by Serena Bell
Anyway, the song couldn’t matter any less. What matters is the press of Sawyer’s big, muscular body against mine, the heat pouring off him, and the way his arms come around me, warm and protective.
I feel safe.
I feel cherished.
When Trevor’s brother, Ian, started his toast, I tensed up all over. In all the horrible visions I’d had of this wedding, it hadn’t really occurred to me that I’d have to endure this particular ignominy: Ian telling the story of how Trevor and Helen had fallen in love and everyone had known from the very first moment that they were meant to be together.
It was a story that made me, made our whole marriage, an awkward parenthetical in the middle of Trevor’s tale of true love.
I wanted to run out of the room. I wanted to stand up and protest the unfairness of this situation, of being invited to a wedding to participate in my own humiliation.
Instead, I held still, and waited for whatever was going to happen.
What happened was Sawyer.
I want to mess with you under the tablecloth.
The thing was, there were so many reasons Sawyer could have done what he’d done. He could have done it for bragging rights—I got my girl off under the table at a wedding. He could have done it for his own kicks, because it was pervy and exhibitionistic and would go in both of our permanent spank banks. He could have done it because he thought it would warm me up so I’d be more receptive to whatever he suggested later.
But I knew why he’d done it.
He’d done it to distract me.
He’d done it because he knew it was going to hurt to hear what Ian had to say, and he didn’t want me to hear it.
And I didn’t. I didn’t hear a goddamn word of it. I just felt the slight, gorgeous burn of his finger circling me, the rising tension that drew and drew like a noose closing around me until it swallowed me up. I came so hard against the light touch of his fingers that I thought I might actually have a heart attack and die. I was red faced and drenched in sweat and boneless from pleasure and relief, and I had no idea what words had come out of Ian’s mouth, nor did I care.
He took care of me. He protected me.
Sawyer pulls me closer on the dance floor so I can feel every perfect inch of his erection against my belly. “It is going to feel so good to finally be inside you,” he murmurs, bending his head.
This is a humongous understatement. The whisper of his breath across my ear and the feel of his cock against my stomach are turning me on. My panties are goners. My thighs are damp. I will be lucky if there are not beads of lube rolling down the insides of my knees.
“Can we leave yet?” I ask.
He looks around. Everyone is dancing. The cake has been eaten. “We can,” he says cautiously, “but I want to dance with you for a little longer.”
“Why’s that?” I ask suspiciously.
“Because I know that once we are alone in the hotel room, things are going to happen really, really fast. Way too fast. So fast that I am going to have to apologize afterward. So I want to savor this as much as humanly possible.”
I can’t argue with that. I just lay my head against his chest, wriggle evilly against his hard-on, and make up my mind to enjoy every minute of Sawyer’s brilliant torment.
Chapter 38
Sawyer
I think most guys, or at least most non-asshole guys, make it a point of pride to last more than a few minutes during sex.
For literally the first time in my life, I may fail at this goal.
The instant we climb up into my truck, we are all over each other. Elle’s hands rip my tux shirt out of my pants, slide up over my stomach and chest, then down to find me tangled and painfully hard in my briefs. My hands slip under her skirt. Her panties are drenched.
“Jesus, Elle.”
We’re kissing, open-mouthed, desperate. Our tongues tangle, battle. There’s a band of pressure on my dick from my clothes, and that, the slide of her tongue in my mouth, and the memory of her clit, swollen under my fingers, make my cock throb dangerously, so I push her away. “God knows I want to kiss you more,” I tell her, “but it would be really embarrassing if I didn’t make it back to the hotel room.”
“I didn’t make it back to the hotel,” she says, with a shrug and a grin. “I think it would be pretty hot. I could make you come now and then you’d have plenty of staying power for round two.”
It’s so tempting, especially when she grabs me through my tux pants, the touch both relief and its own form of torture. And she’s right—I would have more staying power if she got me off now, but I want it like this, both of us pushed to the edge of our patience, to the edge of sanity. This is how it was that first night at Maeve’s, and it was too fast, but it was also just right, and I know that after I fill her once, I’ll be ready to take her a second time, slow and sweet.
Reluctantly, I draw back, peeling her hands off me. Just as reluctantly, she tucks her hands into her lap. We drive back to the hotel, keeping to our own seats. When the truck stops, we don’t turn toward each other but instead climb down from our respective sides of the truck. We hold hands chastely through the hotel lobby, up all those floors in the elevator. We make it all the way into our hotel room, close the door behind us, and then—
“I am not going to fuck you against the wall again,” I murmur into her mouth.
She is pressed up against the wooden door, my body covering hers.
“We are going to make it to the bed,” I insist.
She wrestles her panties, trying to tug them down.
“Don’t. Don’t.”
She unbuckles my belt. Unbuttons and unzips my pants. Pushes them down, then my briefs. She wraps her hand around my dick, which pulses hard in her fist, so hard I have to concentrate not to come.
“Lift me up,” she demands.
I do, and she wriggles like a madwoman to try to get what she wants, but I’m stronger, and I wrap her up and carry her to the bed, where I deposit her, sideways, and kneel. I ruck her skirt up and press my face into her pussy. She smells unbelievably good, rich and fresh and salty, and I’m licking her like a cat that’s got into a dish of cream, busy, hungry. My dick, freed from constraints, is throbbing and straining, but I ignore it, ignore the weeping pre-cum I can feel all over the head, ignore the roaring demand in my balls. I lick and lick and suck and nip and slide two fingers into her, and she comes with a cry.
“If you don’t fuck me now, Sawyer Paulson, I swear to God—”
I fumble in my pockets, extract a condom, fumble again (with a few choice curses because even the pressure of the condom on my dick is a problem at this level of arousal), and oblige her.
I press in slowly. I know my time is limited, and I want to spend it well.
“Ohhhhhhhhh,” she says, as I spread her. Fill her.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You want more?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“That good?”
“More.”
I slide farther, then farther still, then all the way home. The hug of her body and the feel of being seated deep in her push me closer to that looming, tantalizing edge. “Like this?”
“Just like that.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
Still inside her, I wrap my arms around her, lift her, and slide her back on the bed so I can climb over her and look into her eyes, as per our conversation the other night in the restaurant. For a moment, it’s steadying. She looks back at me, and there’s trust there, and joy, and my attention shifts from the furious demanding pressure where we’re joined to the sensation in my chest, like fruit ripe to bursting.
And then she lifts her hips, just the tiniest bit, and closes her eyes and opens her mouth, and the look of total pleasure, utter abandon, on her face does me in.
Completely.
I roar my release, thrusting into her deep, twisting against her as I bury myself fully, watching as it pushes her past the edge again, the flush pouring up over her skin.
Chapter 39
Elle
If it weren’t for the condom, I don’t think either of us would ever move again. But after a while I feel him pull away, and then he rolls off me and goes to dispose of the condom in the bathroom.
I can still see the expression on his face when he braced himself over me and looked deep into my eyes, when I saw his emotions laid bare while he moved in me.
For that moment I could feel his feelings and he could feel mine. And we were both turned inside out, desperate with the need to connect, terrified, elated, falling without handholds or footholds, without promises or certainty, without a net.
It took me over the edge as surely as he could do with his knowing fingers.
But now, of course, I’m wondering: Was that real, what I saw? Or a product of my own brain, addled with sex hormones?
He comes back and stands above me, looking down. There’s an odd expression on his face.
“What?” I demand.
“That was—wow.”
I smile. “It was pretty wow.”
He climbs into bed, wraps his arms around me, and draws me close. I settle my head against his chest. He’s big and warm, and he smells so good, and…“I’m so…sleepy…”
I yawn, and it’s catching; Sawyer yawns, too.
“So sleep.” He shrugs under my cheek.
“But—we have this room and this night. We can’t waste it.”
He laughs, a lovely rumbling under my ear. “Sleeping with you in my arms is not a waste. I mean, think about it. We can get each other off pretty much anytime, but how many chances will we get to do this?” He wraps me tighter, inviting me with a hand to loop my leg over his, which I do. It’s bliss, the feel of his strong body the length of mine, and I let the feeling wash over me.
But then for some reason I hear his words echo—how many chances will we get to do this?
“You mean, because of the boys? Because of having to end up in our own beds?”
“Yeah.”
He’s right, of course. He’s absolutely, 100 percent right. We aren’t going to spring this on the boys until we’re absolutely certain, and in the meantime, there aren’t going to be many times we have the luxury of spending a whole night in each other’s arms.
But he hasn’t said “for now.” He hasn’t said “until we tell the boys,” or “until we’re public,” or—well, anything.
Instead, he made it sound like he still thinks of this as temporary. A relationship yes, but not—
Well, not a forever relationship. Not a marriage.
Oh, Elle, you crazy idiot. Back the hell off. Calm the hell down. Live in the moment. Enjoy what you’ve got.
“You okay?” He lifts his head. “I can feel you thinking a million miles a minute.”
“I’m fine.” Somehow, I manage to make the word sound normal, even bright. And in case he needs convincing, I add, “How could I be anything but fine after sex like that?”
He makes a rough, contented sound. “Sorry it was short.”
“Short, but wow. Anyway, you warned me.”
“And I can make it up to you.” He shifts under me until I feel his cock against my inner thigh, warm and heavy and hardening. “Unless you’re too sleepy?”
See, Elle? He wants you. And he told you he wants a relationship with you. That’s all you need to know right now. The rest is just you borrowing trouble.
About 92 percent of me is convinced. Enough to answer (honestly), “No. Hell no.”
We don’t fall asleep until much, much later.
* * *
—
In the morning, Sawyer orders us room service and we eat breakfast in bed. When we’re finished, he takes my plate out of my hands, sets it on the nightstand, and kisses me. We have sex again, this time with me on top, for his viewing pleasure. It turns out to be my viewing pleasure, too. I can’t look away from his face—blown pupils, a flush high in his cheeks, slack lower lip. Toward the end, he closes his eyes and tilts his head back, his fingers digging hard into the flesh of my backside. When he comes, he rocks my clit against his pubic bone and takes me with him. We give our hotel neighbors more audio than we were intending…
Afterward we shower together, where we review the positive attributes of vertical sex (less vocally than the last round). When we’re both clean and dry, sated and fed, we hit the road. We have lunch in Portland at Bunk Sandwiches on 6th Avenue (I practically fall face-first in ecstasy into my meatball parm, and he tells me that watching me eat is really good foreplay), then visit the famous Powell’s Books, where I buy a few novels I’ve been meaning to read and collect a few sexy romances—man-torsos and all—as a gift for Mrs. Wheeling. Sawyer buys a couple of thrillers. Then we head home.
In the car, we swap firsts. First dance, first date, first heartbreak, first time leaving the country, blah blah blah.
We’re almost home by the time I suggest first kiss.
“Age sixteen, in the movie theater, Amy Orella.”
“I’m shocked, Sawyer. Sixteen? I would have pegged you as a child prodigy.”
“Nope. Slow starter.”
“Hasn’t held you back any.”
“No. It really hasn’t. Your turn.”
“Age twelve, truth or dare at Kelly Simon’s house, in the closet with Devon Santiago.”
“Was it good?”
“It was awful. I almost gave up kissing for life.”
“Thank fuck you didn’t. That would be a horrible waste of the sexiest mouth ever.”
There he goes again with the superlative, and here I go with the self-doubt, but this time I rush to fill the potentially awkward moment, not wanting to make him have to assert, once again, that he means what I know is just a flip comment. “What about first time you had sex?”
“You probably won’t believe it, but it wasn’t until senior year of high school.”
I snort. “You were saving yourself?”
“No, but I really was a late bloomer. I was short and kind of pudgy till the end of sophomore year, and then it took a while for girls to actually notice I was no longer short and pudgy—and then it took me a while to figure out that girls actually wanted me. Once I did, though—”
“You made up for lost time?”
“I may have, somewhat,” he says, getting a faraway look in his eye as he pulls up to the curb in front of my house.
I brace myself to say goodbye, but before I can figure out what that should look like, Sawyer asks, “Would it be weird if I came in and met your parents?”
He didn’t meet them before the wedding because I ran over to his house to save time and a round of introductions (since I already knew Lucy’s parents, who were the ones watching Jonah).
“No! It would be cool.”
He cuts the engine and follows me up to the house. Madden answers the door. “Oh, hey, Mom,” he says, like I’ve been gone two minutes and not two days. Jonah is, of course, standing right behind him. “Hey, Dad,” Jonah says with matching nonchalance, and the two of them fly past us out the front door. My parents are right behind them in the hallway, watching them with amusement and affection.
“You can tell those guys missed you a whole ton,” my mother says, coming forward to embrace me. She’s a small, bright-eyed woman with a cloud of curly salt-and-pepper hair, cinnamon scented and warm, as she has been my whole life. I hug my father, too, who smells like coffee and the pipe tobacco he sneaks in the garage while my mother pretends not to know. “Probably the fact that we plied them constantly with treats. Grandparents’ prerogative.”
“This is Jonah’s dad, Sawyer,” I tell my parents. “Also my wedding
date. Sawyer, my parents, Elena and Matthew Dunning.”
“Very nice to meet you, Sawyer,” my dad says, extending his hand.
Sawyer shakes it. “The pleasure is mine.”
“Nice to meet you,” my mom echoes, smiling at Sawyer.
He smiles back. “You, too.”
“We met your in-laws earlier today. After the boys had run back and forth a few hundred times, we invited Jonah to come out for ice cream with Madden, so we stopped by and introduced ourselves to his grandparents and asked if they wanted to come with. How funny is this? We were all in Barcelona during the push for Catalonian independence, and we were probably all in the same square during a certain protest, maybe just a few hundred feet apart! Small world. How was the wedding?” she demands of me, without pausing for breath. Then, without waiting for an answer, she tips her chin up at Sawyer and says, “I’m sorry! I talk too much and too fast, but I get excited and can’t seem to stop.”
Sawyer laughs. “Now I know where Elle gets it.” He smiles fondly at me, which makes my heart skip a beat.
“The wedding was surprisingly fine,” I say.
“I didn’t think she should go,” my mother informs all of us. “I think it was classless of Trevor to invite her, and she should have turned down the invitation.”
“But tell us how you really feel,” my father chides her gently, but my mother just shakes her head and addresses me.
“Your father feels the same way, even if he wouldn’t say it out loud. Trevor was never good enough for you, Elle.”
Thank God for parents and their blind devotion. I so appreciate her saying that, even though I know she’s full of shit; they loved Trevor when we were together and felt as betrayed as I did when he ended up with Helen. Hindsight is 20–20…but again, thank God for parents and their willingness to back you even when you’re clearly the losing horse.
“No. He wasn’t good enough for her.” Sawyer’s voice is definitive. “He didn’t deserve her.”
I go a little gooey over that, and my mom shoots him an appraising look.