Chapter 4 A Responsible Adult Would’ve Said No #3
The city lights paint him in gold and neon, his jaw tight, his gaze locked on mine. Like he’s watching me fall apart for him and loving every second of it.
“Kade—oh my God—”
“Come for me.” It’s a command, not a request, and the second it hits my ears, I shatter. My body clenches around him, pleasure crashing over me in a blinding wave. He growls, driving into me through it, and then he’s following me over the edge, spilling into me with a guttural sound.
When he finally stills, he’s breathing hard, his weight braced over me. He kisses me slow, deep, as if he’s pressing a vow into my mouth.
“Forever,” he says against my mouth.
“Forever,” I echo, and for the first time all night, I’m not sure if the high is from the lights, the music, or him.
Room service brings our wedding cake at four in the morning. Three tiers of vanilla and strawberry with buttercream roses that look almost too pretty to eat. Almost.
“I can’t believe you ordered this,” I say, holding the bedsheet around me like a toga and studying our dessert dilemma. “When did you even have time?”
“While you were changing.”
“Before we got married.”
“I’m a planner.”
I scoff. “Yeah, well, I guess your plan didn’t include utensils.”
“Who needs utensils?”
Kade’s in nothing but his boxers, and damn if he doesn’t look good.
He climbs off the bed and walks over to the cake, examining it thoughtfully.
Then he scoops up a handful of frosting and puts it right up to my lips.
I open my mouth and lick it from his fingers, maintaining eye contact the entire time. His pupils dilate.
“You’re trouble,” he says.
“Should have thought of that before you married me.”
“Best decision I ever made.”
We eat cake with our hands until we’re both covered in frosting and laughing. When he kisses buttercream from the corner of my mouth, he tells me I taste like sugar and forever.
The sun is rising over the mountains when we finally collapse back into bed. Kade pulls me against his chest, and I fit there like I was designed for this exact spot.
“What happens now?” I whisper into the quiet as I stare at the ring on my thumb.
“Now we live.”
And we do. God, we live.
The month passes like a fever dream that never breaks. I don’t go back to New York. We don’t return to our separate lives like responsible adults. Instead, we stay in Vegas and make ourselves at home in this glittering playground where anything feels possible.
We move to a different hotel every week, always the penthouse, always with champagne waiting and our clothes sent out for cleaning. I stop asking questions about his job when the answers get increasingly vague.
Days blur into nights into days. We sleep until noon and stay awake until dawn. Gamble at private tables. Dance on rooftops while the city glitters below us.
I learn things about him in fragments. He’s military but won’t say what branch.
Has scars on his back that he won’t explain.
Knows four languages and can pick any lock.
Tips everyone like money means nothing because to him it apparently doesn’t.
He gives me a custom hot-pink Glock as a wedding present, and most afternoons he spends teaching me how to shoot it, how to break a hold, how to drop a man twice my size.
He learns everything about me. How I hum when I’m happy. That I eat dessert first when I think no one’s watching. That I want to build something beautiful and lasting but I’m terrified I don’t have what it takes.
“You do,” he tells me one night when we’re wrapped around each other on silk sheets. “You have everything it takes and more.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you took a chance on me. Because you said yes to something insane and made it work. Because you’re brave enough to want more than what you’ve been given.”
He buys me clothes because I came to Vegas with only one suitcase. Everything designer because I’m “the real thing and deserve to wear it.” But I keep wearing the pink Versace heels because some things are too lucky to abandon.
The ring stays on my thumb. Never comes off. Heavy gold that catches light and reminds me every second that I belong to someone who chose me.
Once, in the middle of a drunken dare, I tell him there’s no way he’d actually get my name tattooed in the most ridiculous place imaginable.
I wake up the next morning with him showing me what he’d been up to while I was sleeping.
“You dared me.” He chuckles as he takes in my shock. “And I never back down from a dare.”
We develop routines that feel like tradition even though we’ve been married for only a month.
Morning rides on his motorcycle through Red Rock Canyon.
Afternoon naps by whatever pool belongs to whatever hotel we’re calling home.
Evening adventures that always end with us tangled together somewhere inappropriate.
“I could do this forever,” I tell him one morning when we’re having breakfast on a terrace that overlooks the entire valley.
“Forever’s not long enough,” he says.