by Sara Whitney
From one bad memory to another. He peeled his fingers off the railing and shoved them in his pockets. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to make you feel…”
“Unwanted?”
Her bereft tone tore at him. “Never that. Never, ever that.” He turned toward her. “You scare the shit out of me, woman.”
His honesty startled a laugh out of her. “What? How?”
The suit jacket suddenly felt three sizes too small. Truth telling made him feel even bulkier than usual.
“I’ve never met anyone like you.” He shook his head. “Nobody makes me feel the way you do.”
Her breathing quickened. “How, Erik?”
“How am I different than Jake?” He shot the question back, and she laughed softly.
“You make me feel…”
Her words trailed off, and a strange compulsion took over him. Before she could finish her thought, he cupped her jaw as words came spilling from his mouth, each one more revealing than the last. “Do you feel like trailing your lips all over my skin until you’ve explored every inch of me? Like a circuit will blow in your brain if you can’t kiss me again? Like you only spark to life when I’m around? Because that’s how you make me feel.”
She swallowed, and because he hadn’t moved his hand away, he felt every delicate twitch of her throat muscles.
“I didn’t think you were capable of speaking that many words in a row,” she said with a breathless laugh.
“Only with you,” he said. And inexplicably, he had still more words for her. “I want to feast on every word that tumbles from your mouth. I want your smiles all to myself. Your laughter should belong to me.” He brushed his thumb along her lower lip and inhaled hard when her tongue darted out to stroke along his skin. “I want to rip apart every man who touches you. Every man who even looks at you.”
“Even Jake?” Her breath trembled across his thumb, and he responded instantly.
“Especially Jake,” he growled, uncaring that his jealousy was oozing through the cracks in his crumbling defenses.
“You…” She brushed a shaky hand over his lapel, and his whole body strained in her direction. “I thought I was the one who took advantage of you that day. I thought afterward that I’d pushed for something you didn’t want.”
“Didn’t want?” He huffed an incredulous laugh. “I’d imagined touching you for so long I could barely believe it was actually happening. God, I’m sorry I made you feel that way. But when Gina showed up, I remembered who I really am. I panicked.”
Her eyes rounded. “And who are you really?”
“The guy who doesn’t get the girl like you.”
His lips hovered above hers, and she didn’t push him away. “Look around you, pal. You’ve got me.”
The last of his doubts sloughed away at her words. “I guess I do.” He slid his hand behind her head and buried his fingers in her hair, not caring about the fancy arrangement she had it in. He needed to unravel her, to mark her as his. Talking might not come easily to him, but this he could do.
She was practically panting as he held her immobile with a hand in her hair and another at the base of her throat.
“You’re who I want, Erik. Nobody else here tonight. Nobody else anywhere in the world. This girl wants you.”
Well, fuck. How could he not kiss her after that?
Twenty
Josie’s head was spinning, but she hadn’t had more than a few sips of alcohol during the toasts.
It was Erik, filling her lungs, bubbling through her blood, giving her goose bumps. His eyes never left hers as he closed the tiny distance between them, his fingers tightening in her hair, and this time there was no mistaking who was going to kiss whom. He wanted her, and he wasn’t engaged, and he’d just recited a soliloquy that left her breathless. She needed to put her hands on this good, kind, wonderful man without further delay.
Just as her eyes fluttered shut and his lips brushed against hers, the balcony erupted in a flurry of noise and laughter. A group of wedding guests surged from the reception hall and broke the spell.
She dropped her head against his shoulder with a soft groan. “I don’t think the universe wants us to be together.”
“Fuck the universe.”
His growl made her shiver.
“What are your thoughts on screwing around in a coat closet?”
“Not ideal.”
Still, his hand crept up her thigh and under the hem of her dress, and she bet if she pulled him into an empty room, she could change his mind.
Raucous laughter reminded her that they were no longer alone, and exhibitionism wasn’t one of her kinks.
“Do you want to come home with me? Or I can come home with you.”
He fell silent, his face unreadable in the semidark, and Josie felt a trickle of self-consciousness wiggle down her spine.
“I said ‘come’ too much, didn’t I? You’re paralyzed with lust.” When in doubt, joke it out.
“Good God,” Erik muttered, putting his huge hand on her back and guiding her toward the bright lights of the reception. She chattered nervously the whole time, keenly aware that he hadn’t actually answered her question.
“Oh great. I scared you off again. Someday you’re going to tell your great-grandchildren about the crazed redhead who kept hitting on you in inappropriate settings and trying to get you into supply closets to—”
Her voice cut off with a squeak when he spun her so her back was pressed against the wall next to the reception hall entrance. Wedding guests milled around the balcony mere feet away, but Josie didn’t care. Not when the distant throbbing bass of the music echoed the pounding of her heart and the deejay’s strobe light fell through the window and painted Erik’s face in streaks of red and purple and blue as he pinned her in place with his hard body.
“We’re going to my place tonight, because when I finally get you naked, it’s not going to be in a goddamn closet.” His hands flirted with the hem of her skirt again, ghosting along the backs of her legs. “It’s going to take all night, and you’re going to be as loud as you want. Nod your head if that’s okay.”
She bobbed her head like a newly sprung jack-in-the-box while the rest of her body clenched in anticipation of Erik following through on his promises.
“Okay.” He nodded once and bent to give her a fast, firm kiss that ended with the merest brush of his tongue against her lower lip.
“You’re exceptionally good at talking when you put your mind to it,” she said shakily.
“Oh, I’m just getting started at showing you what I’m good at.” The slow, cocksure smile that slid across his face at that moment shocked the hell out of her.
Her head fell back against the wall. That face with that body, in that suit, oozing sexual confidence? It was possible she wouldn’t survive the night.
“Where’d all this come from?” She’d only ever seen him this self-assured about his baking, and it was seriously doing things between her thighs.
His smile flashed wickedly in the dim light. “Talking to women has always been hard. Kissing them’s a lot easier. No conversation required.”
“Take me home. Now,” she ordered. Then a dreadful thought struck her. “Wait. Nooooo! I’m supposed to help with the cleanup.”
Erik groaned and dropped his forehead against hers. “Presents, flowers, all that?”
“All that,” she confirmed, dismay swamping her. “When I offered, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have a hot hookup on the line.”
His sigh brushed her cheek. “So we stick around to help out.” He dropped a kiss behind her left ear. “And you spend the rest of the reception thinking about all the things you want me to do to you later tonight.”
Another kiss, this time on her collarbone, robbed her of her breath.
“Already on it,” she managed to gasp as his teeth lightly scraped her skin and gave her full-body shivers.
He took a step back, his fingertips running the length of her bare arms before they finally
fell away. But the heat in his eyes remained, and they seared her from behind as he ushered her back inside and to their table. Once he’d delivered her to her chair, he ambled over to the cake table while she willed her nipples back into submission. Of course, watching the big slice of man she’d be going home with did nothing to calm her body down. He circled the remains of his cake like a jungle cat, assessing she knew not what. But that miraculous suit stretched over his body as he made the rounds, and she bit her lip while she openly ogled his ass.
“I guess I really am off the hook tonight.”
Jake folded himself into the seat next to her, and ordinarily, she’d make some kind of jokey come-on that he’d pointedly ignore. But tonight her eyes bounced right back to where Erik was smiling as he sliced a piece of cake for a little girl in a frilly pink dress whose head barely cleared the table. And just like that, her ovaries exploded.
“Does he know what he’s getting into with you?”
Heat rolled through her body for the second time that night, but this time it was the angry variety, which was way less fun than the lusty one. “Excuse me?” She narrowed her eyes at him, but Jake just calmly rattled the ice in his mostly empty highball glass.
“Listen, you toy with me and don’t mean any of it. But I think you might mean it with him.” He tilted his head toward the Beauty and the Toddler show happening in front of the cake.
“Mean what?” Even as she asked, she knew. She didn’t know how Jake knew, but somehow the seventy-hour-work-week brother of her best friend had seen past her showy exterior and divined the secrets in her heart.
“You’re the most optimistic romantic I’ve ever met, even though you hide it behind your legendary man-ogling. But every time you take somebody home, you’re hoping for forever. It’s one of the reasons that you and I haven’t ever…” He had the good grace to look a little chagrined as he waved his glass in a vague circle between the two of them.
She tipped her head toward him. “Why, Jake Carey, are you saying you’ve thought about getting with all of this?” She slid a hand down her side with a saucy wink.
“Yes, actually. Once I got to know you, I… thought about it. You mean a lot to me.”
Her mouth fell open. In all the time she’d been messing with him, not for a second did she think he’d taken her seriously.
He quirked his perfectly perfect lips at her surprise. “I know. It shocked the hell out of me too. But you’re my sister’s best friend, and the thought of fucking up that dynamic made it impossible for me to…” He frowned and stared into his glass, suddenly looking tired and more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him. Then he straightened. “Anyway, we both know how busy I am. No first dates and definitely no second dates.”
“Sounds lonely,” she said softly.
He drained the rest of his drink in one quick motion. “Yeah. But it’s who I am.” He set the glass down on the table with a thump, then nodded toward the cake table. “That guy though? Is he a second-date kind of guy?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure actually.” Erik’s explosion of words on the balcony had twisted her insides. He wanted her. That was clear now. But did he want her in a “bang it out and get on with our lives” kind of way or a “let’s go on a third and fourth and fifth date” kind of way? She watched him serving a fresh wave of cake-hungry guests, pride flickering in her chest as he sliced up his product and handed out business cards with his this-is-physically-hurting-me smile. Wow, did she like him.
“Oh my God, get out of here already,” Jake ordered.
Josie groaned, folding her arms on the table and dropping her head. “I told the guys I’d collect their gifts and whatever else so they can go start their honeymoon without a care in the world.”
Jake tapped a finger against his empty glass before he spoke. “What if I handle it?”
She lifted her head slowly. “Really?”
“Not like I’m taking anyone home tonight.” He nodded toward Finn and Tom swaying together on the dance floor. “I’m sure the lovebirds will help me out.”
Pseudo-big-brother to the rescue! She shrieked and threw her arms around his neck in a quick hug, which he accepted with a grimace and a swift pat of her shoulder. “You’re the best!”
“I know. Now go forth and have sex.” Jake pronounced it like a benediction, but she was already out of her chair and stalking across the room to claim her man.
Erik straightened from the cake table and watched her approach with hooded blue eyes. When she reached him, she hooked a finger through a belt loop on his beautiful suit.
“Let’s get out of here.”
As she was hoping, he dropped the cake server and followed her out the door without a single word.
Twenty-One
Erik was well on his way to being hard as fucking iron by the time he slotted his key into the back door of the bakery. Josie’s body was nothing but curves, and every one of them had been pressed against him from the moment they’d left the reception hall and climbed into the waiting Lyft.
He pushed open the door and waited for her to step inside so he could lose himself in her at last, but she paused in the alley, uncharacteristic hesitation crossing her face.
“Is, uh, is Gina here?”
Like he’d bring her back to his place if they weren’t going to have privacy for all the things he had planned. He rested his hands loosely on her waist but restrained himself from slinging her over his shoulder and carrying her to his bedroom. She needed to be the one to make this decision. “Nope. We’re all alone.” He’d explain about the sublet later, after they finally did this thing.
“In that case,” she murmured, turning to smooth her hands along his shoulders, “take me inside. As amazing as you look in this suit, I can’t wait to get it the hell off you.” She slipped her hand underneath his collar and grazed her nails over the back of his neck.
Had the damn suit felt tight before? Because he was ready to burst out of the expensive material, Hulk-style, so he could absorb every touch she was willing to give him. He swung her into his arms, stepped over the threshold, and kicked the door shut, then took the stairs two at a time. He wasn’t able to focus on any details beyond the weight of her in his arms and her good, clean citrusy scent tickling his nose.
He stalked across the room and settled them both on the couch, pulling her onto his lap to straddle him. His sofa screeched in protest, but he was already too busy kissing her to worry about anything else.
She was positioned exactly where he wanted her, and he devoured her mouth, telling her with his actions that he’d be happy to do nothing but this all night long. And then she told him without words that she wanted more, pushing down to grind against his cock. Her gasp of approval at finding him hard and ready acted like a starter’s pistol for him, and he dragged his hands down her sides until they tangled in the frothy material of her skirt. The dress was frivolous and feminine and maddening—exactly like Josie herself, and he couldn’t get enough.
She broke the kiss and leaned forward to reach for his shirt, and he half expected sparks to trail in the wake of her fingers. Instead, she worked her way down the buttons and untucked the fabric from his suit pants, exposing his chest to her avid eyes.
“Goddamn, Erik, you look good.” She reached out to touch where her eyes had just been, but he grabbed her hand and held it immobile a few inches from his skin.
“Me first.” Because if she got anywhere near the vicinity of his belt buckle, he’d be inside her in a matter of seconds, and he needed this to last for her, needed her to remember it. So he swung her around to sit on the couch back, which allowed her to lean against the wall while he knelt between her legs. She reached to unzip her dress, but again he stopped her.
“Leave it on.” His voice was rough with need. “I’ve pictured you like this so many times.”
Her head lolled against the wall, and she looked down at him with lust-clouded eyes. “Oh yeah? What did you imagine?” She skimmed a hand over the blue of her
skirt as her legs drifted wider to give him better access.
“This.” He reached up and tugged her neckline down to expose her breasts. Then he tilted his head to look his fill, his chest heaving at the effort it took to draw enough breath into his lungs at the sight. Everything. She was everything he wanted. Flushed and flustered and his to touch.
“Erik,” she breathed, leaning forward to smooth her fingers along his hair, gripping the knot at the back of his head where he’d secured it for the evening. A small little smile ghosted across her face, and he had a pretty good idea of what had just popped into her mind.
“Say it.” He surged upward to growl the command into her ear, pressing his chest against hers and reveling in the soft fullness of her breasts and the drag of her hard nipples across his skin. She shifted to quirk a smile at him, as if daring him to guess what was on the tip of her tongue.
“What?” she asked innocently.
“You know,” he growled.
“Oh do I, Man Bun?” Her breathy sass ended in a gasp when he bit her ear.
“You should know by now,” he said darkly, moving down to capture her exposed nipple with his teeth, “I don’t do nicknames.”
“I can tell—” She gave a squeak as he bit down gently before moving to her other breast. “T-tell how much you hate it.”
“Hate it,” he repeated, pausing to lick and tease each of her gorgeous tits before moving down her body. “So much.” He knelt between her legs, loving that she was still wearing her fancy shoes, and inched up the blue material of her skirt to reveal ivory lace underwear. Before he touched her again, he glanced up to check that she was still with him.
She was. Her big brown eyes were locked on his hands where they wrapped around the tops of her thighs, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Then one corner of her mouth lifted and she braced her weight on her heels, pushing herself up so he could pull the lace down. He freed one leg, but the material tangled with the buckle on her other shoe. He didn’t give a single fuck though, not when the heart of her was exposed for him.
