet rest on his taut backside, heels digging into firm flesh.

He was on top of her, eating her, consuming her, and then he took his mouth off hers and applied it to her neck, sucking and nuzzling and nipping until a continuous stream of moans poured from her and she began to buck beneath him like an animal in heat.