Chapter 43 Noah
forty-three
Noah
Standing next to Ethan as his best man, I’m having déjà vu. Same group of friends, different lineup. This time I’m the best man, Grace is the bride with Alex her maid of honor, and one of the bridesmaids is my wife.
We’re at the King’s farm, in the midst of acres and acres of green pastures and fiery woods. The Vermont sky is huge above us, brimming with pinks and gold in this witching hour.
And this time my wife is looking at me with adoring eyes instead of… shit… stealing glances at me. She was looking at me all those years. I just never saw it. Never saw her truly. What is wrong with me?
This should be us, standing at the altar with all our friends around us, exchanging vows. Willow should have had the wedding of her dreams. I shut my eyes briefly. How blind was I, that I didn’t see her? Didn’t sense what she felt for me?
Speaking of which, I need to get to the bottom of how and when this all started for her. I see some tender confessions in our future, a hint of sorrow soothed by an orgasm or three.
Shit. Wrong time to get a hard-on. My eyes open on instinct on Willow, her gorgeous body molded by a brand-new dress the color of sunset, no tag, her gaze on Grace and Ethan, and… tears in her eyes.
Is she thinking the same?
She deserved a wedding like this, something no one would ever forget, with pictures for generations to come in the hallways of Lilyvale.
She smiles feebly now, something Ethan said. What was it? Oh yeah. The man on my right is going on about the years being apart, when they should have been together. Some stuff about mistakes and making up for lost time. Smooth talker, my friend.
I won’t get public declarations of love and she won’t get a lavish wedding. But I’ll make damn sure that ’til death do us part, she has the sweetest life she could ever dream of. I’ll love her fiercely, entirely, and with devotion. She deserves nothing less.
When Grace and Ethan walk past us, I’m faced with Alex, Grace’s maid of honor. “You owe me a swap,” I say with a smile as I take Willow’s arm. Alex slides behind me. “Hey handsome,” she whispers to Chris.
I lean toward my wife as we follow the bride and groom and give her arm a squeeze. “You’re getting better at this.”
She smiles at me. “No tag to bother me.”
“Oh, that’s the only difference?”
She gives me a coquettish shoulder raise. “Pretty much.”
“Really,” I growl. By now we’ve reached the end of the aisle. I pull her aside, but still there’s too many people. So I grab her hand and rush her behind the farmhouse.
“Where are we going?” she pretends to wonder, laughing.
Away from prying eyes, I lean her against the wall, needing to feel the length of her body against mine. Her heartbeat flutters like a bird against a window, her lips part, her eyelids close.
That’s my wife.
I run my hands up and down her sides until I feel the bare skin at her thighs, then slide one hand under her dress and find… nothing but more bare skin. I cup her ass.
Not a single thread of fabric. “Fuck…” I growl.
“It’s not what you think,” she starts.
Not what I think? It’s a bare pussy. There’s no other way to put it. I plunge two fingers inside her to make my point.
“It’s because…” a sigh as I pump in and out of her “the dress is so… oh Noah… so clingy you could see the… ahhh… the underwear so I… I…” She clenches her thighs around my hand. “Baby, stop. Anyone could see us.”
“But you were doing so good.”
She humors me with a chuckle. “There’s kids. Kids tend to run around houses.”
Good point. “Let go of my hand?” She has me in the iron clutch of her thighs and damn… I could use some of that around my head as I eat her, around my hips as I take her, around—
“Promise you’ll stop,” she breathes.
“Scout’s honor.”
She giggles and clenches harder.
“Open your thighs for me, woman,” I order.
“You’re so dirty,” she whisper-moans in my ear. “I can’t wait for you to fuck me.” Then she opens her thighs, and I reluctantly remove my hand, sucking her juices off my fingers.
She pats the front of her dress as she pushes herself off the wall. “Do I look okay?”
“You look like someone who almost got fucked against a wall.”
Her eyes widen, her mouth gapes. “What’s that supposed to mean? You make it sound like a good thing.”
I hold my laughter and reach to fix the strands of hair escaping from the fancy pile at the back of her head. “It means you have that hungry look on you and…” I’m not sure how to put the next thing… “these little guys are still calling for attention.”
She looks down her dress and yelps at her pebbled nipples. “Ohmygod.” Lifting the draped fabric, she looks inside. “I had those little thingies,” she says, producing with widening eyes what looks like a petal-shaped Band-Aid, then another, “but I guess… I guess… the sweat?”
“Babe, you don’t sweat. Not that much,” I say with utter confidence. “Like I said. You look ripe for a good fuck.”
She gapes. “That’s not what you said!”
Shit. Now her cheeks are turning rosy, her nipples are begging for more attention, and why is her dress clinging halfway up her ass? …maybe there is a sweat effect, the kind that would make me fuck my wife against that wall if there weren’t any kids around.
“Almost fucked… primed… what’s the difference?” My erection is getting painful as I get into the specifics of the different stages of making love to Willow. Judging by her bodily reaction, she feels the same.
We need to stop acting like horny teenagers. Getting a grip on myself, I take her hand and pull her to a side door leading inside the house.
“Noah Callaway, we are not having sex in here,” she hisses, trying to resist my pull.
“Just showing you to the bathroom.” Now she follows. “I think they might be waiting for us for photos,” I add.
“Oh god,” she says as she darts into the powder room and takes in the full extent of her appearance.
From her small clutch she produces more things that I thought could ever fit.
She swiftly places another pair of those sticky things on her nipples, plucks hairpins on what she calls her updo, dabs makeup on her forehead.
She checks her ass in the mirror, then smooths her dress, takes a deep breath, and says, “You owe me a serious fuck session tonight.”
I’m going to have to think about… nails on a chalkboard to get rid of the hard-on she gave me again with just her words.
A couple of hours later Willow nudges me. “You’re up.”
Alex is going back to her place at one of the dinner tables, having given a speech about how true love just finds you, and there’s no fighting it or trying to forget it.
She’s talking about her own story as well as Ethan’s and Grace’s, and I can’t help but wonder again…
is there something wrong with me that I didn’t see what was right there, in front of me, several times a week?
Am I that broken that I couldn’t see, couldn’t find, couldn’t recognize true love?
I always felt awed and amazed and a little bit scared by Willow. Shouldn’t I have been able to see who she really was?
“Where’s the best man?” Cassandra calls in the mic.
Shit, that’s me. I head to the spot next to Grace and Ethan and recount the expected story about how Ethan fell head-over-heels for Grace.
I skip the part where he messed up and disappeared for ten years, because no one wants to hear how a groom fucked up.
I manage to make a tasteful joke about them seeing each other for the first time again in a massage tent.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Angela was right outside, and I checked with her.
Nothing happened.” The audience is falling over themselves laughing, but Grace and Ethan are just… blushing. A lot.
“Oh… so she lied,” I state in the mic, my attention on them. “Good to know.”
More laughter.
“Cassandra is typically credited for a lot of love stories in this town…” I tip the mic to her and get Cass a round of applause, “but I think Ms. Angela, who I’m actually proud to now call family, deserves a lot of credit as well.
” This time the round of applause is for Ms. Angela, who makes all sorts of faces and waves her hands no, then finally gives up and makes a heart sign with her hands like she’s a millennial.
“Speaking of family, we want a redo of the wedding, No-no!” Beck bellows from across the party tent.
“Beck, this is Grace and Ethan’s wedding.”
Beck stands and bellows, “He shorted us a party!”
Is this guy for real? I glance at Grace and Ethan. At least they’re laughing. “No one wants a Callaway family argument.”
There’s a Larsen effect from a mic, then Ethan’s voice comes out. “We’d love to see that, actually. Free entertainment,” he jokes, and Grace laughs.
I shake my head. “I’ll only say this. Can’t blame me for wanting to shield my bride from this little brother. Let her have one day of peace.”
Beck places his hands on his heart as if he were mortally wounded but sits down, getting the message that this really isn’t okay. These kids are going to be the death of me… especially considering they’re absolutely not kids.
I wrap up my interrupted speech with a couple of heartfelt and lightly funny remarks, and am almost at my seat when Grace says in the mic, “Willow?”
Willow turns her head to look beyond me.
“We’re expecting a vow renewal for your first anniversary, honey.”
Willow glances at me like a deer in the headlights.
Kiara’s voice sounds from god knows where, “Yeah, I’m calling in my one chance to be a maid of honor.”
Willow is crimson, but nods at her friends.
“That’s actually a great idea,” I whisper in her ear.
She doesn’t answer, just timidly dips her head down, and I’m not quite sure what to make of that.