CHAPTER 37 Tatum Barker
Mrs. Bradley
We exchange rings, and that’s it.
The ceremony is over.
Everleigh was only outside for a moment before she came back inside, and I’m curious what happened. Maybe he had a car running at the curb, and he ran out and made his escape. Maybe he thought I’d pick him, and he’d whisk me away to some destination.
But in the moment when I had to choose, everything suddenly became very clear.
He’s my past. I love him, but Ford is my future.
He’s the one I want.
I don’t see Ford ever throwing in the towel on us. He’s dependable, and he’s the type of man who’s going to continue to try with me. He’s going to continue to work on it. He’ll fight for me.
We both will.
And now it’s done.
Ms. Winston only stays long enough to witness the ceremony, and she leaves an envelope on the small table with gifts from our few guests.
I always thought I wanted a big wedding. It’s what I do, after all.
But this feels intimate. It feels perfect. I want our lives to be a reflection of this…except, you know, that whole getting interrupted by my ex thing that happened in the middle.
That’s it. I made my choice, and he needs to accept that. We already talked about this anyway. I’ve talked it to death, actually, and I keep arriving at the same conclusion.
So here I am, married.
I’m Mrs. Bradley now, technically—even if I keep Barker. I’m just…not the Mrs. Bradley I always assumed I’d be.
We share in our first meal as husband and wife. We cut our honey and fig cake. We toast with champagne and chase it with peppermint schnapps.
Ms. Winston is gone, but we’re carrying on all the traditions, which tells me that this all wasn’t just for her benefit. It was for us, too.
Ford is ever the gentleman as he feeds me a piece of cake, and I do the same in a ladylike manner. I’ve seen enough brides in tears because their new husbands thought it would be funny to smash cake in their faces.
Spoiler alert: it’s never funny.
We dance to a collection of songs I chose and put onto a playlist on my phone. Our first dance is to “Never Stop” by SafetySuit. I heard it once during a wedding, and it became the song I aspired to. As the singer talks about his heart racing, it feels like I’ve found that with Ford.
We dance until dusk gives way to night, and we say goodbye to the family members and friends who joined us here. The small staff I hired to help serve the food has finished cleaning and has left as well.
“It’s just us in here, Mrs. Bradley,” Ford says softly. He loops his arm around my waist and hauls me to him, and I giggle as I fall against his chest.
“What are you going to do about it?” I tease.
“Well, we have several options.”
“Lay them out for me,” I suggest.
“Option one, I take you in the same spot where I married you and make love to you.”
“Mm,” I murmur, closing my eyes as he nips a kiss to my neck.
“Option two, I take you upstairs to the owner’s suite and have my way with you.”
My eyes flip open. “I’m listening.”
“Option three, I bend you over the kitchen counter.”
I raise a brow. “Only if you perch me on top and put your mouth on me again.”
He chuckles even as he shifts his hips against me to indicate what a swell idea he thinks that is.
“Option four, I take you outside and we make love under the stars.”
“You weren’t kidding when you said you had several options,” I say, capturing his lips with mine.
“There’s one more,” he murmurs against my mouth.
I open my mouth to his, and our tongues dance a moment before I pull back. “Make it quick.”
“Hotel,” he pants. “We have sex there, then head down to the New Year’s party with my cum dripping from your cunt.”
I gasp. Literally. I’ve never heard him talk like that before, and it’s like an inferno rises within me as the anticipation builds. I catch his lips with mine once more, and then I say, “That one.”
I don’t even have to think twice about it.
We’ll have sex here someday, surely. But I want the first time to be exactly what he just said.
He kisses me again, the fervor rising as an intoxicating undercurrent of need and hunger pulses between us, and then he grabs my hand.
I collect the envelopes left on the gift table, and Ford turns off the lights.
We meet near the front door, and the car that’s been waiting for us all day is out front.
We’re taken to one of the most luxurious hotels in all of Tampa, and our driver hands Ford the key to the honeymoon suite. The driver already deposited our bags in our room, so Ford and I head inside and toward the elevator, his hand planted firmly in mine.
This is it. This is the moment I’ve been waiting far too many days for.
The anticipation has been building since he first uttered the words “New Year’s Eve.” It felt like this day would never get here just as much as the days have rushed by us, and now we’re here. Waiting. Ready.
Wet. So, so wet.
We take the elevator up to the top floor, and we head down the hall. Ford opens the door, and he steps in first.
And then he sweeps me up into his arms as if I weigh nothing, and he carries me through the doorway.
I only catch a quick glimpse of the gorgeous room. Someone was just in here because candles are lit, soft music plays, and the entire scene is straight from a movie. It’s perfection.
But it’s only a glance because his lips are on mine again.
He kisses me softly at first, but it escalates to urgency as the chemistry I tried for so long to deny takes over.
Our tongues battle together in a war we’re both winning as the need spreads inside me, heating me all over.
It’s reminiscent of our first kiss—not the one at the bakery when we ate that honey and fig cake, but our real first kiss, the one all those years ago in front of a keg.
There’s need and want and curiosity in this kiss, all things I felt twelve years ago that Ford still manages to make pulse within me.
Eventually I pull back, and he carries me to the bedroom. He sets me down on my feet still clad in my white heels, and he spins me around to start working the buttons on the back of my dress.
There are a lot of them. Twenty-eight, in fact.
He threads each one through the loops with patient but slightly trembling fingers while the anticipation continues to build. An ache throbs between my legs, in my breasts, in my chest.
I wonder if his fingers are trembling from nerves or from excitement. Both emotions plow into me as the need becomes overwhelming.
Clearly wedding dress designers only think about how gorgeous the dress looks on, not all the work it takes to get it off.
Once he finally gets it open, his fingers graze a soft caress down my spine before he leans forward and trails kisses there.
I shiver at the feel of him, and I spin around to force his jacket off his shoulders.
It flutters to the ground in a pool, and I yank his tie off as my trembling fingers move to the buttons lining the front of his shirt.
I try to be patient, but I’m needy. I’m aching.
I’m so goddamn horny for him that one swipe of his finger through me will be enough to set me on fire.
He helps me by unbuttoning from the bottom up, and we meet in the middle. I push his shirt off, and he works the cufflinks and cuffs as I reach down and rub his cock over his slacks.
He’s hard. So hard. Incredibly hard.
My brain short-circuits much like it did the day I first sat on his lap and realized that maybe he wasn’t faking his feelings for me.
He reaches for the shoulders of my dress and slowly peels it forward, carefully helping me out of it to reveal the lacy white bra and panty set I wore beneath it. It’s all I’m wearing, in fact, except for my matching white heels.
He backs up to check out the lingerie. “Jesus Christ, Tatum,” he breathes, his voice thick with desire. “You’re fucking perfect. I can’t believe you’re my wife.”
I look demurely up at him, and I think back to his words about what he’s going to do here to me now. “It’s time to fuck your wife.”
His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip as his eyes dilate with need, and I reach for his belt buckle.
I get it undone, pop the button of his slacks, and push them down.
He steps out of them and kicks off his shoes at the same time, and then he’s standing in just a pair of black boxer briefs with an enormous bulge tenting the front.
He pulls me into his arms to kiss me some more. I’d love to stay here and kiss him all night, but I’m so needy, so aroused, that I can’t. I need him inside me. I need him. Now.
It’s all my brain can focus on.
I pull back from his mouth and whimper, “I need you.”
His eyes move to mine with concern, but he sees what he needs there.
“I’m on the pill,” I say before he can ask, before we have that awkward conversation of whether we need to use a condom. I want his cum inside me just like he said would happen.
God, do I want it. All of him.
“Good, because I want to feel all of you.” He reaches down into my panties, and he hisses as he roughly pushes a finger into me. “My wife is soaked for me,” he rasps.
My wife.
The words plow into me with a force that nearly makes me come on the spot.
“It’s all for you. And now I need my husband to fuck me.”
He nods. “I’ll make good on my promise. I’m not stopping until my cum is dripping out of you.”
“My God, Ford. Get to it already.”
He chuckles and starts peeling his boxer briefs off as I pull my bra off. We toss them on top of the rest of the clothes we’ve left on the floor, and he hooks his fingers into my panties and drags them down my legs.
I finally kick off the heels, and he takes my hand and leads me to the bed. He nods for me to go first, and I lie on my back, expecting him to hover over me. Instead, he grabs my legs and pulls my hips down toward the edge of the bed, and when his eyes meet mine, they’re glazed with lust.
He moves down until he’s resting on his knees, and he breaks our eye contact to gaze at my pussy for a few beats. And then he dives in. He licks his way through me, moaning and hissing as if this is the greatest thing he’s ever tasted.
“Oh my God, Ford, yes,” I moan. I can’t believe this is my life. This is my husband. This is my future, this vault of pure pleasure only meant for him and me.
I want to return the favor, but I can’t. I can’t move, and not because he’s got me pinned down or anything like that, but because the pleasure is so fast and hot and intense that I physically can’t make myself move.
He stops, rocking back onto his feet, and my eyes fly open with a question as I wonder why he’s stopping. He rises to his feet and sits on the bed. He helps me shift until I’m on his lap and pulls me down on top of him. I straddle him, and he fists his cock as I line up and sit down on top of him.
Our eyes are on each other as I lower myself and he pushes into me. Our bodies connect for the first time, and I gasp. He grunts as his massive cock impales me.
“Christ, you feel so good,” he mutters. “Better than I imagined.”
He imagined it. He imagined this moment, our bodies connecting intimately.
The thought warms me all over.
“You imagined it?” I ask tenderly.
“Every goddamn second of every goddamn day since I kissed you in the kitchen in front of the keg.”
Tears well in my eyes. He never admitted that he remembered that kiss, too.
We’ll talk more about that later. Feeling him as he moves inside me is causing everything in my brain to go haywire. My only focus is the need to move, to feel his friction as he pumps into me.
I grab onto his shoulders for support with shaking hands.
He slides his palms under my ass, where he can control our rhythm from beneath me.
He lifts me up, grunting as we start to find our pace.
I ride him, my tits bouncing near his face, our eyes still on each other in what I can only describe as the most intimate, erotic moment of my life.
The only sounds in the room are our breathy gasps, our moans of need, and the sound of him moving in and out of me.
He peels his eyes from mine long enough to catch one of my nipples in his mouth, and I arch back to give him the space to work my nipple as I continue rising and falling over him at the pace he sets by moving me up and down.
It’s glorious, the long, slow, forceful drives as he pushes us both toward the edge of bliss.
His fingers edge in closer to my anus, and I let out a moan as the anticipation of whether or not he’s going to touch me there crashes into me. It only amplifies the need between us, and the first rush of release plows into me. I tighten over him, and he growls my name.
“Tatum, fuck. Your pussy feels so good. So tight. So perfect. And you’re already falling apart.” His voice is this low, sexy rasp, and it pushes me closer to the brink.
“Ford!” I yell, tossing my head back as I let the pleasure in. I claw at his shoulders now, his back, wherever I can get a grip on him as I travel up toward the peak.
“Yes, baby, just like that,” he rasps around my nipple. “Ride my cock like you never want to stop.”
“I never want to stop,” I cry.
“Fuck yes,” he hisses, and he pumps up harder into me and arches his neck back. He moves his palms from my ass to grip onto my hips as I leap over that wall of pleasure.
“More! Harder!” I yell, and he hammers harder into me, pushing me into the sort of bliss I’ve never known before.
It hits me all at once and goes on and on, my body contracting over his cock, and the feel of it all seems to push him into his own climax as I hear him yell between grunts and groans. “Fuck, Tatum—ahh, yes! I’m with you, baby. Fuck! Take it all!”
Cries of pleasure fall from us both as we seal the commitment we just made with this moment that was far too long in the making.
My mouth slams to his as I ride out the end of my orgasm, and as he continues to pump into me, leaving his cum behind just as he said he would.
We kiss our way through the end, and my body flushes with heat as he thrusts up one final time. He stays inside me even after we both finish, and I feel his cock twitching as I’m sure he can feel my pussy continuing to pulse over him.
I’m so drained after that exertion that I can barely hold my head up. I let go of his mouth, my head falling onto his shoulder, and I press a soft kiss to his neck. “I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you, too,” he whispers back, and then he gently pulls out of me. That’s when I feel it…the promise he made me as his cum drips out of me.
He moves us so I’m lying on the bed for a few quiet moments of recovery where he lies beside me, and just like that, it feels like nothing will ever be the same again.