“Then bring out the bride and let’s be done.” Dom curbs his language in lieu of the priest. What man doesn’t hope his worldly sins will one day be forgiven, despite how dark and many layered ours are?

Sebastian smirks, reaching out to the bundle of black fluff I took as a potential mother-in-law who mistook the occasion as a funeral. He yanks at the veil, ripping it clean away from the girl’s head in a twisted parody of the motion that should be my duty.

Raven glossy locks tumble free over slim shoulders that know the shape of my hands. Green eyes the color of dark, exotic jade shot through with sunlight like windows into our souls.

Willow.

Fuck my life, because the girl I dreamed about is the girl I’ll marry under duress. I can’t tell whose eyes are wider as we take each other in.

The corner of my lip quirks but she shakes her head frantically. Raven black hair I last remember coiled around my fingers flashes against her black wedding gown, a confection of black lace I just know she chose herself. Maybe she hasn’t been as forced into this as I assumed.

Even Dom catches himself, swaying at my side as he reaches for the fluttering veil before it hits the ground, but lets the material drift through his fingers instead.

But clearly she doesn’t want her piece-of-shit uncle to know just how … close … we are. Tommy’s comment about her virginal status echoes around my head. They don’t know.

The power unconsciously shifts in my head and I stand taller, glowering at Sebastian and ignoring the trembling girl at his side when all I want to do is wrap her in my arms and use the altar as a fuck pad to bury myself hilt-deep and finally claim her as mine.

Screw the priest. I can beg forgiveness later.

“What’s this?” I gesture at her while keeping my hard gaze focused on Hernandez. If I look at her, he’ll know, and I need to get her away from him and strapped into my car before I’ll be able to breathe properly.

“This is your winnings,” her uncle sneers. A drop of saliva flies from his lips and settles on my suit jacket.

I look down at the glob that trickles its way along my front without a single change in my expression. Shrugging my shoulders back, I drop the jacket along my arms. The material slides free and as Dom catches it one-handed I give him a single nod.

The man bursts into action at my side. A flurry of black silk blend and hard-won muscle and Sebastian is on his knees at Dom’s feet, one of my man’s prized matching pistols pressing to the back of Hernandez’s head.

I wrap my arm around Willow’s lace-encased skin and yank her unceremoniously against my side without so much as looking at her. Must hold up the facade. But hell, it hurts me to touch her this way. “Shall we get on with it? I have three more meetings after this one.”

I fix the priest with a bored stare, praying the lie isn’t written across my face. I cleared my day’s schedule in lieu of looking after my new bride … or laying down the law, depending on what comes first.

Risking a look at Willow, I finger the chain hidden away in my pocket and tighten my hold on her until she gasps. But not with pain. Because all I feel right now is high on the possession of her.

She’s mine.

And my God above, will she pay with my hand on her perfect, round ass for walking out and not letting me care for her that night.