Erin leaned over and collected the tequila from the steps. Her eyebrow lifted at the unbroken seal. Another thing we couldn't blame on alcohol right now.
"Happily," she replied. "Now where's your room, kid? Listen to the good doctor's bizarre stories. Sleep makes everything better."
He groaned. "I don't think I have one."
She gave him a hard shove, and it almost sent him stumbling to the ground. That was how bad this situation was: my little lovely could take down all two-hundred-odd pounds and six-and-a-half feet of Riley with one hand.
"How do you not have a room?" she asked. "Batman always has a room."
"That's because Alfred makes his reservations," he murmured. "ThisBatman fucked up. That, and Shannon said I was supposed to be responsible for myself this weekend, and I forgot to do that. I have no Alfred. I have nothing, nothing at all."
"Shit happens, kid," she said. "We're not going to worry about any of it right now, we're just going to find you a place to crash." Erin glanced at me, her wide eyes asking what we were supposed to do now.
"Head over to my cottage," I said, digging through my wallet to find the keycard. I held it out to him, gesturing toward the beach, where a string of tiny, traditional gray Cape Cod homes stood near the dunes. The entire block of cottages was reserved for the wedding. "It's the one between Shannon and Sam."
Riley's bloodshot eyes swiveled between me and Erin. "This is still unacceptable," he said, snapping up the key. "But I didn't see anything and I'm not saying anything. Just don't let me stop the wedding."
He shuffled down the path toward the cottages, his shoulders slumped. My hand slipped under Erin's t-shirt to touch the small of her back.Jesus.She was soft, like a dollop of whipped cream, and that was just her back.
"Your room," I said, skimming the waist of her jeans. "Get me there now."
"In a rush?" she asked. There was a playful twinkle that popped into her eyes sometimes. It was sexy and adorable, and totally devious. I was hooked on that twinkle.
The interior of the inn was quiet, and I was careful to keep my voice low. The last thing we needed was to draw attention to ourselves and run into another Walsh. It was a matter of time until preparations for this evening's event got underway, and we were not getting conscripted into any of that. We were staying far out of sight, out of mind. "Only to get you behind closed doors and naked," I said.
She held up the bottle of Don Felipe when we reached her door. "Didn't think Riley needed to take this with him," she said. "Wait, am I reading the situation right? Is he saying he's in love with…Lauren? Lauren, Matt's fiancée?"
"That was my interpretation, yeah," I said, gesturing toward the door. "But I'm not interested in Riley right now."
"That's strange, since he's given us a lot of material this morning." She tapped her keycard against her chin. "I want to process this."
I shook my head slowly, drawing my knuckles down, over my jaw. The scruff scraped against my skin, yielding a rough, raspy sound. "And I want to lick that tequila off your tits, wife."
Snatching the keycard from her fingers, I slipped it into the reader and waited for thewhirl-whooshthat would grant us some long-overdue privacy. I scooped her up, carry-the-bride-over-the-threshold-style, and kicked the door shut behind us.
My shoes were off, one abandoned right behind another, and three striding steps had us at the foot of the bed. I knew this wasn't a standard-issue marriage, and I knew she would leave and the spell she'd cast on me would go with her, but I smiled down at the woman in my arms. For this weekend, she was mine.
"Can I process while you lick?" she asked.
Her lips were on my neck, and that light pressure triggered a shiver down my spine. It was a hypothalamic response, a reaction tied to emotion and physiological arousal, but I couldn't tell which one was greater. I was feeling a whole hell of a lot, but I was also hotter than the sun for this woman.
"You know," I started, squeezing the back of her thigh, "I'm trying to have a moment here. We only get one wedding night, err—morning. I want to savor this. Then I'm gonna savor you, wife."
"You're a special one, husband," she said, and her words were followed by the fine trail of her tongue up my neck.
"Okay, all right," I muttered, setting her down. I plucked the tequila from her hands, and tossed it to the bed. "Go ahead and process. Let's see how long it takes me to turn your attention."
"Do you really think Riley's been hung up on Laurenallthis time? I didn't think his attention span was that long, and I say that with love. He's a good kid—a good kid who dates a diverse cadre of women—just a bit flighty. How longhasit been? Matt's been with Lauren since September," she said. I tugged her sweater down her arms, tossed it somewhere. "I remember because I was in the Azores, and then back in mainland Portugal, and I was recovering from my first hangover in years—"
I yanked my shirt over my head, unbuckled my belt and left my jeans hanging open.
"Oh, I married well," she murmured, flattening her palm on my abs. "And you have the Hot Guy One-Handed Shirt Removal thing downhard."
I dragged her hand lower. I'd show her hard. "That wasn't even thirty seconds, Skip."
Her fingers slipped into my boxers, and she dropped her head to my chest as she circled me. She stroked me all the way down and back again, and her breath hitched as I growled into her hair.
"I guess it's true what they say about Texas," she murmured. She looked up at me with those eyes, her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. "Everythingisbigger."
