The Play

Throughout the night I fall more in love with him. I swear if you look close enough, you’ll see my heart beneath my rib cage, bursting at the seams. I can’t stop smiling. I don’t want to ever stop smiling.

At some point a band starts playing and Lachlan hands Lionel over to Amara and pulls me over to the dance floor.

“You dance?” I ask him as he wraps his arms around me, Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” starting to play.

“Not a bit,” he admits with a smile I feel down in my toes. “But I can fake it for a few steps.”

Okay, well maybe dancing isn’t one of Lachlan’s hidden talents. The man can’t be good at everything. But he does a good job of faking it and at least he doesn’t step on my toes.

We stay on the dance floor for more than a few songs. I’m in no hurry to return to schmoozing and I assume Lachlan isn’t either. That’s probably why we’re dancing for so long.

“I just wanted you to myself,” he says, burying his face in my hair. It’s like he read my mind.

“How much longer does this gala go for? I mean, when do you usually leave?” I ask him, staring at the other elegant partygoers gliding past us.

“I’m usually the last one standing,” he says. “I don’t want to be that guy who throws a party, asks for money, and then leaves.”

“No, that’s not you. Then we’ll stay till the end.”

“Till the very end,” he says.

The Beatles “All My Loving” comes on and he holds me tighter to him, his hands brushing down the length of my bare back and holding the small of my waist. He very faintly sings the lyrics in my ears and I close my eyes, letting the words sink deep, letting the moment last for as long as it possibly can. Everyone else drifts away and it’s me and him and a world built for two.

“I’m so in love with you,” he whispers, the roughness of his cheek pressed against mine. “So in love. There is no bottom. I just keep falling.”

I’m falling too. But my heart has grown wings. It threatens to carry me forever and each time I’m dropped, careening toward the abyss, it will pick me up again.

I never thought it could be like this.

I never want it to be any other way.

“I love you,” I say softly, my voice choking as all that emotion climbs up my throat, almost overtaking me. “I can’t leave you. I won’t leave you. I want to stay.”

The words are unpla

His upper body stiffens, his steps becoming slower. He pulls his head back and eyes me carefully. “Are you being serious?”

I swallow and nod. “Yes,” I tell him, staring deep in his eyes. “Yes, yes. I want to stay. I can’t bear the thought of losing you, leaving you. I can’t go back to the life I had, not after this life here, as brief as it has been. I know what I want and I want you.”

He stops moving and cups my face in his hands and I can feel his strength seep into my skin. “You have no idea how happy you’ve made me,” he says, shaking his head. “No idea. No idea.” He kisses me hard, passionately and fingers sink into my hair, his forehead resting against mine. “I will give you everything you need. I will be everything you need me to be. I’ll take care of you.”

I’m about to protest that I don’t need a man to take care of me, but I clamp my mouth shut and don’t say a word. Because I do need Lachlan, at least in terms of my heart, and I also know how much it matters sometimes to just feel needed. I want him to feel that, to know that I need him as much as he needs me.

“I know you will,” I eventually say. “You’re my man.”

He breathes heavily into my neck, almost a gasp. “I’m going to make you so happy.”

“You do make me happy,” I tell him truthfully. “Sometimes I don’t think it can possibly get better but then it turns out there is more room in my heart than I thought.”

He sighs blissfully, holding me closer for a few moments. Then he whispers, “We need to find a room,” and his voice is back to that warm, growly tone that makes my panties wet in a second. Hell yes, we need to find a room. All these proclamations of love need somewhere to go.

He takes my arm and strides across the dance floor, shoulders back, taking long, wide steps, like he’s the King of everything. My eyes are peeled for a cloakroom as we dodge people here and there, especially avoiding Jessica because she doesn’t need to know what we’re about to do. We disappear around the corner, past the hotel reception, and find the washroom. It’s the best that we can do.

He pulls me into it, looks back and forth down the hall to make sure no one saw us, then locks the door.

I’m backed up against the sink, my hands resting on the edges, waiting for his onslaught.

But he doesn’t attack me, at least not right away. He just stares at me and our eyes are locked with each other.

“What?” I whisper to him, afraid to break the spell.

He tilts his head to the side, observing me, frowning, as if I am some riddle he’s trying to solve.

“Did you mean it?” he asks. “When you said you would stay?”

It nearly hurts that he sounds so doubtful. “Of course I did. I meant every word.”

“Do you promise?” he asks, stepping toward me, leaning forward with both hands on the edge of the sink.

I hold out my pinky finger. “I pinky swear.”

He dismisses it with a glance. “Nah, that’s rubbish. Your word is more than enough.” He brushes my hair behind my ears. “I want to make you feel as incredible as you make me feel.”

He grabs my hips and hoists me up so that I’m balanced on the edge of the sink, my hands gripping the sides to keep me steady. He tugs my dress up and over my ass, then crouches down, his head between my legs.

I barely have time to compose myself, to prepare. He’s at me like he’s starving, his fingers sliding me apart, his tongue and mouth so soft and warm. I feel every sensation like a hammer, each stroke a hit, radiating outward.

I want so much from him. I want him deep inside, all of him. But among his satisfied groans and his hungry sounds, I know he just wants to devour me. He wants me to have as much pleasure as he can humanely bring me, because he isn’t sure that he’s doing enough, making me feel enough.

But he is. He so is.

His mouth is savage. He’s tireless. His tongue plunges deep inside me before licking up my clit and sucking me into his mouth. I nearly scream, my body at the height of all awareness, on the verge of overload. He reaches down with one hand and two long, beautiful fingers thrust deep inside, curling against me. The heat builds deeper, my nerves are a million champagne bottles about to burst. It’s the slow, twisting anticipation that makes my mouth drop open, my neck arch back until my head meets the mirror.

I’m both hypersensitive and barely aware. My legs clench around his face, driving his lips and tongue and fingers against me, inside me, harder, deeper and he responds by acting as if I’m all he needs to live his life, like he’d die without me.

With impatient hands, he pulls me toward him, his tongue hard and urgent and the world begins to tip on its axis. This world built for two.

I want to feel him, feel him, feel him. My hips rock into him hard. He drags his tongue back over my clit, flicking it so fast, back and forth, over and over, and I can’t breathe anymore.

He moans against me.

And then I let go.

I just fucking let go.

I’m in the freefall, coming onto his mouth, nearly falling off of the sink. His hands grip my waist, holding me up, while he finishes me up with the hard suck of his lips, ripping a cry out of my throat.

I’m loud. I know I am. I always am. And I don’t mind if someone is outside the washroom, overhearing my cries, because everyone in the whole fucking world needs to know what kind of a lover he is. He loves with every inch of him and he gives with every part of him.