I’d used paper plates, but on the buffet, I put out the good serving trays. None fit in the dishwasher, so I stood over the sink, washing them by hand. The water was near scalding, and my hands were wrinkly. I could see the yard from the window in front of the sink. The remainder of the guests were around a table outside.
Dash drank from a water bottle and laughed at something my uncle said. He’d talked baseball with anyone who asked, took some pictures, signed some stuff, but had become part of the furniture in the first hour.
That was, if whenever I looked at the furniture, I had to check to make sure my buttons were fastened. He managed to catch my eye from across the room, over cake, while telling the story of his game-winning hit in game four of the World Series, and every single time, he didn’t break the flow of whatever conversation he was having. Not a millisecond. Yet I could feel his thoughts tracing lust all over the surface of my body. He was an exceptional multitasker.
I hadn’t mentioned the Spring Training Report, and I wouldn’t. I didn’t yearn for his stats. I craved his touch and his laugh, his Shakespeare quotes and his attention. Even his awkwardness. Everything.
I turned away from the window to dry the oval serving tray and stack it. When I turned back to the sink and looked out the window, Dash wasn’t at the table.
I saw him in the glass’s reflection and felt his lips on the back of my neck. With a reaction that was no less instinctive than breathing, I tilted my head to expose my skin to his kiss. He let it linger, moving to my shoulder, warming me with his breath. Every cell in my body vibrated for him, and every sinew of my heart cried foul.
“My body says yes,” I said, “but I want you to listen to my voice.”
He drew his lips along the edge of my ear, and I leaned into him.
“Stop,” I whispered, hoping he’d ignore me.
“Stop what?” He slipped his hand under my dress.
“Messing with me.”
“I’m not.” His finger curled under the edge of my underwear.
I was wet, soaked, and he was a quarter second to feeling it.
“I want you. I want to watch you come.” His face was so close to me I heard him swallow. “I miss you.”
Just those three words said softly, with his fingers between my legs, opening my heart and body to him, and the lump that had been wedged in my throat all night nearly choked me.
I turned to face him. He removed his hand from my underwear. I put my hands on his chest, keeping a barrier between us. “Dash—”
“No.” He pressed two fingers to my lips. “Let’s do this fast before I take your clothes off. I made a mistake. A big mistake. When you drove away, you took my destiny with you. I felt like my future was pulled out of me.”
I leaned back on the sink and crossed my arms.
He took his fingers from my lips. “I know what you’re thinking, and there are no other women. None. There’s only you and the ways I’ve failed you. You don’t have to give me a second chance. I know that. But I want you to. I’m going to beg you if I have to.”
I’d thought the tinfoil over my heart would crumble, but it didn’t. In the flame of his words, it was blown open, charred black, and turned to flakes of ash.
“You can’t do this again,” I said. “I’m fine without you. I want you, but I won’t be hurt repeatedly while you figure yourself out.”
“I’ve figured it out. It’s you. You’re the end of all the figuring.”
“That all you got?”
“‘The very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service.’”
Shakespeare. He was full of shit. He had to be. But my mouth and my tongue found his, colliding in a crush of need. My arms uncrossed and went around him, embracing the fresh-cut grass scent, the attention of his lips, the fire that dropped down the base of my spine and settled between my legs in an explosion of desire that was close to painful.
Dash hitched my knee over his hip and pushed his erection against me, and my * remembered what my brain had tried to forget. I gasped and groaned, eyelids fluttering, body shifting into him, his breath on my face a reminder of how close he was.
I was going to say something about the people outside. How they could come in any minute. It was getting late, and someone could walk in and see me putting my legs around him so I could feel the length of that gorgeous cock against me.
But I didn’t have time. Not a second. He got a hand under my ass and picked me up. I wrapped my legs tighter around him.
“Which way?” he asked.
Which way?
Down, of course. Inside. Hard.
I heard a chair scrape outside and the rhythm of voices.
“Down the hall.” I pointed. “Through the den. Door to the right.”
By the time I said “den,” he was already carrying me through it. He threw me on the bed. Tape and wads of wrapping paper and ribbons bounced with me as he shut the door.
Was I breathing? Yes, I was. So hard and fast I couldn’t even feel it.
He stood over me, pants tight in the front where his dick was hard, and yanked his belt open.