Chapter 32

Elle

We’re done with our main course and we’ve ordered dessert, a molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. I’m somewhere near the bottom of my second glass of wine, and he’s been asking me about my writing, and somehow, I find myself telling him about the super-secret divorce book. He listens with typical Sawyer attentiveness, idly running his thumb along the edge of his wine goblet. My eyes follow his fingers, my body softening and heating in response to the caress. You know you’ve got it bad when a guy can get to you by rimming his glass.

“Hattie thinks I should try to get it published, but I don’t really think anyone would be interested.”

He tilts his head. “Why not?”

“It’s pretty hard to get something published. Really competitive. And there are, like, a million divorce self-help books, and there was the whole Eat Pray Love memoir/self-help thing, and now there are a million of those, too.”

“So?” he asks.

“So, I mean, I’m nothing new.”

“So why did Hattie say you should try to get it published?”

I shrug.

He narrows his eyes. “What did she say, Elle?”

He’s pretty scary when he’s stern. And hot.

“She said it made her laugh and that—I guess she thought it would make people feel less alone with the whole thing. Like I was kind of making fun of myself and the situation in a way that was really accessible.”

He raises his eyebrows.

I lift a shoulder. “She’s my best friend. She has to say nice stuff.”

He leans back slightly in his seat and says, “You know, way back when I was first starting to make furniture, I said stuff like that all the time. ‘Oh, yeah, he’s just complimenting it because he’s my dad; she’s just complimenting it because she’s my wife. There’s so much furniture out there, there’s so much repurposed wood furniture out there; what do I have to offer that’s anything new?’ Truth is, you can talk yourself out of anything. It’s not talking yourself out of the stuff that matters that’s the tough part. I think Hattie’s right.”

“Well,” I say. “Maybe so.”

I change the subject. I propose we do “favorites.”

So we do—favorite color, favorite food, favorite movie, pet peeve, that kind of thing. And of course, the longer that goes on, the dirtier it gets.

“Favorite sex position,” Sawyer murmurs.

The candlelight and the deep rumble of his voice are like warm water in my veins, and I luxuriate for a moment before I choose my answer. “I don’t know yet,” I murmur back. “Planning to find out this weekend.”

“In the past,” he coaxes.

I give it some thought. “Maybe this makes me boring, but I like missionary.”

“Not boring.” His gaze pins mine in a way that makes me vividly imagine exactly what it will feel like to have him braced over me, his face inches from mine, as he moves inside me. It’s hard to breathe, which brings another set of memories to the surface.

“What you did to me against the wall outside the bar? That was—” Blood suffuses my face at the memory. “That was probably the most turned on I’ve ever been.”

He sucks in a breath and nails me with another dark look. “Vertical’s good.” His gaze gets far away, and he squints briefly. “I think, like I said the other night, I’d also really like you riding me. You’ve got the sexiest bounce I’ve ever seen—” His eyes drop to indicate exactly what part of me bounces to his specifications—“and I would really enjoy lying back and watching.”

There’s something about Sawyer. Most men, if they said something like that, I’d think it was crass. Sawyer means it. He’s being honest, and it’s hot. And he’s watching me carefully for my reaction. Words, for him, are foreplay.

My breasts tighten in the spotlight of his regard, my nipples beading under the thin lace, front and center, and yes—his eyes darken, noticing.

His gaze lifts, meets mine, and I flush, hot all over.

He smirks, then leans back in his seat. He looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.

Happy. He’s happy.

I’m happy.

I’m trying not to think too much about what he said earlier. That I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. That he wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t meant it.

But beautiful is just that. Just a surface thing. It doesn’t signify—

I grasp at the easiest way to get my mind back to the moment. “Favorite sexual fantasy.”

“Hmm.” His eyes are sleepy, like they were at that first night in the bar. Heavy-lidded. “Used to be fucking someone against a brick wall outside a bar…”

The pleasure he’s been coaxing to life in me spreads, like a good alcohol buzz, to my lips and to the folds of my sex, warm and tingly.

“Was that the first time you’d done that?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah. What, you think I do that kind of stuff all the time?”

I don’t know, Sawyer. There’s so much I feel like I don’t know, even after all the getting-to-know-you games. “You said you’d had a lot of sex.”

He winces. “Well, yeah, but most of the time back at someone’s apartment, or at my place if Jonah was with his grandparents. I never felt like it was so urgent it had to happen right that instant, like with you.”

That sings through my veins like a strong drink. I guess until that moment I hadn’t been sure whether that night was out of the ordinary for him.

The waitress sets the molten chocolate cake down and lays a spoon in front of each of us. A generous scoop of vanilla ice cream is already beginning to melt over the dark surface of the soft cake. My mouth waters.

“Be nice,” the waitress teases as she backs away. “I’ve seen fistfights break out over the last bite of this stuff.”

The cake really is that good. “Oh, God,” I say, licking soft, warm chocolate off my spoon, the contrast between hot cake and cold ice cream lighting up my tongue.

Sawyer watches me hungrily, and it’s not the cake he’s got designs on. “It’s not going to be a fistfight that breaks out here. I’m going to spread you out on the table and lick this dessert off you. Or, better yet, I’m going to make you lick it off me.”

I squirm, pressing my thighs together. He’s making me so wet. “Gladly.”

“What about you? Favorite sexual fantasy?”

“Besides having someone lick molten chocolate cake off me in public?” I tease in a whisper.

“Mmm-hmm.” His hum is rough enough to rasp like sandpaper over my nipples and clit.

I tilt my head. “Sex in your truck.”

“In my truck.”

“Well, in a truck.”

“Have you ever dated anyone else who owned a truck?”

“No, but the fantasy predates you.”

“So I’m your fantasy guy come to life.” He smirks.

“Yup.”

We both reach for the last bite of chocolate cake, our spoons jangling. We joust for a moment, then he stands down.

“I’d rather watch you eat it, anyway,” he says, and does, his eyes darkening as I caress the spoon with lips and tongue.

Under the table, his foot presses against mine. It’s just shoe leather on shoe leather, but it might as well be bare skin on skin, that’s how deep the sensation travels in my body.

“Where would the truck be parked while we had sex in it?” he asks.

“Someplace dark and quiet. But not a garage, not a driveway. Someplace we could get caught.”

His pupils are so big and dark his irises are just a thin ring around them. He shifts in his seat, and I feel a thrill of triumph, knowing he wants desperately to adjust himself and can’t.

Instead, he raises his eyes to catch the waitress’s, and I giggle at the urgency in his voice as he asks for the check. He gives me a stern look, but I can’t help it; I giggle again.