her body shouted, Encore!
“That was quick,” Mr. Multiple Orgasms praised the hotel employee pushing a cart into the room. He stopped the man just inside the doorway. “I’ll take it from here.”
The pressure in Taylor’s head throbbed to where at any moment she was going to form and rupture an aneurysm. Slade’s wife. This had to be a nightmare. Or a joke. Or a mistake they could rectify with an annulment.
Could a couple get an annulment if they’d spent the night in bed, performing exotic yoga moves with energetic bursts of pleasurable cardio?
She closed her eyes and let images from the night before wash over her, of Slade unlocking her hotel room door, sweeping her off her feet, and carrying her to the bed and stripping off her clothes. She’d giggled and kissed his neck when he’d carried her across the threshold. Then he’d kissed her. Really, deeply kissed her. Even now she could recall the feel of his lips against hers, the feel of his body against hers, his spicy male scent. Heat rose, flushing her face, ears and much more feminine parts.
They so wouldn’t qualify for an annulment.
Wow at the moves the man had hidden inside that fabulous body. His hands were magic. Pure magic. His mouth? Magic. Just wow.
She cracked open an eyelid to steal a peek. He tipped the man from Room Service from his wallet on the dresser, closed the door, turned and caught her staring.
“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.” He gave a lopsided, almost self-deriding grin. “Some night, eh?”
She groaned and pulled a pillow over her head to where she just peered out from behind it. “Tell me that wasn’t real.”
He shrugged his magnificent shoulders. “That wasn’t real.”
Dropping the pillow but hanging on tightly to the sheet, she let out a surprised sigh of relief.
“But if by ‘that’ you’re referring to our wedding at the North Pole Christmas Bliss Wedding Chapel—” the words came out with a mixture of amusement and shock, as if he couldn’t quite believe what they’d done either “—well, according to our marriage certificate, that was very real.”
Keeping the covers tucked securely around her, Taylor sat up. A wave of nausea smacked her insides. He stood there looking sexy as sin and she was going to barf. Great. Just flipping great.
“One minute we were kissing in the limo surrounded by Christmas music and that crazy peppermint spray the driver kept showering us with, the next we’re getting married so we could have sex. Great sex, by the way. You blew me away.” His blue eyes sparkling with mischievous intent, he moved toward her and she shook her head in horrified denial.
“Get back,” she warned, covers clutched to her chest with one hand and the other outstretched as if warding off an evil spirit. Sure, there was a part of her that was thrilled that he’d enjoyed their night as much as she had, but it was morning. The morning after. And they’d gotten married. “That’s crazy. We didn’t have to get married to have sex.”
Pausing, he scratched his head as if confused. “Not that I don’t agree with you, but that’s not what you said last night in the limo.”
The movement of his arm flexed muscles along his chest and abdomen and sent a wave of tingles through her body, but that wasn’t why she gulped again. She was just...thirsty? Parched. Still fighting the urge to barf. Forcing her eyes to focus on his face and not the rest of him, she blinked. The flicker of awareness in his blue eyes warned he knew exactly what she had been looking at, what she’d been thinking, and he wasn’t immune to her thoughts.
“You told me you wouldn’t have sex with me unless we were married,” he reminded her.
She had said that. In the midst of his hot, lust-provoking kisses she’d thrown down her gauntlet, expecting him to run or laugh in her face. “So you married me?”
He glanced down at the cheap band on his left hand and shrugged. “Obviously.”
Not that he sounded any happier about it than she felt, but someone should shoot her now. She was wearing a ring, too. A simple golden band on the wedding finger of her left hand. Because she was married. To Slade.
Slade was not the man of her dreams, was not someone she’d carefully chosen to spend the rest of her life based upon well-thought-out criteria. He was exactly what she avoided even dating because men like Slade didn’t jibe with her life plans. How could she have had such a huge lapse of judgement?
The metal hugging her finger tightened to painful proportions. At any moment her finger was going to turn blue and drop off from lack of blood flow. Seriously.
She went to remove the ring, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Why, she couldn’t exactly say. Probably the same insanity that had had her saying “I do” to a man she should have been screaming “I don’t” at. Besides, she’d probably have to buy a stick of butter before the thing would budge.
“We should talk about this.” He glanced at his watch. “But we have our presentation in just over an hour. You should eat.”
She glanced at the bedside table’s digital clock. Crap. She’d slept much later than normal. Then again, she’d stayed up much later than normal.
Nothing had been normal about the night before. It had been as if she’d been watching someone else do all the things she’d done, as if it had all been a fantasy, not real.
“You have to go to your room,” she told him, needing to be away from his watchful blue gaze.
“I’m in my room.” He shifted his weight and her attention dropped to where the towel was tucked in at his waist. His amazing, narrow waist that sported abs no doctor should boast. Abs like those belonged on sport stars and models, not white-collar professionals who saw cancer patients all day. “Last night we arranged for the hotel staff to move my things into your room while we’re in class today.”
They had stopped by the front desk and requested that. Wincing, her gaze shot to his.
“No.” She was going to throw up. Really she was. How was she going to explain this to Gracie? She grimaced. “I don’t want you in my room.”
“Understood.” He looked as if he really didn’t want to be there either. “But we’re married.”
“Married” had come out sounding much like a dirty word, like someone who’d just been given a deadly diagnosis.
Guilt hit Taylor. She had told him she wouldn’t have sex with him unless they were married. But wasn’t marriage a bit far for a man to go just to get laid? He had a busy revolving door to his bedroom so he couldn’t have been that desperate for sex. He must have been as inebriated as she had.
“How did we end up married?” she asked, pulling the bedcovers up to her neck. The less he could see of her the better. She already felt exposed.
“You told me you wanted to have sex with me, but that you wouldn’t unless we were married. Our elfish limo driver said he knew a place that could take care of a last-minute license and we happened to be right outside it. We got married and had sex. You know this. You were there.”
If she’d been into one-night stands, last night would have been amazing. But she wasn’t. She was a mature, professional doctor who had learned her life lessons the hard way and had a beautiful little girl she was raising by herself to prove it. She’d vowed she wouldn’t have sex again without being married first. Had she foolishly believed marriage would protect her from future heartbreak?
She’d wanted Slade so much. Had possibly wanted him for months, although she’d never admitted as much to herself. When their pointy-eared three-and-a-half-foot-tall limo driver had taken them to the chapel, she’d looked at Slade, expecting him to laugh at her condition.
When she’d seen him actually seriously considering marrying her just to have sex with her, a big chunk of the protective ice she’d