When Honey Got Married (23 page)

“Honey?” Brent asked after a bit, his tone a tad worried.

“I’m stuck,” she explained. “My dress. It’s caught in the door.”

He glanced to the privacy screen.

“It’s fine,” she said, her voice filled with the kind of hopeless exhaustion all the time in the world spent in cotillion wasn’t enough for her to be able to hide. “We’re nearly there.”

Brent looked at her, then seemed to look a little deeper. Whatever he saw in her eyes had him moving closer, leaning over her, checking where door met dress. Like he understood nearly there wasn’t near enough.

The scent of him filled her nose. The remnants of day-old aftershave she’d bought him for Christmas. A tiny drip of crème brûlée on his collar. Sweat. Heat. Musky man. So familiar. So lovely. So loved.

And her heart began to thunder. The knots in her belly twisting into ropy threads of desire. When she tried to lean into him, to nuzzle into his neck, she couldn’t even move that far. And
that
was the final straw.

“Screw it,” she said, wincing at the unfamiliar feel of the word on her tongue. But this was not a time for good breeding. This was do or die. And the girl who’d charmed the music teacher into letting her play the lead opposite Brent in the school musical, even though she was tone-deaf, had what it took to fight for her man.

“Get me out of this damn thing,” she roared. “Now!”

Brent flinched at her tone. But even though beneath the driving ambition, Brent was a naturally gentle man, the guy had muscles, and mercy he knew how to use them. When his big fingers found the row of tiny buttons at her back of her corset, she felt him pause.

“Rip!” she demanded. “Rip ’em right off.”

His blue eyes swung to hers, he breathed deeply, then grinned.

She barely had the chance to register the sweet slide of his thumbs against her skin as they eased down inside the back of her dress, and with an almighty tug he did as he was told.

Buttons went flying. Individually collected pearls in a precise champagne color to match the bridesmaid’s dresses.
Who freakin’ cared?!?
Honey thought, as she hopped onto her knees on the seat, shimmying out of the constraint, while Brent yanked the thing down.

“Jesus, Hon…” he said as his eyes roved over her nearly naked form. She glanced down at the lace half-cup-bra, silk panties, whisper-soft silk stockings, and lace garter belt she’d taken such pains to choose, imagining herself performing a slow and sultry striptease at the base of the canopy bed waiting for them at the Villemont.

A quick reveal in the back of a car not quite the same thing. And yet the look in his eyes mollified her. And then some.

“You like?” she asked, her voice an octave lower than normal.

“I fucking
love
.” Her eyes shot back to his to find the startling blue all but lost in the swell of his pupils. His cheeks were pink, not from the effects of the party, or champagne, or the bracing wind outside the window. Because of her. Just her.

In that moment, the brief lull, it felt like the first time they’d been alone in the same place together in such a long time. In that ephemeral bubble of time she looked into her husband’s eyes and finally felt…something.

A stirring of something good. Of tenderness, and trust, and history, and hope.

Then Brent, using those big muscles of his she adored so much, picked her up bodily and lay her along the bench seat. He moved over her, blocking out the glow of track lighting around the limo’s ceiling. And every tender feeling was swept away as she felt a whole lot of lust.

Honey slid her hand behind her husband’s neck and pulled him into her kiss. Before he’d even settled, she glided her tongue along the seam of his mouth, and with a groan, he opened to her. His tongue tangled with hers, traced her teeth, her lips, taking control until she gave up and followed his lead. Trembling. Needing. Wanting. So much. Everything.

Zipper down, she freed his huge erection from his pants, reveling in the silken heat, sliding her thumb over the pearl of liquid waiting at the tip before opening to him, pressing herself against his swollen head, pulling her panties aside, opening further still. She couldn’t have been more ready, and yet she cried out as he pushed inside of her. Stretching her to her limit and beyond.

There he stopped, waited until her eyes swung back to his, until she saw him. His smile, his need, his plans. Which he brought to fruition as he pulled out, just far enough she thought she might lose him, before he drove back inside of her. It was torment. It was bliss.

Mouth wide open to catch as much air as she could, she gripped his straining arms with her nails. He hissed at the pinch of it. And his eyes became darker still.

Honey moved her hands over his back, down his waist, to grip his backside. Good Lord did her man have the best backside in three counties. Probably the whole damn state. It clenched beneath her touch as he pushed into her, his pace hastening. The pleasure swirling chaotically inside of her began to focus, to slide to her center. God, it felt so fine. But she wanted more. Needed more.

When she slung her leg over his shoulder, her back arching at the sensation ratcheting suddenly beautifully hot and hard inside of her, Brent growled like he could eat her alive.

She closed her eyes and took him, all of him. Her man. Her husband. And just as she felt like she could handle not a mite more, her pleasure reached its fantastical crest, hovered, lingered, stretched, and collapsed in a million tiny points of light.

And when Brent came inside of her she couldn’t remember a time he’d let go with such abandon. When he’d cried out with such raw passion. When she’d felt like he’d lost a part of himself inside of her. Maybe because she hadn’t let herself feel that way either.

Maybe the both of them had been brought up too well.

Screw that
, she thought, smiling on the inside, liking the feel of the word even better the second time round.

When their breaths settled into a matching rhythm, Brent slid free, tucking himself away, sitting up just enough to run his hand through his hair, and to draw in a huge ragged breath. Then he held out his hand to help her sit up. She found herself perched on a mound of tulle. There was no getting away from the thing. It could have handled its own zip code.

“Wife?” Brent said, and she liked it.

“Yes, husband?”

Brent smiled, as though he liked it too. “Today was a good day.” He shuffled deeper into the seat, and held out an arm for her to snuggle against him. Now free of her dress, she took it and the warmth it afforded. She felt the bubble of intimacy expanding, and prayed it would be a little while longer before it burst. Before the real world slammed back in.

“Romance was in the air,” Brent said. “Did you see my parents? Like two lovebirds on the dance floor.” He rolled his eyes, but she could tell it meant something. He liked the world seeing how happy his folks were together. Hope rolled through her like an ocean of waves. “Even your parents looked a little loved up out there.”

“I know, right? Momma sure liked those mimosas.” Her head on his big shoulder, Honey melted and fizzed by turns as he traced fingers down her bare arm and back up again. “I do believe Grace and Beau might go on a date soon.”

“Hmm?”

“Wedding planner. Owner of Belles Fleurs.”

“Right. Grace and Beau.”

“Eve and Rainer too.”

“Now
that
I noticed,” Brent said with an easy grin that made her wonder why she’d ever doubted him at all.

“And Pippa and Griff?” Honey pressed. So, she was a presser. If Brent wasn’t fine with that by now, then that was just his tough luck. Because now she’d found her nook again, she wasn’t going anywhere.

Brent blinked, his eyebrows shifting north. “Now
that
I did not see coming.”

“Didn’t you?” she asked gently.

And she watched closely as Brent thought about it—about his high school girl who’d broken his heart, and the big brother he idolized. As he let himself see what he’d apparently been blinkered to back then. He even had the good grace to blush. “Well, what do you know?”

Not that complicated
, Pippa had said about Brent. Nina had tried to tell her that Brent’s silence about her crazy wedding ideas was the result of his deep and abiding love for her. Maybe they were both right.

Brent said what he thought and meant what he said. And a few hours ago he’d told God and everyone that he wanted to marry her.

And just like that, the last knots in her belly unwound until ribbons of satisfaction unrolled out to the tips of her limbs.

“And while we’re on the subject,” Brent said, taking a moment to press a kiss against the top of her head, “I gotta say—and this is the only time I’m ever going to admit it—I can’t quite believe you married me.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Honore Clemency Moreau. Daughter of Judge and Olivia Moreau. Daughter of the American Revolution. Daughter of the Confederacy. The most beautiful girl Bellefleur has ever born. That’s quite some pedigree to live up to. And I do plan to live up to it. To you.”

“But Brent, you—”

He quelled her with a glance. And pulled her tighter against him, as if making sure she couldn’t get away. She let him. In fact, considering how numb she’d felt for so long, she felt so much all of a sudden she was hard-pressed not to blubber all over him again.

Then he continued, “I spent my childhood striving to be…someone else. To be my brother, in fact. And when Griff walked away from every advantage God had given him, all my ambitions, my plans felt like they had no foundation at all. But the most terrifying part of it all—if I was wrong about him, could I be wrong about my rightness for you too?”

Honey looked up at him, the lift of his strong chin, the distance in his clear blue eyes, all that inherent strength, and realized he’d had doubts too. But not about her. Never about her.

“I had to build myself back up from scratch,” he said. “To make a man of myself. One I could live with. One my parents could be proud of. One you could still love.”

Still
love? Like she could ever stop!

She tried again, needed him to know how silly he’d been. “But Brent—”

He placed a finger against her mouth, soft yet insistent. The heat of his touch, and the way it brooked no argument, touched at the heart of her, and heat coursed through her like a stream of fire.

She flicked her tongue against the pad. His bright blue eyes darkened. Oh, she loved it when they did that. She loved that she knew what it meant. There was no anticipation in the world like it.

But he clearly had more to say. He took his finger away, kissed the tip of her nose, and cocked his head at her.
Listen, will you?

She nodded. She’d listen. Then she’d show him just why he needn’t worry ever again.

Brent said, “And I’d been turned down once before, if you remember.”

Honey blinked. Somehow that had never occurred to her. Well, it
had
. Often. But not as a reason for
him
avoid proposing to
her
.

“But that was
Pippa
,” Honey said, as if that would explain why he was being so ridiculous. “She was right to turn you down.”

“Thanks.” He laughed, but with not a flinch of hurt. So much quiet confidence, she thought. After his struggles through emotional quicksand. It was still there. It always had been.

“You know what I mean,” said Honey. “We both loved her, were both devastated when she left, but she was always bigger than Bellefleur. While this town is so much a part of us both, its lifeblood is our lifeblood.”

Brent’s eyes gleamed, in that way that made her feel as if she’d said something very, very right without having a clue what that thing was. She put it down to years of elocution classes. And the times she and Nina had eavesdropped at the library door when Daddy and his cronies had taken to their whiskey after dinner parties.

At the seriousness in Brent’s eyes, Honey swallowed. He was leading to something big. And she’d better be prepared for it. For better or for worse.

“I knew you were the one for me the first moment I kissed you, Hon. After Pippa walked out, I took to you out of anger and frustration, I think we both did that night, but when I woke up in your arms, I knew. It was where I was meant to be. I’ve never changed my mind. Not for a second. I can only hope you feel the same way.”

“I do,” she said, suddenly remembering with 3-D Technicolor clarity the moment she’d looked into his eyes and said those same prophetic words in front of the whole town hours before. She’d meant them then. She meant them now.

“Well then, that’s that. You and me. A team. And a formidable one, at that. I’m all head, you’re all heart, and together that makes us unstoppable.”

He seemed so pleased with himself, and with her, that Honey bit her tongue. So she might be a tad more dramatic by nature than he. But that was only because the details mattered to her. While he, sweet guy, trusted that so long as he was a good man and worked hard and did right by people, everything would work out as it should.

He was good, hopeful, optimistic. The romantic. And the heart.

She was the realist. Always too much inside her head. A scrapper, a fighter, and ferocious with it, especially when it came to the people she loved. And she loved Brent more than anything else on earth.

But if it made Brent happy to think the opposite, then she’d let him. A few little secrets between husbands and wives were just fine.

See now, she was getting the hang of this wife thing quickly!

And one part of the wife thing she knew she did well… She took Brent’s arm away from her shoulder and straddled him.

His eyes widened a fraction before easing into delicious dark intensity. Hands at her hips, he pulled her against him, against his fast-thickening length, showing her the part of being a husband he knew he was great at.

“How long until we reach the Villemont?” she asked.

“We got there five minutes ago.”

Honey stilled, flicking her gaze to the deeply-tinted window to find they were inside a parking garage. “But how—?”