Wedding Party Collection: Don't Tell The Bride: What the Bride Didn't Know / Black Widow Bride / His Valentine Bride

Lena looked at the table laden with sweet delicacies and groaned. ‘I can’t.’ There was simply no room left in her stomach.

Trig grinned and popped a baklava into his mouth.

‘Oh, stuff it,’ she said and reached for a baklava too.

Trig began to laugh, a sound that was front and centre of so many of her memories. He hadn’t laughed much on this trip. For a man on his honeymoon he seemed to have a hell of a lot on his mind.

‘Are you really worried about having sex with me?’ she asked and Trig promptly swallowed down hard on his baklava. ‘Because I truly don’t understand why.’

‘I just want you to have all your memories back first.’

‘I don’t understand that either. What’s wrong with making new memories? I’m loving these new memories.’

Trig sat back and began to fiddle with the stem of his wine glass. ‘Me too.’

‘Is it the room? Is it too weird? Because, I have to say... I really like this place. I could get naked here and my scars wouldn’t look that out of place amongst the freaky furnishings. They fit. I fit. Being here with you in this place, it’s like a gift. Makes me want to check my inhibitions at the door.’

Trig pinned her with an intent gaze. ‘What inhibitions?’

‘Well, there’s the scars... I saw the way people stared at me in the bath house. I know the marks aren’t pretty, they’re never going to be pretty but they’re mine and the getting of them wasn’t without honour. You told me that.’

‘Lena—’

‘We don’t have to have the lights on. They can be off.’

‘I thought you said you were checking your inhibitions at the door?’

‘I’m just thinking about ways to make it better for you. You said you had performance pressure. I wondered if maybe you had trouble staying interested because of the scars.’

‘I don’t need the lights off,’ he said flatly.

‘Because you wouldn’t have to touch them. The scars, I mean. I don’t know what we usually do, but I do know that they wouldn’t be a turn-on for you. You probably just...skim.’

‘Lena, you have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said icily. ‘I love you. Every contrary bit of you. Why the hell would I want to skim?’

He moved fast when he wanted to. He swept her off her feet and the next thing she knew she was on the bed and Trig was sinking down next to her, sending pillows tumbling to the floor. No weight on her at all but for the pressure of his hands curling around her wrists as he pinned her arms above her head.

‘I don’t skim,’ he rasped, and dragged his lips from her temple to the edge of her mouth. ‘Not with you. How the hell can you not know that?’

And then his lips were on hers and she opened for him and tasted champagne and cinnamon and the truth of his desire for her and it lit her blood faster than anything else ever could.

He didn’t rush. He kissed her for a good long while before moving on to her shoulders and her throat. By the time his lips skated the bodice of her dress, Lena was writhing against him, impatient for more. He found the zipper on her dress and it slid down easy and then his lips were on her again, his tongue curling around her nipple, flicking over it and then sucking softly, testing to see which one she liked best and hands down the sucking won. Hands in his hair she told him that, with her head flung back and her breath gone ragged.

He began to edge her dress down further but she stopped him with her hands. ‘Lights off,’ she whispered.

‘No.’

He shed his shirt, he got all the way undressed, not a shy bone in his body, and she loved that about him, even as she struggled with shedding her dress. He let her keep her panties on as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to the underside of her breasts and then her ribs and then his fingers touched the scar tissue that ran all the way from hip to groin. He pushed her legs apart and licked a stripe straight up the worst of the scars and she shuddered beneath the onslaught.

‘Don’t,’ she whimpered. She didn’t need this. He didn’t need to do this.

But he pressed soft kisses into the rest of her scars next and then set his mouth to the centre of her panties and started drawing circles with his tongue. Ever smaller circles until she was pushing those panties down herself and the minute she had them off one leg he got one arm beneath her buttocks and set his mouth to her again.

She couldn’t stop watching him and he kept his eyes on her, right up until his fingers joined the party and exposed her even more.

And then his lips were back on her scars and his cheek felt soft against them as he explored them with exactly the same attention as he’d given to the rest of her.

‘You don’t ever need to hide these from me,’ he muttered, while his fingers continued to work their magic, rendering her slick and ready for him. ‘I’ve seen them. I’ve watched you fight against them, get angry at them, despair of them but those are your emotions, not mine. These marks on your skin are a part of you now and I love them. I love you.’

He eased back up the bed until they were face-to-face again.

‘Say it,’ he demanded softly. ‘Say, “Trig loves all of me and always will and I will never doubt it”.’

‘Trig loves me,’ she whispered.

‘Louder.’

‘Trig loves me,’ she said more firmly.

‘Again.’

‘You love me. Now would you mind showing me?’

‘Been showing you for years.’

He eased onto his back, his gaze intent, willing her to follow, and she went with him, hands to his chest as she straddled him. Damn but he was built. She wasn’t going to break him, that was for sure. She wondered how careful he had to be when it came to not breaking her.

‘Take your time,’ he muttered. ‘There’s no rush.’

‘That’s good.’ Because she wasn’t in any hurry.

She started at his shoulders, touching and tasting, not skimming as she moved down his torso and learned the way his muscles ran and bunched. She put her hand over his and learned the rhythms he liked, the little flick of his thumb at the top of each stroke, and eventually she wet her lips and took him in her mouth, just the tip and took his curse as a benediction.

His hand fell away and she took him in deeper, feeling the stretch in her lips because he was beautifully proportioned all over and wasn’t exactly small. She tried to take a little more but ended up pulling off him with a loud pop. ‘Damn but you’d think I’d remember that,’ she offered. ‘Not to mention what I used to do with it because right now I’m guessing that deep throating you is out unless I’m a hell of a lot more practised at this than I appear to be.’

Trig groaned and hooked his hands beneath her armpits and the next minute he was kissing her again and surging against her, not inside her, not yet, but doing a mighty fine job of jutting up against her sweet spot regardless.

He had a thing about her hair, winding his hands in it as he grasped her head and deepened the kiss. He had a thing for wrapping his arms around her, one hand between her shoulder blades and the other palming her buttocks. He had a thing about kisses, deep and dirty.

Finally, she sat up and took him in hand and positioned him at her entrance. He put his hands to her hips and bit his lower lip, his eyes a hot glitter as he gave a little push.

Lena gasped. Trig stopped, closed his eyes and breathed.

She pitched forward, skin against skin, as much as she could. ‘Kiss me through it,’ she whispered against his lips, and he did, until he was embedded all the way inside her.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘I will be.’