First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Seven

Baz’s head felt like it was full of bees.

He’d only just woken up and already he wanted to go back to bed. Well, technically, he hadn’t left bed yet, but that was beside the point. His dry mouth tasted like sweaty gym socks, his stomach lurched at the mere suggestion of sunlight coming through the opening in the curtains, and the left side of his body was unreasonably heavy.

Wait.

He opened one eye a sliver, barely enough for the sunlight to shoot spikes through his skull. His left side wasn’t heavier than usual—it was serving as a body pillow for the tempting redhead in bed next to him. A very familiar tempting redhead wearing nothing more than a plush hotel bathrobe and last night’s smudged makeup. At this angle, the generous curves of Sabrina’s breasts threatened to spill out of her loosely tied robe. She sighed happily in her sleep and snuggled closer, the movement shifting the opening of her robe.

How had he ended up in bed with Sabrina Page?

He remembered finding her in the bar, the conversation, too many glasses of Scotch. The feel of her wiggling in his lap, her breath on his neck, the little sounds she’d made against his lips when he’d kissed her .

Christ, I kissed her.

He remembered wanting to kiss her again, wanting to do more than kiss her. At some point they’d left the bar. Flashes of holding her hand as they stumbled down the sidewalk, the bite of concrete beneath his hands when he’d pushed her up against a wall and kissed her again just to hear more of those goddamn noises.

But he didn’t remember a thing after that.

How had they gone from the sidewalk to twined together in bed?

And what had happened to her clothes?

He was 96% sure he hadn’t fucked her…or maybe 83% sure. Not that he hadn’t wanted to. He remembered that hunger clear as day, the way he’d ached to touch her, to taste her everywhere, to feel her move beneath him…

And now he was hard. Fucking hell.

Warily, he lifted the sheet draped over his lower body, even though he was 75% certain they hadn’t done anything more than kiss. His belt was gone, as was his shirt and suit jacket, but his pants had stayed on.

How much trouble could they have gotten into with his dress pants on, really?

He fought the urge to stroke her hip through the terrycloth of her robe, to bury his nose in her hair and shift her closer so she could feel his hard on through their clothing. They may have reconciled, but the fact remained that he had been engaged to her sister. It was one thing to kiss Sabrina in a drunken haze, but he was pretty sure there was a rule against sleeping with your almost-sister-in-law.

Across the room, his phone, still in his suit jacket pocket slung over the arm of the pull-out couch, chimed with a series a notifications. Cursing under his breath and swearing to all gods that had ever existed that he would gut whoever had the audacity to text him at—he glanced at the alarm clock and grimaced—seven o’clock in the morning, he dragged himself out from under Sabrina’s koala grip.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he shuffled across the room and dug his phone out of the pile of discarded clothing. Beneath his suit jacket, a bright red, lacy bra lay accusingly atop his crumpled button-down shirt. He glanced back at the sleeping woman.

He would have remembered if he’d seen her naked, right? There was no way he would have forgotten something like that.

Baz swallowed down the illogical urge to climb back into bed beside her, to curl himself around her and hold her a few minutes longer. His phone chimed again as he finally opened up the group text with his friends.

Jamie: What did you do?

Gavin: Me?

Jamie: Not you. Baz.

Jamie: Are these pictures real?

Ethan: What pictures?

Gavin: There are pictures?

Jamie: At least a dozen of them.

Gavin: Pictures of what?

Ethan: Where are you seeing pictures?

Jamie: Tessa found them on Sabrina’s Instagram page.

Ethan: How does Tessa know Sabrina ?

Jamie: They met at St. Anthony’s Bazaar.

Jamie: That’s not the important part. The important part is the pictures.

Gavin: Oh, shit. There are pictures alright.

Ethan: What pictures? I don’t have Instagram.

Jamie: [link to Sabrina’s Instagram page]

Ethan: Holy shit.

Jamie: That’s what I’m saying!

Gavin: Baz!

Gavin: Wait, is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Are we supposed to be excited or worried?

Scowling at his phone, he clicked the link to Sabrina’s Instagram page and was immediately hit with a wall of photographs of the two of them from the night before. It started with an innocent-enough photo of her perched on his lap, #Reunited. The next one showed her kissing his neck, #StartingOver. In the next, they were kissing, his fingers twined in her hair and her hand wrapped around his wrist, #HeatingUp. Photo after photo of them, each one bringing back flashes of the night before, fuzzy and muted.

Their clasped hands, #BetterTogether.

A blurry selfie on the sidewalk outside the hotel, his arm looped around her neck and lips pressed to her temple, #CoupleGoals.

His hand on her thigh, right above her knee, his pinkie disappearing beneath the hem of her skirt, #Scandalous .

Then a series of photos that had obviously been taken by somebody else: Sabrina wrapped in his arms, her head thrown back in laughter and his hands low on her back, tugging her towards him, his eyes focused on her, #NewBeginnings.

Another one of them kissing, this time accompanied by a bundle of fake, faded flowers in Sabrina’s hand, #Perfect.

It was the last photo that made him nearly drop his phone.

Sabrina’s hand in his, his lips brushing her knuckles, and shiny gold bands on both of their left hands, #HusbandMaterial.

What the fuck?

He glanced down at his left hand. Why the fuck was he wearing a wedding ring?

He sank down onto the couch, digging his hand into his hair.

Holy shit .

He had married Sabrina.

Baz: Who else knows?

Ethan: That’s the first thing you say to us? You got married without any of us there!

Jamie: Who else knows? Anyone with an Instagram account, that’s who!

Gavin: I’m guessing that means we aren’t supposed to be congratulating you.

Jamie: I thought you hated Sabrina.

Gavin: Doesn’t look like he hates her anymore.

“Hey.”

Baz slid his phone into his pocket and shot to his feet, his eyes locked on Sabrina as she stretched and turned her sleepy gaze on him.

“What time is it?” she asked.

He dug his hands into his pockets and glanced at the clock. “A little after seven.”

She blinked away the last bits of sleep from her eyes and stifled a yawn behind her hand. She froze, her eyes going wide, and slowly pulled her hand away from her mouth, her gaze locked on the gold band around her finger.

“Sebastian? Why am I wearing a wedding ring?”

He held up his own left hand. “Probably the same reason I am.”

She leapt out of bed and was at his side in a second, taking his hand in hers and holding it in front of her face. “Why are you wearing a wedding ring?”

He stared at her, at the sleep-rumpled cloud of auburn hair and the soft pillow lines along her cheek, the freckles over the bridge of her nose and across her clavicle, the creamy skin visible through the opening in her robe, daring him to look at her in a way he had no right to. Even if he had married her.

She met his gaze with a wide-eyed look. “We got married ?”

He gave her a tight nod and tried to ignore the lick of hurt at her disbelief, but that incredulous look had released something wild in his chest. Some primal urge to show her how it would be if they were really married, to make her his in truth and not just in name.

“Holy shit. Did we…” She dropped his hand and pulled the robe around herself tighter, flitting her eyes back to the bed. “I mean…Did we?”

“Did we fuck?”

She winced at the harshness of his question. It was a good reminder for them both. One drunken mistake didn’t change anything. She was still the youngest daughter of one of Boston’s wealthiest families, and he was still the man who hadn’t been good enough for her sister. A set of cheap gold bands couldn’t change that.

Neither would touching her. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to. Something about seeing that ring on her finger and knowing he put it there (even if he didn’t remember doing it), something about the way her pupils dilated and her breathing grew shallow when he was near made him want to see how messy he could make her. He was no stranger to having beautiful women in his bed, but this feral feeling, this desire to mark her, to claim her, like the monster dragging the princess back to his lair, that was something new.

He liked it far too much. And judging from the heat in her eyes when she looked at him, she liked it too. Even if she shouldn’t.

He stepped closer to her, crowding her, and a thrill shot through him when she didn’t back away. Instead, she tilted her face up to him, holding his gaze with those deep green eyes.

“If we’d fucked, you’d remember,” he said, his voice low and gravelly as he dragged his gaze over her face, down the curve of her neck, to the shadow of her breasts and back again. “If we’d fucked, you’d still be able to feel me.”

She sucked in a breath, the sudden inhale pressing her terrycloth-covered chest against his. His hands fisted at his side, keeping himself from pulling her against him, to make sure she knew exactly how much of him there was to feel. She swayed closer, lips parted. It would be so easy to kiss her, to give her what they both wanted…

Except she didn’t want him. Not really. What was it she had said at the bar? Something about making her sister jealous? This was all a game to her, one he couldn’t win.

Then it’s time to stop playing.

He stepped away, turning his back on her before he could give in to the fantasy of it. He might want to kiss her, to fuck her until neither one of them could remember their names, but at some point, she’d call an end to this charade .

He’d just have to end it first.

He would not be rejected by another Page woman.

“Get dressed.” He didn’t look at her as he gathered his shirt and suit jacket and stormed off to the bathroom to change. “I don’t want to miss our flight.”