Chapter 321 Wedding Night
Lily’s POV
Scott’s bedroom in the Lightning Pack house was bigger than my entire apartment, and it smelled like him, clean cedar and something warmer underneath. I stood in the middle of it with my suitcase at my feet, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I hadn’t brought much. Most of my things were still back home. I hadn’t been able to say the words out loud, not even to myself, but the truth sat in the bottom of that half-empty suitcase, plain as day: I didn’t know how long a loveless marriage was supposed to last.
Scott came in behind me with a bottle of red and two glasses. He set them on the nightstand and dropped onto the edge of the bed, loosening his tie. "You can hang your things in the closet. There’s room."
"Thanks." I didn’t move.
He glanced up, one brow rising. "You planning to stand there all night?"
"I’m just—not used to it yet."
"Then get used to it." He poured a glass and held it out. "Married people share a room, Lily. Come here."
I made myself walk over and sit beside him. I took the glass and drank too fast. The wine burned going down and went straight to my head, and maybe that was a good thing, because it was the only reason I found the nerve for what I did next.
He’s your husband now, I told myself. In every way that counts on paper, he’s yours. So take what’s yours.
I set the glass down, turned, and kissed him.
He went still under my mouth, shocked. I felt it, the sharp catch of his breath, the way his whole body locked up. For one horrible second I thought he’d shove me off and I’d have to crawl back to my side of the bed and pretend I’d never dared.
Then his hand came up to the back of my neck, and he kissed me back.
He was gentle. Almost unbearably so. He kissed my jaw, my cheek, the corner of my eye, slow and careful, like I was something he was afraid of breaking.
When his fingers found the zipper at my back, I didn’t freeze and I didn’t flinch. I reached for the buttons of his shirt and started working them loose, one by one.
If he can’t forget Emilia tonight, then I’ll find another way. A slower way.
I’ll go on loving him until there’s no room left in his heart for her. Until I’m the only one he sees.
My dress slipped off my shoulders. His shirt hit the floor.
His hands mapped me like he had all the time in the world, and every touch pulled a soft sound out of me that I couldn’t hold back.
He pressed his mouth to the hollow of my throat, my collarbone, lower, and I laced my fingers into his hair and held on.
Then he stopped.
His forehead came down against mine, his breathing ragged, and he looked at me in the low light.
"Are you sure?" he asked quietly. "Lily. Tell me it’s okay."
My heart cracked wide open. He was giving me the out. Even now, even like this, he wouldn’t take a single step I hadn’t offered him.
"It’s okay," I whispered. "I want this. I want you."
Only then did he move.
He was tender the whole way through, watching my face, gauging every breath, slowing when I gasped and murmuring things against my skin that made the ache in my chest and the heat in my body tangle into one. It didn’t hurt. It was nothing like the frightened thing I’d braced myself for. It was good—God, it was good—and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped thinking about anything at all and just felt.
Afterward he didn’t roll away and leave me cold. He pulled the blanket up over us both, tucked me into the curve of his body, brushed the damp hair off my forehead. He got up once, came back with a glass of water and pressed it into my hands, waited until I’d drunk it. He held me like I mattered.
He was a perfect lover. Careful, generous, gentle to a fault.
The only thing missing was the one thing I wanted most.
He didn’t love me. Not yet.
I lay against his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow, and I made myself a promise in the dark. It’s a start, I thought. It’s a start, and I have time.
I closed my eyes and let myself be happy with what I had. The rest, I’d fight for. One day at a time.
Emilia’s POV
The reception wound down around nine, but Sebastian didn’t point the car toward home. He turned north instead, climbing a winding road up into the hills that ringed Silverlake City.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"You’ll see."
Turned out there was a fireworks show that night. We parked at a lookout and watched color bloom across the black sky until nearly ten, my shoulder tucked against his, the minty cedar of him wrapped around me.
We were barely halfway down the mountain when the car jerked, coughed, and rolled to a dead stop.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Me?" He popped the hood and climbed out. A minute later he rapped on my window. "Come on out. Engine’s toast. We’re walking."
I got out and stared at him like he’d lost his mind. "Absolutely not. We just hiked halfway down the hill. You want me to walk the rest? I’ll drop dead on the shoulder and you can explain it to your mother."
"Nobody’s dropping dead on my watch." He slammed the trunk, then crouched down with his back to me. "Get on."
I eyed the broad line of his shoulders. "You’re going to carry me."
"That’s generally what crouching means, yes."
I scratched at the back of my head. "Forget it. You’ve got to be worn out too."
"I’m an Alpha. I can handle a little tired." Before I could argue, he snagged my wrist and hauled me up onto his back. Then he set off down the road and announced, to no one at all, "An Alpha carrying his Luna home. Make way."
I burst out laughing against the back of his neck. "Did you just declare that to the trees?"
"They looked like they needed to know."
He carried me the whole way down, and then kept walking. Halfway home I offered to flag a car. He refused. When the iron gates of the estate finally came into view, I tugged at his collar.
"Put me down now. We’re home. Your parents will die laughing if they catch us like this."