Page 30 of Groom Gamble

And I’m an idiot. Because when I look up into my husband’s face after the officiant announces, “You may kiss the bride”, Ihave rose-tinted glasses on. His colourless eyes seem pink in the setting sun.

It’s fake.

But despite me knowing that this is a pretence, I’m swooning.

There’s a click from a camera.

“Family photos,” Dex murmurs. “For our kids. Better look like we’re the loving parents they deserve.” Then he pushes my chin back around towards him and tilts my face to receive his kiss.

It’s sweet and rough from his beard, and any reservations I had fade. The camera clicks again, and I shut my eyes and focus on him. My husband. The scary mafia boss who planned our wedding, right down to a photographer and insisting on finding not just a lovely dress, but theperfectone.

And when his mouth touches mine, I know for certain I cannot live without this man. Six months isn’t enough.

Whatever the cost, I must get pregnant.

10

DEX

Our wedding night is torture.

Well, for me it is. Sophia seems to enjoy it. I make her come multiple times, and she takes my cock in almost every way except for me on top of her. I don’t think I have the self-restraint to have her beneath me, all wet and pliant and hazy eyed from orgasm, and not blow my load.

I have control, but I’m not a man without appetites.

I manage to tire her out enough that she doesn’t wake, and we remain joined like that, her body a perfectly fitting sheath.

The days crawl by.

I circle the date in my agenda, and tick off the days that pass like I’m a prisoner. But instead of being held by the Camden mafia and my blood flowing, the issue is the lack of outlets for bodily fluids.

Ten, nine, eight.

The time until Sophia will be fertile feels to be getting longer, not shorter.

Seven, six.

I can’t concentrate.

I fuck up a message to the Tiptree, the Essex kingpin I’m arranging to enact a coup with, and only just prevent the wholeplan from being sent to our enemies. Sophia catches my mistake, clever creature that she is. She’s blooming, but there’s a shadow behind her eyes when she thinks I’m not looking. It bothers me that there’s something she’s sad about, and that she’s hiding it from me.

I do what I can to please her. I spoil her with new books. I use the excuse of teaching her about sex to fuck her slow and thoroughly with her on top in the evening, use her pussy to keep my cock warm overnight, and have her from behind in the morning.

I’ve edged myself so hard over the days since our bargain that I’m constantly in danger of falling over. After six months of nothing but Sophia’s face in my imagination as I paint my hand or the shower white when I’ve longed for her, the change to havingmy wifewhenever I want, but being unable to release is sheer irony.

Five, four.

Being married helps, to an extent. I shamelessly use the excuse of making our relationship seem genuine to kiss her, hold her close, and generally be much more handsy than a man sixteen years older than her should be.

I said I’d endure anything to have her, and I will. I just didn’t realise it would be sohard.

But it’ll be worthwhile, I tell myself as my cock attempts to spring up—again—whenever I look at Sophia.

There are still three twenty-nine-thousand-hour days until I can claim my wife fully. But at least this evening I have the ideal excuse for pretending to be as pathetically in love as I really am.

“Do they know you’re married?” Sophia asks, smoothing down her dress as we enter the hotel where the London Maths Club are having a social dinner event.

“Yes.” I put an announcement of our marriage inThe Times,The Evening Standard, and all the local newspapers too, as wellas having some of the most flattering candid shots from the wedding leaked to the gossip magazines. I assume it will have filtered through to Snap Tick Book or whatever online thing is fashionable now.