Epilogue Bennett
EPILOGUE
Bennett
My wife is so fucking hot.
“What was that?” asks the man to my left.
I shake my head. Shit. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
I’m at a cocktail table, sandwiched between a master coffee roaster and some guy whose only personality trait is debating the most sustainable form of disposable cups.
But all I can think about is my wife on the other side of the room and how her throat arches when she laughs, throwing her head back.
My mother’s annual New Year’s Eve party is legendary, and invitations are highly sought after, which means it’s a networking circle jerk.
And now that I’m within a few years of taking up an official position at the Graves Corporation, I can’t attend something like this without fruit flies like these two buzzing around.
I track Clover as she moves across the room from my mom to her mom and finally to Julian, who has been shotgunning vodka and Red Bull for two hours straight.
My super fucking hot wife is in her new dress tonight. When she tried it on for me last week, I bent her over the guesthouse kitchen table before she could try on the next one and that was how she decided this dress was the winner.
It is a great dress, but so is every other thing Clover puts on her body.
A short, white little slip with a sheer overdress dripping in pearls and sequins with flared sleeves.
Turns out I have a thing for Clover in white.
It reminds me of getting married and that reminds me that she is my wife.
My wife. Damn. And when I think about that, I can hardly keep it in my pants.
Unfortunately, though, all I’m able to imagine as she laughs with Julian is what the hem of said dress looks like pushed up around her waist.
She glances over her shoulder at me. The gold and silver New Year’s Eve headband tucked into her tousled waves reflects the light of the dance floor.
I am gratuitous in the way my eyes rake over her body. Her tongue swipes across her lower lip in response.
She slinks toward me like a shark hunting its prey, hypnotizing me.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” she says as she approaches our cocktail table. “I need to steal my husband before he dies of boredom.”
Beside me, each man takes a second to register her blunt statement.
I choke on a laugh and hold my arm out for her to take.
“Thank you for saving me,” I tell her, my lips pressed against the crown of her head.
“Things seemed dire. Stage five boredom. Terminal. A real killer.”
“I might require a full body exam to ensure I’m in the clear.”
“I will be very thorough when we get home,” she swears.
I guide her toward the ballroom exit. “I’m afraid it can’t wait.”
She pulls the cuff of my jacket back to check the time. “We have eighteen minutes before midnight.”
“Say no more.”
Clover
We are less than discreet as we sneak up the grand staircase at the front of the club. The moment we step into the upstairs hallway and are free of the knowing smiles of the valets at the doors, Bennett crowds me against the nearest wall.
His mouth is hot on my neck as he licks and nips a path to my jaw. “You have to stop wearing white,” he says.
My hands tug on his hair, and I’m thankful for the extra inches these platform heels give me, because I’m tall enough to drag my tongue along the notch in his throat as I smooth my hand over the hard swell in his trousers.
“Fuck,” he groans. “Forget I said that. Wear all the white. I’ve had a chub for the last thirty minutes just from watching you sip your drink. Your tongue and that straw. Jesus Christ, Clo.”
“Well, it’s not every day that I consume a beverage in the most pornographic way possible, but you were basically ignoring me to schmooze with those corporate coffee bros.”
He gasps, delighted. “You were seducing me? It was all a ploy! I’ve been seduced!”
“Well, just wait until you see this,” I tell him as I push back his chest to create just enough space between us to open my clutch.
His eyes widen as he sees my panties stuffed inside. “You’re in trouble now,” he says as he shoves the scrap of nude lace into the pocket of his suit jacket. “I’m collecting these as evidence. You’re not getting ’em back until tomorrow at the earliest.”
He tugs me farther down the hallway, checking every doorknob until we stumble into a smaller party room full of unused centerpieces.
I push his jacket off his shoulders and throw my headband in the same direction as my clutch while we trip over each other, all mouths and tongues and swallowed curses until I’m perched on the ledge of a giant picture window.
The room is dark, so we can see clear across the golf course and over the cliff to the waves breaking against the deep winter sky.
Bennett checks his watch again. “Ten minutes.”
“How did we waste eight minutes making out?”
“I wouldn’t call it a waste,” he says as his hand travels under the hem of my dress to cup my bare center. One finger slides in with ease and he moans. “You’ve just been walking around like this? Wet and waiting … straight to jail.”
His fringe tickles my neck as he sucks on the sharp edge of my collarbone. “Or you could just fuck me.”
“I’m getting there, wife. I gotta make these ten minutes count.”
A soft whine shakes in my chest as he swirls his finger right—fuck—there. “Does it make me a bad feminist if you calling me your wife makes me feral?”
He drops to his knees, hands rubbing against the back of my thighs as he hooks one leg over his shoulder. “Considering we agreed to both change our last names to Walsh-Graves, I’m going to say no. Besides, fuck the rules, wife.”
He sucks a bruise onto my inner thigh, and I hold the back of my hand against my open mouth to stifle a scream.
“Graves-Walsh,” I tell him in between breathless pants as he pushes my dress up for me to hold and his mouth closes over me. “It’s alpha—oh god—alphabetically correct!”
“Do you really want to argue about this right now?” he asks, breaking away from the very important duty of eating me out like a fucking buffet.
“Arguing as foreplay,” I grit out.
“What happened to just foreplay as foreplay?”
He uses the flat of his tongue to do ungodly things to me as my brain becomes a jumble of crossed wires.
“I can’t … I can’t believe I didn’t want you to do this to me at first.” All it took was one mind-numbing orgasm with his head between my legs on Halloween and then another right after finals finished for me to get over all the worries and fears I had about being on the receiving end of oral.
I yank his hand up from where his fingers were digging into my hip to check the time again. “Shit. Three minutes.”
Bennett moans and hums into me as the watch-wearing hand squeezes my breast, his thumb harshly rubbing my nipple.
It’s so goddamn tempting to keep him there on his knees, riding his handsome face with those perfect dimples while I lecture him about why I am right when it comes to our hyphenated name.
Instead, I slide my leg off his shoulder and pull him up to me by his tie, because the last time I was here at the Cannon Beach Country Club watching fireworks was a nightmare and I am determined to replace that memory with something better and sweeter.
Something I want to hold on to and remember forever.
My fingers deftly unbuckle his belt and make quick work of his zipper and fly. He hisses when I reach into his boxer briefs and pull his weeping cock free.
At my back, the first firework erupts into the sky, illuminating Bennett’s flushed cheeks.
“Fuck,” I cry. “We have to finish this later. I can’t miss the fireworks.”
“You won’t,” he says sternly as he spins me around, my arms hooked around his forearm that sits in the arch of my back, pressing my chest against the window.
“What if someone sees us up here?” I ask.
He slides his erection through my arousal before thrusting his hips forward with a grunt.
I’ll never get tired of how it feels to be full of him. To share this intimacy with him as husband and wife.
“They won’t,” he says on another thrust. “All anyone can see from down there is two newlyweds who snuck away to enjoy the fireworks in private. No one out there knows that I’m fucking you with your panties in my pocket.”
From below, we can hear the ten-second countdown, and Bennett drives into me on each number.
“Two,” I whisper.
One is lost to his lips as he stills for just a moment, his free hand gripping my chin, my head turned to the side so that we can ring in the new year with a kiss.
Our mouths part on a gasp, and he ruts into me, his hand taking mine and leading downward. He directs my movements, teasing my hot, wet center until I’m at a tipping point.
“You are so fucking stunning,” he says. “In your little white dress…” He grunts into my neck. “I’m going to—” he starts.
“Me too,” I tell him as I throw my head back against his chest.
His grip on my hip tightens and I fall apart on the next stroke.
My body is pliant and shuddering as I convulse with pleasure. He follows with a few slow thrusts, wringing the orgasm out of me.
I’m still crying his name when his climax pulses inside me. He pants into the crook of my shoulder as I clench around him.
My hand comes up to cup his cheek and direct his attention. “Look.”
A chorus of my favorite kind of fireworks shoots up into the air. The kind that flies impossibly high and then erupts into a shower of light.
I can feel him grinning against my neck. “Do you remember the last time we were here together and saw fireworks?”
He nods wordlessly, his throat swallowing against my shoulder.
“I can’t make myself regret it,” I murmur, the show playing out in front of us in a beautiful display.
His arms tighten around my waist. “I was a little shit, but I’d make every mistake all over again to have you as my wife.”
“It all brought us here,” I tell him as the grand finale burns in the sky. “And now we have forever.”
“Not even forever is long enough for me to love you, Clover Rowan Walsh-Graves.”
“Well, Bennett Andrew Graves-Walsh, we’ll have to make do, won’t we?”