Garrick kept a tight hold on my hand as we left the pub, and then we headed back to the car we’d arrived in. Garrick lowered me into the backseat first, and then climbed in after me.
I neglected the seat belt in favor of wrapping myself around Garrick. I found that spot on his neck again and sighed. “You really do smell so good.”
He laughed. “You always say that, especially when you’ve been drinking.”
That’s because it was true. I’d never really gotten scent as a turn-on. When I’d bought cologne for previous boyfriends, it kind of all smelled the same to me. I usually made someone in the store pick for me. But with Garrick . . . God, I just wanted to be surrounded by his smell all the time. If I couldn’t be near him, I wanted to wear his clothes or sleep on his side of the bed.
I was a creeper. I could accept that.
Maybe it was the alcohol or being in a foreign city or the fact that this was the first time we’d really been out drinking together since the night we met; Whatever it was, I wanted him, so bad that my skin itched to touch his. I fiddled with one of the buttons on his shirt, trying to act as innocent as possible. And then ever so slowly, I slipped his top button open. His head didn’t move, so I went for a second button.
Apparently one button was my stealth limit because he totally caught me. I smiled up at him as sweetly as I could and slid my fingers under his shirt to the bare skin of his chest. His chin dipped, and he stared at me in warning, but he didn’t stop me. I trailed my fingers across his collarbone and from his shoulder back down to his chest. He watched me with dark eyes, and the arm draped over the seat behind me came down around me. His fingertips slid under my shirt to curve over my shoulder.
Shifting, I faced him, leaning my other shoulder against the seat and draping my legs over his lap. Immediately, his other hand curved around my calf.
I might be clueless about a lot of things, but I knew my fiancé. He was definitely a leg man.
Between his touch and the alcohol, I felt light-headed.
That might have been mostly the alcohol, considering how heavy my head felt and the way the world in my peripheral vision kept swooping and spinning. His fingertips found the back of my knee, and I giggled at his touch.
“Aw, man.” Rowland said from the front. “You two are like a bunch of randy teenagers.”
I felt like a teenager. I hadn’t been this drunk in ages. I was too busy working and working and then working some more.
Being an adult blows.
I tilted my head up to Garrick and said, “I can’t feel my lips.”
“Here, let me check.” His mouth slanted over mine, his tongue dipping between my lips, tangling with mine. He tasted like beer and himself, and I realized that he’d had almost as much to drink as me. He pulled back. “Nope, they’re still there.”
He grinned playfully, and that was when I knew he’d had plenty to drink. Laughing, I hooked my arms around his neck, and lay back against the seat cushion, pulling him with me.
“Hey, hey now!” Rowland called. “No sex while I’m driving. That’s a public hazard.”
Garrick’s lips ran down my neck, and I couldn’t seem to make myself stop giggling. I called back to Rowland, “So pull over.”
“Are you seriously going to have sex in my car? Because that’s hot. Can she be on top?”
Garrick said, “Eyes on the road, Rowland! No one is having sex.”
I frowned, and he kissed my puckered bottom lip. He muttered, “You are a public hazard.”
Graham leaned around his seat to look at us. “You two don’t need coffee. You need a fucking tranquilizer.”
Groaning, Garrick’s hands slipped off my body to brace against the seat. He pushed himself back into a sitting position, and I whined at the distance.
Whined. I would have been embarrassed if I wasn’t so turned on.
He clenched his fists and tilted his head back against the seat.
Of all the times for him to practice restraint. I was going to burn up in my skin here.
Staring up at the ceiling, he spoke, his voice strained. “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry?” I asked. “Who’s sorry?”
“I’m not!” Rowland said.
I trailed my fingers over his arm. “I’m sorry you stopped.”
Garrick glared at Rowland in the rearview mirror until his eyes focused back on the road. Then he turned to me and pointed at his friend. “That’s why I’m sorry.”
Somewhere in my body, I was fairly certain I still had a brain. And it had probably been shouting at me for a while. But my hormones must have had fucking megaphones because that’s all I could hear. I sat up, my arms and legs shaky with pent-up need. My shirt was twisted, and you could see the blue lace of my bra and the swell of my chest peeking out from the neckline of my shirt. I adjusted it quickly, glancing to see if Rowland or Graham had seen, but luckily they were still looking ahead. My eyes skipped to Garrick’s dark gaze. Yeah, he definitely hadn’t missed it.
A bolt of electricity shot through me, and I pressed my thighs together, trying to relieve something, anything. Garrick leaned over and his lips brushed my ear. So not helping the situation. As I tried to keep from squirming, he said, “As much as I’m dying to have you right now, you’re mine. And I don’t share.”
I swallowed, and squeezed my legs tighter. This was somehow the worst and best moment of my life. In fact, most of our relationship fell into those categories. Best boyfriend. Worst embarrassing moment. Best kiss. Worst excuse ever. Best (well . . . only) sex. Worst timing. But I could take all the worsts, if the best always followed.
His nose brushed my jaw and his breath fanned across my neck, and I swear my body shook in response. You would think with the morning he’d spent distracting me before our flight, I wouldn’t be so desperate for him now, but I was always desperate for him.
Plus, even though we lived together, I never saw him enough. Between plays and the additional jobs it took to pay our rent in Center City, it felt like we were always on the go. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d gone out for a night together, at least not when we hadn’t just finished a show and weren’t exhausted.
All those years of making up excuses not to have sex, and now I was busy trying to think of an excuse to ditch his friends and his parents and keep him all to myself.
His lips brushed against my ear again, and I dropped a hand to his thigh and squeezed. I wasn’t sure whether I was signaling him to stop or to give me more; I just knew I was dying from his proximity alone. A low rumble spilled from his throat, and I glanced up front to make sure his friends weren’t watching. They weren’t, so I took a chance and slid my hand a little higher.
I didn’t get but an inch before his hand clamped down on mine. Against my ear, he growled, “You really are a hazard to my health.” I just squeezed his leg again, and leaned my head to offer him more of my neck. He nipped my skin there and then whispered, “We’re going to meet my parents. We’ll smile and talk long enough that they feel like they’ve met you, then we’re finding a place to be alone. My bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, I don’t care where. The only thing I care about is fucking you so hard you can’t see straight.”
Annnd . . . aneurysm.
The air fled my lungs like I’d been punched in the chest, and I blushed so hard I felt like my blood was boiling. Seriously. It had turned so hot in this backseat, I was going to have a freaking heatstroke. And I had to bite down hard on my lip to keep in the string of unintelligible noises building on my tongue.
Garrick and I had sex. Often. Good sex. But in the spectrum of intercourse (oh God, only my brain would think spectrum of intercourse at a time like this), we made love. It was intense and sweet and perfect. I don’t know if it was the alcohol or my actions that pushed him to the other side of the spectrum, but I knew I was wound tight enough that another minute of him whispering in my ear could probably send me over the edge. That was probably why my arms and legs felt like Jell-O when we stood in front of his parent
s’ door, and he rang the bell. Though I’m sure the alcohol and the stress and the traveling didn’t help.
“This is going to be okay, right?” I asked. “You can’t tell I’m drunk, right?”
And would his parents be able to tell that I’d just been dying to screw their son in the backseat of a car like a high school prom date? That I was still dying to?
I could picture it now.
Hi Mom and Dad, this is my girlfriend—
HARLOT!
Then they would make me sew a red A on all of my clothing, and I did not look good in red, what with all the blushing. Plus I’d barely passed my costuming class in college. Needles and me don’t mix.
A hand came down on my shoulder, and I jumped. Rowland smiled, “You’re good, Bliss. You’re going to be a smash. Just wait.”
Right. I was going to be fine.
Garrick rang the doorbell a second time, and when no one answered, Graham said, “Told you they were shagging.”
Throwing a glare over his shoulder, Garrick took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. I stared, and for the first time realized that he was as nervous as I was. Oh hell, if he was nervous I was doomed. My odds were looking about as good as a main character in Game of Thrones.
He turned the knob. It gave way in his hand, and the door swung open to reveal a darkened entryway. My footsteps echoed as we stepped inside.
“That’s strange,” he said, his voice echoing, too.
Did this mean we could just go straight to his bedroom? Because oh my yes, thank you.
The open door let in just enough late afternoon light to reveal a strip of empty . . . well, foyer. Never thought I would have the need to actually use that word in real life. The windows were covered by heavy curtains, draping the rest of the place in darkness. I reached for the wall beside the door, running my hands along it looking for a switch.
I wasn’t sure which of my many issues to blame when my forearm collided with something cool and smooth and vase-shaped, knocking it sideways. When I tried to catch it and missed, I was blaming my sex-distracted thoughts. When I heard it crash and shatter against the floor, I was blaming the alcohol. When the light flipped on revealing a seriously grand foyer, a large group of people streaming into the entryway holding champagne flutes, and an elegant and terrifying woman that could only be Garrick’s mother staring in horror . . . well, that’s when I knew it wasn’t any of those things.
It was just me . . . failing at life again.
Behind me, Rowland broke the silence with a tentative “Surprise?”
No . . . me being a disaster of awkward proportions was the least surprising thing ever. I’d made a smash all right. Like I was the Hulk’s cousin.
Bliss SMASH.
5
Garrick
THE CRASH OF the vase echoed through the foyer for several seconds afterward, and each reverberation seemed to cause my mother’s expression to contort further.
I’d always thought I was fairly good at thinking on my feet and reacting in a crisis (and looking at my mother, this definitely counted as a crisis). For the life of me though, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Maybe I was out of practice or maybe there still wasn’t enough blood flowing through my brain, but either way only one word was going through my mind.
Fuck.
And not the kind I’d had in mind.
Luckily, my father, ever the composed businessman, covered for us all.
“Well . . . wasn’t that quite the entrance?”
The crowd laughed, and I could almost feel the heat of Bliss’s blush from here. The entire downstairs was brimming with what seemed like every person I had ever met, and plenty that I hadn’t. And I hadn’t the foggiest clue about what they were doing here.
Dad crossed to Bliss, and she looked queasy enough to pass out. He was immaculate in a dark suit that contrasted with his silvering hair. He picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. Her eyes flicked to mine, surprised.
Dad said, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Don’t you worry about it for one second, sweetheart. I’m sure at some point in his life Garrick had already broken that old thing and glued it back together.”
Mum would have flayed me. She loved that vase. But the people laughed, and the room collectively sighed in relief. Dad was good at that kind of stuff. He could charm any conference room, any party, any seminar. It was the one-on-one things he couldn’t do.
Dad helped Bliss step over the glass shards, and that made me spring into action. We crossed to each other, but Dad stayed in between us. Still holding one of her hands, he clapped me on the shoulder and looked out at the crowd.
“Well, we wanted a surprise engagement party, and we certainly got a surprise.” Everyone laughed again. Dad squeezed my shoulder and said, “You all know my son, Garrick.” I spotted a few business types in the crowd—salt and pepper hair, pristine suits, impeccable ties. I sure as hell didn’t know them. Mixing business with family as always.
“He graduated at the top of his class, and his mother and I were ready for him to go to Oxford like all the other Taylor men.” Here we go. Time for the not-so-sly insults about how I’d ruined our family legacy. “But children have to make their own way, or they’ll only pretend to grow up. I’m proud to look at him and see the man he has become.”
I tried not to gape. My mother and I spoke often enough, but I couldn’t even recall the last time Dad and I had actually spoken. He’d been furious when I left, and certain that I’d ruined my life. Was it possible that my parents had done some changing of their own? This new leaf threw me off balance, and suddenly all I could think about was the scent of beer on my breath and how disheveled I probably looked. “He left us to make his own way and moved to America, where he’s already managed to become a university professor at his young age.”
Okay, so his storytelling was a bit selective considering I was no longer a professor. But it was a compliment nonetheless.
“He’s become a fine man and has now brought home this lovely, unpredictable young woman to join our family.” He turned to Bliss, holding up her hand. “We’re so happy to have you here, Bliss.” Then he turned out to the crowd. “We’re happy to have all of you here to celebrate their engagement with us. Please, eat, drink, enjoy yourselves. Though perhaps keep an eye on the decor.” He winked, and Bliss laughed, completely charmed.
He presented her hand to me as people around the house clapped, and then without actually saying a private word to either of us, retreated to a group of men in suits.
I wanted to punch myself. People laughed and aww’d at his performance, and I’d been sucked in just like the rest of them. Like I was sixteen all over again, I churned with rage and wanted to storm out of the door.
So much for that new leaf.
He’d thrown this stupid party to impress people, and he’d made it a surprise so that I couldn’t object. Just once I would love to see my father try to do something important without an audience.
I schooled my face into a blank expression, and then concentrated on Bliss. I placed a kiss on her temple. She hugged me, and against my chest, I heard her say, “Kill me. Just put me out of my misery, please.”
“And leave me to be miserable without you? Never.”
“So selfish.”
“When it comes to you? Absolutely.” Already I wanted to just take her away, to just be the two of us again. I sighed and looked around. Some people were staying in the foyer, others were streaming into other parts of the house, laughing and drinking, and grabbing hors d’oeuvres from passing waiters.
I said, “I guess our odds of finding somewhere to be alone just got significantly smaller.”
She looked up at me and frowned. She looked so disappointed that my stomach clenched with desire all over again.
Just a few hours. This thing couldn’t last forever.
“I’m so sorry about the vase. And for making such a scene.” Her face scrunched up like she was going to cry, and my method o
f dealing with her tears yesterday morning probably wasn’t going to fly in this room full of people. I smoothed a hand over her hair and said the only thing I could.
“Marry me?”
Her eyes turned sad.
“Garrick, not now.”
My heart twisted. It was another one of those moments. “Yes, now, love. Marry me.”
“Still? You know I’m just going to keep breaking things.”
“And you know I’m just going to keep loving you anyway.” Her frown twitched, and I added, “Besides . . . not marrying you would break me.”
The frown softened, and she blinked away the film of tears in her eyes. “Me too.”
“It’s settled then. You’re stuck with me forever.”
She shook her head and made a noise that sounded like disbelief.
My biggest fear was that someday she would talk herself out of our relationship. That she would shake her head and listen more to her own poisonous thoughts than the words coming out of my mouth.
I kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, “We are forever. If you don’t believe me, I’ll have to make you. As soon as we find that place to be alone.”
I only got a faint pink in her cheeks as she looked down at her feet, but I’d take it. After a second, she tipped her head back and groaned, a sound that went straight through me.
She said, “I’m wearing jeans.”
I nodded. I loved those jeans. They fit her perfectly.
“And by the looks of it, I’m in a room filled with people in designer dresses. And you’re crazy if you think this foyer is only slightly grand. There’s a freaking chandelier.”
“Luckily that can’t be knocked over.” Mum’s voice was like whiskey, it came off smooth, but ended with a burn.
“Mum.” It was halfway between a greeting and a warning.
“Hi sweetheart.” She leaned up and kissed my cheek before turning to Bliss.
“Mum, this is Bliss. Bliss, my mother.”
She smiled. “What a name.”
Bliss knotted her fingers together. “Um . . . thank you?”
Mum’s smile was all red lips, white teeth, and sugared kindness. It was the razor-sharp tongue behind those teeth that I was worried about.