Page 6 of Accidentally Hitched (Unintentionally Yours #1)

Amanda

I press my hotel room door open and squeeze my eyes shut momentarily.

Please let them be asleep, please let them be asleep, please let them be asleep…

I let my breath out when I see all the girls passed out on the beds and couch. Some of them are still in their dresses from the night before, some are in their underwear. All of them look like mimosa overdose and regret.

Not that I can talk.

Although…I don’t think regret is the right word for it. Even if I did a lot of things I maybe shouldn’t have…

I pad across the floor barefoot (because fuck these shoes) and step between the landmines of shoes, dresses and those tall, skinny drink cups people lug around the strip just to say “Look at me! I’m in VEGAS!”

I really need a shower.

And to think.

And some Tylenol.

On the nightstand next to my sister is a bottle of champagne with a warm third of the most likely flat liquid left.

I grab it and take a swig, hoping to take the edge off the dull ache in my forehead and I cringe against the sour taste.

I never did like champagne much. Still, it might help so I lug it with me to the bathroom and turn on the shower.

The water is hot and comes down in bullets (thank God for high water pressure) and I close my eyes, letting the events of the last twenty-four hours wash from my skin.

The heels and the dress I would never choose for myself, obviously chosen for me by Kate.

The drinks we had before, during, and after each bachelorette party event.

The auction.

God. The auction.

Callum…

I do not fawn over men, other than maybe Hugh Jackman. It’s just not something characteristic of me. Character matters. Maturity matters.

But after seeing him up there, his stony jaw, his intense eyes, the silver glimmer in his temples from hair that’s seen things over the years, I found myself fawning. Staring. Bewitched, to be honest.

As he moved about the stage, clearly not there by his own wishes, looking like he felt the same as me about the whole charade, something in me connected with him.

Like two magnets that found each other from across the room.

Like we were hooked.

Like I knew, somehow, that I would end up meeting him.

I even wonder for a second, if subconsciously, just maybe, I raised my paddle on purpose.

I shake my head and wring out my hair.

No. It was fully an accident.

A very-characteristic-of-me oops that happened as I stumbled around trying not to make a scene while fully, publicly, making a very obvious, very expensive scene.

And then we went on a date, which, by the way, was also very fun.

And his jawline loosened a little and his eyes lightened from a dark almost gray to a steely blue and we talked. I smiled and laughed, and he allowed me a hint of a smirk here and there. If I had to guess, he doesn’t go around passing out smirks too often.

Then we drank Margaritas, and we walked, and we went to a gag-chapel–

Oh God.

The chapel.

My eyes pop open hard enough to briefly numb the headache and my cheeks flush as I remember prancing around the chapel, spouting off about how I didn’t want to get married but if I did it would be someone like him.

Did we really act it out?

Me, a girl with no time or desire for marriage. And him, a no-nonsense businessman, pretended to get married at a makeshift church off the Vegas strip by a man who looked like Post Malone?

Sigh.

We did.

Who even am I?

But I think about that too. I am a hardworking, always responsible, woman who is type-A, but no one’s type and maybe, just maybe, I needed to let loose as Kate puts it.

And with a little alcohol and enough prodding and a very stacked older gentleman making sex eyes at me from across the room, I engaged.

He locked those eyes on me, and I couldn’t back away.

Then, as he took his shirt off, worked the stage with less effort yet far more effect than all the little boys before him, shooting me a look or a partial smirk here and there, I was committed.

Who would have thought I’d end up in bed with that?

I’ve been with a small handful of men. One who I ran from as soon as he said he loved me (on the first date before dessert hit the table), one who I was on-again-off-again for the better part of two years who I thought I might love but it turned out to only be a bad case of stomach ulcers, and one who thought he was the love guru but fingered me like he was trying to fish an earring out of the bathroom sink.

Callum, however, was not the same.

He didn’t just blow the others out of the water– this man was the storm itself.

And it swallowed me whole.

I find myself closing my eyes again as I use the detachable sprayer to rinse away the unscented, hotel body wash.

The way his hands grabbed me like he had never been more sure about anything in his life.

The way his lips pressed to mine, stealing the kisses without permission.

The way he felt inside me…

My lips pop open at the memory of the feeling and the smallest moan escapes my throat as I realize I am holding the sprayer at clit level.

I turn my knee outward, allowing the streams of water to pulse against me, pretending, wishing it was his tongue, not a shower head teasing my most sensitive parts.

“Knock knock,” Kate’s voice rips me out of the moment, and I jump, dropping the sprayer on the tile. I scramble to grab the sprayer and will my cheeks back to their normal color just in time for her to yank the white curtain back.

Gotta love sisters.

“Well look at you. Boozing in the shower. I take it you had a fun night? Speaking of that,” she grabs the bottle and takes a swig before handing it back and slinking down the wall to sit on the floor.

She leaves the curtain open so we can talk and she’s still in her white dress from the night before.

“It was good.” I say shortly, pumping some conditioner into my hand even though I’ve already used it.

“Just good?” Kate raises an eyebrow. “That man was a snack. Even if he was a bit on the seasoned side. And you didn’t come back last night. I have a hard time believing good is the right word for it. What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” I lie, closing my eyes so I can rinse my hair again. And so, I don’t have to look at her because I’m not a lie to people’s faces kind of girl, especially not Kate’s face because I’ve never been able to lie to her.

She’s quiet. She’s waiting. Fuck.

“I mean we had dinner,”

“Where?”

“I think it was called The Ball? Glass Ball?” I lie. I don't know why.

“High Ball!?”

“That’s it.” I nod.

“Holy shit. That place is nice .”

“Yeah, he paid for it.”

Kate sits up straight. “Wait, so he paid for a real date?”

“I wasn’t a real date,” I snap and tug the curtain shut. Kate yanks it back open.

“Sebastian Stan fucked you from across the room, threw his tie at you, took you to one of the most elite lounges in the city and paid for everything. How much was it by the way? A hundred fifty? Two?”

“Around that,” I admit.

“See! Fucking date. And then what? Tell me everything. It’s distracting me from puking.”

I turn the heat up on the shower since it looks like I’m going to be here for a while. I don’t want to turn it off because I don’t know who else is awake and I don’t really want all her friends hearing about my wild night.

“We had drinks. And went for a walk.”

“Where?”

“Down the strip.”

“And?”

And we got married.

“And we went back to his hotel.”

Funny how that is the tamer part of the story.

Well, I wouldn’t call what he did to me last night tame. I look down at my knees which are in fact still red from being flipped onto all fours before he fucked my very soul from my body.

But it’s the less embarrassing part of the story.

“Yeah you did!” Kate grins, reaching for the now very warm champagne and taking a swig. “See? I told you this trip would be good for you! You’ll never be the same and I think it’s for the better. And the best part is, you never have to see him again. It’s a win-win.”

I smile but it tips downward ever so slightly in one corner of my mouth. The idea of leaving everything that just happened behind me is obviously ideal.

I have a life to get on with.

I have a job that starts tomorrow.

I have a role to play.

A role that doesn’t involve Vegas and drinking fancy cocktails and frolicking down the streets of Vegas like a schoolgirl.

A role that doesn’t have space for thoughts of sexy men and the things they do to my usually very steady heartbeat, among other parts of my anatomy.

And the thought of all of that, makes me just the tiniest bit sad.