Bride Read online

  Bride

  Jenna Rose

  Copyright © 2019 by Jenna Rose

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Also by Jenna Rose

  MUSE

  DOLL

  TEACHER’S PET

  MAID

  Contents

  1. Jay

  2. Rachel

  3. Rachel

  4. Jay

  5. Rachel

  6. Rachel

  7. Jay

  8. Rachel

  9. Rachel

  10. Jay

  11. Rachel

  12. Rachel

  13. Jay

  14. Rachel

  Epilogue

  Also by Jenna Rose

  Chapter One

  Jay

  I may have been the fisherman, but from the second I saw her, I was hooked.

  I was just finishing up a long day at sea and tying up my boat at the docks when I saw her. She took my breath away. A long flowing dress of sea-green, heaps of light brown curls draped over her delicate shoulders and a face that would have put Helen of Troy to shame. I literally tripped over my mooring line as I made my way up the dock to shore.

  She obviously wasn’t from around here. Green Harbor was a working-class fishing town. The local girls wore Carhartt jeans with sweatshirts, not something that looked like it had just come off the rack of a Paris fashion show—not that I knew what any of that fancy stuff looked like anyway.

  Even if her clothes hadn’t given away the fact that this girl dined at Michelin-star restaurants and came from a private school, the black Mercedes behind her sure did. It was brand new and looked like something a mob boss or rapper would drive.

  Some of the fishermen around here had nice trucks. They didn’t know how to save their money. Every year after a good season would go blow their earnings on something new and shiny and then spend all next season working to pay their bills.

  A car like that parked in a place like this screamed one thing: this girl was not from my world.

  That would have intimidated a lot of guys I knew. They were used to folks who were a little more rough around the edges, “down to earth” as they put it. But when I laid eyes on the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, I wasn’t going to let any of that crap stop me.

  I walked right up the rocky beach to where she was sitting on an old upturned rowboat and didn’t even try to hide the look in my eyes.

  And neither did she.

  “Nice car,” I told her. It was a simple enough statement, but around here, we both knew what it meant.

  “Dreadful color,” she replied. I glanced at it and raised my eyebrows.

  “It’s black.”

  “Exactly,” she laughed. “What am I? A mafia wife?”

  I smiled. “What color would you have preferred?”

  “Well, white would be better,” she thought. “Or maybe green like my dress.”

  “Not pink?” I suggested, which drew a frown.

  “I may not be a mafia wife, but I’m also not Paris Hilton, thank you very much.”

  Thank God.

  “I’m Jay,” I said, extending my hand. “Jay Cousins.”

  “Rachel,” she replied. “Rachel Banning.”

  She took my hand and my whole body went tense. My hands were fisherman’s hands—rough and callused from years of working the sea. Rachel’s, on the other hand, were soft and cared for, delicate like a doll’s.

  “Nice to meet you,” I nodded as my body began to respond to hers.

  Don’t get hard, idiot, I told myself, but my body was fighting me. Her dress may have been long and loose, but the wind was blowing in from the sea, causing it to hug every inch of her incredible body, making her look like a Grecian statue that had been carved from marble and placed on the beach to give the sailors something to smile at when they came home every night.

  Her skin was white like cream, a complete contrast to my working boy’s tan, and her pronounced collarbones framed the modest amount of cleavage her dressed allowed to be seen.

  I started salivating and felt the bulge in my pants beginning to grow, but focused as hard as I could on keeping it from getting any bigger—or at least big enough for her to notice.

  I didn’t want her to think I was just some scumbag fisherman looking for a quick fuck from the rich girl. There was something intriguing about this girl, something that made me want to know her more that I could not ignore.

  “So what’s a rich girl like you doing in a place like this?” I asked, opting for a cheesy bullshit line to see how she’d react. I wasn’t one of those guys who didn’t mind his girls having no personality. Thankfully, she saw what I was doing and tossed her hair dramatically and sighed in a way that caused her chest to heave distractingly.

  “Oh, you know,” she replied. “Just getting away from the pressures of my overprivileged life. Parents, school, expectations. You know?”

  “Oh, sure,” I nodded. “And I’m just working hard to support my sick, aging mother after my father died.”

  Rachel smiled, enjoying our little joke, but I held my expression firm. After a moment, she frowned.

  “Wait, really?”

  I let the moment stretch until it was about to break, then shook my head and laughed.

  “Nah, I’m just messing with you.”

  “Oh, you jerk!” she giggled, reaching out and slapping me gently on the shoulder.

  “It’s actually way worse than that,” I replied. “Both of my folks are dead.”

  “Uh huh,” she smirked. “And mine are dying from Ebola! Oh, and I have a rare disease and only have three weeks to live.”

  “No really,” I replied. “My folks are actually dead.”

  Rachel paused and twisted her lips at me while she ran her internal lie detector over me.

  “Wait, you’re serious?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “It’s okay though. I’m not that tortured.”

  “I’m so sorry!” she stammered, obviously embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her, stepping closer. She smelled incredible, like some kind of perfume that only royalty could buy. “I started it. You were just playing along.”

  “No…I feel terrible now—”

  “Okay, well, you’re gonna have to make it up to me then,” I told her.

  “Of course!” she replied. “What can I do, Mr. Dawson?”

  “First of all, call me Jay,” I told her as I took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Second of all, since you insulted me so badly, you’re going to have to come for a walk with me around the harbor, and if you’re really nice to me, I’ll show you my secret spot.”

  “Oooh, secret spot?” she asked, bouncing slightly beside me.

  God, she’s adorable.

  “No one knows about it but me,” I told her. “So you’re going to have to really impress me for me to show you.”

  Rachel smiled at me as I took her down the rocky shores to where the waves broke against the beach, and although my body was aching for her and I was insanely turned on, I was also feeling something deeper, beyond the basic animal instincts telling me to take her and make her mine.

  I’d met more than a few rich girls in my life; Green Harbor had become a bit of a tourist destination lately and old money was showing up from out of state and buying up property. They all mostly kept to themselves or watched from afar, and while they were friendly enough when addressing you, it was easy to see that they thought they were better than the rest of us.

  But I didn’t get that vibe from Rachel at all. In fact, if it wasn’t for her Mercedes, designer dress and diamond earrings (which I assumed were real), I would never have guessed she came from money.

  “You’re so lucky to live here,” she said, leaning down and picking up a piece of soft driftwood. “It’s beautiful. I can’t imagine waking up here every morning.”

  “Well, imagine yourself going out on the fishing boat in mid-December when it’s just below freezing and hauling in traps,” I chuckled. “It’s not all sitting on the beach watching the evening sunsets.”

  “Well, why don’t you imagine yourself on those same evenings smiling at parties filled with lawyers, bankers, accountants and mind-numbingly boring businessmen, all of them looking for a way to turn their already enormous mountains of money into even bigger mountains.”

  “Rich people problems,” I countered. She replied by sticking her tongue out and poking me in the ribs with a well-manicured nail.

  “Everyone’s problems are their own.”

  “Very true,” I told her, stopping at the edge of Dane’s Wharf, the oldest fishing wharf in Green Harbor. The setting summer sun glowed peach and violet above us, casting its soft light across her gorgeous face.

  This girl could have been a model, but she never would; it would bore her. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. And I wanted to know more.

  “It’s private property from here on,” I told her. “But to get to my secret spot, we’ve got to go through it.”

  Her big, beautiful brown eyes flashed with enthusiasm and she gripped my hand tighter.

  “But if you are scared of breaking the law—”

  “Shut up and show me!” she laughed, tugging my arm.

  “Okay, Rachel,” I smiled, feeling like the luckiest man in the world. “Come on.”
r />   Chapter Two

  Rachel

  My heart was soaring as I raced through the shadows of the trees, clutching the strong, callused hand of the dreamy Green Harbor fisherman boy who’d come into my life just when I needed him most.

  I’d only been half joking when I told him I was here getting away from the pressures of my life. Coming from a family like mine, a family “of means” (aka a wealthy family), pressure was all there was.

  Sure, I had a Mercedes, a huge house with my own wing and a small staff who cooked and cleaned for me, but I also had a father who worked seventy hours a week and when he was home was entertaining business clients in his smoking room and a mother who only seemed to care about how I reflected on the family.

  My grades were of the utmost importance. Anything less than an A- and I lost my “privileges,” which meant my car, my money and any help from the staff or any entertainment in the house. Basically I just had to sit in my room and study until the next test.

  On top of that, I was expected to show up at every family party and event with a smile on my face, looking like I belonged at the Oscars. No matter what my mood, I had to smile and present myself as the perfect daughter that loved being part of high society.

  I dressed how my mom wanted me to dress, dated guys she approved of, and if she had her way, would end up marrying one that she and my father agreed would be a good match for me.

  And that meant some rich guy, probably Caleb Norman, who was from a family whose business interests aligned with those of my father. It was no surprise that Titanic was one of my favorite movies, and I couldn’t help but feel like Rose as I ran together with Jay past lobster traps and shadowed trees as the sun set over the sea.

  “This way,” he whispered, pulling me towards a long hedge of wild roses. He knelt down and I saw a hidden path leading into a cramped tunnel under the bushes. “You’re gonna have to get that dress dirty, Rachel. That is, if you want to see my secret spot.”

  “I may look like I’ve never crawled around in the dirt before, Mr. Cousins,” I retorted as I rolled up my dress and got down on my knees beside him. “But I assure you—I will not break.”

  Jay’s beautiful blue eyes flashed as he looked at me with an approval that warmed my heart. He was devastatingly handsome and I was practically swooning from the moment I saw him. There was simply no comparison between him and the prep school boys I was used to.

  They all relied on their parents—used their money, connections and influence to get what they wanted, but Jay was an orphan who worked on his own and made his own living and seemed to be thriving.

  Jay smiled and got down and began to crawl through the tunnel beneath the hedge. I followed closely after him, not minding the fallen thorns that scraped my knees or the dirt surely ruining the brand new dress my mother had picked out for me to wear tonight at her party.

  That would be beyond boring. This was the most alive I’d felt in years, and when we emerged on the other side of the hedge, I couldn’t help but gasp.

  “Welcome to my secret spot,” Jay said.

  It was magic.

  A small, hidden bay lay before us, arms of shale rock wrapping around the gentle, peach-colored waves like strong arms. A tall tree stood on the shore amidst the pines with a bench made from driftwood and logs at the base of its trunk. A thick branch stretched out over the water with a tire swing hanging beneath it, drifting lazily in the wind.

  I was suddenly acutely aware of being alone with Jay, as though we were the only ones alive in the world, and even though I’d only just arrived—only just met him—knew that I could have stayed there forever.

  “It’s beautiful, Jay…”

  “Like you.”

  His response shook me and I turned to him in surprise. I hadn’t been expecting that at all. I’d seen the way he was looking at me, of course, and he must have seen the eyes I was giving him, but I’d never met a guy who just spoke so freely.

  “I—excuse me?” I replied. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Like you, Rachel,” he said, stepping close to me and taking my hand again. “You’re beautiful. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you since the moment I saw you sitting on the beach back there.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but he cut me off as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him. Our lips met and my entire world turned upside down.

  It was only the second kiss of my life—my first being with Timmy Jenkins when I was seven—and my heart rate soared as his strong arm held me close and we embraced beneath the twilight.

  My body cried out for him and I felt feelings rise within me I’d never felt before for anyone. I arched my back and pressed against him, felt a bulge beneath his pants that caused my nether regions to respond. I was suddenly conscious of my body as his fingers traced the small of my back up to my shoulders and neck.

  A moan slid from my lips as my arousal grew.

  This can’t be happening, I thought as my excitement threatened to overwhelm me. I’d run here to escape from the reality of my life and stepped into a dream that I didn’t want to wake up from.

  His hands continued exploring my body and my heart rate continued to grow, as he took hold of my breast. My body took over and I ran a hand down his strong stomach and took hold of his bulge.

  This isn’t like you, I thought. None of it was, and that’s what excited me.

  But as Jay lifted the hem of my dress and slid his hand between my thighs, a sudden jolt of panic shot through me like an electric shock and I pulled back, breaking our embrace.

  “Wait…” I muttered. “Just…can we hang on a second?”

  I was looking at his feet, anticipating an angry reaction, but looked up when I heard the tone in his reply.

  “Of course we can. Did I do something wrong?”

  “No!” I blurted out. “No, definitely not. It’s—it’s not you, it’s me.”

  “That sounds an awful lot like a cliché,” he smirked. “But it also doesn’t mean it isn’t true. We can slow it down.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. I stood there a moment, head spinning and trying to process what was happening. I was feeling things I’d never felt before and it was happening so fast, it was like a bolt of lightning had come out of the sky and struck me, and that bolt of lightning’s name was Jay.

  “Why don’t we go for a swim?” he asked as he slid out of his t-shirt. I knew it was ridiculous, but my jaw fell open when I got a look at his physique.

  Jay was obviously a working man and had the muscles to prove it. His biceps bulged and his chest was thick and taut and as he set his shirt aside, I couldn’t keep my eyes off his abs.

  “S—swim?” I stammered as he undid his belt buckle.

  “Yeah,” he smiled. “You know how to swim, right?”

  “In the ocean?” I asked. “Isn’t it freezing?”

  “It’s cold,” he nodded as he let his pants drop and stood before me in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs stretching around his massive bulge. I felt myself blush and hid my face behind my hair. “It doesn’t scare you, does it?”

  “What? What doesn’t scare me?!”

  “The cold,” he replied. “Why? What else would I be talking about?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him slide out of his boxers and kick them aside, and even though I fought desperately not to, I turned and looked.

  Jay stood completely naked before me with his hard cock sticking straight out at me. His body was beautiful and I was at a total loss for words. I didn’t even know what to do, so I did the only thing I could do; I stood there like a statue, staring at the most gorgeous man to ever walk the earth.

  “You’re not scared, are you?” he repeated, stepping closer. All I could do was shake my head. “Good. Then let’s go for a swim.”

  “I—”

  “But you won’t want to get that dress wet,” he whispered as he reached out and took hold of my dress and lifted it up. Without thinking, I raised my arms and let him pull it up and off, leaving me standing there in nothing but my panties. He set it aside with his clothes and looked at me.