One Night Stand Bride

“I’m being serious.” Their fingers were still entwined and he brought one to his mouth to kiss the back of her hand tenderly. “There’s no one on earth who gets me more excited than you. We’re not talking about whether or not you have the ability to get me off, but why you’re trying to do it in the middle of my mother’s fundraiser.”

Guilt put her back up. “I guess the thrill is gone. And so early in our marriage, too. I thought that didn’t wear off until at least after the first year.”

He rolled his eyes. “I literally just told you this is not a conversation about how much I desire you. I’m trying to figure out why you have a seemingly self-destructive need to have sex in public. That’s what got us into this marriage in the first place.”

So now all this was her fault? “There were two people in that hot tub, Hendrix.”

“Willingly,” he threw in far too fast and that pissed her off, too. “I’m not pushing blame onto you. I wasn’t saying no as you pulled me into that closet at the wedding. But I am right now. Wait.”

He tightened his grip on her fingers as he correctly guessed she was about to storm off to...somewhere that she hadn’t quite worked out yet.

“Sweetheart, listen to me.”

And she was so out of sorts that she did, despite knowing in her marrow she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“You want me so badly that you can’t wait?” he asked. “That’s great. I want you like that, too. The problem is that we both use that heat as a distraction. From life, from... I don’t know. Crap going on inside. Whatever it is, I don’t want to do that anymore.”

The earnestness in his expression, his tone, in the very stroke of his fingers over hers bled through her, catching on something so deep inside that it hurt. “I don’t do that.”

He didn’t even have the grace to go along with the lie. “You do. We’re cut from the same cloth. Why do you think we were both so willing to go through with this marriage? We understand each other.”

Oh, God. That was so true it nearly wrenched her heart from its mooring. If he made her cry, she was never going to forgive him. She’d spent thirty minutes on her makeup. “What are you saying?”

His smile did nothing to fix the stuff raging through her chest. “I’m saying let’s take our sex life behind closed doors. Permanently. Let’s make it about us. About discovering what we can be to each other besides a distraction.”

“So there’s no more chance of public humiliation, you mean?”

He shook his head, dashing the out she’d handed him. “No. Well, I mean, yes, of course that is a very good side benefit. But I’m talking about removing the reasons why we’re both so good at creating scandals. Stop avoiding intimacy and get real with me. At home.”

That was the worst idea she’d ever heard in her life. “You first.”

He nodded. “I’m at the head of the line, sweetheart. Get in the queue behind me and let’s do this ride the way it was intended.”

Her lungs hitched. “You’re not just talking about laying down a new no-sex-in-public rule. Are you?”

“I don’t know what I’m talking about.” He laughed self-consciously, finally releasing her fingers to run a hand through his hair. “All I know is that my mom asked me to get married so her campaign wouldn’t take a hit and all I could think about was getting you into bed again. Then we made a mutual decision that sex was off the table until after the ceremony. It really made me think about who I want to be when I grow up. An oversexed player who can’t control himself? I don’t want to be that guy. Not with you.”

Stunned, she blinked up at him but his expression didn’t waver. He was serious about making changes and somehow, she was wrapped in the middle of all of it. Like maybe he wanted to be a better person because of her. That was... She didn’t know what that was, had no experience with this kind of truth.

“So where does that leave us?” she whispered.

He tilted his head until their foreheads touched. “A married couple who’s expected at a fundraiser. Can we get through that and then we’ll talk?”

She nodded and the motion brought his head up just at the right angle to join their lips. The kiss had nothing to do with sex, nothing to do with heat. It was a sweet encapsulation of the entire conversation. A little tender, a little confused and so much better than she’d have ever dreamed.

Somehow, she floated along behind him as he led her back into the fray and the fact that they hadn’t gotten naked meant something significant. Hell if she knew what. Later tonight, maybe she’d get a chance to find out.

* * *

Turned out that Roz hadn’t actually needed the orgasm to relax after all. Hendrix held her hand like he’d promised and generally stuck by her side through the whole of the fundraiser. The evening wound to a close without one snide comment being wafted in her direction. Whether that was because Hendrix had studiously kept her far away from her father—a fact she couldn’t help but notice and appreciate—or because the marriage had really worked to soften society’s opinion toward them, she couldn’t say.

Ultimately, the only thing that mattered was that she ended the evening on a high she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not even sex could compete with the burst of pure gratitude racing through her veins as the limo wheeled them toward Hendrix’s house. Their house. It was technically theirs, for now, as he was sharing it with her. No harm in claiming it as such, right?

“I think that was a success, don’t you, Mr. Harris?” she commented as he held the door open for her to precede him.

He shut it with a resounding click. “I’m sorry, I missed everything you just said outside of ‘Mr. Harris,’” he murmured and propelled her up the stairs with insistent hands on her hips.

She let him because it suited her to get to a place where they could pick up their discussion from earlier. “You like it when I call you Mr. Harris? I can do that a whole bunch more.”