Page 63 of Forced Vows

And it doesn't contain an ounce of alcohol. I can't afford to get drunk in this crowd.

The real celebration happened already anyway, and I got pleasantly tipsy then.

"More pink," Miceli mutters.

I smile. "It's good. Do you want to try it?"

I expect him to say he'll stick with his whiskey.

But he takes my glass and sips while I gape.

Snapping my mouth shut, I take my drink back. "Isn't it yummy?"

"So yummy you can't even taste the alcohol." He gives me a sardonic look.

"Because there isn't any."

"On your 21st birthday?"

I shrug, feeling no need to explain and move away from the bar, expecting Miceli to go off and do his own thing.

He doesn't. He follows me, his hand once again on my waist.

I try to step out of his hold, but his grip on my waist tightens.

"Do you mind?" I'm trying to hide my hostility from the partygoers around us, but it's getting harder by the second. "You don't need to act all possessive."

"I'm not acting."

That I believe. This man will keep what is his. But I'm not his. Not yet.

"Our relationship might be drowning in contracts, but you didn't buy me."

"Agreed."

I don't trust his easy agreement. "So, let me go."

"You drank that night in Portland."

"It was safer to drink there." No way am I going to admit to needing liquid courage to follow through on my plan to have sex for the first time.

"You thought it was safer to have your thought processes impaired when you were trolling for a stranger to have sex with than it is here among our families?" His tone is a mix of judgmental disbelief.

"Absolutely."

"You don't deny that is what you were doing?" he asks, something flickering in his dark eyes.

"Why should I? I did have sex with a stranger." Hard to deny that reality when he'd been the stranger in question.

"What I want to know is why?"

"Not your business." Besides, I already explained. If he didn't believe my explanation, that's his problem.

It's the only one he's getting from me.

"You planned to give your virginity to a man who was not me. That is my business."

"No, it is not. We hadn't signed contracts. I didn't even know you were the man I was supposed to marry. But you knew it was going to be me, didn't you?"

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