Page 44 of After Dark
Just.
Their wedding was swift, simple, and perfect. Josette could hardly believe it was happening. It felt like a dream—and it happened to be a dream that she’d had a thousand times, only to wake up in some unpleasant motel room. Or worse, her mother’s trailer.
But this time, she didn’t wake up. Arlo slid two rings on her finger, both of them weighty enough for her to notice. And one of them a sapphire that matched her eyes.
Before she could lament the fact that she didn’t have a ring to give him, he produced one, and handed it to her so that she could slide a ring onto his finger as well.
It made her feel… shy. New. What a virgin must feel like.
She felt breathless and silly. And his.
Then it was done. Josette Warren, who more than one person had suggested had been put on this earth to become a hooker — because she was clearly born a whore — became Arlo Finn’s wife.
Andheloved all those things about her. When he called her slutty, whoreish, or whatever dirty word he fixated on at any given time, it didn’t make her feel small. Because he used those words differently. In Arlo’s mouth, they were compliments.
Becauseheliked her. The way she was, not the way she’d pretended to be—though maybe it was more accurate to say he liked both. Any version of her he could get, he liked.
He liked how she talked and what she talked about. He liked that she had an endless appetite for sex, because hedid too. He liked playing with her and he liked sharing her, too. He knew that it turned her on to be watched, shared, and used. He knew every single one of the deep, dark fantasies that even she hesitated to share.
Not only did he know them, he created scenarios where she could act them out.
Somehow she knew that with Frederick’s club opening this weekend, the intensity of all of their games was only going to amp up.
It made her feel…
Josette didn’t know how to put it into words. She didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t sure she had the vocabulary to express it.
But when he walked out of City Hall with her and kissed her on the stairs, a sweet, chaste, seemingly vanilla kiss that was none of those things because it was them, and all of those things at the same time, she got it.
She’d been raised to feel ashamed of all the things she was. And Arlo loved those things.
Arlolovedher.
Arlo didn’t need her to change, or repent, or twist herself into something she wasn’t. Arlo liked that leash as much as she did, and loved nothing more than letting her play.
Arlo knew — and had probably known before she did, if she remembered it right – that she’d been in love with him all along.
From first sight, if she wanted to be brutally frank about it.
She just hadn’t believed it waspossible.
Not thatshelovedhim. That made complete sense. She hadn’t believed it was possible thathecould loveherback. Not like this.
Not enough to forgive her the way he had. To take her back.
Tomarryher, when Josette had known since she was a young girl — she’d known it, she’d been told it, it had been pounded into her in a thousand different ways — no one would ever want her. Not for a wife.
Not for good.
“Good luck to you both,” Frederick said, and he shook Arlo’s hand. Then, stunning Josette, he kissed her on the cheek.
She was shaking already by the time they got back in Arlo’s car. It was an interminable drive across the Bay Bridge, even though she knew, rationally, that there was relatively no traffic. Not compared to the way it could be in the city.
By the time they got in the elevator of their building, she couldn’t stop trembling.
And when the car stopped on their floor, she went to sink to her knees, but Arlo swept her up into his arms instead.
“Brides don’t crawl on their wedding day,” he told her. “Not at first, anyway.”
