Page 130 of Wild Then Wed
Then Mason and Sage. She looks beautiful. All quiet confidence. No wasted movement. Mason looks like he’s doing breathing exercises in his head just to stay vertical.
And then Emily comes, walking between Nathan and Luke. She’s glowing—proud and completely locked into the moment. I’ve never seen her look so grown up. Nathan looks like he’s thinking too hard. Luke’s definitely not thinking at all.
They all file in and line up in place. Emerald green dresses on one side, black suits on the other. Clean. Symmetrical. Just the way we planned.
And I’m standing here, still trying to convince myself this is just a formality. Just part of the plan. Just a thing we’re doing to get from point A to point B.
That traditional wedding song starts—predictable, ceremonial—and the second it does, the room goes still.
Then the doors swing open.
And fuck me.
There she is.
Wren steps into the doorway between Ridge and Boone, and the everyone reacts like they’ve just witnessed something holy. A ripple of whisperedwowsand gasps moves down the pews. Somewhere behind me, someone says “she’s beautiful,” but even that feels like an insult. Beautiful doesn’t begin to cover it.
She looks like sin wrapped in satin.
Her dress is off-the-shoulder, white and smooth and clinging to every curve like it was designed specifically to fuck withme. The bodice wraps across her chest, lifting her breasts high enough to make my mouth go dry. And the slit—Jesus.It’s high. Way too high for a wedding, but just high enough to make me want to drag her into the nearest room and find out how far up it goes when I’ve got her leg hooked around my hip.
Her skin is golden, like she was dipped in honey. There’s blush along her cheekbones, mascara darkening already-long lashes, and mauve lipstick that turns her mouth into something I can’t stop looking at, no matter how much I know I should.
Her hair is curled and silky, tucked behind one freckled shoulder. Her collarbone is bare and perfect, and all I can wonder—without meaning to—is what it would feel like to press my mouth right there. To kiss lower. To feel her pulse against my tongue.
She’s wearing strappy little white heels that make her bronze legs look like they go on for miles. I follow the line of her body—ankle to thigh to hip to waist—and land on the way the fabric clings to her ass like a fucking prayer.
Underneath all of that—beneath the want, the ache, the restraint I’m gripping in both fists—is one quiet, staggering truth: She’s the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen.
And I’m already ruined just looking at her.
I’ve seen Wren a hundred different ways. In jeans. In mud-covered boots. In old, over-sized sweatshirts covered in horse hair and paint. I’ve seen her patiently guiding horses in a round pen. I’ve seen her determined and pissed off and barefoot and quietly brilliant.
But I’ve never seen her likethis. And I’m not sure I’m going to survive it.
And Idefinitelyshouldn’t be thinking about sliding my hand under her dress in the middle of our goddamn wedding.
But I am.
I’m also thinking about the sound she’d make if I did. And her silky hair, soft and shiny, looks like it’d slide right through my hands if I let it. If I fisted it once. Twisted it. Pulled just enough to make her tilt her chin up.
I wonder what she’d taste like. Between her breasts. Along the inside of her thigh. If she’d let me kneel for her. Take my time. Make her forget everything outside the two of us.
Then she steps in front of me and just like that, every thought snaps into silence. Boone and Ridge unhook their arms from hers—Ridge presses a kiss to her cheek and she gives a small smile in return, one that’s not quite full, not quite steady.
She’s nervous.
I can see it in the way she exhales. In the way her fingers flex slightly at her sides. She hates being the center of attention. Hates being watched, measured, expected to perform.
This—walking down an aisle with every person she’s ever known staring at her—probably feels like some hellish nightmare.
But she’s doing it anyway. For her family. For mine. For the land. For something bigger than either of us, and I know what that costs her. I’d admire the hell out of her if I could stop fucking gawking at her long enough to think straight.
Then she looks at me, her eyes on mine, and for a second, everything else disappears. The crowd. The weight of all the pretending.
It’s just her. And me.
I inhale. Slow. Controlled. Then again.
