After I explained to everyone that there’d been an accident at the entrance to the ballroom which was finally cleaned up, the angry mob just dissipated. Some went back to dancing, and most everyone went back to drinking.

Now, the waitstaff wheel the table into the room. Claire and Chase are bombarded with guests gathering around as the happy couple prepare to cut the cake. Claire looks at her new husband with a worried expression on her face, and it’s clear they’re having a conversation. I bite my lip and weave through the crowd, but I stop in my tracks when her gaze zeros in on mine.

“You?” she mouths, her brows drawn together, and tears shining in her eyes. Frozen with fear, I can only give her a paltry smile. “Thank you.”

I swallow back the lump in my throat. I need to get out. I don’t know if I want to scream or cry or fall apart, but regardless, I can’t do it in this room with everyone watching. I turn and flee, running on my heels as fast as I can through the lobby, and finally the exit.

I push out of the heavy wooden doors into the humid, tropical night. The scent of sand and salt washes over me. My skin prickles with the warmth after so long in the air-conditioned resort, but it’s nice. I take a deep breath, exhale loudly, and the dam breaks. Fat tears spill down my cheeks. Not because I’m unhappy, but because for the first time in several months, I feel free. Free of the embarrassment, the shame, the heartbreak. I don’t feel a single thing for Chase anymore. I don’t know where Claire and I stand after what she did, but right now I don’t have the energy to think about it. I’m exhausted and relieved, and all I really want to do is curl up in my bungalow and sleep through the rest of the weekend. I’ve earned it after the last few days. I turn around, preparing to do just that, but Leo is standing there in the moonlight, looking every bit as devilish as he was in my room an hour ago.

My body is suddenly on high alert, and I swipe at my cheeks so he won’t see my tears. “I assume you’re here to collect.”

“Are you crying?”

“I’m fine—”

“You’re better than fine. You’re amazing, Poppy. Chase is an idiot. I’m an idiot. I’ve been an idiot for so fucking long.”

“Leo, what are you—”

“Just let me get this out,” he says. My brows practically shoot to my hairline in surprise. “I don’t do all this dating, and love, and wedding stuff or—I haven’t—but damn it, Pop Tart, you make me want that, with you. I want—”

“Stop talking,” I whisper as I move closer, and cover his mouth with my fingertips. Reaching up on my tiptoes, I grab his lapel, pulling him down to me. Then I lay one on him. I slide my fingers into his hair, thrust my tongue in his mouth and kiss him like ... well, I kiss him like I eat cake. Leo’s hands slide down my body to grip my ass. Confident he won’t let me fall, I jump and wrap my legs around his waist. He stumbles, my back hits the glass doors of the ballroom, and I cry out. He kisses my neck, my jaw, my collarbone, but then he dips his head and trails his tongue along the line of my cleavage. I gasp, wishing the fabric of my dress wasn’t in the way.

“Leo,” I pant, between kisses.

“Yeah?”

“I need you inside me.” Wow, I did not mean for those words to come from my lips. His wide-eyed gaze tells me he’s just as surprised as I am. He searches my face. His tongue darts out to lick his lips, and I wonder if I just screwed everything up. “Please say something.”

“I think I almost came in my pants.”

I burst out laughing. “What?”

“I’m dead-serious here, Pop Tart. You can’t say shit like that without me losing mine.”

I toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Okay, but you know I’d rather you just came inside me.”

Leo winces, and bites his bottom lip. “Jesus. Again, Poppy, really?”

I chuckle, and Leo grinds his erection against me. My laughter dies away, and a soft moan replaces it. “Are you going to make me wait?”

“I’m thinking about it,” he says breathlessly. “Yeah, you know what? Fuck waiting.”

“Fuck waiting,” I agree, and bring my lips down on his again. He lets the glass at my back take my weight as he slides a hand between us. My dress is bunched up around my hips. There’s too much fabric and I can’t see, but I can certainly feel. Leo rubs his hard length against me, and I thank God that I’m not wearing any panties. He teases me, sliding the smooth tip over my clit and then easing into my wetness. He only pushes in far enough to get me really worked up before slipping out and rubbing himself over that tight bundle of nerves again. I lose track of how many times he does this, but eventually I grow tired of him keeping me on the edge and I pull the hair at the back of his head. “Fuck you, fuck waiting. Fuck me, please, Leo?”

His low chuckle washes over my skin, causing me to break out in goosebumps. “God, have I told you how much your dirty little mouth turns me on?”

“Have I told you how violent I get when men deprive me of the things I want?”

“Oh, you want this?” he says, shoving his cock inside.

I throw my head back and hiss, “Yes. Oh, God yes.”

Leo groans as he slides all the way out, “Maybe I’ll make you beg.”

“Maybe I’ll shank you in your sleep,” I hiss. “I did almost kill a man tonight over a cake. Imagine what I could do when I’m all worked up and sexually frustrated.”

“Good point,” he says and slams inside, all the way to the root. I moan. Leo pivots his hips, bringing us a new closeness, and I scratch and claw at his tuxedo shirt to get closer. He pulls out and shoves back in, gripping my ass and driving his cock into me with a merciless rhythm, pushing me closer to the precipice. Fireworks explode behind my eyelids, but when I open them, I discover they’re not just on the inside. They’re lighting up the night sky. Oh shit. I forgot about the fireworks.

One by one wedding guests move outside through the open doors, drawn by the beauty in the sky but faced instead with the hard, hot reality of Leo thrusting in and out of me as they all look on in slack jawed horror. Chase’s Aunt Myrtle even swoons.

“Leo,” I pant, as he drives inside again, this time rougher than before. “Leo, wait.”

“Fuck, Pop Tart. If I knew your grumpy cat would feel this good around my cock, I would have quit tormenting you back in high school.”

“Leo,” I hiss. My mother and father, Leo’s mother and father, Claire, Chase, Jasper, Katherine, and all one hundred and thirty guests—give or take a few—are staring at the two of us instead of the fireworks, and Leo, oblivious to it all, continues jackhammering away.

My mother gasps. My father clears his throat, and thank God for small mercies, Leo finally stills. His eyes meet mine, and he breathlessly says, “There’s someone behind me right now, isn’t there?”

“Uh, yeah . . .” I swallow, hard. God, could my life be any more humiliating? “Everyone is behind you right now.”

“Shit,” Leo mutters. His hand moves between us and he pulls out of me. I miss the thickness and warmth of him straight away. I hurry to fix my dress. I can’t meet the eyes of anyone, but it’s apparent Katherine has reclaimed her jaw from the ground because she’s currently using it to draw the guests’ attention away from us and onto the fireworks. One by one, they eventually turn and as I watch them go, I wish the tide would come in and just rush me out to sea. To say I’m mortified would be a serious understatement.

I begin sinking toward the concrete when Leo grabs my hand. It’s sticky with my arousal, and I’d kind of like to pull away but it’s sort of nice to have someone hold my hand and share in my humiliation. He squeezes it once and leans in. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere we don’t have an audience,” he says and leads me toward my bungalow, but instead of having me walk beside him he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

Once inside, he sets me on my feet and I waste no time removing his shirt. I rip at it like a wildling, scratching, and clawing to get closer. I remove my dress and shoes and climb that man like a kitty up a tree, wrapping my limbs around him and digging my nails in his back so he can’t escape. He slams me into the wall. The picture frame shakes and falls, shattering on the blond hardwood floor.

“Shit,” I groan.

Leo trails kisses down my neck. “There goes your security deposit.”

“Maybe we should take this outside, where we can’t break anything.”

“Good idea.” He slides his hands around my ass to support my weight and walks us through the bungalow to the private deck outside. He lays me down on the sunbed and unfastens his belt and unzips his fly. He shucks off his shoes, slips out of his pants, and hovers over me.

“Shit.” Leo stands, fishing his pants off the ground. He grabs a condom from his wallet and tears into the foil packet, rolling it over his long, hard cock. Thank God one of us is thinking straight now, because we had sex outside the ballroom without any protection and I’m not on the pill.

“Okay with you if we have foreplay later?”

“Totally,” I pant, as eager to have him inside me as he seems to be.

“Good, ’cause I’m going to eat you out on this daybed as the sun comes up, but right now I gotta fuck you, babe.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” I say, taking hold of him and guiding him inside me. I’m plenty wet enough—it seems the last few months of aggression and back-and-forth banter have had me in a permanent state of arousal. Leo pulls out and slams back in. I cry out, far too loudly, and he clamps a hand over my mouth.

“You need to learn to keep that pretty mouth of yours shut, Pop Tart,” he says with a grin. I bite down on his hand, hard, and he chooses that moment to thrust harder. “Feisty.”

I laugh, but when he starts thrusting into me again, the laughter is quickly stolen by my breath catching in my throat. “Oh, you like that, huh? Like my cock filling your sweet, hot pussy?”

“Yes, God yes.”

“Good. Now hold on.”

I wrap my arms around his neck and stare into his pretty blue eyes. “What? Why?”

“Because I want you in the water.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s all I’ve been able to think about since we arrived.”

I shrug. “Well, it’s certainly not missionary.”

“Stick with me, Pop Tart, and you’ll never have missionary again.”

I hold on tight as he lifts us off the bed. I don’t know how he’s able to go from lying to standing with me in his arms, but I thank God for personal trainers everywhere.

He crosses the deck, and I half expect him to throw me in the pool, but he carefully moves down the stairs to the ocean below. Warm water rushes around us. I worry about the condom breaking or coming off, but as soon as our bodies are submerged Leo positions himself at my entrance and pushes inside. I hang onto his shoulders and he moves in me with slow, languid strokes. I rock my hips in time with his and he claims my mouth again, sealing his lips over mine and thrusting his tongue in deep.

A beat later when I’m gasping for breath, Leo lowers his head to my neck and kisses my heated flesh. The first slow, delicious strains of my orgasm build in my core. “Jesus, Poppy, you’re so fucking wet.”

“Well,” I pant. “We are submerged in the water, and you know what they say about that—water is wet.”

“I’m gonna have a lot of fun filling your smart mouth with my cock later,” he says.

I smile and lie back in the water. Leo makes a face like he loves this new angle and he grabs hold of my hips, thrusting into me with slow, lazy strokes. I come hard, my back arching against the ocean, his strong hands digging into my fleshy hips. I cry his name, and he runs a hand over my breasts and down to my clit where he makes me come again as he spills into me.

“I don’t think you screamed loud enough for the whole resort to hear,” he says as he pulls me towards him. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and close my eyes as I catch my breath and bathe in the afterglow. “In fact, I think a pod of dolphins nearby heard you and are coming over to investigate.”

“If you hadn’t fucked me so thoroughly, I wouldn’t have had to scream so loud.”

“You’re right. Next time, I’ll totally fuck you only halfway, so we don’t risk a repeat.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He slides free of my body and I pout. “Don’t look so forlorn, Pop Tart. This isn’t the end, but if I fuck you again with the same condom we’ll likely be due not long after Chase and Claire.”

“No,” I say, thrusting my fingers against his lips. “Don’t mention their names. I don’t want to think about Chase and Claire again for the next ten years.”

“What about my cock? You wanna think about sucking it?”

I shake my head and swim away, but he catches up to me before I can make it to the steps and pulls me back against him, sealing his lips to my neck and sliding a hand over my stomach and between my legs. He brings me to the brink again and then stops just as I’m about to come. I squeeze my legs together, but his hand is already gone. I sink back into his chest, and groan. He grabs a handful of ass cheek and squeezes hard.

“Get that fucking sexy ass up on the deck and spread your legs for me, Pop Tart. I’m going to have you so often, and in so many different ways you’ll be begging me to stop.”

“Oh my God. You really don’t get any less annoying after an orgasm, do you?” I mutter.

He grins, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. “Nope. Not even after ten.”

I do not doubt that at all.