Chapter 23
“Are you sure about this?” Stacey asked as she adjusted my veil.
“I’m sure,” I reassured her for the fifth time. She’d flown in yesterday, and besides Gage and Eve, she was the only person I knew at my own wedding. The rest of the guests, acquaintances and business associates of Gage’s, were only there to witness the wedding of the year.
That’s what the local media called it, anyway.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She knelt and straightened the hem of Eve’s dress that matched my own. “You know what to do, right, hon?
My daughter nodded, a wide grin on her face.
The music filtered into the back where Stacey had fawned over me as I’d gotten ready.
She left the room and walked down the aisle, followed by Eve.
I waited, wringing my fingers and shuffling my feet.
The first strains of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” began, and I stepped outside the sanctuary of my hiding place.
Everyone stood and faced me, their eyes widening as I came into view.
Amongst a chorus of “oohhs and aahhs,” I scanned the audience and gave a sigh of relief that Ian was nowhere to be found.
Deep down, I feared he’d make an appearance and try to stop the wedding, but he really had given up.
The realization caused a pang of sadness in me; I hated how things had ended between us. Mostly, I hated the way I’d hurt him.
I walked over the rose petals Eve sprinkled in her wake, bringing me one, two, three steps closer to him.
I sensed the heat of his gaze and finally lifted my eyes to his.
Oh God…I’d forgotten how well Gage Channing wore a tux.
A shiver ran through me at his expression; it encompassed so many things—smoldering desire, lethal resolve, but above all else, ownership.
I was his, and this ceremony was only a technicality to make sure the world realized it too.
That walk was the longest of my life, but when I joined him and we laced our fingers together, the significance of the moment left me in awe. I was being reborn from the ashes he’d created.
The wedding officiator recited his introduction and then the vows began.
“Gage Channing, do you take Kayla Sutton to be your wife, to love, honor, and cherish now and forever more?”
“I do,” he said, his gaze never leaving mine.
He would push me beyond my limits, always demand more than I wanted to give, but damn if he didn’t make me feel alive. I needed him to breathe, and my humiliation and submission were small prices to pay. My body would endure him, because without him it would petrify.
“Kayla Sutton, do you take Gage Channing to be your husband, to love, honor, and obey…”
Obey.
Gage’s mouth curved into a satisfied smile. The man performing the ceremony had no idea the weight that word carried in our relationship. Above all else, I would obey him.
“…now and forever more?”
My heart thumped—a drumming beat that grew louder with every second obey flitted through my mind. Obey and owned. Two little words, both beginning with the same letter but holding so much meaning in the complexity of our union.
Gage waited for my answer, his sapphire eyes alight with absolute confidence. I was his.
His to command. His to set on fire. His to punish.
His.
I cleared my throat, parted my lips, and confirmed in front of God and the world what Gage and I already knew.
“I do.”
His.
Now and forever more.