Page 59 of The Wrong Groom

Licking my lips, I drag in a shaky breath. “We both know this arrangement between us is only temporary. After this, we’ll each go our own ways. But I don’t want my husband—my next husband, I mean—to be disappointed because I have no idea what I’m doing in bed.”

Something in his face changes at that. He cocks his head slightly, water droplets sliding down his chest. His hands curl slowly into fists, then release.

“Your next husband,” he repeats, drawing the words out slightly as if testing them on his tongue.

He reaches over and shuts off the water with a twist of his wrist, and the sudden quiet makes my heart pound louder in my ears. For a few beats, he just stands there dripping, watching me, the muscles in his body taut. Then he pushes the door open and reaches for a towel, dragging it across his chest carelessly, as if getting dry is the last thing on his mind.

He steps out of the shower and strides toward me, and his presence is so overwhelming that my back meets the door before I realize I’ve moved. He doesn’t stop until there’s almost no space left between us, close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his gaze, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his damp skin. The towel hangs forgotten from one hand.

“Say that part again,” he breathes. “About your next husband.”

I can’t. My throat won’t work. All I can do is look up at him, and whatever he finds in my face seems to be the thing that snaps the restraint he was holding on to.

“Christ,” he mutters, more to himself than to me. Then he shakes his head and bites out, “Fuck it.”

Chapter 19

Gabriel

Fuck it.

Those two words keep repeating in my head as I close the last bit of distance between us. Wrapping one arm behind Alexis’s back and the other under her knees, I lift her easily off her feet. She gasps in surprise, her hands flying to my shoulders, but for the first time in what feels like forever, I don’t stop to question or overthink any of it. I just keep moving.

Because I’m afraid that if I stop, reality will come crashing back in and I’ll talk myself out of this.

Something has been building under my skin all night, and now it’s been let loose. As much as I hate to admit it, hearing Alexis talk about a “next husband” did something to me. It made me want to wipe the words out of her mouth, to make her think about me and nothing else, least of all some theoretical future husband.

She clutches at my shoulders as I carry her out of the bathroom. “What are you doing?”

“Teaching you. Just like you asked.”

Every inch of my skin lights up where she’s pressed against me, making me wish like hell that she was as naked as I am already. She makes a sound somewhere between a whimper and a sigh in response to my words, and my pulse takes off. Every beat of my heart pushes me on, urging me to make sure she never spends another second thinking about belonging to some other man.

By the time I’m done with her, she won’t.

I lay her down on the bed and stand over her. She stares up at me, eyes wide, lips parted, her copper hair fanned out across the sheets. God, she’s beautiful. I’m sure she had men lining up for her, had dozens of chances to get the sexual experience she told me she lacks, although I can understand why she held off. She’s lived pretty much her entire life feeling like her life isn’t really her own, so I get why she didn’t want to complicate things by dating or hooking up when she knew nothing could ever come of it.

But she wants it now. With me.

My stomach clenches as the weight of that responsibility settles over me. Part of me wonders if I’m the wrong man for this, because once we start, I’m not sure how much control I’ll have left.

I’ve craved my new wife for weeks, more or less from the moment I laid eyes on her. Taking the edge off of my raging desire while she watched should have helped—and for a few seconds, it did. But the instant she asked me to teach her, all of that barely contained attraction came roaring back into the room.

Alexis stares up at me as I climb onto the bed, settling over her on my hands and knees, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her. Her heart is beating so hard that I can see her chest tremble slightly with every thump.

I rest a fingertip at the base of her throat. She swallows against it, and when I start to trail my finger down the center of her chest over her shirt, her breath turns ragged.

“Tell me what you want to know.” I keep my voice low and my eyes locked on hers. “What have you been thinking about, Alexis? What do you want to learn? Say it.”

“I—I want you to teach me about sex. Everything.” The pink tinge in her cheeks deepens as she speaks, her expression trusting and a little overwhelmed but with a hint of hunger underneath it that lights my blood on fire.

“Then pay attention.”

I move downward on the mattress and nudge her legs apart, settling between them. She shivers when my hands slide up her thighs to the button of her pants, and she sucks in a breath as I unhook it. I work the zipper down and ease them off her legs, taking my time, savoring every inch of the skin that comes into view.

By the time her pants reach her ankles, goosebumps have chased their way across her thighs, and there’s a dark bloom of wetness already showing through her panties. Her fingers twist into the sheets when I reach for the waistband of the delicate cotton fabric, and the second my knuckles graze her stomach, she jumps.

“You good?” I ask, glancing up at her face.