Bad Boy's Bridesmaid (4 page)

Even if I never
took her again, I refused to let her regret the night we had.

“It’s been a
month,” I said. “That’s too fucking long.”

Mandy shook her
head. Waves of dark hair fell in front of her face. I brushed her cheek to
chase the ebony locks away. She stopped me before my hand caressed the soft
angle of her jaw.

The best
decisions were made from my gut.

The fun choices
came from the twitch of my cock.

I pulled her
into my embrace. Her eyes locked on mine. She meant to chastise me, but even
she couldn’t hide what simmered in her stare. It stirred everything inside me,
and that desire was dangerous.

I shouldn’t have
wanted her so badly.

I had no idea
why I did.

“I’m not
sleeping with you again,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

Her words
trembled. “The first time caused enough trouble.”

“The second time
can cause even more.”

“Not sure that’s
physically possible.”

She squirmed. I
let her go, but she lingered. Too close. Her hand trailed over my skin, and
every touch shot bolts of pure adrenaline through my body, tearing through what
wasn’t ravaged with a surge of desire.

I had a bed. I
had a beautiful woman.

And she threaded
her fingers into the tie around my neck. My breathing stilled. I’d take a leash
or a whipping from this woman, and it didn’t matter as long as it was her
delivering that pain or pleasure.

She gave me
neither.

She wove the tie
into a perfect knot, tightening it until it fit around my bare neck. I
hardened, ready and willing to follow this woman wherever she led.

I hoped it was
to the bed.

“I have to make
it through this wedding,” she said. “There’s a lot of pressure on me to help.
My parents can’t stand each other, and Lindsey is going insane—”

“I know a good
way to cope with the stress.”

“You’re making
it
worse
.”

I leaned in as
her fingers curled around the tie. Our foreheads touched, and I breathed in the
sweet vanilla scent of her.

Fuck, did she
always smell this good? Look this good? Feel this soft?

Something about
her was more tempting than before. It wasn’t a
need
for her. I actually
hurt
.
My thoughts bled into a headache, my fingers cramped against the urge to throw
her on the bed, and my cock would split if she didn’t drop to her knees and
kiss away the strain.

A man could
dream.

Mandy’s voice
steadied. “We can’t do it again.”

“You know this
hard-to-get game just makes me hard.”

“Let’s talk
after the wedding, okay?” She bit her lip. I ducked down to taste it. Denied. “We’ll
see if you still want me.”

“I can’t last
two months before fucking you again.”

“I think after
two months you’ll want out. I’m pretty sure you will.”

“Baby, I’m like
a man stranded in the desert…” My lips grazed her cheek. She couldn’t hide the
shiver. “I’m dying for something
wet
.”

She tightened
the knot and jammed it into my neck. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I’d love something
sweet too.” I grinned, even as she tried to choke me. “
Creamy
.”

“We’re done here.”
Mandy pulled away before I could capture her lips in a kiss. Next time I
wouldn’t be so slow. “I’m not sleeping with you again, Nate.”

“Baby, we
wouldn’t get
any
sleep.”

“I’m serious. I
need space. I can’t handle the wedding preparation and work and my family
and…you at the same time.”

I loosened the
tie, imagining how beautiful she’d look with it binding her hands over her
head. But then she couldn’t touch me, couldn’t wrap around me.

Other girls
might have made it interesting, but I wanted to be held, caressed, and fucked
by Mandy as much as I planned to do the same to her.

I stared at her,
wanting nothing more than to kiss her back into a smile. “Something about you
is irresistible to me now.”

“That’s because
you can’t have me.”

“That’s not it.
I already had you. I should be satisfied.”

Mandy’s mouth
popped open. “I didn’t
satisfy
you?”

I laughed. “You
did more than that. I’ve never had a fuck like you. I don’t think I will again
until I lay you down and get those panties off. So fair warning, baby. Once
isn’t enough. It will never be enough. You’re a sweet addiction, but there’s no
vice in wanting you. The only sin would be denying what we need.”

She shook her
head. “You have no idea the trouble it will cause.”

“The only thing
I love more than trouble is a good fuck.” And the only thing better than a good
fuck was doing it again. I loosened the tie and tossed it onto the bed. She was
lucky I didn’t lay her down next to it. “I’m not going to stop until I take you
again.”

“And then what?”

I should have
shown her. She baited me, like she didn’t believe how badly I ached to fill
her.

The only way
she’d understand was if I took her again, but I wasn’t a man to beg. Next time,
she’d come to
me
, and I’d reward her for every second of her bravery.

“And then I’ll
fuck you until you realize you never should have run.”

Coconut cake.

Why did it have
to be coconut cake?

Even the
chocolate wasn’t sitting right. Or the marble. Or the carrot.

Or the water.
The air. The car ride to the cake tasting.

Morning sickness
came at all times of the day, and it didn’t mix well with the apprehension of
holding the cake tasting at Nate’s pub,
Arrogance
. Of course he
graciously
volunteered his bar for a private event, opening the doors before his regular
hours.

He did it to see
me. He wasn’t giving up.

And I might have
been flattered if it weren’t for the secret hanging over my head.

Mom wasn’t happy
about being seen in a bar before nightfall, but the ivory balloons and flowers
Nate used to decorate was a stroke of genius. She overlooked the dark woods,
leather seats, and huge selection of specialty brews on tap because he pampered
Lindsey.

For that, I
supposed I could be nice too. Except I had no idea what to do while he leaned
against his bar. The green-eyed miscreant offered me a seat at the counter,
close to him. He wanted to sample the sweets together.

That only made
the nausea worse.

My life wasn’t
flashing before my eyes anymore; it was hurling into the toilet as discreetly
as I could hide it without my family assuming I was pregnant. Of course, when
Mom heard me at home, she patted my cheek with an encouraging
good job
.

At least I could
please my mother with a fictitious eating disorder. God forbid we had a size-ten
bridesmaid.

Curves were for roads,
not strapless dresses.

But coconut
didn’t have a place in my life
before
I got pregnant. Now it exacted
some sort of tropical revenge for every disparaging remark I ever made about the
nut.

Fruit?

Hellspawn
.

The flakes
crusting the top of the cake squeaked over my teeth. I took one bite, shuddered
as the stringy flecks lodged in my throat, and tried to choke it down.

My stomach flipped.

This wasn’t
good.

“What do we all
think?” Mom clapped her hands. “Write it down. Come on, quickly now. We have
two dozen more cake samples to go.”

Now my stomach
flopped.

Twenty
more pieces of
cake? I couldn’t even watch Food Network this morning. Who the hell inflicted
this type of torture on their family
or
local bakery?

Lindsey slapped
my arm. “You aren’t writing anything down! I need your input! This is
the
most important decision for the reception!”

She’d said the
same for the music, the venue, the dress…

I blinked,
staring at the grid paper in front of me. The cake samples were labeled
numerically, and a dozen columns stretched across the page. Each box held a
specific set of criteria for judgment—decorations, flavor, color, texture,
consistency, sweetness, frosting thickness, exclusivity, trendiness,
melt-ability, memorability, champagne compliments, and how likely the flavor
profile would match Lindsey’s chosen wedding theme, Fairytales in Heaven.

I wondered if I
could add my own—how fun it’d be to smoosh in my sister’s face.

But Lindsey
handed us tiny pencils without erasers, so I had to behave. Mom smacked my
wrist as I tried to doodle in a score.

“Don’t hold your
pencil like that, you’ll give yourself arthritis. Men don’t like gangly hands.”

This was why I
typed everything, but Mom said I’d get a hunch back from the keyboard anyway. I
gritted my teeth. The frustration swirled in my stomach. I stood up too fast.

“Where are you
going?” Lindsey pointed her pencil at me. “Eat the damn cake, Mandy! I can’t do
this without you!”

“I just…” Words
nauseated me too. “Bathroom. Mark a big
no
for me on the coconut.”

Lindsey dropped
her fork. “So
that’s
how it’s going to be?”

I shimmied from
the table, easing as far from the reeking cake as I could manage without
drawing suspicion. “I didn’t like that one.”

“So you’re
completely disregarding the other
eleven
sections of criteria because
you don’t like the
flavor?
We can’t ignore how perfectly this cake would
match the dress! It looked
heavenly
!”

Bryce shrugged.
“We can order the other cakes to be white and coconut, babe.”

“For the last
time!” Lindsey burst into tears. “It’s
ivory!
”

Nate couldn’t
resist making my life harder. “Wait…you actually wanted us to score this,
Linds?”

He pointed me to
the bathroom while Lindsey raged. I slammed the door behind me as my sister’s
wail turned into a threat to shove the rest of the cakes down Nate’s throat.

Coconut tasted
as bad coming up as it did going down. I did the best I could and tried to keep
quiet. At least the bar’s bathrooms were surprisingly clean. I remembered
Nate’s disaster of a bedroom from when we were kids. At least he grew up and
started taking care of his property.

It almost gave
me…hope?

Sitting punked
out on a bar’s bathroom floor gave a woman a lot to think about.

This wasn’t rock
bottom yet, but it wasn’t far under my tush. If I wanted to hide the pregnancy,
I’d have to stop getting sick so often or come up with a better excuse. I’d
only get a couple days’ mileage out of the stomach flu. After that, I’d have to
be more creative. Food poisoning. Dysentery?  Once I used all the illnesses I
could remember from playing The Oregon Trail, maybe I’d pretend I was shooting
up. My family would probably accept drug use over an unexpected, unwed
pregnancy.

Especially since
Nate was…not like the Prescotts or Washingtons.

If our families
weren’t pleased that Nate abandoned his calling to open a microbrewery and bar,
they definitely wouldn’t like that we accidentally mixed pale ale with a dark
stout.

Not that Nate
would take the news well either, though I didn’t think it’d matter to him what
color the baby was…just that it was his.

He hadn’t
stopped chasing me, and I couldn’t get his scent out of my head—that rich, hoppy
masculine tease that followed him from the pub. I barely survived walking in on
him, bare-chested and trying on his tuxedo. For the past two days I suffered
through hormone-induced nights of alternating weeping and unrelenting
horniness.

I was a mess,
and his green eyes and cocky smile were equal parts dangerous and tempting. Slipping
into bed with him would probably soothe my nerves, and it wasn’t like I could
get
more
pregnant.

Right?

But it would be
a mistake, and I knew it. The warmth that once centered in my core had spread,
and I was afraid it’d find its way to my heart. Nate pursued me for the wrong
reasons, but his words layered in sensuality and
honesty
, as if he
actually wanted more than that one night with me.

The greatest
danger in the world wasn’t falling for the wrong man—it was letting him catch
me after I fell head over heels.

How long could I
hide the baby from him? Nate wasn’t stupid—and I constantly underestimated the
muscle-bound trouble-maker. Even he’d notice if I looked like I swallowed a
basketball.

I had to tell
him.

It was the right
thing to do.

Really, it was
the
only
thing I had to do. If Nate knew about the baby, he could help
me prepare. More importantly, he could help me keep the secret until after the
wedding.

If I survived
the coconut onslaught to come.

I peeled myself
off the bathroom floor before Lindsey rampaged through the door. The mirror
revealed everything I tried to hide. My hair was limp. My eyes were still wide
in that perpetual
Oh-Dear-God-It’s-Positive
shock. Maybe no one would
notice?

Nate would.

He hadn’t
stopped staring at me since I arrived. But…at least it made me feel beautiful.

I returned to
our table. Bryce’s brother only just arrived—late, but as he was still in
scrubs and transcribing his notes from the day’s cardiovascular rounds, Lindsey
forgave him.
This time
.

Rick looked
identical to his younger brother. Both men played linebacker at college though
Rick focused more on his studies and went pre-med. They were both handsome, and
their skin coffee dark. Bryce got more of his mom’s patience. Rick inherited
his father’s uncanny ability to speak without thinking.

He took the seat
next to me. “You look like hell.”

I made a face.
“You smell worse.”

“I’m fresh off
an eighteen hour shift.” He gobbled up his slice of cake. Mom smacked his wrist
and told him to wait for his score card.  “What’s your excuse?”

I casually
scooped my cake onto Rick’s plate and avoided Nate’s questioning glance. “Only
eighteen hours? I’ve been on bridesmaid duty for the past three
months
.”

“She still kicking
your butt?”

“Yeah, and
skinning it, tanning it, and turning it into a belt to beat me with.”

“Well, if you
need to get her a new heart, I might be able to sneak one home from the
hospital…” Rick frowned at the cake criteria sheet. “Linds, what the hell is
this? It looks like my MCATs.”

Bryce answered
for her, either to avoid conflict with his brother or to score points with the
bride-to-be. She still refused to talk to him after the Spiderman cufflink situation
a day ago.

“We’re judging
cakes,” he said. “We want to be sure we pick the right flavor for our special
day.”

Nate snorted
into his beer. Lindsey heard. That wasn’t good.

“Excuse me for being
methodical
.” She crushed her pencil against the score card. “And I hate
this one. I don’t want chocolate. It’s cliché and trite and—”

“It’s
delicious.” Rick said. “Go with this one.”

Oh God, he was
here for less than a minute and already he’d damn us all. I tugged on my best
friend’s sleeve, but Rick always did like pissing with Lindsey.

“Take it back,
take it back, take it back,” I whispered. “Eat the cake and shut up.”

“Rick, I’m
looking for a
little
more consideration than saying
it’s good
,”
Lindsey said.

“It’s…chocolatey.”
Nate grinned.

Someone was
going to die today. I peeked at Rick’s score card and copied the answers he
scrawled onto the sheet. Lindsey stomped her feet.

“If you can’t
take this seriously, how can I trust you’ll make my wedding a joyous fucking
occasion?”

Rick apologized.
“It’s just a cake.  I don’t even remember what flavor mine was at my wedding.”

“Oh yeah? Maybe
that’s why you’re divorced before thirty!”

Low blow.

“
Me-ow
,”
Nate laughed.

Rick rolled with
it. “Single life is feeling pretty damn good right now, huh, Nate?”

“And what’s that
supposed to mean?” Lindsey’s hands coiled at her sides. “You apologize right
now or so help me God...”

I edged away
from the ruckus, collecting the plates and passing out the next round with Mom.
She stilled with the plate in her hand, looked at me, and gave a tiny whisper.

“Maybe a
half-bite for you on the rest of these, sweetheart.” She broke a tine off the
plastic fork. “We want to be able to see the bride at the altar.”

I gritted my
teeth and plopped a plate in front of Bryce. He stayed quiet, simply tasting
the cake with a sigh and charting his reaction to it. Lindsey squeezed his
shoulder.

“I’m not
over-reacting, am I?” She gripped him harder, and Bryce flinched. “
Am I
?”

“Of course not.”
He jingled his empty bottle of beer at Nate—the third lined up before him. “Can
I get another?”

“See?” My sister
glared at Rick. “If you can’t handle me at my worst…”

I muttered to
myself. “Then get the hell out of the wedding party.”

“What was that,
Mandy?”

I smiled.
“Nothing. I’m admiring your bridal boot camp. The red velvet cake is dry.”

“Write it down.
Only nineteen more samples to go.”

Nate and Bryce
opened their fourth beers. Lucky bastards.

It took two
hours to finish, but I only needed to throw up once. Fortunately, it was right
when Nate and Rick doodled something obscene on their score cards prompting
Lindsey to kick them out of the wedding. They were reinstated by the time I
made it back to the table, and my sister decided on a winning flavor.

She chose a
three tiered castle of a cake—the bottom layer classic almond, middle a white
filled with a strawberry puree, and the top a cream cheese infused fig and
blueberry that Lindsey thought would look fantastic on Instagram.