He urged her back down onto the bed, reaching back to flick on the light so he could see her body. She blinked as the harsh overhead light hit her eyes, but she didn’t complain. She knew he wouldn’t go down on her if she did, and that made his mouth hot, his cock throb. Stripping off his own clothes, Rhett took his time, touching her everywhere with teasing, light touches, skirting her clitoris until he felt her quivering, goose bumps on her skin, her need growing more and more urgent.
“Put your ankles on my shoulders,” he told her. He suddenly needed to be inside her.
She did so without question and Rhett entered her, and even without stimulating her with his fingers or tongue, he found her wet and welcoming. Knowing that she got aroused just from his fingers brushing over her bare skin, that she knew her pleasure was a guarantee, was almost as arousing to him as the tight fist her pussy made around his erection.
Breathing hard as he gripped her shins and pumped them both to desperation, Shawn sought his permission with her eyes.
“Yes?” he asked, willing to grant any request she might have at that moment, his body tight and alive, his heart swollen with the knowledge that she loved him.
“Can I come? I really, really need to come.” Her lips were wet, her eyes glassy, her hand lifting off the mattress, then fluttering back down as she remembered she could not do whatever she had been planning to.
Rhett wondered if she’d been intending to bite one of her fingers, to suck it, or if her plan had been to twist and tweak her own nipple with the pads of her fingers.
“Not for another minute,” he told her. “I want to come with you. You’ll know when.”
“Oh,” she panted in agony, her head turned to the side, her legs trembling from the position.
“Suck on your finger,” he told her. “It will help.”
She did without hesitation, though the widening of her eyes and the clasping of her body onto his cock told him that it hadn’t made it any easier for her to hold back. It had made it worse, which was his intention, he had to admit. Watching her struggle to hold off her orgasm, her lips frantically wrapped around her finger, sucking it in and out like she was substituting it for his cock, heightened his own frantic desire.
When he squeezed her legs tight and let himself go, pumping his hot ejaculation into her, Shawn was immediately there with him. Her orgasm blended with his, her cries of anguished ecstasy ringing in his ears, as he held her and gave in to his body, gave in to her. She owned him, there was no question about it. Shawn had his heart and his body, and hell, even his soul, and he felt the most profound satisfaction and sense of triumph that he’d ever felt in his twenty-five years of life.
As he fell onto the bed next to her and pulled her into his arms, their bodies warm and sticky, her fingertips fluttering over his chest, he was inclined to believe there was such a thing as destiny. “Scarlett, you’re one hell of a woman,” he told her.
Her response was to kiss his shoulder. But a moment later, she asked, “What’s your middle name?”
He was so content, he didn’t even get annoyed with his least-favorite subject. “I’m sure you can guess.”
“Your mother seriously named you Rhett Butler Ford?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t laugh. “I’m named after my father, who took off and left my mother and two little kids living in an RV.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter where a name comes from, it’s whether you live up to its original intention.” Rhett yawned and reached down to drag the blanket up over their bodies.
“True. Which is why I was wondering how you’d feel about me being Shawn Hamby Ford.”
Rhett looked at her in astonishment, his heart squeezing. “I would be honored.”
This was real. And they both knew it.
“Now are you going to turn the light off?” she asked.
He grinned. “I was hoping you would.”
“I didn’t turn it on,” she pointed out.
He couldn’t argue with that. As he sighed and lumbered out of bed and across the cold room to flick the switch, he said, “Next week, I install the Clapper.”
She giggled. “I dare you.”
“Done.” Then he was back in bed, and she was in his arms, and the world was a perfect place.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SHAWN looked at herself in the mirror, Eve and the twins hovering around her, fussing with the long, flowing skirt of her white dress that Charity and Sandy had chosen off the rack at a retail store. She looked like a real bride.
And she promptly burst into tears.
“What’s wrong?” Harley asked, reaching out and taking her cold hand in hers.
“You’ll mess up your makeup!” Charity shrieked, horrified.
“I’m sorry.” Shawn managed to stop the tears almost as soon as they started, sniffling and widening her eyes to keep herself under control. “I can’t help it. I miss my grandparents.”
It was the truth. But she also was realizing that not only did she look the part, she felt like a true bride. She was in love with her groom. She wanted to spend her life with him, regardless of the reasons they had come together in the first place.
How nuts was that?
Rhett had told her he loved her the night before, and she believed him. For the first time ever in her life, she had looked into the eyes of a man and seen that she was cherished by him. It was wonderful. It was wacky. It was overwhelming. She wasn’t sure how a woman was ever supposed to be prepared to fall in love, but she hadn’t been. Instead of enjoying their mutual emotions, she was still a ball of anxiety, because who was to say what was going to happen when six months had passed? It was too soon to ask Rhett for a real commitment, regardless of their legal marital status. Pressuring him or even asking could smother the spark of their newfound love. It had merely been the post-sex relaxation that had allowed her to say something about taking his last name, and while he had agreed, it could have been purely because he knew his family would expect it.
Despite everything he had told her, he still hadn’t said what was going to happen when he had a hundred grand in hand.
It was a lot to have swirling in her head when she was staring at herself in the mirror, looking every inch the part of a woman pledging her love and her life to her new husband.
“I’m going to puke,” she said, her stomach suddenly clenching in a violent spasm, bile clawing up her throat.
“Holy shit!” was Eve’s opinion as they all glanced frantically around the lounge area of the restroom of the Hamby Speedway banquet room for some kind of receptacle.
Sandy had come into the room in time to hear Shawn’s last words, and as Shawn covered her mouth and desperately breathed through her nose, Sandy cut through the girls and took charge. “Give her some space!”
Taking her firmly in hand, Sandy pushed her down into the deep sofa opposite the vanity area, and she sank down gratefully.
“Head between your knees,” Sandy said gently, pushing her shoulders forward and kneeling down to lay the back of her hand on Shawn’s clammy forehead. “You’re okay, you’re going to be fine. Just try not to swallow so much.”
Shawn started to calm down at the soothing tones of her mother-in-law.
“What’s wrong?” Harley asked. “You’re already married, no need to be nervous.”
“She’s not nervous,” Sandy said, running her hand down Shawn’s cheek in a way that made her realize in thirty-two years she’d never gotten that kind of touch from her own mother. It made her miss her grandmother even more. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you, sweetie?”