Chapter 37

Elle

“Want to dance?” Sawyer asks.

What I want is to climb Sawyer like a tree, which I’m pretty sure he knows. But I let him take my hand and lead me onto the dance floor. The music is the usual upbeat dance stuff interspersed with a parade of everyone’s favorite slow songs—so generic that I wonder if Trevor and Helen chose the songs or just told the DJ to “play stuff people like.” Right now, we are dancing to “Wonderful Tonight,” which also played, equally forgettably, at my wedding to Trevor, as well as pretty much every other wedding I’ve been to.

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.