Healing Beau (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 6) (18 page)

But here was her most treasured possession, and Beau had chosen to give it to Christian. That had to mean something, despite their rough start.

Christian began to cry. Maybe it was the hormones, or maybe it was getting everything she’d ever wanted all at once.

Beau smiled. “I take it you like the ring?” He could tell the difference in her happy and sad tears.

“Oh, Beau!” She threw her arms around his neck, hugged him, and then pulled back to look into his face. “I loved Amelia so much. And it means so much that you have given me her ring. There is no ring in the world that I could have wanted more.”

He nodded. “She loved you, too. I wanted you to have it. And so would she.”

“It’s like she’s here, part of this.”

Beau tilted his head and briefly closed his eyes, those mile long lashes touching his cheeks. Then he opened them and leered at her a little. “I hope Aunt Amelia isn’t here, because she would not want to see this.”

It was as if he had never been injured, because in one fluid, graceful move, he was beside her on the sofa. He pulled her against him, pressing as much of their bodies together as possible given that they were seated. Then he captured her mouth with his, in a slow, wet, hungry kiss. He took his sweet time, tangling their tongues together, gently biting her lips, and urging her to do the same to his.

The kiss was everything—sweet, sexy, romantic, and full of promises. Though she would have welcomed it, his hands did not stray from where they held her firmly against her back.

Finally, he pulled away. “I’ve missed you, miss you this way. And this.” He untied her robe and parted it. “I see you’re wearing matching underwear this time.”

“I just got out of the shower. I’m not wearing any.”

“Exactly the kind I like.” He drew back to assess her breasts. “Beautiful. And you’ve grown a little.”

“Have I?” She glanced down. “I guess. They say that happens.”

He gently cupped her and barely moved his hand against the side. “They also say they hurt. Is that true? Can I touch?” He gently stroked her again.

“They do—though it’s not true pain. Just a little achy and tender.” He stroked again and she sighed. “Actually, that feels really good.”

With a little laugh he pulled her across his lap. “Then I’m your guy.”

You always were, even if I wasn’t your girl.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “Tell me if I start to hurt you.” But he didn’t. He gently stroked and lightly massaged, his hand flitting from one breast to the other, his fingertips barely glazing her nipples, making them peak and long for more.

He was longing, too. Christian could feel the hard evidence of that in the curve of her side, where she lay against him. But he stroked on, soothing, lifting, and rubbing, gradually increasing the pressure but never attempting to take anything for himself.

After a long time, he bent and gently took a nipple in his mouth and lightly suckled. When she moaned with pleasure, he lifted his head. “Is it okay? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No. You’re not. It’s good. But it’s selfish. Isn’t this going on too long? For you, I mean. You’re getting nothing.”

“Can you sit and look at the Mona Lisa too long? Do you get nothing from that?” With that, he ran his tongue around her nipple and drew the whole tip into his mouth.

She cried out. Mary Charles could have prom queen. She felt like the queen of the world.

He raised her face to hers. “Is it going on too long for you?”

Was that even possible? “Oh no. I could do this all night.”

He swung her off him, stood up, and pulled her to her feet. “If we’re going to do it all night, I suggest finding a bed. I want to feel the whole length of you against me.”

Walking on a cloud, Christian followed him, this time to her bed, the master bedroom, the place where they would live together. He pulled the covers back, pushed her robe off her shoulders, and eased her down.

“Clothes off, please.” She could ask for that; the ring on her finger said so.

“I live to make you happy.” Soon the whole warm, naked length of him was pressed hard against her. “Now where were we?”

“Here.” She reached out and took his pulsating penis between her palms, savoring the smooth, hot hardness. “I love doing this. I wish I could do this for the rest of my life.”

His voice was raspy. “I love letting you. And you
can
do it the rest of your life.”

The rest of her life.
That still had not come home to her.

“But you know what?” His breath was warm against her ear. “It’s been too long. I want you too much. Right now, all I want is to be inside you. Here, raise up.” He slipped a pillow under her hips. “I want to go in deep and lie still, feeling you, until we can’t stand not to move.”

She wanted that, too. And he entered her gently, but went very deep. They lay still together, moaning with pleasure and craving for a long time. Just when she thought she could not endure the low, sweet ache another second, Beau groaned and rolled his hips against hers—and she rose to meet him again and again and again until they both gave all they had to give.

And then she gave some more.

Beau learned the meaning of
irony
in eighth grade English class, but he had never lived it until a bizarre set of circumstances led to his wedding falling on perhaps the only date on the calendar that was, considering the circumstances, totally inappropriate—February 14
th
. This wedding wasn’t about romance or love, and it wasn’t lost on him that he would be reminded of this every year for the rest of his life with the annual visitation of his wedding anniversary.

Beau had done a pretty good job of playing the part of the besotted bridegroom, or maybe not. Maybe everyone believed he was thrilled with the notion of marriage and fatherhood because that’s what they wanted to believe. He wished he could believe it. The trick was to try not to think about it, which was pretty easy with Christian. She seemed happy, probably because she kept giving him credit for things he didn’t do—like picking that ring for her because it had been special to Amelia when, in reality, he hadn’t even known it, had never noticed what, if any, rings Amelia had worn.

It had been easier and less hurtful to let Christian believe it. Sometimes, in such moments, Christian wanted to go down a romantic, emotional path that he could have no part of, but it was easy to distract her. All he had to do was kiss her, let her feel him go hard against her, and they were immediately on a path that he
did
want to go down—very much. And so did she, especially the
going down
part.

He couldn’t imagine how in the unholy hell she had gotten so good, when she’d had no experience, but he was thankful for it, very thankful indeed. Some said it just came naturally, and maybe that was true—though he didn’t remember his neophyte sex that way. She loved it as much as he did, and it was the saving grace of a bad situation. But it was impossible to forget that this was a bad situation, even with the distraction of the Pepto-Bismol wedding from Candy Land Underworld.

It certainly wasn’t by romantic design that the wedding turned out to be on Valentine’s Day. That hadn’t even been the original plan.

Aside from Jackson, the family had been surprised to the point of paralyzation when Beau and Christian had gathered everyone together to announce the engagement and Christian’s pregnancy. But the paralyzation quickly moved to elation. Rafe had said right out that they were all relieved that neither Beau nor Christian would be bringing an outsider into their tight little circle. It would just be messy if everyone hated the outsider and, furthermore, this definitely sealed the deal that Beau was home for good.

Leave it to Rafe to say what was on everyone’s mind, and leave it to the women to start planning the wedding.

The phone call with Christian’s mom hadn’t gone quite as well, but Beau couldn’t worry about that right now. He had a workshop to set up and a wedding ring to buy. As near as he could tell, aside from doing as he was told, buying that ring was his only wedding responsibility.

Since Around the Bend was booked solid with parties and consequently Firefly Hall was booked solid with guests, the plan had been for the Beaufords and Christian’s mother, aunt, and cousins to gather quietly at 11 o’clock on February 15 at the Beauford First United Methodist Church chapel and get the deed done. Afterward, there was to be a luncheon at Mill Time, with a small cake and Champagne.

But it was not to be. The very reason everyone associated with Beauford Bend and Firefly Hall had been chasing their asses so fast and furiously was a Valentine’s Day wedding that had been booked for over a year. People had been coming in for three days, and there had been showers, brunches, magic carpet rides, and every other overdone, loud commotion known to man. Beau had stayed away from it all and spent his time setting up his new workshop and having sex with Christian. Once, when she’d stopped in briefly at Beauford Bend to see the progress he’d made with the shop, he’d locked the door, and the visit hadn’t turned out to be so brief after all. He’d screwed her right against his new Sjöbergs workbench. That had been the best of both worlds. She’d come three times.

But as for the Pepto-Bismol wedding: apparently no detail had been overlooked—flowers, cake, nine course dinner for two hundred, floats, trapeze artists, and unicorns shipped in from outer space—all festooned with pink hearts, lace, and ribbons.

Everything was ready to go except, apparently, the bride. After a fashion, she was ready to go too—but not to the portable altar that had been upholstered to match the bridesmaids’ dresses and assembled in the Beauford Bend ballroom. No. On the very eve of the wedding, when she didn’t show up for the rehearsal dinner, it was discovered that she had been more of a mind to go to Mexico with one of the groomsmen and all the cash wedding gifts.

The groom had cleared out pretty quickly, taking all the parents, wedding party, and assorted guests with him, leaving Firefly Hall empty, with a bunch of uneaten food and unsmelled flowers at Beauford Bend, all paid for. According to Emory, the father of the bride, unwilling to lose everything, had packed up a cooler full of raw beef tenderloins and taken two cases of wine. His wife hadn’t even wanted that—said she couldn’t stand to think about all the trappings much less look at it.

Emory had done what she could to help them recoup some costs, less deposits—canceled the swing band, limos, and such. But there was nothing she could do about most of it, and a contract was a contract. Emory was not in the charity business, and unlike Aunt Amelia, she wasn’t going to take a loss just because a spoiled brat bride had gotten an itch that only a groomsman could scratch.

So it seemed that despite his distaste for the whole surreal World’s Fair meets matrimony, it would be Beau and Christian kneeling on the pink satin portable altar, cutting the pink heart-shaped ten layer cake, and dancing in a forest of portable trees that had been painted white and decked out with silver glitter and—wait for it—what had to be ten thousand pink roses. And ribbon, God knows ribbon. There was enough ribbon around Beauford Bend to hog-tie Gabe’s entire football team and Jackson’s band.

Gwen and the sisters-in-law were beside themselves with glee. They’d been cheated out of an extravaganza when Gabe and Neyland had run off to Las Vegas, and they weren’t about to miss this opportunity to see one of their tribe united in holy pink matrimony.

But pink birdcages with live doves for centerpieces? Really? Wouldn’t they poop and make a lot of noise?

“Look, I know it’s tacky,” Emory said. They’d all been summoned for an early morning powwow shortly after the remaining bridal party had cleared out of Firefly Hall. First they’d been given a tour of the decorated ballroom, which had left everyone pretty much speechless, and not in a good way. Now, the women were seated around the dining table in the family wing, and the men were grazing off the buffet of food that was to have been the bridesmaids’ breakfast. “A lot of it is awful. I tried to make other suggestions, but that bride had a mind of her own. But everything’s ready, and the food will be delicious. The whole staff has worked so hard it would be a shame for it to go to waste. Your marriage and your baby are blessings. We should celebrate.”

“I kind of like the decorations,” Neyland said. “Did you see all the tulle on the staircase and those hearts hanging from the chandeliers?”

“It might be a little overdone,” Hope said. “But it’s sweet in its own way.”

Beau leaned over and said to Gabe in a low voice, “Which is another way of saying it looks like a brothel.”

Gabe laughed. “When did you get to be such a snob? How do you even know what’s tacky?”

“How can you not? You were raised here the same as me.”

“I don’t care about one bit of that. And from the looks of it, neither does Christian.” Gabe put an entire mini quiche in his mouth and said around it, “Look at her.” Given Gabe’s love of talking and eating, the two were bound to occur at once from time to time. Beau didn’t point this out, as he might have done on a different occasion, but directed his eyes to where Christian sat between her mother and Abby.

Beau was well aware that he vacillated between eerily intuitive and totally obtuse, without much in between. This was one of those intuitive times.

Christian was sitting forward on the edge of her chair, eyes wide, but focusing on nothing. If ever there had been a daydream in a woman’s eyes, there was one in Christian’s. She wanted this prefab wedding—though, probably not precisely this. He couldn’t see her choosing that huge flower-covered heart surrounding the double doors of the foyer or providing guests with miniature heart-shaped bubble wands and bubbles, but maybe she thought it was better than the chapel at the church and the private dining room at Mill Time.

Wait.
Guests?
Who was going to eat all this food? And look at all this pink? And drink all that booze?

Abby was writing furiously on a pad. “I’ll invite people. I’m writing down the names I can think of. If everyone else will do that, I’ll compare the lists and make the calls.”