by Amelia Wilde
Ash’s eyes narrow. “The sex was that bad?”
Heat spreads across my cheeks, a wave on another wave. “I’d say I didn’t want to talk about it, but there isn’t…much to talk about anyway.”
And it was more. It was more than the sex, obviously. Obviously. All of it revealed itself the moment I saw that redhead curled around Clayton radiating lust. Have I ever felt that lustful about Clayton? Has Clayton ever felt that lustful about me?
No, and no.
I’ve barreled into this with my garden variety honesty, but suddenly talking about my ex-fiancé’s lack of sexual prowess feels dangerous.
Dangerous…in a good way.
Ash stands to his full height with a causal tug at the hem of his jacket, the movement precise. The adjustment to the jacket is subtle. It absolutely makes a difference. He’s a details man.
What else is he a details man about?
“Let’s be clear. You’re looking for a wedding night to write home about.”
It strikes me then, how insane it is to still wish for a wedding night after you have been left at the altar by your own fiancé. Then again, it’s pretty fucking insane to get all the way to the altar before you run away with your mistress. This day has gone completely off the rails already, and having Ash in my honeymoon suite isn’t nearly the weirdest thing.
I swallow hard and take in a deep breath by sheer force of will. The reward? A lungful of Ash’s scent on the air, all cologne and soap and sunshine. He smells like a man who could run twenty miles without breaking a sweat. Who could lift…I don’t know, an enormous amount and barely have to flex his muscles. Those muscles…
“I wasn’t planning to write home, if that’s what you were thinking. If it has to be a secret…” My lips buzz at the thought, caught between numbness and hypersensitivity. My heartbeat ticks down the time until I have to go back into that banquet hall and give people a story. If all I have with Ash is a truncated wedding night, if it has to be a secret between the two of us, then I will take it. “It can be a secret.”
His eyes flash and flare, and I am desperate for the sofa between us to disappear. I’m desperate for the space between us to close like a door that’s been slammed. I can see him in the sun, out at the end of the dock. I can see his body slicing cleanly through water covered in crystals.
“They’re waiting for you downstairs,” he says, and something revs in my chest like an engine. “One of the guys from the resort stepped in with appetizers and bought you some time. He’s a real hero.”
“You’re my real hero,” I blurt. The moment Ash stepped up beside me out in that parking lot, a knot in my stomach unclenched and some of the sheer mortified shock from watching my fiancé run out of the room like his ass was on fire vanished. Another truth—god, they can’t stop coming, can they?—swells in my chest and sidesteps my brain. “You’ve been my hero for a long time. I’ve been thinking about you for a long time.”
Ash rubs a palm over his lips, his perfect Roman Empire lips, and I want to trace those lines with my own fingertips so badly my skin aches. “I thought of you every day.” His voice is low, curling into my ears like the silk of my wedding dress, and I fight for a full breath. “Something about you…Jesus, Sophie, if only you knew.”
“Me?” It’s fishing, only slightly, and I know it. But I can’t stop myself. Who the hell could? “You thought of me?”
“How could I not think of you? I saw you in that bathing suit. You think a man can forget a bathing suit like that?”
“A navy blue bikini?”
A smile breaks over his face and I swear it’s like the moment when the sun finally crests over the horizon. “A navy blue bikini. That’s like describing the Mona Lisa as a rough draft. I thought of you every day. And it wasn’t just about the bathing suit.”
I know. I know, because it wasn’t just about the rock-hard abs or the gorgeous face that Ash has been blessed with. It was the way he took his time before he spoke. It was the way he moved through the world. It was all of it. All of it.
I rock up on tiptoe, my kitten heels rising off the carpet. “So, one of the Bliss Brothers is covering for us?”
That smile smolders at the corners of his lips. “He did.”
“Then I want it right now.”
Now, before I have to go down to the reception hall and make my excuses to dozens of guests. Now, before the pain-in-the-ass reality of getting left at the altar sets in. Now, before I lose my nerve.
“We don’t have all night,” Ash says, the final words close to a growl. “By this point, I’d say we have forty-five minutes before everything downstairs goes to hell.”
“Then why are you making me wait?”
He’s instantly in motion, and my eyes lock on the lines of him in that suit, striding around the sofa. One, two, three long steps, and Ash is there. He’s there.
This time, there’s no hesitation.
His hand wraps around the side of my face, tilting my chin so I have to look deeply into his eyes. He pulls me close with the other hand around my waist. I’ve never felt so small, so breathless.
Ash’s lips are inches from mine, his eyes black pools of want made bright by the mid afternoon sun. “If this were our wedding night, this is how I’d start.”
Then he leans in to kiss me, and every inch of my soul coils around the contact. It’s a full-body sigh. If this were a romantic comedy, my heel would kick up, but instead my knees weaken and Ash has to tighten his grip around my waist. His lips on mine are gentle, then possessive, then demanding, and all of my being explodes into nothing but yes, yes, yes.
Ash
I’ve wanted to kiss Sophie Langdon since the moment I first saw her out on that dock, with her body stretched out in the sun and her hair gathered up on top of her head in a loose bun that exposed the curves of her neck to me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain how something at the center of me pulled toward her, or how hard it was to keep moving past her when the sight of her already had its hooks in my skin.
And I’m not fucking kidding. I kiss her exactly the way I would kiss her if this were our wedding night.
If she was my bride.
It’s a form of worship…and when she makes a small noise in the back of her throat, so soft I doubt she’s aware of it, it’s pure sin.
Pure, forbidden sin. She tastes sweet with her lips parted to yield to me, and I could survive on that ghost of a moan for the rest of my life.
An alarm sounds in the back of my mind—don’t do this, don’t risk your friendship, this is wrong, not allowed, bad, bad, bad—but for all its ear-splitting racket, it can’t change a thing about the way Sophie leans into my hands in that dress.
It’s a thousand times softer than I expected, and from the way it fell from her hips to the floor, I expected it to feel like running my hands through a cloud. It’s better than that, with her curves underneath. There’s another layer, too. Lace? I’m going to have to hold myself back, because if I had my ring on Sophie’s finger I wouldn’t hesitate to tear those lacy things to shreds.
I shove that thought, along with a few others, out of my mind and concentrate.
We don’t have much time.
And there’s so much I want to show her.
I bring my lips down to her neck, kissing a hot line down her creamy skin, and Sophie tips her head back and gasps. Her gown is my favorite item of clothing on the planet. It offers up both her shoulders to me, her collarbone, and I work my mouth over every inch.
She trembles, knees shaking.
Finally, finally, when I can’t wait another moment, I hook a finger in the top of that neckline and tug it down.
There’s no bra underneath.
It’s a miracle.
But how—
I cup one breast in my hand, rubbing the pad of my thumb over her nipple and making it jump to attention. Sophie lets out a hiss between her teeth. When her other nipple gets the same attention her knees give out.
I catch her i
n one arm and sadly, so sadly, have to use both to pick her up from the floor.
I’m not going to fuck her on the sofa. No. This wedding night deserves the king bed.
It’s an easy enough guess, heading to the master suite. On the way over Sophie twines her arms around my neck, gazing up at me with eyes so wide and wanting that it shatters that resolve.
She’s mine.
In this moment, she’s mine, and what else matters?
We cross the threshold into the master suite. Sophie sucks in a breath and holds it. The bed is a white oasis dotted with pink—pink flower petals to match the crown in her hair and the bouquet she held in the ceremony. The muscles at the back of my shoulders tense with the sensation that we’re veering off an unplanned exit on the highway, careening toward a big, plummeting drop.
This bed was made up for Sophie and her douche of a fiancé.
The sight of it might send us crashing out of this fantasy and back into the ugly reality of a canceled wedding.
But Sophie’s arms aren’t shaking around my neck. Her chin isn’t trembling. And there’s not a single tear in her eye.
“Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s destroy this bed.”
Unleashed.
I’m free—I’m finally free from the vise around my chest. I’m free from that horrible, aching want that’s dogged me every day for three years. And most of all, I’m free from my tuxedo. Fuck formalwear.
Sophie helps, attacking the tux like it’s offended her. She shoves it ruthlessly off my shoulders, pops one of the buttons off the shirt, and looks ready to bite through the belt with her teeth when it doesn’t immediately do her bidding. Thirty seconds flat and I’m left with nothing but boxers.
Then it’s my turn.
She’s tugged the dress halfway back up, but I undo her progress slowly, so fucking slowly it almost kills me.
I’m in the eye of the storm, in a moment of peace.
I’ve turned her around so I can undo the zipper. The gown comes down over her waist, then her hips…
And then the lace panties come into view.
Sophie steps out of her wedding dress, her hair still sheer perfection down the back of her shoulders, and when she turns to face me, I’m…blinded.
It’s the strongest drink I’ve ever sipped and then my mouth is on her neck, her lips, the delicate flesh of her earlobe. Every inch of skin is suffused with her scent, and Jesus, it’s so good. How can it be so good? How can that combination of sunscreen and sex still be on her skin after all these years?
It’s her. That’s why. It’s Sophie.
I lay her back on the bed and watch as she arches her back for me.
I’m careful with the panties. She might want to put them back on, but I body-check that thought out of my head along with all the other useless things. Time presses in on me from both sides, the past barreling into the present and shoving me forward like a rifle in the back.
Then it stops, skidding on its heels.
Sophie spreads her legs.
She spreads her body out on the bed for me, panting, nipples peaked and arms above her head. An offering. A gorgeous, mind-crushing offering, and it’s for me.
“Please, Ash.” Her eyes are bright, pleading, her face open and honest, and I have no doubt in my mind that she wants this.
The slick cream already gathering between her legs is the final proof.
She’s pink and glistening and everything I have ever wanted.
My boxers are gone in an instant.
I crawl up on the bed over her and thread my hand underneath her chin, exposing her neck, and kiss her just beneath her jawbone. “Say that again.”
“Please,” she whispers, her breath brushing the shell of my ear. “Take me. I want you to take me…”
“You’re already mine,” I growl into the pulse at her neck. “Turn over.”
In a collision of bodies and flesh we rearrange ourselves, Sophie on her hands and knees. I kiss down her spine, stopping just at the cleft of her ass, and reach between her legs.
She’s wet. She’s so wet.
Two fingers slipped inside of her tell me just how tight she is, and I groan. “Fuck, Sophie.”
“More,” she commands through gritted teeth. “I want more.”
Sophie throws her head back and I curl one hand around the front of her neck, finger and thumb circling her jaw. Her breaths come fast and hard underneath my palm and she arches her back again, offering herself again, and I’m going to fucking lose it.
If this was our wedding night I’d take my time with her.
But we don’t have that kind of time, and my body screams to have her. Now. Now.
I line myself up with her opening, holding her back against my hips, and she writhes, core rocking.
“I’ll give you more.”
That’s the last thing I say before I take her in one stroke, so powerful it would knock her forward into the pillows if it weren’t for my hand. She gasps a breath in, turning it into a moan, and spreads her legs wider.
Fuck, it’s so filthy, and so wrong, and so perfect. I have my best friend’s sister pinned to the bed, ass up, driving into her with everything I have. She quakes underneath me, hips rolling.
And that’s not all.
I play a hand over her breasts, pinching one nipple first, then the other. The sounds she makes are delicious. They’re enough to sustain a man for forty days and forty nights and fuck, add another set of days and nights because that’s how good they are.
Then I trace a line from the center of her perfect breasts, down, down, down, to where she’s utterly and completely mine.
Sophie
It never would have been like this with any other man.
I can’t think of any specific men right now, other than Ash, because he’s filled me to capacity. There is nothing but him in this moment. He is the world, and the world is between my legs.
With anyone else—anyone else—I wouldn’t be on my hands and knees. I’d be demurely on my back, staring up at the ceiling and trying my best to stay in the moment. I wouldn’t be wet from just enough pressure around my neck.
You belong to me, that grip says. Mine.
It sends waves of hot, needy pleasure sparking through every nerve, right down to where Ash thrusts into me with a studied mercilessness.
I can’t get enough of it.
I thrust back against him, hips begging, and then…
Then his fingertips meet my clit.
The woman who used to be Sophie Langdon detonates.
I’m not a rational creature any more. I’m nerves on fire, an explosion of pleasure, a perfect pain.
So this is what it’s like to have an orgasm. A real orgasm, so powerful it rattles every muscle, every bone. Ash moves his hands, and I’m impaled. My body bucks and writhes, and I don’t know whether I’m trying to get closer or farther away, but it doesn’t matter, because I can’t.
I can’t go anywhere.
I have to come on his steely thickness, and it is steely. Steely, alive, pulsing. He makes me ride it out until I can almost catch my breath.
Almost.
Because Ash pulls out then and turns me over as easily as he’d turn a pillow. I land on my back on the cool comforters, flower petals stroking against my skin, and look up at him.
His eyes are black, and when his gaze travels over my skin it burns.
“You’re killing me,” he says through gritted teeth.
“You’re saving me,” I answer, and there’s a flash of intensity across his face that’s gone before I can fully identify it.
He doesn’t give me time to identify it, either. He spreads my legs wider and rakes his eyes between my legs.
Where he has recently been fucking me.
Is it possible to blush over your whole body?
It is.
Ash stops, holds his body still, his hands beneath my knees. He takes his time looking. Assessing. I’ve never felt dirtier in my life
. My legs are open wide and I instinctively reach for the headboard. I fight off the urge to grab for the sheets.
I don’t want sheets.
I want him to see me.
All of me.
“So wet,” he says. “So tight. Is this for me?”
His eyes blaze into mine and I could swear the air between us shimmers and shakes. It’s my eyes that are shimmering and my muscles that shake. My teeth chatter like it’s twenty below, but it’s hot in the room. Or at least it’s hot in Ash’s hands.
“It’s all for you.” I press my knees against his grip and he groans. “Husband.”
Without breaking my gaze, he dips his head to the inside of my thigh and sinks his teeth into the flesh there.
It’s not hard. Not hard enough to wound, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to leave a mark.
I feel myself get wetter.
“Wife,” he growls.
When this game ends—this beautiful, dangerous game—it’s going to hurt like hell.
“You’re going to come for me again.” Ash’s words land like raindrops on the surface of a lake that’s already roiling underneath. “I’m going to devour you until you come on my tongue.”
“I don’t—I don’t know if I can.”
He grins, as cocky as I’ve ever seen him. “You don’t have any choice.”
“Ash—”
Before I can get another word out his mouth is on me, tongue teasing and lapping and working, and there are no more arguments to be made.
All my thoughts sink down beneath the surface. Someone is moaning. It’s me. It’s me making that noise, straining against Ash’s grip to close my legs against the overwhelming pleasure. Where did he learn to do this? How did he learn to do this? How does he know how much I want him to suck at my clit, to tease it until it’s throbbing, until I’m gushing, until my hips rock up off the bed and into his mouth?
How…how…how…
I can’t help but follow his orders.
I can’t help but come all over his tongue.
Ash laps up my juices with long strokes of his tongue, relentless and unforgiving. There’s the slow drag and then the release and my hips arch every time.