“Are you okay?” she asks, sounding breathless.
I touch my lips to her forehead to break our connection. “Yeah, baby.” I slowly slide out of her. “Are you?”
“Besides not being sure that I’ll be able to walk, I’m okay.” She laughs and I smile at her then grab some paper towels and clean myself up before I do the same to her. Once she’s good, I lift her off the counter then help her adjust the skirt of her dress. “I’m just going to go check my makeup.” She looks up at me, blushing and I touch her pink cheek with the tips of my fingers.
“All right.” I bend down brushing my mouth across hers, then watch her take off toward the bedroom as I tuck my shirt back in. When she comes back out a few minutes later she still looks well-fucked, but her hair is back in place and now a dark stain that looks the color of red wine is covering her swollen mouth.
“Now I’m ready,” she tells me, grabbing the gold bag she carried out earlier.
“You look gorgeous, baby.”
“I kinda got that’s what you thought when you put me on the counter.” She smiles.
I chuckle as I follow behind her to the door.
When we get downstairs to my jeep, I hold the door open for her, then wait until she is buckled in before I walk around the back and get in behind the steering wheel. “Anytime you’re ready to take off tonight, let me know and we’ll leave.”
“How about you let me know since it’s obvious you don’t want to go.” She places her hand on my lap before I can reach for her like I normally do, because I like having her connected to me even when we’re sitting right next to each other.
“I never said I didn’t want to go.”
“You didn’t have to say it.” I can almost hear her rolling her eyes. “You’ve asked me a dozen times today if I’m sure I’m up to going out.”
“I know that you wanted to rest this weekend?” I squeeze her hand and before she can reply her phone starts to ring and she takes it out of her bag.
“It’s my sister.” She puts her cell to her ear. “Hello.” A second later she starts to laugh. “You know how Dad is.”
I can feel her looking at me, and I glance her way, finding her eyes soft as her gaze dances over my skin.
“I’ll ask him, maybe we can all have dinner next weekend.” A pause. “Nothing like any of them.”
This makes me curious about what her sister is asking.
“I know… Um we’re going to the Rooftop, it’s a lounge close to downtown… Really? Okay hold on a second.” She squeezes my thigh. “Harmony wants to know if she and her husband can come tonight.”
“Sure.”
She relays that to her sister, then a second later she says goodbye and hangs up.
“She’s going to talk to Harlen and send me a text if they’re coming.” She pulls down her visor and looks in the mirror as she nervously rambles. “I promise my sister is much more chill than my dad and her husband is awesome. You’ll like him. Miles actually reminds me a little of him.”
“Relax, babe, it will be all good.”
“I know, I just want you to know they’re cool.” She sighs, leaning back in her seat and flipping the mirror back into place.
“Have they ever met any of the guys you’ve dated?”
“My whole family met Brodie. My dad hated him, but everyone else loved him.”
Fuck, if my hands don’t get tighter on the steering wheel hearing his name. “What happened between you two?”
“His job.” She gets quiet a second then adds. “I don’t know if you recognized him, but he plays hockey in Nashville.” I listen to her drag in a breath. “He traveled all the time, which was understandable, but I hated that even when he was home, he was out with his teammates more than he was with me. Then there were the women.”
“Women?”
“Yeah, there were constantly women throwing themselves at him and again I understood that would be one of the things I’d have to deal with when we got together. I mean, I’m not stupid—he’s a good-looking guy with money who’s famous, so that was inevitable. What I didn’t appreciate was how he played into their attention by flirting back or feeding into it. And when I told him how I felt, he ignored my feelings, and made it seem like I was just acting like a jealous girlfriend. And yeah, I was jealous, but it was more than that. I never felt secure with him, and I didn’t feel like a priority, so without those two things, I knew that I couldn’t be with him.” She let out a breath. “So that’s why things between us ended.”