When I looked back to see Brandon’s reaction, his mouth was in a perfect little “O” shape. This time, I gave the fake smile and the wiggle-fingers.
“It wasn’t so bad in the end,” I said in relief, once we’d lasted a few hours and escaped back to Grahame Cabin. I stacked up more wood on the embers of the fire, stoking it into a crackle as Damon pulled off his suit and got back into his preferred outfit: jeans and a hoodie. He looked just as amazing dressed down as he did up, and I couldn’t help watching him as he prowled into the open kitchen, checking out the fridge.
“Help yourself,” I called across. “Or I can make you something, if you like.”
“Nah, I ate enough. That Fox guy was right; the food was good.”
We’d been reintroduced to Sebastian Fox and his partner, Ezra, who I vaguely remembered as a roommate of Tristan Taylor’s. Tris was there, too, and it was great to catch up. He was as snarky as ever, but some of his sharp edges had been sanded down a little since the last time I’d seen him.
“Jackson seemed like a good guy,” Damon said, closing the fridge. It was like he’d read my thoughts. Seth Jackson, Tristan’s boyfriend, was a huge, quiet man who seemed uneasy among the rich East Coasters of the Kincaid extended family and friends. Thankfully, Jon’s family—large, noisy, and shameless—had swallowed up Seth in their antics, and by the end of the night he’d seemed more relaxed.
“Right?” I said, sitting up on the couch to enjoy the warmth of the fire. “He’s had a good influence on Tristan, I think. Tris used to be…well, a lot more bitter than he was tonight.”
Damon jumped over the side of the sofa and put his head in my lap with a contented sigh, his legs still dangling over the armrest of the couch. My hand went automatically to his hair, stroking it back from his forehead.
He half-closed his eyes with a small hum of pleasure. “Your friends are different than I thought they’d be.”
“How do you mean?”
“I thought they’d be…you know. Assholes.”
“What? Why?”
He pulled his legs over and swung up into a sitting position on the couch, slinging his arm around my shoulders. It felt nice. Natural. “I figured they’d have to be assholes if you were so worried about telling them you were single again.”
The way he said it irritated me, mostly because I didn’t want to admit that he had a point. “You don’t have to hug me. We’re not pretending now.” We hugged all the time, but right now—somehow—it felt different.
“What if I just like hugging you?” But he let me go, although his thigh was still pressed up against mine.
“My friends aren’t assholes,” I mumbled. “I’m just not ready for the deluge of pity right now. And I don’t want to detract from Jonny’s day.”
“And Cooper’s.”
“Let’s be real, Jon’s the one who wants to peacock down the aisle. Hey, what did you think of Cooper’s mom?”
Damon gave a short laugh. “Let’s just say, Jon sure seems to know how to handle her.”
Jon had introduced all of his LA friends to Alicia Kincaid in a group, and the look on her face indicated horrified fascination. She’d been dismissively pleasant, repeating our names in a way that told me she didn’t consider them important enough to remember.
A little later, Damon and I had overheard her asking Cooper to ask Jon to tell his family to tone it down a little. Admittedly, Jon had a lot of young siblings and cousins at the wedding, and all of them seemed to be playing a vigorous version of hide and seek, mostly under the trestle tables of food, drinks, and presents.
One table had started violently shuddering after a mass of kids dived under it, and nearly collapsed. Jon’s family seemed to find this more funny than frustrating, unlike Mrs. Kincaid.
But Cooper had told his mother, firmly, to suck it up—with a slightly more polite phrasing.
“Anyway,” Damon said, leaning into the fire, holding up his hands to warm them, “you seem a little more relaxed now.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, that was convincing.” He turned to me with that particular, wicked smile that never failed to make my belly flutter. It was a smile that promised dirty, filthy things; that promised I would be writhing in a sticky mess of pleasure and pain in the very near future. “How about if I make you relax?”
“We should lock the door,” I murmured, pressing back into the couch as Damon loomed over me.
“I think all your friends are going to be busy themselves tonight. Didn’t you notice the way they were all looking at each other?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “I haven’t been able to keep my eyes off of you all night. You were really damn convincing as my boyfriend—not to mention my Dom.”
“I am your Dom.” Damon put a careful hand on my throat. “While we’re here, at least,” he amended. Disappointment washed through me.
