I Do (Hate You) by Sienna Blake
Epilogue
James
“Oh. Fuck. My. Head. Hurts,” Shell complained from her side of the bed.
“Shhhhhh,” I said but then winced. “Ouch. It even hurts to shush you. Here. There’s a bottle of aspirin on my side of the bed.”
The sun was just coming up, so it was still pretty dark in the room. When Shell reached out to take the bottle from me, we heard a little clinking sound. A sound we’d gotten to know very well over that weekend.
It was the sound of a chain on a set of handcuffs. Handcuffs that were clamped on to my left wrist and her right one.
Shell whimpered. “Did we get drugged and handcuffed by someone? Again?”
“I’m pretty sure this was self-induced. We had to have polished off a bottle of champagne each.”
“I remember the champagne on the beach…but I get a little fuzzy after that,” Shell said, sitting up and opening the bottle of aspirin, causing the covers to slide down to her waist. I was immediately turned on by the sight of her naked body. My erection had the added bonus of sending blood to my cock instead of pounding through my head.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she warned, shoving my fingers away as they crept under the covers and up her thigh. “I may not remember much from last night, but I do remember the sex.”
“How was it?” I asked, handing her a glass of water from the bedside table and watching as she swallowed two pills.
“Amazing, mind-blowing, inventive, and that thing you did with your tongue…probably illegal in half the country.”
“Worth going to prison for, though?”
“Ha! Ouch. Don’t make me laugh until after the aspirin kicks in!” she begged.
“When it does, I’m going to do something with my tongue that’s illegal in the other half of the country. Until then, let’s cuddle up and try to piece together the parts of last night that we don’t remember.”
“And figure out where the keys to the handcuffs are,” Shell said from her spot lying on my chest, her bare leg lying across mine. “But we can always call Claire since we know she can break into them with a hairpin.”
“Yeah, I’m not even worried. There’s no way that things can have gotten crazier last night than what we’ve already been through.”
“I know, right?” she asked, eyes closed, her head tucked under my chin.
While we lay there, I noticed something on her hand and I blinked, wondering if it was a hangover mirage.
Shell kept on talking. “James, I am so happy you had the idea to make last night into an ‘I’m not getting married’ party.”
I was only half listening. I was too busy staring at her hand.
“I just want to say how grateful I am that you saved me from a rash decision.”
Is that what I think it is?
“I mean, if it weren’t for you, I’d be married right now.”
Left hand. Ring finger. Shiny. Gold.
“Holy shit!” I yelled.
Shell was so surprised by my shout that she threw her hands up in the air. The sun streaming through the edge of the curtain glinted off the brand-new wedding band on her finger.
“We didn’t,” she whispered.
“We did,” I said, grinning at the woman I loved as the forgotten bits of the night flooded back into my brain.
Me begging her to marry me.
Her tearful “yes.”
Dragging the officiant from his room to perform the ceremony.
Logan as my best man.
Carrying Shell over the threshold of my villa to start our new life together.
“What are you going to do now?” Shell asked, moving her eyes from the ring to my face.
“Make love to my beautiful wife and tell her I’m the luckiest man on earth.”
And I did.
And I was.
And we lived happily ever after (after we got the handcuffs off).
The End