Chapter 29
WREN
His mouth is on mine and I don’t even remember how we got here.
One second I was on his lap, pretending I still had the upper hand.
The next, I was melting into him—his lips warm and insistent against mine.
He tastes like champagne and heat and something steadier beneath it all.
Something that makes my brain fog and my stomach twist in a way that feels dangerously good.
His hands grip my ass, guiding my hips with a certainty that steals my breath.
Every roll of my body drags a moan from his chest, and I feel him beneath me, hard and throbbing.
The power of it—of knowing that I make him feel like this—coils low in my belly until I’m moving faster, harder , chasing the way his fingers dig into my skin.
Our mouths are tangled together, hot and open and full of all the things we’ve been holding back. He kisses the way he looks at me—intense, all in, like he’s not thinking about anything else. Like he wouldn’t even know how.
His tongue brushes mine and I nearly whimper.
I’m trying not to show how much it affects me, how nervous I still am—because it’s been a long time since anyone’s kissed me like this.
Hell, it’s been a long time since anyone’s kissed me at all.
It feels so good I have to grip his shoulders just to stay upright.
You can have sex with someone and still not feel them. Not really. Not in the way that matters. Sex can be bodies moving in the dark, a collision of heat and hunger, all friction with no meaning behind any of it. It can be something you walk away from—untouched, unchanged, unscathed.
But a kiss is a surrender.
It’s the moment your breath becomes someone else’s. The second your pulse syncs to the rhythm of theirs. It’s lips parting like a confession, like the truth is something you can only speak skin to skin.
A kiss doesn’t let you dip your toes in—it pulls you whole into the deep end where the water presses against your ribs.
It peels back all those careful layers, the polite pretenses, until there’s nothing left but the glorious, messy truth of who you are.
Kisses are quiet, holy things. Sacred in their simplicity.
Devastating in their tenderness. The universe whispering the same secret against two sets of lips at once.
It’s a tragedy. A travesty, really. We should’ve been kissing since the second we started pretending not to want to. We should’ve kissed in the kitchen. On the porch. That night on the balcony.
It feels like something we’ve been circling—through grief and silence, through all the things we lost before we ever found our way to each other.
But maybe we had to break a little first. Maybe we had to grow into the kind of people who could kiss each other like this—like we mean it, like we’ve always meant it.
I think we were made for kissing, he and I.
Sawyer’s tongue strokes deeper into my mouth, slow and sure, and I moan. The sound slips out of me before I even know it’s coming, and I don’t care—I’m too far gone to be embarrassed now.
His hand cradles my jaw as he tilts my head and kisses me harder, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth. Like he doesn’t want to miss a single part of this.
I suck gently on his bottom lip and he groans, low and wrecked, pulling back just enough to whisper, “I’m not gonna last much longer if you keep doing that.”
My heart stutters. Everything in me feels hot and wired and alive. I look up at him—because even sitting, he’s taller, broader, taking up space in a way that makes me feel both small and entirely seen—and I say, quietly but without hesitation, “I want more.”
His eyes search mine, and then he grabs the wrist that’s looped behind his neck and presses it to his lips. Soft. Thoughtful. Like he’s telling me something with his mouth that he can’t find the words for.
“How much more?” he murmurs.
I lean in, pressing a kiss just under the corner of his mouth. “All of it. However much you can give me.”
He watches me for a second longer—like maybe he’s weighing everything unsaid between us—and then reaches for the champagne bottle.
I blink as he tips it toward my shoulder, cold streams of it sliding down my skin, dripping across the ridge of my collarbone and between my breasts.
I suck in a breath, but before I can say anything, his mouth is there.
Following the path with slow, open-mouthed kisses.
His tongue traces the drops along my neck and I can’t help the way my body responds—shivering, arching, aching for more. Always more.
Then I feel the tug at the back of my neck. The gentle pull of the knot of my bikini coming undone. My breath catches, and when my top falls away, I don’t cover myself. I don’t hide. Not from him. Never from him.
He’s still kissing my skin when it happens, still whispering between every breath that he’d give me anything I asked for. That he thought I knew that by now. And I do. God, I do.
His eyes drop to my chest, and I feel the heat rush to my cheeks.
I still don’t move to cover myself, even though I probably should.
Even though everything in me is buzzing with the urge to fold in on myself or look away or do something to break the tension that’s suddenly thicker than the steam curling up around us.
My chest has never exactly been something I’ve flaunted—small, barely-there, something I learned early on could be easily dismissed.
But Sawyer doesn’t look at me like I’m missing anything.
He looks at me like I’m whole. Like this—me, exposed and nervous and trembling a little from the cold air on wet skin—is something he wants.
“They’re…I know they’re small,” I start, my voice quiet, too aware of the way his eyes are still tracing every inch of me.
But before I can say anything else, his hands are on my waist again and his mouth is at my collarbone, then higher, his lips brushing up the slope of my neck. He shakes his head just barely, then presses a kiss to my skin.
“They’re perfect,” he murmurs. “You’re perfect.”
And just like that, I don’t feel small anymore.
His mouth is on me again and I can’t think. Can’t move. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until his lips find the soft curve of my breast and everything in me locks up.
Then he sucks. My head tips back, and a sound escapes me—breathy, involuntary, too honest. His tongue moves slowly—hot and wet against my skin—and I gasp when his tongue moves over my nipple, my body lurching forward before I can stop it.
It’s like every nerve in me woke up all at once.
He groans against my skin, and I swear I feel it everywhere.
His voice is low when he says it again, rough and quiet against my breast. “You’re perfect.”
His mouth closes around my nipple again, swirling, tugging, just enough pressure to make my thighs tighten around his waist. My fingers stay tangled in his hair, keeping him there, like if he stops, I might actually fall apart.
And then his hands shift, strong and steady as they always are, and he lifts me up without warning. My legs wrap around his waist, my thighs squeezing nothing but hard muscle, and a gasp catches in my throat as he stands—like it’s nothing, like I don’t weigh a damn thing.
The water sloshes behind us as my arms band around his broad shoulders, my fingers digging into the hard ridges of his back.
His chest is a wall of slick, heated skin against mine, every chiseled inch of him flexing as we move.
And God, the feel of him—all that raw power caging me in, his body a fortress of hard muscle and barely leashed restraint.
There’s water dripping from my hair, his lashes, our tangled limbs, but I don’t care. Not when the only thing I can focus on is the heat. The way it licks up my spine.
The way it pools low in my belly.
The way I can feel every thick, unyielding inch of him pressed against me.
“Fuck it,” he mutters, and suddenly we’re moving.
The night air hits my skin as we step out of the hot tub, cool enough to make me shiver.
But Sawyer doesn’t even falter. One arm wraps tighter around me, his hand gripping the underside of my thigh, while the other rests on my ass, keeping me anchored to him.
His shoulder presses into mine, his body soaked and hot against me, and I realize just how high off the ground I am.
“Shit,” I whisper, glancing down. “You’re, like, really tall.”
He grins, cocky and amused, his eyes flicking down at me. “You think I’m gonna drop you, Wilding?”
I narrow my eyes, playful even with my heart jack-hammering in my chest. “You better not.”
He smirks and carries me down the hallway, his footsteps steady and sure.
Inside the bathroom, I nearly lose my breath again—and not because I’m soaked and half-naked in front of him, but because the shower is massive—floor-to-ceiling glass, sleek gray tile, rainfall shower heads, and enough space to host a small wedding reception.
My mouth actually falls open. “Holy hell! I could live in here.”
He chuckles under his breath, and the sound rumbles through his chest.
“I’m not complaining,” he says, reaching in to test the water temperature while still holding me against him like I’m nothing more than muscle memory.
One hand stays on my ass while the other twists the dial even more, the steam beginning to rise and curl and twist. His lips graze my jaw, then lower to my neck, and the rough drag of his stubble against my skin sends a shiver curling down my spine.
My blood hums, my heart stumbles, and for once I don’t try to shrink or disappear.