Dangerous: Made & Broken (A British Bad Boy Romance) Read Online Free Page B

to the altar was the fresh wave of adrenaline coursing in my blood.
    He hated me.
     
    * * *
     
    The ceremony was a blur, and I have no idea how I made it through the entire thing without my anxiety making me break down into a sobbing mess. All I really comprehended through the pomp and circumstance was the sound of my own pulse drumming unsteadily in my ears.
    Blaine must have led me through it, though, because when I finally snapped out of it, it was in the middle of the reception. I was seated at a table with a pretty, but untouched, dessert on my plate in a room full of laughing people I mostly didn’t know or had spent years hiding from. Everyone was dressed up, there were flowers everywhere, and music underlined the chattering and laughter.
    It looked like the perfect wedding, I numbly realized. Picture perfect, in fact.
    If only the guest list wasn’t made up of some of the worst criminals in the country and the bride hadn’t been kidnapped and married off against her will.
    A hysterical giggle bubbled out of my chest, only to die in a wheeze.
    “You doing okay there?”
    I snapped my head around to the speaker, dimly recognizing one of the redheaded groomsmen as he leaned over from a few seats away. The spaces between us were vacated, and I realized the dinner was over and most people must have left their seats for the bar, or perhaps to mingle—or whatever people did at arranged business weddings. Including my groom.
    His eyes were the same color as Blaine’s, but light and cheerful rather than broody and angry.
    “No.” The same frantic giggle escaped again, and I shook my head to make it stop. “Not even remotely. But the flowers are nice, aren’t they?”
    The groomsman cocked his head, his eyes turning slightly less cheerful as they roamed over my face.
    “I’m getting Blaine, hang on,” he said before he got up from the table and walked off toward what looked like the bar.
    Great. Seeing Blaine was about the last thing I wanted, but extraordinarily poor problem-solving skills aside, at least the redhead tried. It was the first time anyone had shown any consideration for my well-being since I walked in the door to find my father in my flat, and it was enough to shake me out of the shock that had kept me shielded from the world.
    It was odd, really. I had spent the entire week so terrified that my mind had shut me away from everything that happened around me, practically leaving me a living doll. I had gone through the motions when my mother arrived to take measurements for my wedding dress and while she and some distant cousins got me ready earlier this morning. I hadn’t even objected while the people I feared most in this world took away my freedom and my choices to sell me off like a farm animal.
    But when I finally snapped out of it again, in the middle of my own wedding reception, fear wasn’t the emotion that rushed through my body and washed away the last tendrils of stupor.
    No, it was a refreshing wave of anger.
    I wasn’t a bloody doll—and I damn well wasn’t a trinket to be exchanged for power and influence!
    “Why don’t you two go up to the suite, eh? Everyone’s had the chance to see the happy couple now, so you may as well spend some time getting acquainted in private.”
    I snapped my head in the direction of the speaker in time to see the groomsman from before waggle his ginger eyebrows at me. Behind him, Blaine stood, a glass of amber liquor in one hand and the other shoved down one pocket. Even in a tux he managed to look devil-may-care.
    “Sure, may as well get started on securing the proud Steel-Clery lineage. Or should I say Steel-Holler lineage, eh, wifey?”
    I got up from my seat with a glare in Blaine’s direction. “You should say whatever you damn well please, because there’s not going to be any lineage-making here, I can tell you that much.”
    He whistled and took a swig from his glass. “Your daddy’s gonna be ever so disappointed.”
    I repressed a