Chapter Forty-Nine
DREW
She was breathtaking—beyond anything I could have conjured in my mind, and I had to shuffle my stance, push my shoulders back, raise my chin and swallow the emotion in my throat as I held my hands together in front of me and waited.
Her blonde hair was a relaxed halo around her body—a body that carried my child and made me love her in ways I could never have imagined loving her.
The dress she wore hung in all the right places, showing me her strong, slender arms, her tanned skin, and just enough cleavage to make me contemplate ditching the wedding just so I could drag her back to her our room and ruin her.
Fucking perfect.
I had to swallow again, the world around me fading away until all I could see was the glow of lights from the bikes lining the aisle, and my woman. My savior. My soon-to-be-wife.
Whatever I’d done in life to deserve this moment, I would be forever grateful for it.
My slow rising smile soon turned into a grin of disbelief as she grew closer, her eyes locked on mine.
Get here to me, darlin’. Let’s live this good life.
It was like she read my mind. Her smile was brighter than the Texas summer sun and filled with happiness and love that was aimed directly at me.
The closer she got, the more I struggled to hold onto my emotions.
I wanted to run my hands through her hair, drag her to me and hold her there forever, in our forever—a forever no one could ever touch now.
It took a different kind of forever for her to reach me, and when she did, I sucked in a breath and held it in my chest as I watched Deeks and Tate take turns to kiss her cheeks and hide their need to cry like babies, too. When Ayda turned back to me, her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.
Stepping forward, I reached out to take her hands in mine, any cool I’d ever possessed gone as I broke the rules, pulled her to me, and pressed my lips to hers in a slow, sentimental kiss I needed to take for nobody else but myself.
The men around us cheered, but I couldn’t hear a word a single one of them said.
Ayda relaxed into me, the hand not holding the flowers rising to run over my cheek as she returned the kiss with just as much enthusiasm. When she slowly pulled away, she kept her eyes closed, and her smile was bright.
Then she unleashed the sea of blue on me. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Fuck, hi,” I whispered right back, a wave of laughter rising from the crowd, no doubt at my toothy grin. “You look sensational. Out of this world.”
A single tear escaped the corner of her eye. “You stole my line.”
I held her hand in the air and took a step back, looking her up and down like I wanted to eat her… because I really fucking did. So many things ran through my mind. I wanted to ask her how she’d made it possible to look better than she did whenshe was riding my dick, but I was trying really hard to keep this moment semi-pure for her. A fairy tale. The dream she deserved. The start of a brand new chapter and adventure for both of us.
“I could fuck you right here, right now,” I let slip.Dammit.
She let out a quiet laugh, her cheeks turning pink as her own hunger flared in her baby blues. “How about you marry me first. Maybe later, you’ll get lucky.”
Tate’s groan of disgust only made my smile brighter as I stared at Ayda, giving her those bedroom eyes of mine she told me turned her legs to jelly.
“I’m already lucky,” I told her, lowering her arm down and bringing her to my side to place a kiss on her forehead.
A rough cough forced out to grab our attention came from the officiant in front of us, and I looked up to find a familiar face smirking back at me as he stood there under an iron arch, which was covered in leafy twigs. His hands were clasped in front of him, and it was nice to see him wearing a suit that made him look more human than cowboy.
“Let me know when you’re ready. It’s not like I’ve nowhere else to be,” Sutton mocked, his brow rising high.
“If you weren’t the man about to marry us, you know where I’d tell you to go, don’t you?”
“I have a feeling it would begin with F and end in—”
“That’s right,” I interrupted on a laugh, squeezing Ayda’s hand in mine one last time and taking another look at her. The two of us had chosen Sutton to go through the ordeal of becoming ordained. He was the only man among our family committed and intelligent enough to pull it off without any swearing involved—although he almost came close.
“You ready?” I asked Ayda softly.
“I’ve been ready for a long time.”
“God, me too, darlin’.”