Chapter 10
Natalie
Friday morning waits outside the suite like a beautifully catered threat.
I know this because I have been awake for twenty minutes, lying very still in the circle of Jordan’s arm while the rehearsal dinner creeps closer by the second.
The curtains are half-open, pale mountain light spilling across the room, and Jordan is warm behind me, his breath steady against the back of my neck.
Nothing happened last night, which feels like a ridiculous thing to say when I am naked in his bed and sore in places that make walking a negotiation, but by the new standards of my life, it is true.
He fed me dinner in the suite, held me through half a movie, and slept with one hand spread over my stomach like he was keeping me anchored there.
There had been no lessons, no devastating demonstrations, only Jordan holding me all night.
Somehow, that was worse.
His arm tightens around my waist. “You’re awake.”
“No,” I whisper. “I am a decorative pillow with anxiety.”
His mouth brushes my shoulder. “You talk too much to be decorative.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
His hand slides over my stomach slowly, and my body reacts with deeply inconvenient enthusiasm for a body that was recently filing complaints.
“You still sore?” he asks.
“A little.”
His hand stills. “Then I’ll be careful.”
The words should calm me. They do calm me. They also make heat gather low in my belly because I know what Jordan Richmond sounds like when he is being careful. He sounds like control pulled tight over something dangerous.
I shift against him, and he goes still behind me.
Very still.
Then I feel him, hard and heavy against my backside, and every sleepy thought in my head evaporates.
“Natalie,” he says, voice rough.
“I moved normally.”
“You did not.”
“I’m pretty sure I understand basic movement.”
His hand tightens at my waist. “I have dreamed about taking you from behind since the first week you worked for me.”
The room drops away.
I turn my head enough to see him over my shoulder. “Really?”
His eyes are dark with morning and hunger. “Over my desk. Your dress pushed up. Your hands flat on the wood while I hold your hips and make you take every inch of me.”
My mouth goes dry.
A normal woman would need time to recover from that sentence. A normal woman would ask follow-up questions, perhaps about workplace boundaries or the structural integrity of executive furniture.
I slide out of his arms instead.
The suite has a polished table near the windows, elegant and innocent and about to experience a very complicated morning. I walk to it with my pulse beating everywhere, place both palms on the smooth surface, and glance back at him.
“Like this?”
Jordan’s face changes.
He is out of bed before I take another breath.
His body comes behind mine, hot and bare, and his hands settle on my hips. He does not rush. He only lets me feel him there, lets me understand exactly what I asked for.
“You’re sore,” he says against my shoulder.
“I know.”
“If it hurts, you tell me.”
“I will.”
His hand slides between my thighs, and the first stroke steals my answer before I can make one. He touches me slowly, fingers parting my pussy lips, learning where I am tender and where my body still wants him. Pleasure curls around the ache, sharp and sweet, and my elbows weaken.
“Jordan.”
“I’ve got you.”
His fingers move with careful pressure, circling my clit until my breath starts breaking. When he slides one finger inside me, I tense for half a second, but his other hand spreads over my stomach, holding me steady.
“Too much?”
“No.”
“Good girl.”
My body clenches around him.
He makes a rough sound at the back of his throat. “Every time I say that, you get tight.”
My face burns against the cool air. “Then maybe stop saying it.”
“Never.”
He works me open with slow, steady strokes until I am wet enough to embarrass myself and too desperate to care. I feel the blunt heat of him sliding through me from behind.
“Breathe,” he says.
“I am.”
His hand tightens on my hip, and then he pushes in.
The angle is deeper than last time, fuller, stealing the air from my lungs as my body stretches around him. He goes slow, inch by inch, letting me take him, and I feel every bit of his control in the tremor of his hands.
“That’s it,” he says, voice low and strained. “Let me in.”
I bow my head, fingers curling against the table. There is pressure, a little ache, and then the impossible, devastating fullness of him seated deep inside me.
He stops.
His chest presses against my back, his breath rough at my ear. “Tell me.”
I swallow. “I’m good.”
“Better than okay?”
I shift my hips carefully, and his hands clamp down.
His curse is soft and filthy.
A thrill moves through me. “Way better than okay.”
He pulls back slowly and thrusts in again.
My mouth falls open. “Oh.”
His rhythm starts slow, deep enough that the table creaks under my hands. Morning light spills over the windows, the mountains stand quiet beyond the glass, and I am bent over a hotel table while Jordan takes me exactly the way he said he dreamed about.
It should feel scandalous.
It does.
It also feels like being wanted so completely that my body has nowhere left to hide.
His hand slides around my front and finds my clit. My knees nearly buckle.
“Jordan.”
“Let me have it,” he says against my ear. “I want to feel you come around me like this.”
His fingers circle, firm and relentless, and his thrusts deepen. The pleasure builds too fast, rushing through me with every stroke, every rough sound he makes, every possessive pull of his hands on my hips.
I come hard, shaking over the table, his name breaking out of me as my body locks around him.
Jordan follows with a harsh groan against my shoulder, holding himself deep while the last of my strength turns to water.
For a while, neither of us moves.
Then he kisses the back of my neck and eases out of me with careful hands, turning me into his arms before my legs can betray me.
“You all right?” he asks.
I press my face to his chest. “Your office furniture should be terrified.”
A low sound moves through him, almost a laugh. “It has been in danger since the day you walked in.”
That should make me blush.
It does.
After a shower that stays mostly respectable because Jordan has iron self-control and I have thighs made of jelly, we order breakfast to the suite. Before the tray arrives, he cleans the table by the window with an expression so serious I almost ask if he plans to apologize to it too.
I do not, because I like living.
A few minutes later, we sit there with coffee, eggs, and the kind of eye contact that makes toast feel suspiciously intimate.
“So,” I say, poking at my toast, “what do people do before a rehearsal dinner?”
“Whatever you want.”
“That is a risky answer to give a woman currently trapped in a wedding weekend with her sister, her ex, and the rest of her family.”
My phone rings before I can turn that sentence into a proper spiral.
Mom.
My stomach drops instinctively.
Jordan’s expression changes the second he sees my face.
I answer carefully. “Hi, Mom.”
“Where are you?” she snaps.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Lydia needs you. Now.”
I sit straighter. “What happened?”
A sharp breath crackles over the line. “Wesley called off the wedding.”
My fork slips from my fingers.
Jordan goes motionless across from me.
“He what?”
“He says he made a mistake.” My mother’s voice shakes, but the anger underneath is aimed straight at me. “He says he has loved you all along.”
The room tilts.
For one horrible second, I cannot speak.
Jordan reaches across the table and takes my hand.
Mom keeps going. “Your sister is destroyed, and you need to come downstairs immediately. You have done enough damage.”
“I did damage?” I whisper.
Jordan’s eyes go cold.
“Downstairs,” she says. “Now.”
The call ends.
I stare at the phone.
Jordan stands. “I’m coming with you.”
“No.” My voice cracks, so I try again. “No. I should see Lydia first.”
His jaw tightens.
“You have a five-minute head start,” he says.
“Jordan.”
“Five.”
I know he means it.
The dining room is full of morning light, polished wood, and people pretending they are too polite to listen. Lydia is near the far side, crying hard enough that several guests are staring into their coffee like it might save them. My mother stands beside her, rigid with fury.
The second she sees me, she moves.
“You,” she says.
I stop. “Mom.”
“How could you?”
The words hit like a slap before her hand ever lifts.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Your sister’s wedding is ruined because of you.”
Lydia sobs harder. “He said it was always Natalie. Always.”
Heat crawls up my face as the room goes quiet in that awful public way, everyone listening while pretending they have manners.
“I didn’t ask him to say that,” I say.
“You never ask,” my mother snaps. “You never have to. You stand there looking wounded and helpless, and somehow everyone ends up giving you what should have gone to your sister.”
Something inside me cracks.
That one lands where all the old ones live.
“What should have gone to her?” My voice shakes, but I force the words out. “Wesley was mine first. He left me for Lydia. I didn’t take him from her.”
“And now you bring your boss here, parade him around the hotel, and suddenly Wesley remembers he loved you?” Her eyes cut over me, sharp and cold. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”
My throat closes.
Her hand lifts.
I see it coming.
I still do not move fast enough.
Someone else does.
Elegant fingers close around my mother’s wrist midair. Diamond bracelet. Perfect red nails. A cloud of expensive perfume and absolute authority.
A woman I vaguely remember seeing in magazines stands between us like she has been placed there by a very stylish act of war.
“I wouldn’t,” she says.
My mother stares at her. “Excuse me?”
The woman smiles, and the temperature of the entire dining room seems to drop. “You were about to strike my future daughter-in-law in public. I am advising against it.”
Future daughter-in-law.
My brain trips over the phrase and stays down.
“Who are you?” my mother demands.
“Vivienne Richmond.”
The name moves through the room like a match catching silk.
Jordan arrives behind her, furious, his gaze cutting through the dining room until it finds me. For half a heartbeat, the fury in him softens.
Then he looks at my mother.
“You do not deserve her,” he says.
The words are quiet enough to be controlled and sharp enough to cut through the room.
My mother pales.
Jordan steps closer, his hand settling at my lower back. “You do not get to blame Natalie because a man realized too late what he lost. You do not get to make her small because your other daughter is hurting. And you sure as hell do not put your hands on her.”
Lydia hiccups through a sob. “Jordan, please.”
He does not look at her.
My mother’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
Jordan’s hand spreads against my back, warm and steady.
“She is done earning love from people who should have given it freely,” he says. “I will make sure she is happy with me.”
“And I will love her like a daughter,” Vivienne adds, still holding my mother’s wrist like it is something unpleasant she found on the floor. “Since the position seems to be vacant.”
My breath catches.
The room disappears around that sentence.
Vivienne releases my mother’s wrist and turns to me, her smile softening without losing any of its power.
“There you are, darling. I meant to introduce myself over coffee, but your mother forced me to be dramatic before caffeine.” Her gaze sweeps over my face, warm and assessing.
“You are even more beautiful than the picture Tina sent me yesterday.”
I blink at my mother, then at Jordan, then back at the woman who just called me her future daughter-in-law and stopped my mother from slapping me before breakfast could settle.
“I think,” I say faintly, “I need to sit down.”
Jordan bends, his mouth near my ear.
“I’ve got you, love. I’m not going anywhere.”