THEY MARRIED THREE days later in the apartment.
Hunter offered to plan something bigger for another time, but Amelia brushed that off. She really did believe this union would be temporary. That’s why she didn’t take him up on the offer to fly her father in for the ceremony. Tobias had only just settled into the cottage at Lake of the Woods. He sounded content, so she would tell him after the fact.
Maybe she was also punishing Tobias for putting her in this position. He wanted Peyton’s father to do the right thing? Fine. She acquiesced, but she wouldn’t let her father see it and be all smug about it.
She wouldn’t raise his expectations, then dash them in a year or two when she and Hunter admitted it wasn’t working.
She asked Hunter to keep it to a bare minimum. Vienna was their witness, along with Carina. Apparently, Remy had read Hunter’s invitation to be his best man again, but hadn’t replied. Amelia could tell he was confused when his friend ghosted him, but the ceremony went on—not that it was very ceremonial.
She kept reminding herself that it was her choice to keep it so unsentimental and bureaucratic. Unity had shown her a dozen beautiful dresses of various lengths. Amelia had settled on a muted yellow pantsuit that Unity persuaded her to dress up with a satin camisole and a few sprigs of baby’s breath in her hair.
Even that much froufrou nonsense bothered Amelia. She couldn’t help recalling the vineyard and the string trio, the multitude of guests and linen-draped seats and the pavilion of fine china. That vision carved a hollow cavern into the pit of her stomach. Not because she wanted that. Not really. A thrown-together civil union would have been completely satisfying if she was marrying someone she loved, but she and Hunter didn’t have that. That was the reason she felt cheated and unattached to anything that happened today.
Maybe if they had spent the last three days getting to know each other she might have felt differently, but they’d only come together for meals, and invariably someone had joined them. He had constantly been taking calls or meeting with strangers whom he would introduce very casually as, “Your driver while we’re here,” or “She’s with the nanny agency. They’re pulling some candidates together.”
Amelia had been equally busy and inundated with decisions. Did she like this cut of neckline? Would she rather have her hair corrected to brunette or re-streaked to blond? Which brand of crib would she prefer for Peyton, and was there anything she needed from the house in Goderich?
She had left the penthouse only once for a visit to the doctor. She took Peyton because she was due for her first immunizations. That left the infant fussy and running a low-grade fever. Amelia had opted for an IUD, so she had cramps and was up with Peyton half a dozen times in the night.
Hunter came in at four, concerned that Peyton wasn’t settling. He took her and walked her until she cried herself out, allowing Amelia to finally get some sleep.
They both had sunken eyes and a distinct lack of spirit as they repeated their vows.
When the officiant pronounced them husband and wife and urged, “You may kiss if you wish,” Amelia felt teary, and not in a good way. She was still angry about all of this. She was sad that her life had become so much less than she had wanted for herself. She felt cheated and raw and second-best.
Why had she agreed to this?
Hunter’s strong hand cupped her cheek and his mouth slanted across her own. It was a chaste kiss, but the warmth of his palm brought heat to the surface of her skin. The brush of his lips made hers buzz with subtle electricity that pulsed in signals down her throat, through her heart and into her loins. Her lips unconsciously caught at his, wanting him to linger.
The tip of his tongue brushed the seam of her mouth, and she opened to welcome a deeper kiss. A more thorough seal of their mouths and their union. His touch on her arm firmed, and her hand fisted into his jacket. She ran the other up and behind his neck. His arm went behind her back and crushed her into the hard wall of his chest.
This, she thought distantly, as desire swept through her like fire through dry grass. This was why she had agreed. She wanted the sex, too. She wanted the run of his palm to her lower back and the shift of his body so she felt the brush of his growing erection against her stomach. She wanted to be wanted.
But even as she melted, Hunter abruptly lifted his head, setting Amelia back a step. He checked his mouth for smudged lipstick.
She pretended to care about her hair and used her raised elbow to hide whatever hurt might be showing in her expression. Then she sat to sign all the paperwork including a form to have Hunter added to Peyton’s birth certificate.
She took Peyton from Vienna while they had their photo taken and accepted congratulations and sipped champagne when it was handed to her.
“It’s a shame you didn’t have time to get Peyton’s passport sorted. A proper honeymoon would have been nice,” Vienna said as they ate a light brunch. “The cabin is off-grid, though. At least no one will bother you there.”
“I’ve never seen the Rockies. I’m looking forward to it,” Amelia said politely. She had never seen Greece, either, but she was glad not to be subbing into the honeymoon Hunter had planned with Eden. “What time do we have to be at the airport?” she asked Hunter, already dreading the long flight with Peyton.
“The plane is ready when we are,” he said absently.
That wasn’t an answer, but she bit back saying so.
A short while later, they said goodbye to their few guests. Amelia combed out her hair and changed into more comfortable travel clothes. When she came downstairs, Hunter was putting Peyton into her car seat.
“Ready?”
“No,” she said with frustration. “I packed the diaper bag, but now I can’t find it. Did you put it somewhere?”
“Everything has gone ahead. I’ve got the ticking time bomb—Yes, I know you hate being in this thing,” he said patiently to Peyton as she squawked a complaint. “It’s only a few minutes. I promise.”
“I usually put my phone and wallet into it,” Amelia grumbled, looking at both in her hands.
Unity had supplied her with a number of accessories, so she fetched a small purse with a long strap and only noticed the monogramed design after the fact. Goodness, the purse was worth ten times the amount of cash she was ever likely to carry in it.
She hurried to join Hunter on the elevator. “This doesn’t feel right. The two times I went south for vacation, I was weighed down with bags and the stress of whether I had my passport and tickets. Do you use one of those first-class concierge services I’ve only heard about?”
The doors opened onto the roof, where a helicopter waited.
“Something like that,” Hunter said drily.
The helicopter whisked them over the midday traffic to a private jet that was, indeed, waiting for them at the island airport.
Amelia had only seen planes like this in movies about drug lords and corrupt politicians. The interior was styled like a comfortable one-bedroom apartment with a king-size bed in a stateroom. The galley held a real stove, and the main salon had armchairs, a sofa, a big-screen television and a dining area toward the back. The decor was all polished wood and gleaming chrome.
The flight attendant brought champagne and gave Amelia the Wi-Fi code, instructing her to ring for anything she needed. After they got under way, she hung a swing seat for Peyton, but Peyton didn’t care for it. Hunter wound up holding her. He urged Amelia to lie down in the stateroom, which she did, and she had the best nap of her life.
When they landed in Calgary, they hopped onto another smaller plane that took them to Banff. Only then did they travel by road—in a tricked-out four-wheel-drive SUV. A young man handed Hunter a key fob, and Hunter drove them through a winding route onto roads that weren’t well-marked, but he seemed to know where he was going. Peyton must have been as enthralled with the scenery as Amelia, because she stayed quiet the whole way.
They arrived at massive iron gates that Hunter opened with a touch of a button on his phone. He parked in front of a stone structure that was no modest cabin. It wasn’t even a chalet. It was a castle with split levels and a round tower, angled roofs and massive windows that reflected the surrounding granite peaks.
“Why do you call this a cabin?” She had expected something far more rustic.
“It was a log home when my father bought it. He called this the cabin, and the lake house was the cottage, so we knew where we were going on vacation. Irina tore down the cabin and built this monstrosity about eight years ago. Way over budget, obviously. Vi and I still call it the cabin because we’re very mature. But I told you it was a real house.”
He hadn’t told her it was a palace with staff. The caretakers were a young couple who volunteered on the ski patrol in the winter, “For the free ski pass,” Kyra confided over her shoulder with a cheeky grin.
She showed Amelia into a room converted to a nursery, where Amelia put down the sleeping Peyton.
“I can listen for her if you and Mr. Waverly want to relax. There’s a short walk down to a viewpoint. It has a picnic table. I could throw together a happy hour basket in five minutes if you like.”
It hit her that she was Mrs. Waverly. That’s why this young woman was treating her with deference even though Amelia was younger than she was and was technically still a jobless student.
“I’ll, um, ask Hunter what he wants to do.” She peeked into the hall.
Mr. Waverly had gone to change his shirt because Peyton spit up on him during the flight.
The double doors to the master suite were closed, and she almost knocked before entering, then slipped inside like a thief because she definitely did not belong here.
The room was huge with hardwood floors and a vaulted ceiling. There was a sitting area with a box window that thrust out, creating an impression of being suspended over the tree-filled valley where the turquoise line of a river snaked in the bottom of the crevice.
Hunter emerged from the walk-through closet that seemed to lead to what looked like a massive bathroom. He was shrugging on his shirt, fixing the collar. He froze when he saw her.
“Kyra said she would listen for Peyton if we want to go for a walk.”
“We can do that.” He finished straightening his collar, then lifted his head, eyelids growing heavy over his steady gaze. “If you want.”
His voice dropped several octaves, hitting her like a stimulating vibration between her thighs.
She swallowed and looked to the window. Hugged herself. She was nervous about the sex, mostly because she was so eager. Embarrassingly eager. What if it was awful? What if they were married and stuck with each other and that night last year had been a combination of moonlight and ovulation?
“How long will she sleep?” he asked.
“An hour?” If they were lucky.
“Do you want to lock the door?” His voice was making her scalp tighten. All of her skin had grown sensitized. Nerve endings prickled beneath the surface. The air in her lungs thinned.
“I do, but—” She didn’t move except to squinch up her eyes in a cringe of self-consciousness. “I don’t know how it will be. My body is different. I’m worried it won’t be good.”
“I’m not.” He spoke right in front of her.
She snapped her eyes open to see him reaching past her to click the lock.
“If something doesn’t feel good, we’ll stop and find something that does. For instance, that kiss the other day...” He cupped her face. “Felt very, very good.”
“It did,” she whispered, and watched his mouth come closer.
Then his lips were brushing hers, capturing. Her hands found his neck and the crisp line where the fade of his haircut met the hollow at the base of his skull. In seconds, they were back in that passionate kiss, and she was lost.
They both groaned, and he shifted his hands to the door behind her, flattening her there with the press of his body.
She gasped as she felt the shape of his erection press against her stomach.
“Yeah,” he said against her ear, nuzzling her neck in a way that weakened her knees. “I think this new body of yours is really freaking hot.”
She couldn’t help but slide her hands beneath the open edges of his shirt to explore the warm skin of his torso. She followed the ripples of his rib cage and found the lines of muscles in his lower back on either side of his spine. As they continued to kiss, she crept her touch back to the hard beads of his nipples.
He sucked in a harsh breath and lifted his head, pressing his hips into her, nostrils flaring as he looked down at her. He cupped her chin again.
“I’m trying to take this slow,” he admonished through his teeth.
A thrill of power went through her, giving her the confidence to hold his gaze as she deliberately pushed back on him with the thrust of her hips, gently crushing her pelvic bone into his erection.
He made a supremely sexy sound, eyelids flinching before he swooped, gathering her up like she weighed nothing. Her stomach dipped and her head floated. She blinked and clung around his neck, trying to get her bearings, but she was disconcerted by his strength and the razor-sharp lines that had come into his intense expression.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked in surprise.
“In the best possible way, yes,” he said grittily as he placed her on the bed. “Brace for payback.”
Oh. She scooted to sit and drew her knees up. “I should, um, tell you that the doctor said I might need lubri—”
He withdrew a tube from the night table.
All her sexy feelings fell off a cliff. “Kept that handy for Eden, did you?”
“No.” He scowled. “I did my research. You think I wasn’t interested in how soon a woman can have sex after a baby?” He caught her ankle and tugged.
She let him drag her down onto her back and remove one sock, but had to say, “I’m a little nervous. It’s been a while for me, and you’ve been having sex with someone else—”
“I haven’t.” He threw her sock away and removed the other.
“But—” She was surprised. She let him pull her bottom all the way to the edge of the bed. “Sorry, I just assumed. You were engaged.”
“She wanted to wait until we were married. Now quit talking about her.”
She set her hands on the sides of his head, needing him to look her in the eye. “Is that true?”
“Yes. You’re the last woman I slept with, okay?” There was such banked discomfort in his eyes as he revealed that, she couldn’t doubt it.
“Okay,” she said dumbly.
He threw off his shirt and dropped his trousers, his hurry implying it had been a while for him. She hid a smile at that thought and let him dispense with the fly on her wide-legged trousers. She lifted her hips so he could more easily peel them off her hips, then sat up to pull her shirt over her head.
He studied her as he absently dropped her clothes atop his own.
She bit her lip as he looked her over. Unity had bought her matching underwear with nursing bras that were a lot prettier than the boring white cotton ones she had gotten for herself. This one was gray satin with pink rickrack and a closure between her breasts that she found a lot more convenient than the strap snap of her old bras.
“I’m afraid to take this off,” she said truthfully. “I don’t want to spoil the mood if they decide to misbehave, but maybe a quick look?” She teasingly opened the cups to expose the heavy swells and the deep cleavage between.
“I think I have a kink for denial.” He groaned as he sank to his knees between her feet. His gaze never left her chest. He grazed his tickling touch from her hips up her waist, making her nipples sting before he stole the edges of the cups from her fingers.
With great tenderness, he pressed a kiss to each inner swell, pooling his hot breath against her skin as he promised, “Another time.”
He took great care securing the cups closed, then he made a noise of concern as he traced his fingertip up the flame-shaped mark on her abdomen. “Stretch marks?”
“Yes.” She started to cover it with her hand, but he brushed her hand aside and gave her sternum a light nudge, encouraging her to lie back. He kissed and nuzzled along the marks, smoothing his lips across her abdomen and licking suggestively against the narrow waistband at her hip, then against her bikini line.
She was still a little tender from being waxed the other day, but when he opened his mouth and scraped his teeth over the silk covering her mound, such an exquisite spear of sensation went through her she nearly leaped straight up in the air.
“Hurt?” His eyes were laughing at her.
“No.” But her legs had turned to jelly. Quivering jelly as they tried to decide if they wanted to clamp onto his torso or relax open for him.
“Do these have to stay on for some special reason?” He hooked his finger in the gray lace against her hip.
Only because it was daylight, rather than the shadowy intimacy of midnight.
“You can take them off if you want to,” she said, voice husky with nerves.
“I do want to. Lift your hips.”
He peeled the silk away, then stroked his hands up and down her thighs. Her stomach jumped and quivered, and her muscles trembled. When his thumbs came up to gently caress on either side of her sex, her folds grew heavy and hot and sensitized. She groaned and tried to twist.
“Do you want my mouth here? Because I’m dying to taste you again.” The pad of his thumb was tracing a line, barely, barely touching her. The most agitated, excited point on her body felt each pass of his fingerprint like a lightning strike.
“I do,” she admitted with a pang.
He drew her ankle onto his shoulder, kissing the inside of her calf. “Do you think of that night?”
“Yes,” she sobbed, throwing her arm over her eyes.
“What do you do when you think of it?” His mouth was traveling to the inside of her knee, arriving at the thin skin of her inner thigh. “Show me,” he coaxed.
She was dying. Keeping her eyes hidden by one forearm, she slid her free hand down to relieve the ache he was stoking.
He groaned and his hair brushed her leg, then his mouth was against her, displacing and replacing her fingertip. His thumb circled her entrance, then eased in.
“Okay?”
“Yes,” she groaned, digging her heel into his back and lifting her hips, losing herself to the sort of pleasure she hadn’t known she could feel until she had met him. She had fooled around here and there. She wasn’t a strict virgin, but that had been a biology class. This was...
She groaned out her enjoyment.
It was earthy. Erotic. Carnal in the way he turned her body into one receptive nerve ending. Filthy in the way he held her thighs open. Exquisitely pleasurable as climax swept up suddenly and crashed across her.
She realized belatedly that a cry had been torn from her throat. Had Kyra heard her? She might wake Peyton. Hunter didn’t let that stop him. He aroused her anew, making it impossible for her to find breaths that didn’t scrape and shake. Her breasts ached and her skin burned and a terrible, needy emptiness gripped her.
She licked lips that were dry from panting. “I want you inside me.”
He turned his head and opened his mouth on her thigh, biting softly against the tendon there. Then he kissed her stomach and along the underside of her bra, her sternum and her collarbone and her chin.
“I don’t think you’re going to need this, but let’s be sure.” He reached for the lube and kicked away his boxers before smearing some on his erection with blatant confidence, fascinating her as she watched.
Then he lined himself up and played his glistening tip against her, pressing with incremental pressure at her entrance.
“It’s okay,” she gasped. There was a small pinch, no worse than their first time, which had had this same quality of hot friction and gratifying stretch.
As he filled her, the deep intimacy of the act made her eyes sting. This was the most vulnerable she’d ever felt, lying beneath him with his flesh inside her, but also the most alive and animalistic and, when he gently brushed her hair from the corner of her mouth, cherished.
“No condom,” he said shakily. “I may not last long.”
“I’ll try to keep up.”
“Do.” He kissed her softly once, then more deeply, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.
She shifted so he sank a fraction deeper, and he grunted with pleasure. Then he gathered her beneath him and watched her as he withdrew and returned.
“Okay?”
“Yes,” she breathed, tracing his ear and arching sensuously. “It feels really good.”
“It does.” He combed a hand into her hair and kissed her deeply, moving with more purpose. “Really good.”
They were made for this, she thought as she began to meet his thrusts, matching the pace he set. They were made for each other, because she was suddenly approaching another peak.
“Hunter—”
He paused.
“No, don’t stop. Never stop,” she gasped, so close. Almost there. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
“Damn, woman.” He kept thrusting, increasing his power.
Another profound orgasm rolled through her, nearly painful in the strength of her contractions, but so good she could only moan her pleasure.
“I thought I remembered this wrong.” He made a sound between gratification and suffering as he gathered her and rolled her so she was above him.
For a few moments, she could only remain splayed atop him, nuzzling her nose into the crook of his neck while his hands stroked over her back and hips and backside.
He remained a pulsing presence inside her, so hard she couldn’t help tightening around him. Soon he was subtly lifting his hips, and the pressure and slight friction brought her senses awake all over again.
She rose to sit straddled across him and roamed her hands over his chest, luxuriating in the right to do this.
His lips were pulled back against his teeth gritted in control. His hands firmed their grip on her hips as he urged her to ride him.
She did, watching through the screen of her lashes. The tendons in his neck stood out along with a vein on his arm. He might leave fingerprints on her buttocks, he was so fully in the grip of near orgasm.
“Let go,” she urged, wanting to feel it, to watch him. She wanted to know she could make him unravel the way he kept devastating her.
“You first,” he said in a voice so tight it was nearly menacing. He swept his thumb in and down, pressing between them so she couldn’t escape the pressure as she rode him.
She didn’t want to escape. Everything fell away except that pinpoint of exquisite sensation where he penetrated her. Her flesh tightened around him and shot shivering waves through the rest of her body.
“Hunter—” As her pleasure rose, she dug her nails into his chest and the marble-hard strength of his forearm. This shouldn’t be happening again, but it was. She was nearly there. She lost her rhythm and ground herself against him, needing that. Him. Deep and hard within her as sparks danced behind her eyes and culmination reached up like a hand to grab her.
It was him. His hand caught behind her neck and drew her down so they were kissing. Her cry was muffled by his own sharp groan as they shattered in unison.