Chapter 45
Tucker
The wedding, which started late, goes deep into the evening.
By the time we finally return to the lodge room we’ve been sharing, we’re both exhausted.
After all, we got up at the crack of dawn, faced down two crazed wedding planners—one with a gun, decorated for a total of two weddings, attended a wedding, and defused a multi-decade feud.
We don’t try to play the modesty game. We undress and get into sleep clothes, and I don’t even try to sneak a look at Autumn. Not that I don’t want to. But I’m pretty sure we’re about sixty percent through breaking up with each other, and I don’t want to have that conversation with a boner.
“You can sleep up here,” she says when it becomes obvious I’m settling in for another night on the floor.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. There’s a long pause. Then she says, “It’s a terrible idea.”
It’s been a long, difficult day. I’m completely drained. I’m already dreading saying goodbye to Autumn.
But the tease in her voice still gets to me.
I sit up so I can see her in the bed. She’s sitting up, too, beautiful in her tank top in the low light of the single reading lamp.
“We’re going to say goodbye tomorrow,” I say. “After the brunch. You’re going to fly back to Baltimore, and I’m going to go back to—”
I hesitate, because I don’t know exactly what I’m going to go back to. I’d like to do a little more to be part of the Hott family, I guess. To actively help Hanna run the business. To show up to family gatherings.
And there are a few other things on my to-do list, too, but I’m not ready to talk about them yet.
“I’m going to stay here,” I say instead.
“I know,” she says. “We talked about this, and I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.
I was just thinking…we have this one last night.
And…” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t know about you, but that was kind of an intense day.
I wouldn’t mind—” Her mouth tips into a smile. “Blowing off some steam?”
God.
I really, really like her.
If we were together, like really together, this is how it would be. It would be bedtime and she would look at me with that sly, secret smile, and she would tell me what she wanted from me, and I would—
I would do everything in my power to deliver it.
It wouldn’t matter what was happening tomorrow.
It would only matter that she needed me, that she was asking for me, and that I could be there.
I untangle myself from the blanket on the floor and cross to the bed, where I stand over her, looking down.
I am sure from her perspective right now, I’m looming, but she doesn’t look like she minds in the slightest. In fact, the smile gets bigger, and then it disappears entirely and her eyes darken, and she reaches up and tugs me down.
It’s only been a little more than twenty-four hours, but I’m starved for her, and if the sound she makes when our bodies connect is any indication, she’s starved for me, too.
Our mouths collide, and it’s so fucking hot, the way she whimpers into me, the way she bites and sucks and licks like she’s trying to consume all the pleasure from me she can.
She rips at my clothes until I make them go away, and then she plucks at her own until I make those go away, and then she rubs her body all over me like a cat that’s marking territory, and some primal possessive need claws into me.
I slide my palm down the center of her body, slip a finger into her core, feel the heat and slickness there, and groan.
“For you,” she whispers. “Come and get it.”
“Jesus, Autumn,” I say, wrapping a hand around the base of my cock to calm down the instinctive reaction I have to her words. I reach for a condom, roll it on.
“Tucker. Please.”
The more desperate she is, the more I want to tease and prolong.
I drag the head of my cock down her slit, bumping over her clit and making her cry out, dipping into the silk of her core so I can feel her heat, so she can feel the beginnings of stretch, then pull back and watch her face.
Her pupils are huge, blown. Her cheeks are pink, her mouth open and red.
“Tucker!”
I dip and stir and circle and tease, and she lifts her hips and tries to get me to plunge and thrust. It’s the best battle I’ve ever been in. I love the way she wants to rub, love the frustrated noises she makes.
I love the long, deep moan she lets out when I give her the whole head, when I press forward into her. And a second moan, longer, deeper, when I give her the rest of me, all of me.
I lower myself onto her, and we move together, rocking to meet each other.
The thrusts are small, not a lot of leverage, but I’m getting so deep inside her, my body rucked up so close to hers, that it’s driving us both wild.
Words are coming out of both of us: That’s right, pretty girl, just like that, exactly like that; Tucker, harder, deeper, come on, fuck me; I fucking love the way you take me, you’re so good, so tight, so wet, so—
I love the way she feels, the way she talks dirty, the way she weaves her fingers through mine and noses her face against my cheek—I love the sounds she’s making now, halfway between gasp and whimper…
“I’m going to come,” she says breathlessly. “I’m going to come so hard, you’re going to feel it all the way down to your toes.”
As if she’s ordered it, pleasure surges down my spine, heat and pressure and white-hot need.
Her body tightens on mine, and that’s all I needed—to know she was with me and we’re coming together. Words are still pouring out of me, all the words I want to say except the ones I want to say most.