“There’s a heady feeling in that too,” she says. “I know I have enough love in me that I can let it spill over to someone new. I just need to find someone who wants to receive it.”
“I volunteer for the job.”
She falls against me and wraps her arms around me, joining her hands in the back. I hold her close. Those moments when she had my dick in her hand were great. But this…this is the shit. This is the shit you write home about.
“My grandmother called it a tender–sweet sense of belonging,” she whispers.
“Called what?”
“This. Just this.”
“Oh.”
“Tender–sweet sense of belonging. That’s what this is.”
“You want to go back to bed?” I murmur.
She takes my hand and pulls me with her. I climb in my side and she gets in hers, and then she lifts my arm and slides up so she can put her head in that spot where my shoulder meets my chest. Her hand slides into the waistband of my pants, but she doesn’t go any farther. I lift her shirt in the back and place my palm against her skin, moving it until it slips beneath her waistband at the small of her back.
“Is this okay?” she asks quietly.
I don’t respond. Because there are no words that can adequately describe what I feel, can adequately describe just how okay this is.
Wren
Look for the dapper dudes in mirrored sunglasses, he’d said. He probably should have mentioned the mansion-on-wheels he had them bring to the hotel. It was bigger than the hotel suites we’d been staying in.
“I thought he was sending two dudes and a bigger van,” Mick says as we walk toward the monstrosity.
I point to one of the new security guards. “If she’s a dude, I’ll eat your hat,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.
Mick tugs his hat lower over his eyes and sweeps them up and down the bodyguard’s black uniform pants, all the way up to her navy-blue polo that’s precisely tucked into her pants. “Definitely not a dude,” he whispers back.
I elbow him in the side and he bends at the waist, laughing. “You can stop staring at her now.”
He jerks his eyes from the perfect blonde with the high ponytail and the shiny mirrored glasses and looks down at me. “She’s got nothing on you.”
“Nice try,” I mutter.
“Is this big bus for us?” Anna asks, holding tightly to my hand.
“I think so,” I reply.
Alex, one of the bodyguards who has been on our security team for the past few years, walks out of the front office of the hotel. He comes to introduce us to the new person. “Wren, this is Mel. Short for Melanie, but the last time I called her that, she kicked me in the balls, so I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Nice to meet you, Mel.”
She nods at me, a barely perceptible movement.
“She’s pretty quiet, and she hates my guts. So, this has been a fun trip so far,” Alex says to me.
“I thought Emilio was sending a bigger van,” I say.
“He was, and then he remembered that Eddie Von Brantley lives in this state, so he called him up and Mr. Von Brantley offered the use of his personal ride for the trip.”
“Eddie Von Brantley?” Mick echoes. “Like, the Eddie Von Brantley, the rock and roll star?”
“The one and only.” Alex beams as though he did all this himself.