“Brae, how drunk are you?”
I smiled up at him. My friend was so tall. Gorgeous too. I mean, his eyes were insane. And his jawline. Woo. Roman rarely shaved, but he did tonight, and I couldn’t stop myself from touching his smooth cheek with my fingers. His eyes darkened and yet appeared so clear and bright. How could that be? It felt like a contradiction, but it was exactly how he was looking at me. But that was neither here nor there. Unless he was in his underwear. I choked out a laugh at myself. Oh wait, he asked me a question. What was it?
My face twisted up as I worked my memory. “How drunk am I?”
His fingers found the delicate skin at the back of my neck, and I involuntarily shivered.
“Yes, pretty girl. How drunk are you?”
“On a scale of one to ten? I don’t know. About a ten point five, so I guess I’m rounding up to eleven. What about you?”
“An eight. I’m a solid eight. So that means we’re drunk and shouldn’t get married.”
“But this is Vegas,” I whined, feeling a little hurt by his blatant rejection. Why did he always reject me?
“I don’t always reject you,” he said, hurt flashing in his eyes, and oops, I guess I was musing aloud. But with that, his eyes softened, and his body shifted, holding me closer. “I don’t want to be your regret.”
Adam was my regret. Roman was the dessert worth every calorie.
“They dared us. I’ve never turned down a dare in my life. I think we have to do it.”
“You think we have to get married because people who work for me dared us to?”
I couldn’t tell if his question was rhetorical or incredulous or genuinely asking. “Well, yeah. Right? They said we belong together. Maybe we do. I’m starting to live my new life. Let’s be wild. Let’s be reckless. Let’s get married.”
His eyes searched mine even as they swirled with color from the overhead lights. “There are a million reasons we shouldn’t do this. But looking at you right now, I can’t think of one.”
A weird flutter rolled through me. What was I thinking? Still, I didn’t want to back down.
“You honestly want to get married? Because I’ll say yes and then you’ll wake up married to me.”
My hand moves across my body until it connects with my other. Hard metal and bumpy ridges are on my left hand. Diamonds. There are diamonds on my left hand. On my ring finger.
My eyes snap open, and I spring up, my robe falling open, but I don’t care because all I can do is stare down at the row of large diamonds banded around my finger.
“Roman!” I scream as I scramble out of bed. Thankfully, I remember to close my gaping robe because I’m only in panties beneath it. “Roman!”
I fly out of my bedroom just as he comes racing into it, and we smash into each other.
“Ow!” I step back and rub my shoulder. “Do you have to have so many muscles? They hurt.”
He’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt and looks sweaty. How could he work out at a time like this?
“I take it you remembered that you married me last night.”
I blink up at him, only to flip down to his left hand that’s perched on his hip. He has a black band on it. “It’s real, right?”
“Yep. We closed the place down. We were their last wedding of the night. You were so relieved we made it in time.”
“Oh my god!” I cover my face with my hands. Then I laugh. Kind of loud and a lot hysterical. “Oh my god!”
“Yep.”
“Did we kiss? I don’t remember the ceremony. Well, not a lot of it. Some of it. I was in my blue dress, and we said our vows and… oh hell. I threw myself at you and kissed you. Didn’t I?”
“You kind of missed,” he tells me with some amusement in his tone. “You got more chin than lips.”
My hands fall to my sides, and the room sways with it. Fuck, I’m so hungover. And when the room sways again, I hold up a finger, telling him I need a minute, and race for the bathroom. I make it just in time to lift the lid and empty everything in my stomach into the toilet. It’s awful. Alcohol retching is the worst, which is why I haven’t had enough alcohol to induce it since college. Ugh.