Pfft. “Not surprised. With Dolores’s broom parked out of sight, some sort of throw down seemed inevitable. I’m sure the last thing Andi wanted was Tara stirring the pot too.”
“Look,” she interrupted. “We’re being waved over. I think it’s time to do the garter.”
Lisa laughed. “That’s all on you, girl! Us married ladies get to sit this particular indignity out. But hell’s bells, let’s get close and give Kyle all kinds of shit.”
Linking arms, they sashayed into the crowd and proceeded to make as much trouble as possible.
“I feel pretty. Oh, so pretty. I fell pretty and. . .what?”
Ryan shook his head as she stopped singing, blinked once or twice, and looked at him like she had no idea how funny this all was.
“Nothing, nothing,” he assured her.
They were walking along the beach—ostensibly to clear their fuzzy champagne heads—but he was pretty sure they both knew the real reason. If he couldn’t kiss her, and kiss her soon, he wasn’t sure if his sanity would remain intact.
“How’s that garter treating you? Want me to readjust it or anything?”
Giggle-snorting, she planted her feet in the sand, cocked a hip, and did an effortless Angelina Jolie leg pose. The purple and white garter decorated with sparkling crystals peeked out of the slit in her sarong.
“You tell me,” she joked. “Does it need adjusting?”
His insides warmed. She was being cheeky, and he was eager to keep on playing.
“Well, it does if I can make the adjustment with my teeth.”
He wanted to laugh when the champagne slowed her response. “With your teeth? What the hell does. . .oh, my god!” she shrieked. After swatting him on the arm, Samantha crossed hers and glared at him.
She gave as good as she got even though he could have taken a nap in the amount of time it took her to come back at him with a comment.
“Does that actually pass as a pickup line in your world? ‘Cause seriously, dude, not impressed.”
Dropping to his knees in the sand, Ryan clasped his hands together like he was praying and whined, “Please, please, please.” He wondered what she would do.
“If that’s a challenge, Mr. Charming Man, your bluff’s about to be called.” Taking a few steps closer, she offered her thigh and laughed.
She was in for a serious shock if she thought he wouldn’t take up the sexy offer.
Not giving her time to reconsider and shift away, he reached for her ass, took hold, and moved her into position. And then he stuck his face between her legs and all but lost his shit in spectacular fashion.
Desperately trying not to react to her enticing smell, he nibbled along the top of the garter until his mouth was on the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.
Despite going still when he grabbed her, she wasn’t pulling away.
Latching his teeth onto a section of the ruffled ribbon, he tugged at it until the damn thing shifted upward about an inch. Good enough. Then he kissed and nibbled his way to the outside of her thigh, calmly bit her, and then tugged the garter higher.
With his hands massaging her bottom, he looked up at her and grinned. They were in a very provocative position.
Briefly shoving his face close enough to inhale her mouth-watering scent, he sat back and innocently inquired, “How’d I do?”
“Charming Man on his knees. Hmm. I could get used to this.”
Jumping up like a jack-in-the-box, he dipped his shoulder and hoisted her until she was trapped caveman style. Then he let out a roaring whoop-whoop and started tribal dancing around an imaginary bonfire. She was laughing hysterically when he finally put her back on her feet.
Her laugh made him a million times hornier than he’d been five minutes ago.
Wanting to kiss her—badly—he didn’t ask, didn’t stop, and didn’t pull back. At all. Grabbing her hair in his fist, he pulled her head back until he loomed over her as she arched over his forearm.
“Open your mouth, golden goddess.”
His tongue slowly traced the soft fullness of her lush lips until she trembled in his arms. He moved his mouth over hers and heard a sigh so deep he was sure it came from his soul.
He took her mouth with savage intensity and fiercely crushed Samantha’s lush body against his. She returned his kiss with hungry urgency.
What was this sensation of mystical ecstasy swirling inside him? How could one woman actually affect him so deeply? He didn’t have any answers. All he knew was what he felt.
Samantha Evers was changing his life.
Her playful calm shattered the moment he claimed her mouth. Surrendering to the passion their kiss incited, Sam clutched Ryan’s shoulders and tried to remain steady, but she needn’t worry. He had her so tight there was no way she’d fall.
Her head swimming, she thought he said something, but the sound got smothered by her frantic need for more.
More.
She ran her palms up his neck, along the side of his face, and then grabbed the back of his head with both hands.
Was she making that grunting noise?
With his tongue demanding access to every part of her mouth, Sam shuddered and rubbed against the length of his body. This. Was. Heaven.
Suddenly raising his mouth from hers, a thread of saliva briefly hung between them as he gazed into her eyes.
Her heart was double booming in her chest when he growled, “Samantha Evers. For the record. I don’t do wedding guest sex.”
A zap of rejection hit her broadside and then a smile curled her lips when she realized what he was saying.
“Good,” she replied with dead seriousness. “Neither do I.”
Her words acted like a match held to kindling, and a fire roared to life in his expression.
This was either the hottest encounter of all time and the best thing she could give herself or the biggest mistake imaginable.
She went with the first and stood her ground.
Keeping one arm tightly banded about her middle, he reached up with his free hand and took one of hers. Bringing her trembling fingers to his mouth, he held her eyes and kissed her knuckles.
It took the sound of the ocean crashing ashore to drown out the shaky whimper she couldn’t hold in.
Words came out of his mouth. She knew this because she was staring a hole through him with most of her attention focused on his lips.
“What?” Eloquent, right?
He chuckled. She liked the way his manly sounds turned her insides to molten lava.
“I said,” he teased with another kiss placed on her knuckles, “that I have something for you.”
Um, okay. “Really? For me?”
He was balls-out grinning when he took her fingers and placed them on his bulge, using his big hand to cup hers around the impressive hardness.
“Well, I don’t think this is for anyone else.”
“Oh.”
Oh! Tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth, she gazed helplessly into his laughing face and let him use her hand in a most outrageous way.
“Think you can handle it?” His voice sounded sexy and teasing.
This was nothing like anything in her previous, albeit meager, experience. The laughter. The teasing. The sexy come-ons. All of it was missing from her sexual repertoire.
And oh my dear sweet lord, how turned on was she by their playful making out?
Elated by this revelation, she gave him her sauciest smirk, mapped his manhood with her fingers, and giggled.
“How much mileage has that come-on line logged?”
“None,” he shouted with glee. “How fucking awesome is that?”
Taking control of her hand, he separated them, made sure she wasn’t having a nip slip, and walked them back down the beach.
Out of nowhere, he drawled, “I like coffee first thing in the morning. My bedroom usually looks like a bomb went off, and my mom will tell you I never met a clothes hamper I couldn’t completely ignore.”
She snickered with la
ughter.
“Bracelet janglers make me crazy. Rude people make me crazy by the power of ten. I don’t understand why more people don’t enjoy public television. Green peppers in anything make me gag.”
Gosh. He was fun to be around. And getting to know this man was just as much exciting fun as rubbing up against him.
Well. . .almost.
“My mother, by the way, thinks you’re the shit. And I’d bet a dollar my sister is whispering notes into her phone about us.” He gave her a funny eye roll. “With a writer in the family, there’s always a possibility you’ll get written into a story.”
“Get the hell out,” she squealed with delight. “Shit, Ryan! For a chance to be in an Ali Morgan book, I’d shag you in the middle of the ballroom with a crowd of witnesses showering us with dollar bills.”
Yelping in surprise, she let go of his hand and swung hers in a protective gesture to cover her bottom after he swatted her good.
“Sommerfields do not share, Ms. Evers.”
Ah, right. She remembered him poking Kyle over an exhibitionist reference. Was the fact that she was secretly glad to hear this apparent in her expression?
“Shame,” she muttered with a scowl. Rubbing her bottom, she gave him an insolent wink and said, “I’ve always fancied a three-way.”
His expression after she finished taunting him had enough fiery power behind it to launch a rocket.
“Oh, my god!” She wheezed with laughter as the hilarity of his reaction hit her. “Your face!” she said while pointing and giggling. “I was just kidding!”
Sam thought he’d laugh. What she didn’t expect was for him to grab her and growl, “Tell me now if you are in any way serious.”
Whoa. Note to self. Drop a pin to remember this because holy cow, talk about a line in the sand.
Something significant shifted inside Sam. Wasn’t the woman supposed to be hardwired for monogamy? Ryan’s knee-jerk responses were making it abundantly clear where he stood on the issue.
Insert note, she thought. Ryan Sommerfield was an old-fashioned guy with a lovely, romantic point of view that matched hers. Add an asterisk and in bold caps the word swoon.
He’d told her his likes and dislikes, although in a more tongue-in-cheek way than how she planned to offer hers. Her turn to share and set his mind at ease at the same time.
“I like wind chimes outside my bedroom window, Starfuckers iced chai lattes, and chocolate biscotti from Trader Joes.”
He chuckled at her irreverent phrasing.
“I have a long-standing relationship with all things Seinfeld—right down to a cabinet full of cereal. Scooby Doo makes me laugh and what the hell is with a music channel that doesn’t have music in the programming?”
She reached up and ruffled her fingers through his hair.
“I can generally spot a fake do-gooder, I threw up after acting in a high school play, and whenever I see a penny, I pick it up.”
“Okay,” he grunted, but the dark expression never left his face.
She circled round in her head for a minute to gather the words she wanted to say and then gently glided to a landing with a brutally honest confession.
“I lived with a guy who had no qualms about pretending to care for me when all he really wanted was to get laid. When the relationship inevitably tanked, his awesome parting shot was that I was boring in bed. Aren’t those two things like mutually exclusive or something? If all he wanted was a quick fuck, did it really matter how I reacted?”
Ryan’s fearsome glare confirmed her feelings about how shitty Rich had treated her. At that point, she went to the finish line with one final thing.
“And I’ve never had an orgasm.” His head snapped back. “Um, with a guy, I mean.”
Took seconds for her words to sink in and then he dropped a ferocious mauling on her that left Samantha quivering with need. When he sucked on the juncture of her neck and shoulder, while reaching into her halter-top to pluck a pebbled nipple, her knees wobbled.
With his warm hand still covering her breast, he backed off and spoke to her in a way that finished Sam off where any other man was concerned.
“To be clear, this isn’t dirty talk. It’s a statement of fact.”
Her tongue snaked out and wet her lips. His eagle eyes didn’t miss the motion.
“I intend to fuck you into next week, Samantha. Not only will you come, but I will also make you come on my command.”
She swallowed and reminded herself to breathe.
“And if you’ve never been with someone man enough to see to your pleasure first, I’m guessing that also means you’ve never had your pussy licked. Properly.”
The thought of his talented mouth and wicked tongue between her legs made Sam tremble and whimper.
“That’s right, golden goddess. Don’t be shocked or shy. I want your pussy, Samantha. To lick and finger. Mmm,” he growled. “Imagining fingering you is what I thought about as I stroked my cock last night.”
“Ryan,” she whispered shakily.
“Oh, baby. I’m not finished.” The wind blew, and he pushed some hair out of her face. “In my fantasy, you rode my fingers until you were wet and dripping with need. I could get you off right here. Right now. Two fingers going deep. Would you like that, Samantha?”
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.
“Because you want me to. Because you want me to fuck you hard. You want to come all over my cock. I can taste your desire. Smell it. But make no mistake about what’s going on here. I’m not interested in just getting laid. I want all of you. Your thoughts. Your body.” He put his hand on her throat and held her. “When you give yourself to me, there’s no going back. And no sharing. Ever.”
She didn’t know what to say. Finally, he took control of the outcome and asked, “Your place or mine?”
Ryan marveled at his golden girl’s outward show of calm when they returned to the thinning crowd of wedding guests. If not for the strong, steady throb of her pulse under his fingers, he might have been fooled.
It turned his dick to stone watching the sexy maid of honor acting so ladylike and together. He liked the way she handled herself very much.
Once or twice, he felt Tara’s fuming glare on them. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t worrisome that she was so openly on the warpath. The only thing keeping him from taking her down once and for all was the undisputed fact that she was fucking crazy and making all this shit up. Common sense urged him to stay out of it even though so much of her attention was focused on him.
They stayed until the bitter end because that was what Maids of Honor and Best Men did. That meant there were a thousand last-minute challenges and enough after-the-fact details to keep them busy.
After running back and forth from the hotel several times, he managed to fix a transportation snafu and endured his sister’s nonstop taunts while waiting for his parents’ driver to arrive. They had decided to avoid the big hotel and leased a vacation rental nearby.
His dad and Uncle Burt got seriously lit, so Ryan wasn’t shocked when his dad pulled him aside and, with about as much finesse as a toddler in a room full of pots and pans, proceeded to quite loudly ask if he was all right or if they needed to have ‘the talk.’
He was thirty-two years old. Had walked the runways of Europe and done his time as a boy toy and sex athlete. The question seemed so absurd and out of context that he started to laugh and then pulled up short. Maybe it wasn’t all that laughable a question.
“How do you know, Dad? I mean,” he yammered, “well, I don’t know what the hell I mean.” His chuckle was half laugh and half howl of confusion.
“My boy.” His dad chortled with a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “You just made your old man a happy camper. I was getting worried since not once in all these years have you been anything approaching serious with a girl.”
“Small victory,” he muttered.
“And you asked the right question, Ryan, so I’m proud of you for that.”
“I
s there an answer, or am I farting into a windstorm?”
His father’s hand squeezed his shoulder reassuringly, smacked him once more for good measure, and then crossed his arms. It struck him that he looked a little like the statue outside his mom’s favorite seafood restaurant. To be a perfect match, all he was lacking was a pail of lobsters and an old fisherman’s hat.
“Does this girl make you laugh, boy?”
He nodded.
“And does she give it right back to you every chance she gets?”
This time, he snorted a laugh with the nod.
“That’s how you know.”
“Come on, Ted,” they heard his mother yell. “Hurry up, would you? This bra is killing me.”
The moment was perfect, and they cracked up laughing.
“See?” his father drawled.
They shook hands and hugged, making promises about lunch tomorrow that they both knew wouldn’t be kept. After a hug and several motherly kisses, Ali flipped him off as she slid in the car and his family obligations were taken care of.
Now, all he had to do was lure his bewitching partner-in-bridal-crew-crime away from here so they could get back to what they left unfinished.
“Sweetie, I owe you big time. Like super-sized big time,” Sam said to Julie in a hushed phone call. “Thank you so much for taking this one for the team.”
“Joe says he likes Jack Daniel’s Gentleman Jack and a case to start would be acceptable.”
“Ouch! That bad?” Sam giggled. “Is Dolores being a right royal—”
“Uh-huh,” Julie whispered. She heard the hollow sound of her next words, a sure sign she’d cupped her hand over the phone. “And a drunk one at that.”
“Well, pour her into bed and run for the hills. She’s on her own now. Andi and Kyle have their phones turned off for the duration, and my job is done!”
She jumped from fright when a hand slid around her ass. The surprise quickly disappeared when a hand moved her hair out of the way, and a warm tongue licked her neck.
“Gotta go!” she barked into the phone. “Have an, uh, yeah. Have a thing to return and some. . .”
The Wedding Affair (The Affair Series Book 2) Page 15
