Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 446

Those words had rung in my ears, even when Sparrow did not get up to dance with me, even when I stood on that floor alone while people watched. I should have felt the sting of it. Instead I felt like the most important person in the room, because everyone was looking at me, admiring me, and I had never been placed on a pedestal in my life. I had never felt that kind of belonging, and it made me wonder, standing there in my white dress, what if I could keep it?

What if I could be Sparrow's wife for real? He had said one year, a contract, but contracts could be broken by love. If I could make him fall for me, if I could make him never want to let me go, my life would be perfect. I would be his wife in every sense of the word, I would give him children, and we would be a family, a real one, the kind I had stopped believing existed.

That had to be better than trailing after Scarlett a year from now to wherever she decided to drag me next. Sparrow was strong, dependable, handsome, wealthy, and mine in the eyes of everyone. What right-thinking woman would marry a man like that and walk away?

I watched him drive, the tattoo running along the side of his neck. The first time I saw it, it had scared me. Now I found it unbearably sexy, and I wanted him. I wanted to be in his arms, to give myself to him, to be his wife in the dark as well as in the light, and my whole body warmed at the thought.

So when the car finally stopped at a beautiful mansion in a quiet neighborhood, I was in a hurry. I wanted out of that wedding gown and into something softer, something he would notice, and I asked Scarlett to come help me. She said she was coming. I went up the stairs ahead of her and waited in my room, listening for her footsteps, and I waited, and I waited, until my impatience turned to irritation and I went out to see what was taking her so long.

I watched until I could not stand it anymore, until his cock slid out of her and he dropped onto the couch and pulled her onto his lap, until she sank down onto him and rode him with her head thrown back, his hands gripping her bare ass, their mouths locked together between breaths, and then I turned and went back to my room before the tears could fall.

I fought my way out of the wedding dress alone, tearing at the fabric, damaging it in my desperation, and when it finally came off I left it in a heap on the floor and changed into a nightdress. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall and thought about everything Granny had said, and I thought about how right she had been.