Julia
I strain to reach behind myself in the mirror, attempting to see the tiny ivory hooks that hold the dress together. My fingers brush against them, but refuse to take hold, and I mutter a curse under my breath as I try to right my balance once more.
I feel like I’m losing it. It has been nearly twenty minutes that I’ve been trying to get out of this dress, to no avail. One of the glam squad at the hotel helped me into it, and I guess it’s not designed to be taken off by just a single person.
Ugh. I sit down on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands.
This is supposed to be my wedding night, for goodness sake.
Not that it would be my first time doing something like that—I mean, this isn’t the eighteenth century anymore—but I thought, at least, I would get to spend it with my husband.
And the distance Andreo has taken from me, the way he dumped me out of the blue, it’s more than I can wrap my head around. Everything we planned together, everything he promised me, all of it torn away in a matter of moments.
And I still don’t know why.
All of this was his idea in the first place, choosing to get married like this.
He was the one who pushed for us to get engaged, the one who moved forward the date of the ceremony, only for—what?
For him to change his mind at the last moment, decide he has better things to do than spend his life with me?
I’m going to be stuck in this dress if I can’t find someone to help me out of it.
I know it’s meant to be my husband who does that for me, but the thought of going to Antonio and telling him I need help…
yeah, he’s made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want anything like that from me, and no matter how deeply it stings, there’s nothing I can do to change it.
Unless…I mean, he’s the one who married me, right? And he should be the one to step up and handle everything that’s to be expected of him now that I’m his wife. If he wants to do this whole marriage thing, then he needs to act like it.
I rise to my feet and head for the door, not even sure where I’m going or what I’ll say when I get there—but I know I need to see this through. I can feel it tingling all the way through my body, something inching close to desire, as crazy as I know that is.
What kind of person am I, if I’m willing to go to this man I barely know and ask him to undress me on the night of my wedding? My heart thuds in my throat and I do my best to ignore it, willing myself to keep calm in the face of what I’m doing.
Because there’s a part of me, a crazy part of me, that wants him.
Antonio has always been attractive to me, but I could fool myself into thinking that it was just because he had a few traits that I liked in Andreo.
Now, though? I’m not so sure that’s true.
He has a self-possession that his son doesn’t, a far cry from Andreo’s jittery, uncomfortable urge to keep everything under control.
He’s a man of few words, compared to his son’s constant conversation after several beers.
And he married me on the day that his son abandoned me, stepped up to do the right thing when his son didn’t or couldn’t. And that is, right now, the most important part of all of this for me. That this man did not abandon me on the day I was supposed to walk down the aisle…
And that now, whether I’m ready to accept it or not, I belong to him.
I slip out of the room and down the quiet corridor, passing by a couple of guards on the door.
Neither of them seem to look at me, and I pad quietly, barefoot, toward the other side of the house.
I’m not entirely sure where Antonio is, but the way he was talking, it seems like he wants to put as much distance between us as possible, so I assume that he’s at the far end of the mansion.
I make my way through a few doors, most of which lead to bedrooms or other empty rooms. One leads to a library, which is so full of books that I can’t help but take a moment to linger and look at them, wondering if I would be better off just reading tonight to try and soothe my overthinking mind.
But I brush that aside. What, just sit there in my wedding dress, flicking through the classics? Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Eventually, I turn a corner and see a light on at the end of the corridor, warmth spilling out from a half-closed door. It has to be him, right? I can’t imagine he’s sleeping any better than I am this evening, probably caught up in the shock of the fact that he’s married to me.
I take a deep breath and make my way toward the door, and sure enough, when I reach it, I peep around to see Antonio sitting within.
His hand is splayed against the side of his face, eyes half-closed, as though he’s deep in contemplation.
His silver hair is messy now, as though he’s been running his fingers through it, and there’s an empty glass sitting next to him, as if he has been drinking for a while already.
I wonder if I should just leave him to it, but then I shift slightly and the floor creaks beneath me, and his head snaps up at once.
“What is it?” His voice is curt, almost irritated, as if I’ve interrupted something important.
I consider just excusing myself, apologizing for distracting him, but then I remember that I’ll be stuck in this wedding dress all night if I don’t.
I take a step forward, raising my eyebrows at him. “I need someone to get me out of this dress.”
He stares at me for a moment. “Speak to one of the household staff,” he replies, his voice cool, unmoved. “They’ll be able to help you.”
I sigh. “There’s nobody else awake in this place,” I point out. “And I don’t want to sleep in this thing.”
“You can’t get it off yourself?”
“If I could, I already would have,” I retort. I turn around, gesturing to the hooks on the back. “See? I can’t reach all of them. It’s not designed for me to be able to take it off without…help.” I trail off, realizing how pointed it sounds. And just how alone we are right now.
He eyes me for a second, as though considering whether or not he believes me, and then rises to his feet. “Turn.”
I do as I’m told at once, turning to face the door.
I feel him move in behind me, the sudden warmth of his presence flooding through every inch of me at once.
My breath hitches as I feel his fingers against the nape of my neck, brushing aside the hair that has gathered there, and he begins to carefully unhook each of the ties that holds the dress together.
I can’t see his fingers moving, but I can tell they are deft and quick. He makes light work of the hooks at the top, pulling them apart, and I feel the warmth of his breath on the back of my neck.
My pulse races. Does he feel it too? This weight hanging over us, the promise of what is meant to happen on a night like this one?
There’s so much more I want to ask him, like if he has ever been married before, if he was married to Andreo’s mother—what happened to her if that’s true, why they split, how long it has been.
But I doubt he would give me a straight answer to any of that, and maybe it’s better to just let the quiet surround us right now rather than trying to speak it into action.
His hands seem to slow as he works his way down my back, almost reluctant. I’m not sure if it’s because he has no interest in seeing me out of this dress, or because he has too much interest in it.
I glance back over my shoulder as his hand stills at my waist, and I narrow my eyes in his direction. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He doesn’t move for a moment, a beat of silence playing out between us, and then he continues his way down, unhooking the pins that lead down to my back so the dress gapes open over my waist. I take a deep breath, the first time I feel I’ve been able breathe to all day, and it falls over my shoulders.
I reach up to clutch it vainly in place, though it has already exposed more than I intended.
Beneath, I’m wearing this gorgeous white lingerie which I had picked out weeks ago and never wore until today. I’ve never really been a lacy underthings kind of girl, but matching the white dress to this perfect silk-and-lace bra and panty set only felt right.
I had imagined Andreo tearing them off of me this evening, since he was never interested in anything other than my naked body and what it could do for him, but now, with the dress hanging half off me, I can feel Antonio’s eyes on me, tracing out the shape of me beneath what I’m wearing.
“I think…I think that should be it now,” I murmur, breaking the quiet between us at last.
His hands are still resting against me, fingers on my skin, just beneath the strap of my bra. He lets out a slight grunt of agreement, but he makes no move to pull back.
And, oh God, I can feel it—a rise of desire within me, even in the midst of all of this madness, something I can’t and won’t and don’t want to hide from. Something that feels as though it has lit up a part of me I’ve tried to leave untouched.
In all the pain and hurt of being abandoned at the altar like that, this man stepped in to take me as his wife, and right now, there’s nothing I crave more than the chance to show him just what it means to me.
Can he feel it too? Fuck, he must be able to. There’s no way he could ignore what’s between us right now. His thumb grazes across my spine, the barest touch, but enough to make my heart pound faster.
He still doesn’t pull back. Seems to have no intention of doing such a thing at all, actually, and I don’t want him to, not now, not now that we’ve come so close to one another.
I dare myself to look back at him again, and this time, I can see that something has darkened in his eyes, a heat that wasn’t there before. A want. A need.
I shrug my shoulders, letting the dress tumble down a little further so it sits in the crook of my elbows. I’m undressing right in front of him, and he’s making no move to stop me, watching me as though this show is personally for him. Right now, it might as well be.