Chapter Thirty-One
At the club, we’re all whisked past the velvet rope—an actual velvet rope!
with actual bouncers!—and ushered straight inside.
Dozens of heads turn as the lads breeze in and head for the semiprivate area reserved for the team, and I get a thrill at being with them, the object of fascination from all the Normals dancing their way into the new year.
My life has become like a dream sequence from a movie, a sensation augmented by the fact that an unbelievably handsome man with a gingery beard is nodding at me across the dance floor, beckoning me to him.
Lachlan hands Sadie and me a shot, then grabs one for himself from a passing waitress (who looks like she’d gladly give him more than alcohol).
The lads have all undone their ties and they’re getting into the music, proving that their feet are good for more than just kicking balls.
The shots keep coming and I find myself wishing I’d eaten a bit more at dinner, because it’s all going straight to my head. But fuck it, I’m leaning in.
Then Lachlan throws his arms around me and presses his lips to my cheek. “Happy New Year, Stripes,” he murmurs in my ear. “Let it be the first of many we celebrate together.”
I already know this comment will be held up to the light, examined with a jeweler’s loupe, burnished until it shines in my brain.
But for now, all I can do is just nod, because I’m afraid I’ll start crying if I open my mouth.
I think he gets what I’m trying to say, though, because his smile is warm and loving and genuine, and the light in his eyes is soft and simple.
Bashie and Sadie press fresh drinks into our hands, and for the next hour we just dance.
Kieran grinds behind me like we’re eighteen again (which he basically is).
The Brazilian lads try to teach me how to samba, and it goes about as well as my attempt at Top Bins.
At some point, the border between our area and the rest of the club becomes permeable, and a dozen beautiful women edge into our territory.
Several of them flock to Kieran, and I delight at the look in his eyes, like a kid who’s just been given his allowance and can’t decide which toy to spend it on.
I’m also grateful for the distraction these strangers provide, because as the clock pushes into the wee hours, Lachlan and I are increasingly drawn to each other.
The DJ transitions from poppy New Year’s bops into harder electronic stuff, thumping bass lines and sexy rhythms, the only light in the club coming from a laser display in tune with the music.
The cover of darkness emboldens me, emboldens us, and we back into a secluded corner.
He’s drunk, so drunk, but then, so am I.
We’re sharing a beer now, passing the bottle back and forth lazily, languidly, our tongues always staying a little too long on the rim.
The warmth of his earlier smile has gone, replaced by a ragged, starved look.
He’s got his goal-scoring eyes on, pitch-black and asking questions that demand answers.
I take a sip of the beer and raise my hands in the air, twirling the bottle and my arms over my head, and Lachlan uses this opportunity to move closer.
We sway together for a moment, not quite touching, the air between us crackling with electricity.
He grabs the bottle from my hand and takes the last sip, never breaking eye contact, and smiles as he sets it on a nearby table.
Then his hands are on my hips and just like that, it’s like he found the button and switched me on.
All the way on. I lean into him, closer than I’ve been even in my dreams. I catch the familiar scent of him, but it’s masked by beer and whisky.
Whisky-no-E, so much of it that I might be getting drunker just by the secondhand fumes.
But I can’t think about that because all of my attention, all of my focus is on his hands on my hips.
His fingers are sinking into the soft flesh there, grabbing it like it’s a lifeline, like it’s the only way out of quicksand.
Strobe lights bathe us in splintered beams, making the bodies writhing around us move in slow motion.
In a dark corner of my mind, I know this is dangerous.
There are too many people here that we know, too many people watching.
But I watch Lachlan’s beautiful body move in steady, fluid arcs through the fracturing light of the strobe, and I can’t think of anything else.
His hands slink behind my hips to the small of my back and he pulls me into the boozy heat of his breath.
Then he presses his lips to my neck, right behind my earlobe, and each breath sends a shockwave through me.
I angle my chin upward and he slides his lips to the sweet spot right where my jaw meets my ear.
The feeling of his mouth on my skin is too much and I take a short, shocked gasp.
My fingers, already pressed between us, clutch at the fabric of his shirt, twisting and pulling in a desperate attempt to close the infinitesimal gap between our bodies.
He moans and the vibration travels from his throat to his lips to my neck, an electric shock that short-circuits me.
I slide my leg in between his and feel him there, and the thought that I’ve made this man hard is nearly enough to finish me off.
But then his mouth is on my ear and he murmurs, “I want you so bad.”
The way I light up at his words, the way I burn…
It’s like reaching the bottom of a staircase and thinking you have one more step, so you fall forward, suspended ever so briefly in a dizzying freefall.
That’s what he does to me, but the freefall doesn’t stop.
I hang there in blissful suspension, not thinking about the ground rushing up to meet me.
He’s grabbed the folds of my dress, hiking it up a bit as his hands roam down. The heat of his palms radiates through the fabric, leaving little trails of lightning as he cups my ass, pulling me up and into him, and he looks at me, searching. “Abby…”
I haven’t said anything. I can’t say anything.
How can I form words when all the air has been pressed out of my lungs?
My hands are trapped between our bodies.
I send one to his heart, my fingertips finding it thumping wildly under his shirt.
I send the other to his neck, his throat, his cheek.
I run a thumb along his bottom lip, tracing it up with his smile.
And he’s smiling, yes, but his eyes are pained.
I can see the anguish there, can see my own reflected back at me.
Because sure, the hand curling around the back of my thigh is not sporting a wedding ring, but we both know it could still be there, legally and perhaps morally.
The lips under my fingertips are not yet mine for kissing; the heart under my palm is not yet mine to take.
“Abby,” he says again, and it’s deeper this time, heavy with the lust and heat welling between us, honeyed with the sweet malty notes of our beer.
But there’s something else there, buried under the desire.
He’s pleading, begging, but the tone I hear isn’t the impatience of someone who wants to hurry out of the club and into bed, it’s the agony of someone who knows he can’t. Shouldn’t. Might.
“Lachlan,” I say, because to move beyond our names is to invite trouble.
Is to open Pandora’s box. And we need to leave it shut tight.
We need to stop this. I need to step back, not fold my body against his.
He needs to release me, not turn us around and press me into the wall.
Not slide his hand further up my thigh. Not move his mouth so close to mine that only a whisper separates us.
The strobes are flashing and the beat is pulsating, and where his lips continue to explore my neck, I’m sure he can feel my pulse throbbing along with it.
The music is so loud that he has to speak directly into my ear, and his breath hitting my skin sends a trail of cold snaking around my neck and down to my navel.
I shiver and clutch the fabric of his shirt tighter.
His lips brush my earlobe again and every part of me is coiled so fucking tight in anticipation of his words.
But of all the things I was hoping him to say, wanting him to say, begging him to say, I would never have chosen this: “If you ask me to leave her, I will.”
Oh, God.
I’d never realized how close the sensations of arousal and anxiety are, but at those words, the shivers he’d just sent down my spine turn sinister, the tautness of my muscles becomes paralysis. I shake my head and push him lightly off me so I can look him in the eye. “What?”
“Claire,” he says, like it was just that I didn’t know who he was talking about, not that he just begged me to ask him to leave his fucking wife.
“If you ask me, I’ll pull the trigger. I’ll leave her.
For good, for real. But I need you to say it.
I need to know it’s worth it, that you’ll be waiting for me on the other side, because it’s a huge decision for me. ”
I blink while I process the words. “You want me to…” That’s all I can spit out because my head is spinning and I have to get away from this man.
Immediately. I recoil, step away, collide with someone behind me, but I don’t stop moving.
I’m shaking my head and my breath is coming in shallow gasps and I see Lachlan reaching for me, trying to say something, trying to clarify, maybe, but what the fuck else is there to say?
I turn away from him and muscle my way through the writhing crowd as the speakers ring in my ears and panic rises in my chest.