Jaxxon had agreed to allowMahogany Miss Magazineto have the rights to the wedding photos. I tried not to blink as bothMahogany Miss’s photographerand the photographer we’d hired, Aaron Shields, snapped away. Though the chapel was relatively small, the aisle seemed long as hell as I marched down with my arm around my brother’s. Finally, we stopped at the edge of the raised pulpit.
My future father-in-law, Pastor Malcolm McKissick, gave me a bright smile.
“Hey, Pastor,” I whispered with a small wave.
“Good afternoon, daughter. Who presents this woman to be joined in marriage today?”
“My family and I do,” King responded.
Jaxxon stepped down, took my hand, and escorted me up the two stairs that led to the pulpit. I glanced around, and everything was so gorgeous. The unity candle that we’d selected had been lit by both of our mothers and was burning brightly. Right behind us was Lake Michigan, in all her early summer glory.
Jaxxon caught my eye. “Focus,” he mouthed to me, and I had to laugh a little.
Soon, it was time for us to say our vows. We considered writing our own vows, but it didn’t take long for us to nix that idea. But then the traditional wedding vows were so antiquated that we decided to do a hybrid, mash-up of traditional vows with more modern wording.
After we repeated our vows to one another, it was time to exchange rings. I took his ring from Kelcie, while he took mine from Travis.
Pastor McKissick turned to his youngest son. “Jaxxon, please repeat after me, Son.”
Once we’d stated our intentions and placed the rings on each other’s fingers, Pastor McKissick grinned at us and then at our guests. “Now, by the power vested in me by the holy Christian church, I pronounce you husband and wife, . . . united in love for life. You may salute your bride.”
The chapel disappeared behind me as Jaxxon pulled me into his arms and kissed me. My happy heart danced around in my chest, as the words his father had spoken over us resounded in my head.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
The reception lasted well into the night, with Jaxxon and I finally making our exit around nine o’clock. The classic Rolls Royce Silver Cloud took us straight from the venue to Chicago Executive Airport, where we boarded a private jet headed for the city of Felicidad on the Caribbean Island of Iredia.
“This is wild as hell,” Jaxxon told me, leaning his head back on the cushioned rest of the jet’s captain’s seat. “Like, you actually stood at the altar and married me.”
I giggled. “What? Why are you acting like you can’t believe it happened? We spent more than a month planning the wedding.”
“Yeah, but you don’t understand. You played not only hard to get, but . . . impossible to get for decades, Home. You knew how I felt about you, and you wouldn’t give yourself to me for shit.”
My heart clenched at the shadow of pain in his voice. I took his hand into my lap. I wasn’t one who liked to talk about feelings. My natural inclination was to deal with feelings and try to move with the good ones and past the bad ones. I wasn’tcomfortable discussing and/or examining them. But I felt like I owed it to Jaxxon to talk about our past.
“Jaxxon, when we were teenagers, my thoughts on love were warped and toxic. There were so many people in my life that I loved but didn’t really like. I mean, King, Sparkle, . . . my father. I loved them because I felt like society dictated that you needed to love your family; otherwise, you were weird or a psychopath, but I didn’t like them. It’s hard to like somebody with a hair-trigger temper. I mean, things could be going along so good. We could be laughing and joking, and out of nowhere, King would get offended, or something would rub him the wrong way, and he would snap. Then there was Sparkle, same thing, different manifestation. You could be laughing and joking with her, and as soon as the laughter subsides, she’s gonna say something slick. It’s hard to relax or settle in when you live in a household filled with ticking time bombs.
“But you were my constant, boo. You have always been, besides my momma, the person I’ve loved and liked. If we would’ve dated as kids and broken up, I would’ve had nobody. So, it was never about me trying to reject you or test your patience. It was always about me trying to make the best decisions possible to keep the person I needed the most in my life. Thank you for being so patient with me. Thank you for not writing me off.”
He pulled me to him. If the armrest hadn’t been separating us, I would’ve been in his lap.
We were quiet until I broke the silence.
“Okay, about this BDSM you’re trying to introduce me to, when are we gonna get into it? I feel like you started it up, but then you gave me the ring, along with the three-hour course on the rules and regulations, but we haven’t revisited it since.”
“I haven’t been denying you sex.”
I looked into his eyes with a smirk. “No, you haven’t. But it’s been giving very vanilla,Big.”
His eyes twinkled, and his chest rumbled with a chuckle. “Take your seat belt off and come over here.”
I unbuckled myself, stood, then sat in his lap.
“You’re just ready for me to dominate your life, huh?”
“Not my life, sir,” I corrected quickly.
That caused us both to laugh, because we both knew how much I hated being controlled.
