Beautiful Beginning(35)

            Excitement, lust, and the thrill of anger blurred the edges of my vision. “What the fuck do you mean by my condescending ass? Maybe if you’d put as much effort into your personality as you did into behaving like a raging bitch all the time, I would have been a little more pleasant to be around!”

            “Ha! And by pleasant, do you mean bringing you your coffee and stupid little chocolate Danishes and pretending not to notice the way you were staring at my tits?”

            “Maybe I wouldn’t have stared at your tits if they weren’t in my face all the time.”

            “Maybe they wouldn’t have been in your face all the time if you didn’t call me into your little hellhole of an office for every little thing. ‘Miss Mills, I can’t read the handwriting on this expense report. Miss Mills, I specifically asked that these documents be collated by ascending date, not descending. Miss Mills, I’ve dropped my pen, perhaps you could bend over and retrieve it from the floor near my chair because I’m a giant fucking pervert!’”

            “I never said that last one!” I shouted.

            She got right in my face, breasts pressed to my chest and eyes full of fire as she met mine. “But you thought it.”

            Fuck yes I did. “I also thought about firing you about seven hundred and fifteen times. Let’s hope I made the right choice not acting on that instinct, too.”

            “You are such an egotistical asshole,” she growled.

            “And you’re still a man-eating shrew!” I shouted back. And God, this was so familiar and felt so fucking good, it was exactly what we needed. I wanted to throw her down, pin her to the sand, and tear through her clothes so I could bite and mark the skin underneath.

            I pushed a hand into her hair and she knocked it away, gripping the fabric of my shirt instead to pull me down, kissing me too hard and for too long and with way more tongue than was appropriate considering where we were. A fact I’d only become aware of as the sound of catcalls and horrified apologies began to float around us.

            “Oh, my,” I heard someone say.

            “I think . . . I think they’ve had a lot of stress in the past few weeks,” my mother murmured.

            “Jesus this is awkward,” said someone else.

            “Are they just going to have sex right here or . . . ?” That one was definitely George.

            “Who called today?” Henry asked. “Will? Was it you?”

            By now, Chloe had wrestled me down to the ground and was starting to climb onto my lap.

            “Okay!” My father’s voice cut through and I straightened onto one knee, trying to disentangle my hands from Chloe’s hair and hers from my belt. “I think we’re good here. Kristin? The cars should be out front; it’s time for the rehearsal dinner. Let’s go, everyone!”





                     Chapter Five



I felt like my skin was going to ignite. Bennett sat beside me in the car, scrolling through emails on his phone, as calm as he’d ever been in his life. After the rehearsal exploded into chaos and dry humping at the altar, I’d gone upstairs to change, splash some water on my face, and take a few minutes to collect my sanity. But once I was back beside him, I wanted to find something else to yell at him about. I wanted to get into another huge, knock-down, drag-out fight. Unfortunately for us, fighting meant sex and we’d both agreed to the stupid fucking abstinence rule.

            Instead, we sat in heavy silence, the memory of the disastrous rehearsal sitting between us like a thick fog.

            He cleared his throat and without looking at me, asked, “Did you bring your pills?”