Wear My Ring: The Secret Wedding Dress / The Millionaire's Marriage Claim

Gabe reached for his keys, suddenly needing to go … somewhere, anywhere but the big, empty, cold, lifeless room in which he sat. In which his every thought seemed to echo. Tracking down the one thing that seemed to quiet those thoughts seemed as good a place to start as any.

He paused at his front door when he realised he had no idea which apartment number was hers. To hell with it—he’d knock on every door till he found the right one.

He opened his door, the lift dinged, and the doors slid open. And as if he’d conjured her from thin air, there Paige stood, soft and pink-cheeked, her blonde hair gathered off her face in a wind-tousled knot.

He opened his mouth to joke about the errant lift being his new best friend for having brought her to him again, but at the slow lift and fall of her chest, the quick swipe of her tongue over her plump bottom lip, his throat came over too tight and every muscle in his body was hit with a sudden dull ache.

If he’d had any illusions that the lift had brought her there by accident, they went up in flames the moment Paige lifted her right hand and unfurled a row of condoms. The silver foil wrappers swung from her fingers, glinting at him and sending tracks of fire through his veins.

A growl rose in his throat, and along with it the urge to throw her over his shoulder and drag her back into his cave. But it seemed she had ideas of her own.

She stepped out of the lift, tucked the edge of a condom wrapper between her teeth, and slid a pin from her hair, allowing it to tumble over her shoulders.

She dropped a couple of inches of height as her boots hit the floor with a double klump klump. Next came her scarf, uncoiling from around her neck far too slowly before it pooled at her feet. Then, as she watched him from beneath her long lashes, her breaths coming harder again, her fingers moved to the top button of her cardigan. Gabe had to dig his toes into his shoes until they hurt in order to stand still, knowing he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t let this play itself out.

The long strip of silver foil still dangled from her teeth as she padded his way, and slowly, achingly slowly, undid each button until she opened it to reveal beautiful soft skin and a pale pink lace bra, the dark circles of her nipples drawing his hungry gaze.

As she came level with him she slid the demure cardigan from her shoulders, her breasts pressing forward, her back arching. When she hooked the cardigan on the end of one fine finger and twirled it over her head, at the aroma of her hot skin wafting past his nose his patience finally gave out.

Gabe lifted her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder fireman style and a whoosh of her laughter filled his lofty apartment.

The second he’d seen her all the blood in his body had headed for his groin. The second he touched her he was rock hard, ready. It took every ounce of self-control he possessed to place her down gently. Her stockinged feet landed with a soft touch on his hard floor.

She took the row of condoms from between her teeth, tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans, her hands lingering on his backside a moment. He gritted his teeth to keep from exploding on the spot as her soft hands moved up his torso to press his jacket aside. She shoved it down his arms and to the floor, and then she was on her toes, her hands beneath his T-shirt, his muscles clenching at the firm touch of her determined fingers.

And then her mouth was on his. Hot, lush, bliss. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her bodily off the floor to feel her body against the length of his. All he could think was so hot, so soft, so beautiful. The urge to get her horizontal was getting harder to push back, when he remembered belatedly that he still didn’t have a bed.

Irrelevant. His apartment might be stark, but his imagination was not.

He backed her into the pool of light by the kitchen, needing to see her, to live through her every reaction. Her breath hitched as he bunched her skirt in his big hands, only to come in contact with a hard man’s worst nightmare. Tights. He glanced down. Dark pink, they were, like the colour of her skin when she blushed. Hell. Was she trying to kill him? When she started to shimmy her skirt down, her body rubbing against his, he was sure of it.

He thanked everything that was good and holy that the tights were going south as well. Like a man in trouble, he sank to his knees to worship those legs. Drinking in the tiny V of her G-string, her pale thighs. His hands were so dark against her pale skin as he circled her lean calves, traced her fine ankles, spent extra time on the soft spot behind her knee when he saw it made her shake.

When her fingers slid into his hair, hard and reckless, he placed a single kiss at the juncture of her thighs, marking his place, before he kissed his way up her beautiful body. The curve of her stomach, the dip of her navel, the jut of her hip, the shadow of her breasts and back to her mouth, hot, ready, waiting. The gates of heaven.

When he lifted her and plonked her on the kitchen bench, she cried out and flinched as her warm bottom met the cold granite. He swallowed her gasp, and it turned into a groan. Her lovely long legs hooked around his waist, pulling him to her with an urgency he understood.

When the heat at her centre bore against him and his tether ran out.

Pants off. Condom on. He hooked her underwear to one side and nudged the head of his penis against her centre. The swift intake of breath as he stretched her killed him just a little more.

His eyes met hers to find them wide. But hungry. Her nostrils flared with every intake of breath and her cheeks were so pink with desire he couldn’t stand it any longer. He plunged into her. She cried out, pleasure and shock twisting on her face before she tilted her hips to take him deeper, tighter.

If he’d thought her mouth the gates of heaven, deep inside her was heaven itself. So hot, and tight, her muscles clenching around him as together they found a perfect rhythm.

He opened his eyes to find hers on his. Like twin blue flames, hypnotic, drawing him in until he felt the ache build deep inside. He needed every last effort to hold back, even as he rocked into her, deeper, harder. He stopped breathing altogether when her mouth dropped open, her eyes turned to liquid, her breaths to short sharp gasps, and her fingers to talons in his back as she came. Then, after a moment of the most gripping stillness, his world crashed around him in waves of hot, hard, liquid heat.

He came to and found her shaking in his arms. The chill of unheated air touched his skin, turning his sweat to ice. He lifted her off the bench, wrapping his long arms around her until their combined body heat warmed them both.

Her eyes caught his and he took her in. The cool blonde exterior. The wild heat pulsing so close to the surface. Just what he needed. For now.

He opened his mouth to say … who knew what? But she silenced him with a kiss. Soft, sensual and steadying.

Then with a light scrape of fingernails across the stubble of his cheeks, she moved away, stepped into her skirt. Padded through his still-open front door to find her clothes, putting them back on as she went before twisting her long, dishevelled hair back into a makeshift knot.

And then she was in the lift and gone, leaving him with his pants still around his ankles.

‘Dear God,’ Gabe said, running his hands over his face. That had been hot. Scorching. And they hadn’t said a single word to one another the entire time.

He pulled up his jeans, leaving the fly undone, and leant his weary self against the kitchen bench, imagining her in the lift, skin pink from ravishing, clothes rumpled, lips swollen, pretty blue eyes as dark as night. And impossibly he found himself getting hard for her again.

Gabe pushed himself away from the bench, and padded into his bedroom on the way to his shower. He nearly tripped over his laptop bag, which had remained unopened since he’d walked in the door. In fact it had remained unopened all day.

He couldn’t remember a day in the past several years he hadn’t spent glued to the thing, searching out the next big idea. Collating, researching, and filling his head with every nuance of it so that he would not fail to land it. His gran had raised him to work hard, and make her proud. And since the time he’d failed her so spectacularly on the latter, he’d redoubled his efforts at the former. And while he’d never quite managed to regain that flicker of brilliance he’d felt the night BonaVenture was born, he’d never seen failure since.

But rather than feeling antsy at not working himself to exhaustion, he felt smug as hell. BonaVenture was so healthy it was radiant. And he’d had himself some mind-blowing sex with a beautiful woman who seemed so in tune with his preference to have a good time and not push for anything more, finding her was nothing short of serendipitous.

If he didn’t let himself enjoy the spoils of his labour every now and then, what the hell was the point?

As Paige waited in the foyer for the lift the next afternoon, she was still in a bit of a daze, wondering where she’d found it inside her to head to a man’s apartment, strip for him, have her way with him, then leave.

She’d never done anything like that before, but she liked it. After years of being so categorically careful, a little recklessness was a revelation. Even a relief. The world seemed that bit brighter, colours richer, the spring in her step springier. She’d even had an even more awesome day at work. Probably something to do with great sex being good for the blood vessels or some such thing.

Maybe she should indulge in a fling every now and then from now on; find some stranger to give her life the occasional splash of panache. Airports could be the new bar. Find someone looking lost and lonely and bam! Her next date.

She was laughing out loud when the lift doors opened, but all her confidence turned to mush when she got in the lift that afternoon to find Gabe already on board, lounging resplendently in the back corner. His dark eyes connected with hers, lit, burned, and it was all she could do to keep blushing from head to toe.

Funny, because now they were even, or nearabouts. Though perhaps she still owed him an orgasm. She stepped inside the lift, feeling his dark eyes on her, and thought it seemed as good a time as any to remind him as much—

‘Good afternoon, Ms Danforth,’ a female voice said.

And Paige leapt fair out of her skin. Her gaze jumped sideways to find Mrs Addable from the ninth floor tucked into the front corner, stroking Randy, her Russian Blue whose hair was the same solid dark grey as his owner’s.

‘Mrs Addable, hi,’ Paige mumbled as she slipped into the gap, behind Mrs Addable, and beside Gabe, who looked straight ahead even while his body heat reached out to her like an invitation. ‘Randy okay?’

Mrs Addable rolled her eyes. ‘He’s decided he’s too good for his litter tray. We now have to take a constitutional down to the garden near the parking lot four times a day.’

Mrs Addable’s eyes slid over lounging Gabe to Paige, who was standing as still and upright as a tower. The older woman’s sharp eyes softened to a dull gleam.

‘You’re Gabe Hamilton,’ Mrs Addable said.

‘That I am,’ Gabe’s deep voice rang out.

Paige had to swallow hard so as not to tremble as the sound reverberated deliciously through her bones. She remembered all too well the feel of his breath against her cheek that came with the exquisite sensation of having him inside her.

‘Gloria Addable. 9B. I heard Sam the Super talking to Mr Klempt the other day about your arrival.’

‘Pleasure to meet you, Gloria.’

‘Likewise, Gabe.’

No Mr Hamilton, Paige noticed. She’d lived in the building for two years and had yet to progress from polite surnames from anyone in that apartment bar the cat.

‘Sam said you’d had some trouble with your bed?’ Mrs Addable added, eyes now front, watching the movement of floor numbers, the slow strokes to Randy’s back causing the cat to purr.

‘True, yet I’ve managed remarkably well,’ he said, pulling himself upright, bringing him closer.

Paige looked directly ahead, not daring to meet his eyes. Yet she felt a beat pulse between them. Two. Three.

‘I have a spare mattress I can send up,’ Mrs Addable tried again. ‘It’s only a single, but …’

While Mrs Addable droned on about the history of her single mattress, Paige felt Gabe move closer still. Close enough when she breathed the sleeve of his jacket brushed against the sleeve of hers.

Then he said, ‘My bed arrived this morning.’

Forgetting propriety completely, Paige shot her gaze straight to his. ‘It did?’

Mrs Addable’s snort of triumph barely touched the edges of her sub-conscious. Gabe’s dark and dangerous eyes had a funny way of blocking out everything else.

His voice was low as he said, ‘The service lift, it seems, is less touchy.’

‘That’s great,’ Paige said, adding a belated, ‘For you.’

Gabe’s cheek lifted in the beginnings of the kind of smile that meant big trouble for her. ‘I’m glad—for me—too.’

The lift binged and when Paige and Mrs Addable both turned with expectation towards the doors, Gabe took the chance to slide his finger down the edge of Paige’s. The shock of his touch shot through her like a bushfire, spreading in half a second flat to the whole of her chest and the ends of her curling toes.

The door opened to the fourth floor. Where nobody was waiting. And stayed there.

Mrs Addable sighed. ‘It’s okay, Randy. We’ll get there eventually.’

As the lift went up and down the next ten minutes, Paige locked her knees, and bit her bottom lip, and prayed for the strength not to moan out loud as Gabe’s thumb traced circles over the wildly fluctuating pulse at her wrist, making her so woozy she saw spots.

And for the first time since she’d moved into the building she was thankful she had a Machiavellian lift.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT TOOK more than fifteen stupid minutes for the stupid lift to open at Paige’s floor on the night of Gabe’s party. Way too much time in which to wonder if she ought to change her dress. Her hair. Her mind.

She felt edgy. Hyper-aware. As if she could feel even the slightest shift of air dancing across her skin. Because after several days of living out the most hot, illicit, exciting affair of her life under cover of darkness in the privacy of Gabe’s moon-drenched loft, the real world was about to impose on their heretofore perfect little bubble of secret sex.

The lift doors began to close and she slipped inside at the last second, squeezing into a gap amongst a group of bright shiny young things, none of whom she’d ever met. Why would she have? She and Gabe knew hardly anything about one another outside the bedroom.

Which was fine. Perfect really. It kept things super casual.

She wished she’d brought up the party once, at least to get a gauge of what she might be about to walk into. Would she and Gabe treat one another as virtual strangers? As friendly neighbours? Or would they simply avoid one another all night?

This, she thought. This was why she liked things to be simple, straightforward, with all the cards on the table from the very beginning. This nervous tumbling in her stomach was awful. And horribly familiar. Surely it was a symptom that something wasn’t right.

As the lift rose the deep whump whump whump of music pulsed in her bones, lifting the energy throbbing deep within her to screaming point. The lift opened, and the sounds of party chatter and, ironically, Billy Idol singing ‘Hot in the City’ spilled into the lift as the inhabitants tumbled out.

Paige took a deep breath, smoothed a hand over her new dress, ran another over her hair, then with chin tilted she walked into Gabe’s penthouse.

As it turned out, Paige knew plenty of people. Mrs Addable and several other inhabitants of the building huddled by the windows checking out the view. She saw a few girls from uni, and even a couple of guys she’d dated. She felt an odd surge of disappointment. She shook it off. She wasn’t special to Gabe and she didn’t want to be.

She nearly managed to convince herself as much when a quick glance around the jam-packed room revealed a massive red and grey rug now covering the lounge-room floor. A large red urn bursting with a tall spray of stripped willow. And chairs and tables in every place they ought to be. A half second after she got over the surprise of Gabe having decorated she realised every item was from that season’s Ménage à Moi catalogue. The bubbles in her stomach went haywire.

Then the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle, as though she was being watched. In a party that size someone somewhere would be smouldering at someone, and it was likely she’d been caught in the crossfire. And yet …

Rolling her shoulders to fend off the scratchy sensation, she turned, eyes searching the crowd until they landed on a pair of familiar dark eyes.

Gabe stood on the far side of the large room, his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows, a near full moon and a million stars twinkling in the inky black sky his backdrop. He was so deliciously handsome, so unsettling, so much. And his eyes were focused entirely on her. Dark eyes of a man who was near addicted to doughnuts, knew more about Doris Day movies than she did, and who remembered where she worked even though she was sure she hadn’t mentioned it since the day they first met.

She liked that he was leaving. Liked that he was discreet. Liked that every time she saw him he could barely keep his hands off her. But the riot of sensation ripping through her in that moment was so beyond mere like she hadn’t a hope of naming it.

She clutched her silver lamé purse in one hand, and the small box she’d brought with her, so hard they left imprints on her palms.

‘Paige!’ Mae’s voice rang sharp in her ear.

Paige blinked, the noise and energy and light and life of the party rushing in on her as if she’d burst from a tunnel. Then the crowd shifted, and Gabe was gone.

Paige turned to find Mae shoving through the crowd and bundling up to her like a ball of energy, Clint lolloping in her wake.

‘How cool is this?’ asked Mae. ‘And my godfather, this apartment! You must be dying to get stuck into it.’

Paige opened her mouth to tell Mae this was Gabe’s version of decorated, until she remembered that according to Mae this was the first time Paige had been there too. She hadn’t meant to keep the thing with Gabe from Mae, but they’d barely seen one another in the past week, and she’d been so busy at work—And it had been so intense, so unlike anything she’d ever done before, she hadn’t wanted the bubble to burst.

She’d fill Mae in on all the juicy details the first moment they had some girly time together, just the two of them. She glanced across at the ever-present Clint and wondered when that might be.

‘Where is that delicious pirate of yours?’ Mae asked. ‘The guy was clearly into you at The Brasserie last week, and he looks like the kind of guy who doesn’t need a flashlight and a map to find your treasure, if ya know what I mean.’

Paige rolled her eyes even while she knew it to be the absolute truth. Gabe Hamilton had found her treasure no problem at all. In fact, her treasure was so attuned to him she was doing her best to ignore the heavy ache in her treasure just thinking about him.

‘Drinks!’ Mae said and Clint looked as if he was reminded again why he wanted to marry her. Then hand in hand they made a beeline for the bar.

Leaving Paige to pretend every fibre of her being wasn’t paying intense heed to their host, wherever he might be.

Gabe ran a finger beneath the V of his sweater for about the hundredth time since a bunch of strangers had piled into his apartment.

He’d be pushing it to say he knew even a tenth of them, and a half of those he’d met in the lift at one point or another that week. The rest were a blur of hair and teeth that Nate had introduced to him, talking each and every one up as though they were the next big thing. He got it, Nate was trying to make him feel at home. Yet the only thing keeping him from making a hasty exit in search of fresh air, no matter how cold, had been brief glimpses of a familiar head of cool-blonde hair.

He’d known the moment Paige had arrived—some shift in the air, some call of the wild to his hormones had him sniffing the air for her scent. And then she’d appeared through the crowd in a white dress that looked as if she’d been poured into it and revealed enough leg to give a less vital man palpitations.

His gaze found her again, this time talking to some guy. Her hair shifting across her back as she talked. When the guy moved in, placing a hand on her upper arm, waving his big watch in her face, something clenched hot and hard deep inside Gabe. Something primal and not pretty.

‘It’s the legs,’ said a voice cutting into his thoughts.

He turned to find a group of men in sharp suits standing beside him, all cradling half-filled glasses, all looking in Paige’s direction.

‘What’s that?’ asked Gabe.

‘They’re like something out of a forties detective movie,’ said another of the men. ‘I’ve spent more time than I dare admit imagining myself as Sam Spade, walking into a smoke-filled room, sunlight pouring through slatted blinds, to find those legs crossed as she sits waiting on my desk.’

‘Hamilton, right?’ asked the third. ‘We’re friends of Nate’s.’

‘Right,’ said Gabe, brushing off the fact that Nate seemed to have more friends he didn’t know than friends he did. There were more pressing matters. ‘You know Paige?’

At the dark tone of his voice three pairs of male eyes turned his way. Turned, and softened. He could all but hear them thinking, Poor mug, thinks he’s in with a chance.

Never in his life had Gabe felt a stronger urge to kiss and tell. I’ve had her up against a wall, on the kitchen bench, crying out my name so loud the whole damn building must have heard. But he lifted his glass and filled his mouth with Scotch before his foot landed there instead.

‘Dated her one time,’ said the first, ‘before she introduced me to my wife.’

‘Cool move,’ said the second with a laugh.

‘Cool creature,’ said the third.

Gabe’s gaze drew back to Paige. He caught her profile as she smiled and waved at someone across the room. Her smile was calm. Understated. He could see why people might think her cool, he’d thought so himself at one point, but now he understood it was a mask, a mode of self-protection. Something tickled the back of his mind, as if he were trying to catch the disparate threads of a dream.

Familiarity, perhaps. Maybe even a recognition of his own natural reserve.

Or déjà vu.

Another cool blonde of his acquaintance came crashing into his mind, right along with the tightness in his gut as he’d first spied that long ago blonde smiling at him from across the room at BonaVenture’s first big party, and the smile that never quite reached her eyes unless they met his.

‘No,’ he said, out loud, turning heads. Grimacing, he downed the last of his Scotch before slamming the glass onto a passing tray.

This wasn’t the same as that. For one thing he’d been young, and cocky, and ruled by his libido. He was older, wiser now and kept that part of him on a short leash. And yet his subconscious wouldn’t let it lie. This thing with Paige was … intense. And it had ignited exceptionally fast. Who could blame him? The woman was so lush and lovely she kept him half hard half the day and all the way all night.

He ground a thumb and forefinger into his eyes, but the memories continued to knock against the inside of his brain.

He’d met Lydia right as BonaVenture had hit the crest of its first wave of success. The business that had been a mere dream a few years before had gone stratospheric right after his gran had died. And it was as though he’d gone to sleep one night himself, and woken up to find the world as he’d always known it was simply no more.