Shawn shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.”
But she did undo the bun and let her hair down. It fanned around her face in some weird hair-sprayed clamshell effect. Rhett was suddenly glad he hadn’t come of age in the eighties. That hair was terrifying.
“If you’re tired, lay down.” He urged her down onto his lap and was surprised when she didn’t protest. “Just don’t fall asleep.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have a thing or two I’d like to say with my tongue before you sleep.” He waggled his tongue down at her so she could get the rather obvious hint.
Shawn rolled her eyes. “This may be the first night in our relationship that I’m immune to your heavy-handed charms.”
Uh. No. He didn’t think so. It was their wedding night, or their second wedding night. Which didn’t sound right. But the point was, he was not going to waste a good buzz and a hard-on tonight of all nights. “Heavy-handed? Is that what we’re calling it? I’ll give you heavy-handed.”
“Shh,” she whispered, her finger over her lips, and her head tilted to gesture to the driver.
“I think he probably has a good guess what we’re going to do. I don’t think you need to worry about being seen as tawdry. It’s our wedding night.” Rhett was starting to lose his buzz. Something was off with Shawn, and he didn’t like it.
It was obvious when she didn’t even wait for him to pay the driver, instead letting herself into the house and actually shutting the door behind her while he was still in the driveway. The driver shot him a look of sympathy, and Rhett felt his irritation spike.
When he went in the side door, Shawn had tossed her coat on a hook in the entry and was holding on to the kitchen counter, peeling her shoes off with a sigh.
“Is there a reason you just shut the door in my face?” he asked her, striving for an even tone.
“I wasn’t sure how long you’d be and it’s cold out there.”
That was clearly an excuse. She was bordering on petulant, and he didn’t understand why.
“Let me help you.” He shucked his suit jacket and tossed it over a kitchen chair. Bending over, he undid the buckle on her other shoe and pulled it off. He pressed his lips to her ankle, sliding his tongue up the firm calf. “You have amazing legs.”
Normally she went liquid under his touch, but she remained stiff. Rhett rose again, pulling the fabric of her dress with him so that her legs were exposed from the thigh down. “What kind of panties do you have on?” he asked curiously. He was picturing a white scrap of lace.
Which contributed to his total astonishment when he reached under the silky folds of her dress and discovered some sort of one-piece bodysuit that was clinging to her skin like a wet suit. “What the fuck are you wearing?” He immediately retreated. He didn’t want to touch that. It was like stroking a seal.
“A body shaper. So there are no lumps under my dress.”
“There aren’t any lumps anywhere on you. Except for this.” He cupped her breasts. “First order of business is getting you out of that contraption.”
But when he reached for the zipper on the side of her dress, she wiggled out of his reach. “No, I’m not going to have you take this off. Getting out of a body shaper is almost as difficult as getting into it. There’s a lot of tugging and . . . flopping.”
He held up his arms, palms out in surrender. “Okay, hands off.”
“You can’t watch either.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” This seduction was not unfolding at all the way he had intended.
“No.”
Rhett tore his tie off and dropped it on the counter. “Do you think this counts as disobedience?”
For the first time all night, he saw her breath hitch with desire. But she shook her head. “No. You said that you would never force me to degrade myself. Shoving this off my body while you watch constitutes degradation.”
Rhett laughed. “I can respect that.” He ran his finger over her lip. “Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you for being you.”
But for some reason, his words didn’t have the effect he had assumed they would. She pulled a face.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Studying her expression, he couldn’t read her. She wasn’t even meeting his eye. “Then go take your dress off.”
There it was again, another face. “I suck at these parties. I was awful tonight. I’m sure your family is wondering what you see in me.”
It wasn’t like Shawn to dive into a pool of self-pity, and he was taken aback. “I’m sure they’ll love you like I do.”
Then she totally threw him when she suddenly reached out and started to undo the buttons on his dress shirt, with a sort of manic fervor. He had no idea what this was about, but he wanted no part of it. Something was going on, and they were going to talk about it, not bury those feelings behind sex.
He took her hands firmly and pulled them down by her hips, pinning them in place. “No.”
SHAWN wasn’t even sure what she was doing. She had just suddenly been overcome with the need to prove herself, to be independent, to be in charge of something because it felt like her whole life had suddenly skittered out of her control. Why did everyone else get to determine her future? Hell, her orgasms.
Feeling mutinous, she pulled a pout, ready to protest.
But Rhett shook his head and gave her a very unexpected crack on her backside. “No pouting, Shawn. You’re better than that. Pouting is for three-year-olds wanting a cookie.”
Maybe he had a point about the pouting. But she was not in the mood for submissive sex play. “You’re not my father.”
“No. I’m your husband. And I’m just trying to get you to see that you’re really much more amazing than you give yourself credit for being. If something is bothering you, tell me. None of this avoidance crap.”
This just wasn’t the way she had operated most of her adult life. She was used to wheedling with the men she dated and using a circular back-door approach to get what she wanted. Rhett despised that.
Which she could understand. But there was direct, then there was just being a dick. She didn’t feel like playing the game tonight, and he should know to back down.
“What I’m feeling is that my husband is an asshole,” she said. The night had been too much. Clinton’s confession. Rhett’s lack of attentiveness. Her own guilt for frauding everyone and their mother. It was all just too much and she wanted, needed to lash out, irrational or not. “Stop treating me like a student whose behavior you need to correct.”
He studied her in that careful way he had. “If I say no or you say no, then the other one should respect that, right?”
She was not in the mood to have him speak carefully to her. She wanted to scream out her emotions, all these unexplained feelings, all this fear, and she wanted him to crack, to break down, and lose it like her. “Of course. But this is about you telling me I’m doing something wrong and I’m tired of it.”
“It’s called communication. When I left a wet towel on the floor, you made it pretty damn clear to me that I was in the wrong, and if I did it again there would be consequences. How is this any different?”
He had a point, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “Because I was pointing out something that is easy to fix and it’s not personal. You were correcting something about me.”
“Tomato, tomato. It’s all the same thing. It’s a matter of letting each other know how we feel so the other can respect it.”
“Well, I don’t feel like being told what to do tonight.” With that, Shawn picked up her swirly bridal gown and stomped off in the direction of the bedroom, tears in her eyes.
She was breaking down. She couldn’t do this. She didn’t want to feel inadequate.