Quinn grabbed me and forced my body to bend until we found ourselves in a dirty, panting sixty-nine on the carpet outside of Tommy Drakes’s basement office.
“Fucking fuck, I wanted this,” Quinn mumbled before sucking me. It was a hot, heavenly clasp. I tried to give him the same pleasure he gave me, but it was a losing battle. Two weeks of pent-up lust had put me on a hair trigger.
“Baby, coming,” I warned through gritted teeth. I pulled off and jacked his slick cock until I felt his warm release hit my face. It was hot as fuck and pushed me over the edge into a mind-blowing orgasm.
When we both finished, I moved around to face him, grabbing my T-shirt to clean us both up before kissing the hell out of him. “God, I missed you,” I said against his lips.
“Why didn’t you say something if you wanted this?”
“Why didn’t you?” I demanded.
He sighed and snuggled into my chest. “I don’t know. Part of me wanted things to cool off between us, but…” He let out a little laugh. “I honestly never thought you’d go along with a stupid revirgination plan.”
I pulled back and grasped both sides of his face. My eyes had adjusted enough to make out his semi-sheepish expression. “Revirgination stops here,” I said firmly. “It’s done. Your cherry has been well and truly popped. Again. Come to my bed because I’m not done with you.”
Thankfully, my bossiness didn’t seem to be an issue for him postorgasm because he obeyed my order and followed me back to my room.
“I know you think I’m being high-handed,” I said when he climbed under the covers and snuggled up beside me. “But I really don’t want you involved in this investigation. I don’t want you involved with Vince.”
“You’re worried about me?” Quinn teased. “Aw, Nutter Butter. So loving.”
I wished the man would take me seriously. “I promised you no blowback, remember? But I can’t keep that promise if Vince is involved.” I fucking hated that fact.
“I hear what you’re saying,” he promised. “I’m not gonna take any unnecessary risks. I was today years old when I learned that I really don’t like authority figures.”
I grunted. “Please. I could have told you that weeks ago. Though you seem to like it well enough under certain circumstances.”
Quinn rolled on top of me, and his grin lit up the darkness… while the sweet weight of him against me lit up all sorts of other things. “Know what else I learned today?”
“Hmm?”
“Your taste in men has vastly improved in recent weeks, Percy.”
I laughed out loud and then moaned when Quinn leaned down to take my mouth with his.
My concerns about Vince were long forgotten. Until the following week, when they all came rushing back.
13
QUINN
“And then my aunt Bertie did her duck-lip disapproval face—you know the one?—and said she thought my dress was pretty but a bit… plain. At the final fitting! Can you even imagine?” Marissa fumed. She jabbed a stem of dried pampas grass into a tiny bud vase with excessive force.
“Mmm.” I watched Marissa carefully from across the bundles of dried flowers and vases laid out on the table in my showroom—ground zero for wedding favor assembly this week.
Before she and Levi had taken their trip to Nashville for her dress fitting the week before, I’d have said Marissa was holding up just fine under the stress of wedding preparations. The farm had been a bustling hive of activity that had only ramped up in the last week, but she seemed to take it all in stride, like something about the rolling hills and wide-open skies soothed her. She’d been pink-cheeked and happy… or so I’d thought.
Now, though, she suddenly showed all the signs of a bride who was ready to explode. I wasn’t sure what had changed. And I felt a bit guilty that maybe I’d been too busy obsessing about Percy Champion and hadn’t been paying attention.
“Pay your aunt no mind,” I advised. “It’s your wedding, girl. Your dress. Your decision.”
“Is it, though?” Marissa attacked a clump of starflowers, ripping them apart so violently that the dried petals swirled in the air around us like hot pink snowflakes and landed on her greasy ponytail.
Oookay.
“What happened?” I demanded, setting down my own miniature dried flower bouquet and leaning my hands on the table. “Spill it all.”
Marissa shook her head, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Nothing to spill. Doesn’t matter anyway. My mother—” She jammed a willow branch into the vase so hard the stem broke and tiny white buds hung drunkenly over the edge. “—paid the seamstress extra to embellish the dress as a rush job. They’ll deliver it today.”
“Embellish it.” I ran a hand over my mouth.
I hadn’t been involved in Marissa’s dress selection, but the one she’d chosen was exactly perfect for her. A formfitting, winter-white, off-the-shoulder, long-sleeved mermaid silhouette with a sweep train that highlighted her lovely figure and natural beauty. It was the sort of dress that would have looked perfectly elegant had Marissa opted for the Nashville wedding I’d originally concepted but was versatile enough to work well with the understated boho chic of the farm wedding she’d preferred. In fact, the only thing that could possibly ruin that dress would be… embellishment.