He held out his hand and Stefano put Brielle’s hand into his. He immediately locked his fingers over hers so she didn’t have a chance to pull away. Touching her was like touching a match to a flame. Heat sizzled between them. He felt electricity race up his arm, through his nerve endings and down his spine. She reacted with a little gasp and a quick jerk of her arm. He held her tight to him, refusing to relinquish her hand. They made it to the altar and stood before the priest.
The priest immediately began to give an abbreviated reading and then gave a short homily as the two faced each other. Elie looked down at his bride, not really hearing what the priest had to say. Brielle tried to look anywhere but at him. He had both of her hands in his, refusing to let her escape what this ceremony meant. It was a commitment and they both knew it. He was one hundred percent in. All the way. He wanted her to see that he meant it.
She kept shaking her head and trying to inch her hands away from his. She was adamant that she wasn’t marrying him. He tried to think what had happened to her in the intervening years since he’d last seen her. She was very thin in comparison to when she’d been eighteen. She’d had an hourglass figure then. She wasn’t a rider at the time. He’d been told she had washed out of the program, yet now, her résumé claimed she was a shadow rider. She’d been a virgin with no sexual experience and yet her questionnaire had included specific, very exacting questions regarding sexual preferences and she had answered she was familiar with bondage and other kink and she had listed what she was willing or unwilling to do.
Elie wasn’t a man who got angry fast. He’d conquered those emotions after he had lost his temper with Jean-Claude Archambault and spewed crap that hurt Brielle and ended their relationship before it ever began. He’d worked hard to overcome a natural tendency to be passionate about everything in his life. He found himself getting angry at the mere thought of Brielle learning about sex, any kind of sex, from other men. He’d lost that opportunity as well through his own carelessness and her stubbornness.
He had taken full responsibility for what happened between them, but as time went on and he’d tried numerous ways to apologize to her, and she’d refused even to open a single letter from him, he had come to realize both of them were to blame. She might be younger than he was, and she felt humiliated, but she still could have listened to his explanation.
The priest ceased speaking and looked at Elie expectantly. Vittorio Ferraro, his best man, nudged him to take the wedding ring Damian had crafted for his bride. Elie took it almost reverently. The circle was bluish black in color and made of a particular element that could enter the shadows with a rider. Where her band was thin and dainty, it still matched the thicker band Damian had crafted for Elie to wear. Inside each ring, Damian had etched à toi pour toujours, meaning forever yours.
He took the ring and repeated the vows in a firm voice, promising to love and cherish this woman for all his days. He pushed the band onto her finger and wasn’t surprised when it fit perfectly.
Emmanuelle handed Brielle Elie’s ring, the one he had reluctantly removed just before the ceremony started. He had wondered at his reluctance. Now he knew why. Subconsciously, he must have known his bride was Brielle. Brielle’s voice was low, shaking, as she stumbled over the vows to love and cherish Elie. He knew she wasn’t really doing more than parroting the priest when she promised to obey him. He thought she’d stop the entire ceremony. Emme nearly threw her bouquet at him. Maybe Brielle heard and didn’t care because she planned on petitioning to get out of the marriage immediately. She did take his hand and push the ring onto his finger.
The priest pronounced them man and wife and said he could kiss his bride. He’d been waiting for that moment. Hot blood roared through his veins, and thundered in his ears, drowning out every civilized sound. The chapel, and everyone in it, receded until there was only Brielle, the woman he’d had so many erotic fantasies about. The woman he’d thought about for years.
Elie swept her into his arms before she could think to protest. Maybe she wasn’t going to protest. He didn’t know because the moment he gathered her close, her body fitted to his, the familiar electricity ran like a hot live wire between them, connecting them instantly. The air seemed to crackle and lightning shot through his body in jagged streaks. He had never been so aware of another human being in his life.
He tilted her chin with one hand and lowered his mouth to hers. The moment their lips touched, it was as if a match flared into a bright, hot flame, scorching them both. She gasped and he took advantage, sweeping his tongue into the heat of her mouth. At the first taste of her, every nerve ending in his body came roaring to life, instantly aware of every part of her. Soft skin. The way her breasts rose and fell against his chest. The way her feminine mound pressed tight against his thigh and her firm belly rubbed against his cock where it pushed intimately against her very elegant gown.