I feel like a time bomb with the counter started: tick, tock. I feel like Delilah reroutes the wiring in my brain, like she bypasses the synapses for reason and logic and self-control and connects lust to impulse to sheer madness.
I grab her a little harder, growl a little louder, catch her lip between my teeth and curl my fingers in her hair. She rewards me with a breath that hitches in her throat.
Delilah pulls back, just so our lips are almost touching, clenches my hair in her fist, a cascade of sparks shooting down my spine. She’s breathing hard and I think she’s laughing, so I find her ass and squeeze it as hard and I can, pressing her body against mine.
The door to the ballroom opens.
Delilah yelps into my mouth and jolts backward, but my fingers tangle and catch in her hair, her hand going to my wrist.
“Shit,” she hisses, as the open door hesitates, its blankness facing us. “Fuck, that’s my hair. Ow. Ow.”
“Hold still,” I whisper, flexing my fingers, relaxing them, pulling back slowly and steadily, her curls sticky with heat and sweat and whatever women put in their hair at weddings.
Fifty feet away, the door wavers, and then finally, my fingers come out and Delilah exhales.
“Yeah,” a male voice says, calling back into the ballroom. “One sec.”
He steps out, sees us, hesitates a moment.
“Delilah?” he calls.Chapter EighteenDelilah“Yes?” I call back, and to my relief my voice comes out steady strong and normal.
I stand up straight, shoulders back, hands clasped in front of me. Like I’m getting ready to sing in the church choir or something, because even though I’m pretty sure it’s either Wyatt or his father, my uncle Doug, it’s hard to tell from that single word this far away.
At least it’s not Vera. Or, God forbid, my dad.
He takes a step further, though he doesn’t let the door close and the light and music spills out of the ballroom behind him.
“Hey,” he calls again, sounding tentative. “Is that Seth?”
“Hello again,” Seth says.
He’s got his arm around me, his palm right where my lower back becomes my ass.
“Huh,” Wyatt says, and leans one arm against the edge of the door, above his head, as though taking his time to consider the two of us.
“Do you have a message, or were you just dispatched to make sure I’m behaving myself?” I ask, my voice pointed.
Wyatt laughs.
“Lucky for you, the first one,” he says, drawing out the words, clearly enjoying himself. “Ava’s gearing up to throw her bouquet, and Aunt Vera has requested the honor of your presence.”
Seth’s hand moves a fraction of an inch lower. I stand a little straighter.
“You mean she’s demanded I stand there and let Ava hurl flowers at my face?”
“That wasn’t her phrasing,” Wyatt says, politely.
“That was her meaning.”
“I’m sure I can’t speak to that.”
Seth’s hand moves another fraction of an inch downward, his warmth soaking through the thin fabric of my dress, drowning out every other thought I’m trying to have. I slide my hand behind myself, put it in his.
“Tell her I’ll be there in a sec,” I tell Wyatt. “I need to…”
My mind goes blank.
“Yes, go on,” Wyatt deadpans.
“Prepare myself for more bullshit?”
That gets a grin from Wyatt.
“I’ll pass along that you’re using the powder room first,” he says. “Get that game face on.”
He turns back and before the door even shuts, I’ve stepped around Seth and grabbed the champagne bottle.
“Preparing?” he asks as I drink, swallow after swallow.
When I finally pull the bottle away I wipe my finger along my bottom lip, short of breath.
“I thought I was done after the shoe game,” I tell him.
He’s just standing there, in the low light, sleeves rolled to the elbow, tie loose, collar unbuttoned, and I can barely keep my feet planted on the floor. If Seth is hot in a burlap sack and devastating in a suit, then like this, undone and slightly rumpled, he might be the most fuckable thing I’ve ever seen.
“But no,” I say, tearing my eyes away. “I forgot the bouquet toss, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to go be the desperate and unwanted divorcee who serves as a warning to any woman who thinks —”
Seth kisses me with the words still on my lips. It’s rushed, impulsive. His hand slides around my waist and I step back to catch my balance, find the side table with the flowers behind myself.
“Unwanted?” he says, voice rough, lips barely leaving mine before he kisses me again and this time it’s deeper, harder, his other hand curling around the back of my neck. “Desperate?”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments,” I say, one hand holding the bottle, the other on his chest.
“I’m not giving you compliments, I’m stating facts,” he says, blunt as ever.
We kiss, kiss again.
“Fact: if Ava thinks you’re the worst-case scenario, her entire worldview is fucked.”