I always thought it would be great to be given a credit card, but it’s terrifying. What if I buy the wrong thing? It’s not my money, and somehow that’s worse.
He’s going to be cross with me.
The dress I bought is good, but is it good enough? I look down at the deep, shimmering blue of the full-length dress. I don’t know what the fabric is exactly, but it’s incredibly soft, and feels amazing against my skin.
It’s wild that on Friday night I went to a club to get my first kiss, and on Saturday night I’m pretending to be married to the man who killed three people to protect me. Granny was sceptical about my staying with Dom, and I didn’t even dare tell her about the fake wife thing. As predicted, she refused to come and stay here. Dismissed it with a “Pshh, don’t be ridiculous”.
“Taggie.” Dom’s voice comes from outside my door.
My tummy flutters. “Come in, it’s unlocked.”
“I thought I told you to lock your…” He stops mid grumble when he sees me, and stares in silence.
He’s wearing a black tuxedo with a bow tie that’s the perfect amount of imperfect, and my mouth waters at the sight of him. My fake husband.
“Is it okay?” I ask nervously.
He sweeps his gaze down over my body.
“I know you said to spend lots, but it wasn’t the most,” I babble out with all the coherence of a three-year-old. “It was—”
“Was it the one you wanted?” he cuts me off.
I straighten. “Yes.”
“Then it’s perfect. You look perfect.”
“Good enough for Richmond?”
“A credit to Richmond,” he says sincerely, then adds with a wry twist of his lips. “Too good, really.”
I can’t help but laugh. “That’s not true, you…”
I stop because I’m about to embarrass both of us. He looks delicious enough to eat without a spoon. I’d put my whole face on him and eat every part of him in greedy licks.
“I what?” There’s a shadow over his expression, and something serious in his black-brown eyes.
“You look nice in that tux,” I admit in a whisper. A spectacular understatement. He’d look amazing in anything, and I wish I could see him out of it, too.
“Nice,” he repeats, with the inference that I mean it as an insult.
“Very nice.” I’m blushing. I shouldn’t be imagining him naked. He obviously doesn’t think of me that way, whereas I’m hallucinating him in my bedroom at night.
Because it was a dream.
Wasn’t it?
“Thank you, Taggie,” he says roughly, and I go still with the sound of my name on his lips.
It’s just because I’m a silly girl fantasising about a man out of my league when he’s been kind enough to protect me by pretending to be my husband. It’s not that he sounds like the man in my room last night… In my dream.
Is it?
All the way downstairs, Dom keeping a careful distance as though he’s aware I’d climb him like a tree given half a chance, fancy dress or no, and I think about that dream. I’ve never had one like that before. The bit with the book was just weird, but the man I saw in the darkness was… Vivid.
Real?
“We’re going to the Blackwood triplets’ forty-first birthday and there will be a lot of the London Mafia Syndicate there,” Dom explains when we’re in the limo. “Hopefully there won’t be any violence, except possibly from Mayfair if there are too many stupid jokes about maths. And all you really need to know about the maths club is that Rhys Cavendish wanted a baby with his now wife so badly that he pretended the mafia syndicate was a maths club so she wouldn’t realise he was dangerous.”
I snort at the idea anyone could marry a mafia boss without realising he was dangerous, then catch myself. Because I have first-hand experience of how deadly the man I’m pretending is my husband is, but I can suddenly understand why someone would make that mistake. Because there’s an unshakable feeling in all my vital organs that Dom is trustworthy.
Dom tells me more about the London Mafia Syndicate as we travel to the event, filling me in on who’s who, and that I should expect to be adopted by the wives and dragged along to their book club. No dragging needed, though.
Gotta admit, going straight from virgin who has never had a boyfriend to established wife cuts out all the parts of a relationship that I was most anxious about. I’ve never been interested in boys my own age, and only curious about older men in an abstract way, which is why I’m yet to have my first kiss.
When we arrive at the venue, worry spikes through my tummy.
Can I really carry this off?
Dom fits his arm casually around me as we walk to the entrance, his hand on the small of my back, and I stumble with the electric heat of his nearness.
“You’re not scared of me, remember?” he murmurs, “And I’ll protect you from anything.”
“I’m not scared of you,” I whisper back.
“You should be.” He loses the words into my hair.
“Richmond!” A man approaches and stops dead when he sees me at Dom’s elbow. “You have a plus one. Does that finally make you an addition to the London Maths Club instead of a minus?”
“Blackwood. Happy birthday,” Dom grumbles with all the charm of a tiger woken from a much-needed nap. “May I introduce my wife, Taggie.”
Dom keeps a possessive arm around me.
“Oh, not a plus one, a better half,” says another man, with a slight Italian accent as he saunters up. He’s identical to the first. They both have almost inhumanly bright-blue eyes and perfectly tailored suits, but when the first Blackwood triplet turns to his brother, a black tattoo is exposed at his collar, and the line of a gun under his suit jacket. These men aren’t as tame as they seem.
“That is enough bad maths jokes,” Dom drawls.
“It’s not.” The first Blackwood folds his arms. “Because finally, you solved the love equation, and you didn’t invite us to the wedding.”
I have to hide a giggle. They’re ridiculous and fun, and totally unexpected. Not what I thought mafia bosses would be like.
“Yeah, it was a lovely event.” Dom squeezes me. “Just mia bambola and me.”
“Mmm.” The other Blackwood brother nods. “Looks as though they balance each other. He’s an arsehole, and she’s perfect.”
“Well, that we can agree on.” Dom smiles down at me, and I feel as special as they say.
“When is Sev going to get married?” grumbles the first brother.
“When he finds someone who’s got his number.” The second Blackwood brother claps Dom on the shoulder. “Come on, rompicoglioni, there are a lot of people you need to shock.”
He’s not wrong. It takes us a while to repeat our story, developing it a bit each time. Dom introduces me as his wife, sounding convincingly in love time after time. He describes dozens of romantic details that make my heart ache because I really wish they were true.
Roses. Phone calls. Sweet words and getting engaged after only a month. Our marriage on a beach in Sardinia. And although we met on a dating app, Dom says it was love at first sight.
All lies.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, and I flush with warmth. “You’re doing well. And don’t worry, the London Maths Club isn’t always this fancy,” he adds as we move between groups, a pause in our introductions.
All around us are couples dressed in evening wear. As I watch, a man drops a kiss onto his partner’s cheek, and a couple who have their backs to us, I notice the man’s hand wander from her waist to squeeze her bottom. At the bar, another couple is kissing and laughing. No one seems to even notice.
“There are a lot of PDAs,” I observe anxiously.
“Mmm. Come here, wife.” He says that word with relish, but there’s a soft tenderness in his expression, his dark eyes fathomless but warm as he draws me to him with the small touch on my chin. His other hand slides over my waist, until I’m flush with him.
He tilts my head up, and I boost onto my tiptoes to bring myself closer.
Brushing my lips with his thumb, he gazes down at me with naked desire.
Fake.
But although my brain knows that, my body doesn’t. I tingle. I’m out of breath. My nipples are pebbled beneath this dress, and I’m hot and squirmy between my legs.
“How about a kiss so we’re the same as all these other couples?” he murmurs as he dips his head.
“Okay,” I breathe, and I get all the prizes for understatement.
Dom though, is an actor worthy of shiny gold awards that are heavy enough to brain someone with, because he lets out a groan like he’s been longing for ten thousand years to kiss me, holding my waist and lifting me clean off the floor.
My eyelids flutter closed.
Then our lips touch, and I realise the disadvantage of faking that we’re already married. Because my breath is stolen. He kisses me like it’s his right to take my lips, my air, my soul sucked out through my mouth.
This kiss gives no consideration for the fact I’m inexperienced, or it’s the first time we’ve done this. It takes. It demands and refuses to listen to anything but a moan of pleasure that inevitably is torn from my chest.
His tongue is in my mouth in a bold sweep, hot and possessive, as though I’m his fuck toy.
He shifts his hand and plunges it into my hair, careless of the hours the hairdresser spent making the curls beautiful, and I don’t care either because he holds me gently but firmly, just pulling at my scalp enough to make me feel his strength and dominance over me. His power, all leashed for me.
My clit pulses.
This kiss is a whole-body experience, from my toes that are off the ground now as he presses me to him, to the tips of my hair, held in his big hand. Sparks shower through me as I feel a bulge in his trousers, hot and hard.
He’s aroused. By me.
Then as quickly as he initiated the kiss, he sets me down and draws away. He meets my gaze and for a split second all my shock and confusion and desire are mirrored in his expression. Then his dark eyes glint with golden brown, and he smiles, soft and almost sad.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. Yeah. I…”
This is fake. That was a fake first kiss.
I flick my gaze to the side. One of the wives is watching us, while holding a baby, an indulgent look on her face as she talks to her husband. He glances over, then rolls his eyes.
“I think we fooled them. Not bad for a first go.” I make light of it.
“What do you mean?” my fake husband demands.
“Just that I… Well.” I’m blushing, and I wish I hadn’t brought this up.
He waits, brows low, completely focused on me. It’s as intense as his kiss, his attention. There’s no getting away from it, but it’s not like I want to.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” I confess in a rush.
The shock that dawns on his face is almost comical.
“How…”
I think of my mother, having me far too young, and never seeing me grow up. I think of Granny’s cutting wit, and emphasis that education and money are a better investment than boys who only leave you knocked up and penniless. I think of how none of the boys I know do anything for me.
And then I look into Dom’s fathomless dark eyes, and I burn.
“Never had the right opportunity,” I say.
He sighs, and reaching out, cups my jaw. “You should have told me,” he rumbles. “We could have practised first so you weren’t… Distressed.”
“I wasn’t.” Quite the opposite. Although if you count horniness as distress, then yeah. I guess so.
How am I going to fake being Dom’s wife when the way I want him is painfully real?
