Unfortunately Yours (A Vine Mess, #2)

“Okay. I promise.” She leaned back a little and her puffy eyes and red-tipped nose nearly made him stumble. “Of course, if I ever got stuck out there, you’d just strap on a harness and come rescue me. Totally calm and casual, as if you’re heating up a microwave dinner.”

He took stock of his body, cataloging the chaotic buzz at the base of his throat, the vibrations in his fingertips. The rippling of his heart, which whipped into breakneck speed at her words. “For the record, I’m not calm. I’ve got enough pent-up adrenaline to flip this truck and maybe run a half marathon. If you were the one I had to rescue, Natalie . . .” He shook his head, and kept right on shaking it until he probably looked insane. “I wouldn’t have been coolheaded enough to put on the harness. I’d have jumped in and swum.”

The picture she’d painted in his head—of herself stranded on the island of her blue car in the middle of a swift current—made his arms and knees weak, so he set her down sideways on the passenger seat before he did something humiliating, like collapse in the middle of the road. He was attempting to rein in his stampeding adrenaline and it took him a moment to notice how she was looking at him. Softly, with teeth-marked lips and eyes heavy with moisture, her breasts shuddering up and down. Vulnerable in a way he’d never seen her before. Walls down.

“I don’t think one month is going to be enough anymore,” she said haltingly, swiping at her eyes and hiccupping through a gulp of air. “We might need to renegotiate our terms.”

Oh shit. There went his heart. Booming like a cannon. Did she mean what she was saying? Or was she shaken up over the water rescue? He didn’t care. He just wanted his bride. “Forget negotiations.” He leaned down and pressed their foreheads together. “I don’t need any fancy language to know you belong with me.”

She gave him a tearfully dubious look. “It’s not that easy.”

“I don’t want easy,” he said through his teeth. “Neither one of us wants easy.”

“So . . . what? I can’t just . . .” The rain was so loud on the roof of his truck, he had to press his ear almost to her mouth to make out the next part. “I can’t just . . . give up New York.”

August’s lungs flooded with oxygen so fast, he got lightheaded. The way she said those words didn’t sound all that confident. No, she sounded open to negotiation. As in, she was considering the alternative to returning east? Holy hell. “Yes, you can. You can stay with your husband, who would throw himself into a flood for you.”

“That’s . . .” Was she having trouble breathing? Should he perform CPR? “That’s extremely romantic, but we’re probably jumping the g-gun because we just went through something scary.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe that all it took was a standard water rescue to make you consider staying.”

A watery laugh burst out of her. “There was nothing standard about that. You were heroic. You were . . .” The muscles of her throat worked. “You could have died.”

“Me? Nah. I’m too stubborn.” Why did his response seem to upset her more? Was her lip trembling now? God, he didn’t like that. Not at all. Make her laugh. “Out of curiosity, how scary does living with me permanently sound to you? On a scale of TV dinner to flash flood.”

Not even a beat of hesitation. “Like back-to-back flash floods.”

“Thanks for your honesty,” he responded dryly. “We’ll try and work it down to a summer storm with no possible fatalities.”

Her attention dipped to his mouth and the damn thing went dry, like she’d snapped her fingers and wished it. “I love that,” she murmured. “I love some parts of the storm between us.” For long moments, they looked into each other’s eyes. Hers were uncertain, but hopeful, and so beautiful, so fathomless, a chicken bone seemed to be stuck behind his jugular. And it only doubled in size when her legs parted, ever so slightly on the seat, allowing his hips to move in closer to her heat. “Am I really considering staying longer than a month? I don’t have a real job, my family could take me or leave me, and you . . . we barely get along—”

“We are the fucking dream team and you know it. We got this.”

“Not yet. Not completely.” She closed her eyes. “Right now, this very moment, we do, though. I’ve got you. You’ve got me. Can you please bring me home and take me to bed?”

Frantically, August performed another check of his vitals and found the adrenaline hadn’t ebbed whatsoever. If anything, it had skyrocketed at the very real possibility that Natalie might consider staying in St. Helena. That he might actually have a shot at turning their marriage from one of convenience to one that would last.

Forever. Forever, if you asked his heart.

Or his dick. Because the damn thing was forever a backseat driver that wouldn’t be silenced. At the mere suggestion of sinking into Natalie’s warm, wet pussy, dude was growing like Jack’s magic beanstalk. Fuck. He was going to love on that thing so hard, he’d snap the headboard in half. Unfortunately, he might snap the girl of his dreams in half in the process. “You need to give me twenty minutes to flip my tire when we get home.”

Puzzlement knit her forehead together. “Huh?”

“The leftover adrenaline, Natalie. I need to work some of it off first or . . .” He pointed at the apex of her very smooth, very spreadable thighs. “I’m going to offend the queen.”

She did a double take. Squinted one eye. “Wait, so I’m the princess and my vagina is the queen?”

“And I’m her loyal subject. Yes.”

Silence fell.

But it was interrupted a moment later by her laugh.

A clear, musical sound that twisted his chest up in a knot and forced a hoarse chuckle from his own mouth. Foreheads flush, their bodies shook with mirth in the middle of the still-raging storm. “You’re such a weirdo,” she gasped.

“You can learn to live with it.”

She nodded, turned serious. “Maybe.” Her fingertips traveled down the front of his torso and he saw actual stars when they tucked inside the waistband of his sweatpants. “I don’t want to wait for you to flip the tire.”

“Need to flip the tire. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Do you think this is turning me off?”

“I don’t know. I just stay one hundred percent honest with you and hope for the best.”

“Oh dear,” she whispered, brushing her lips along his jawline. “That turns me on, too. We’re not even going to make it home.”

Jack’s magic beanstalk was almost at full height. “Tire.”

“Forget the tire,” she purred, touching her tongue to his earlobe.

Colors and shapes blurred in front of his eyes. “What t-tire?”

Footsteps approached from August’s right and he moved on instinct, stepping back from the V of Natalie’s thighs and pushing her knees together. There was only one person that had the privilege of seeing her panties and that person had been reduced to monosyllables.

Someone slapped him on the back.

“Thank you again for your assistance, Cates.”

August looked back over his shoulder to find one of the police officers holding his hand out for a shake. But thanks to his beanstalk being at full maturity, he could only turn partially and slap his hand into the officer’s waiting palm. “Don’t mention it.” The guy just stood there nodding and grinning, shifting in his boots. Oh man, August knew that look. He was seconds from getting invited out for a beer with the bros. “I need to get my wife home before she catches a cold.”

Natalie ran a knuckle down his happy trail and he almost swallowed his tongue. “The only thing I’m going to catch,” she whispered for his ears alone, “is this di—”

“All right, you take care, man. Let’s have a beer sometime,” August blurted, pushing Natalie’s legs into the truck, his blood thickening like hot gravy. At this point, he didn’t even care who saw his boner, as long as he got the woman home in the next ten minutes. Rest in peace to his headboard. In a few long strides, he was around the front bumper, diving into the driver’s side and reversing through the maze of emergency vehicles. “Oh, you are going to get it, Natalie queen princess Cates.”

She slid gracefully across the front row of his truck, pressing her mouth to his shoulder. Kissing, licking . . . and biting down in way that sent his balls up into his throat.

“Fuck.”

“Yes, please.” She gripped his cock through the wet material of his sweatpants and in one big, shuddering breath, he fogged up every single window of the truck. “And I don’t need you to take it easy on me. Our make-up sex was interrupted this morning. Maybe it should be a little . . .”

“Rough.” He fumbled for the defroster with a growl. “You have no idea how bad you’re making it hurt, princess.”

That magic hand of hers started to stroke him up and down. “Pull over and show me.”

“Natalie,” he groaned, trying to blink away the tiny dots of light spinning in front of his eyes. “I think you might be short-circuiting my brain.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not looking the least bit contrite. Jesus, what was coming next?