Chapter 33
SAWYER
I fix the collar, smooth my jacket, and check the mirror one last time.
The full-length one’s wedged between the closet and the floor-to-ceiling window, reflecting the entire room—and me in it. Black tux. Crisp shirt. A clean shave I almost forgot I needed. My hair’s combed back, neat but not stiff.
The silver cuff links belonged to my dad. I don’t wear them often, but tonight felt like one of those nights.
Hank’s already been out, fed, watered, walked and is now sprawled like a beached seal across the bed, snoring with his legs in the air. I gave up trying to move him.
The gala tonight is for Mountain West Rescue and Rehab.
It’s one of the few events I commit the clinic to every year without hesitation.
They take on the cases no one else will touch—abandoned livestock, abused pets, injured wildlife dumped at the edge of a field like trash.
The ones that come in broken, starved, too scared to let anyone near them.
The ones everyone else writes off as a lost cause.
But not them. Not me.
When I opened Hart Clinic, it wasn’t just to worm cattle and vaccinate barn cats—though we do that, too.
It was for the families who need their working dogs patched up after a brush with barbed wire.
The ranchers whose livelihoods depend on keeping their herds healthy through brutal Montana winters.
The kids who show up with a trembling baby goat in their arms and tears in their eyes.
We’re the place they come to when their animals are hurting, and I built the practice so we’d never have to say no—whether it’s a broken wing or a crushed pelvis or a bill someone’s praying we’ll forgive.
Every year, we donate a portion of clinic profits to Mountain West and take on their overflow—surgeries, long-term care, whatever they need. Pro bono. My staff never complains. They believe in it, too.
It’s not glamorous work. It’s not always clean. But it’s good. It matters.
And tonight, I get to stand in a room full of people who care about the same things—and bring Wren with me while I do it.
Instinctively, I check my watch. We’re still good on time.
The bathroom door suddenly clicks open and Wren steps out. The entire world seems to slow down.
Her dress is black silk, cut low in the back, hugging her body in a way that makes every thought I’ve ever had flee to somewhere very far from where they should be.
It has thin straps and a draped neckline, and it glides over her curves like it was made for her.
And I don’t mean tailored—I mean conjured.
Like someone dreamed her up and spun her out of shadows and silk.
Her red hair is down, all loose curls and shine tumbling down her back. She has tiny studs in her ears, and black heels that wrap around her ankles. Her cheeks are flushed—not just from the blush, though that’s there too—and her eyes…Christ.
She’s a vision. No, more than that.
She’s my wife.
And if this were a movie, I’d say something smooth right now. Something charming. But all I can do is stare at her, because the woman standing in front of me is so damn beautiful it physically hurts.
She smooths her hands down the sides of the dress, fidgeting a little. “Okay, say something,” she says, glancing up at me. “I know it’s kind of…a lot.”
“Wren.” Her name leaves me low and rough, and I have to clear my throat to say anything else. “You’re…you’re unreal.”
Her lips twitch. “That good, huh?”
“That dangerous .” I take a slow step forward. “You look incredible.”
And I mean it. Not just in the way men always say it, but in the way where I’m not sure how I’m supposed to walk into a room with her on my arm and not get into a fight over the way someone else looks at her.
Because if anyone else sees what I see right now? I’m fucked.
But I’m also the luckiest man alive, because tonight, I get to bring her with me. And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to keep her, too.
She steps closer, her eyes dragging over me like she’s deciding what part of me she wants to take apart first.
“You don’t look too bad yourself,” she says, her finger slipping between the buttons of my shirt, teasing the fabric open just enough to make my pulse trip.
I fucking love when she touches me. Doesn’t matter how—soft or bold, accidental or intentional—it knocks the wind out of me every single time. And the way she’s looking at me right now, like she’s already undressing me with her eyes, has every nerve in my body tightening.
“Wren,” I warn, my voice already low. “Careful.”
She just grins and does it again—slowly, deliberately, slipping her finger between another button. Her eyes flick up to mine, teasing, and her bottom lip pulls between her teeth like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
She does.
“Or else what?” she whispers.
I catch her wrist—gentle, but certain—and pull her closer. She presses against me like she’s been waiting to. Her perfume wraps around me—vanilla, and something warm I still haven’t named. It hits me low and fast, like memory and want tangled together.
I lean in, my mouth close to her ear. “Or else I’m gonna fuck my wife hard enough for the entire city of Bozeman to hear.”
Her eyes widen for a beat, but then she shrugs, pretending she’s not even a little rattled. “Guess they’ll know I married well.”
Then she turns and walks across the room like she didn’t just bring me to my fucking knees without even touching me again.
Jesus.
Her dress is going to be the death of me. You can see every perfectly toned muscle in her back when she moves. Her shoulders shift, elegant and effortless.
And her ass.
God.
Tight, round, lifted just right in that dress.
The fabric hugs it like it was designed with her in mind.
It dips at her lower back, then flares in all the right places.
She walks in those black heels like she’s grown up walking runways, not on ranch land.
One leg slides slightly through the slit in her dress and I catch a glimpse of her thigh—smooth, strong, and now all I can think about is wrapping it around my waist.
She bends to grab her clutch off the table, and it takes everything in me not to follow her over there and hike her dress up.
She stands up, clutch in hand. “You ready to go?”
I swallow, hard, and nod, forcing my arm out in a gentlemanly gesture I barely remember how to pull off. She loops hers through mine and smiles—wide, easy, her lips covered in lipstick and gloss.
I’m so fucking gone.
Not just distracted. Not just tempted. I’m in another dimension.
She opens the hotel door and takes one step toward the hallway—and I don’t even think twice about it. I just move, because fuck it.
I grab her elbow and tug her back in, catching the door with my other hand and slamming it shut with a flat smack of palm against wood. It echoes off the walls, loud in the sudden quiet.
She gasps, her eyes wide—half startled, half something else. Something that makes my pulse spike and my control vanish.
My mouth finds hers like gravity, like instinct. Like maybe if I don’t kiss her right now, I’ll stop breathing.
She tastes like peppermint and whatever kind of sweet hell that lip gloss is made of. She’s soft and warm and already gasping against me as I press her back into the door, my hand wrapping lightly—possessively—around her throat.
Her fingers dig into my sides, her lips parting as I swipe my tongue along the slick curve of her bottom lip, catching the gloss and her moan all at once.
She makes a sound low in her throat, breathy and wrecked, and it goes straight to my gut.
Fuck, I need her.
Right here. Right now. Against this goddamn door.
She pulls back, lips kiss-bruised and breathing hard. “Sawyer, we don’t have time for this. We’re going to be late.”
I glance at my watch. “We’ve got thirty minutes.”
She arches her brow.
I smirk. “I only need five to make you come.”
That gets me a look. One corner of her mouth lifts, smug and teasing. “That long, huh?”
I laugh and kiss her again, my hands locking around her waist, fingers digging into the soft curve of her hips as I spin her toward the vanity.
I guide her back until the edge catches her thighs, then I lift her, setting her down as a few makeup brushes clatter to the floor.
She doesn’t seem to notice or care. My mouth never leaves hers, my tongue sliding against hers in a slow, filthy promise.
I’ve been ravenous since the second she stepped out of that bathroom. Before then, if we’re being honest.
Her legs part slightly when I step between her thighs, the heat of her already searing through my slacks.
My grip tightens in the silk of her dress, hiking it up inch by torturous inch until it bunches around her waist. Her breath hitches—half shock, half surrender—and fuck if that sound doesn’t go straight to my cock.
“We’re seriously doing this right now?” Her voice is low, breathless, fingers curled in the fabric of my shirt like she already knows the answer.
I kiss the underside of her jaw, just beneath her ear. “We’re seriously doing this right now. You’re my wife, Wren. That means this pretty pussy belongs to me.”
Her hands slide up under my jacket, nails dragging lightly along the back of my neck. Maybe we will be late, because we have thirty minutes and I want to use every single one of them. Maybe we’ll walk into that gala five minutes behind the rest of the room.
But right now? I don’t give a single fuck.
Wren’s fingers are working the top buttons of my shirt free, her gaze locked on mine.
And then— fuck— her mouth is on my throat, her tongue dragging a wet, hot path up to my jaw.
My grip on her thighs tightens, spreading her wider as I slide my hand beneath her dress, searching for whatever’s underneath.
Lace.
Delicate and barely there. My fingers skim over it before slipping beneath, and she’s already soaked. Silky, warm, her hips arching into my touch like she can’t help it.