Finally, he gave me a dark, hungry look. “I promise you, I’m not broken. I’m getting this done so I can focus on wearing you out later.”
“Wear me out now,” I whined, standing and walking over to him. I slid my fingers into his hair and tugged. Adrenaline dripped hot and electric into my veins when his eyes fluttered closed and he suppressed a groan. “Where’s all this money you have? Why haven’t we hired someone to do this?”
Laughing, Bennett wrapped his hand around my wrist and pulled my fingers from his hair. After kissing my knuckles, he very deliberately set my hand back at my side. “You want to hire someone to fold programs the night before we leave for San Diego?”
“Yes! Because sex!”
“But isn’t it nicer like this? Enjoying each other’s company and,” he said, lifting his wineglass to take a dramatic sip, “conversing like the happily affianced lovers we are?”
I glared at him, shaking my head at his attempted guilt trip. “I offered sex. I offered hot, sweaty, floor sex—and then I offered to give you a blow job. You want to fold paper. Who is the buzzkill here?”
He picked up a program and studied it, ignoring me. “Frederick Mills,” he read aloud, and I began pulling my shirt up and over my head, “together with Elliott and Susan Ryan welcome you to the wedding of their children, Chloe Caroline Mills and Bennett James Ryan.”
“Yes, yes, it’s so romantic,” I whispered. “Come here and touch me.”
“Officiant,” he continued, “the Honorable James Marsters.”
“If only,” I sighed, and dropped my shirt on the floor before working my pants down my hips. “I’m going to pretend it’s Spike performing our wedding ceremony instead of that hilarious gentleman with early dementia we met back in November.”
“Judge Marsters performed my parents’ wedding ceremony almost thirty-five years ago,” Bennett chastened me gently. “It’s sentimental, Chlo. The fact that he forgot to zip up his pants is a mistake anyone could have made.”
“Three times?”
“Chloe.”
“Fine.” I did feel a little guilty for making the joke, but I stood quietly for a minute, letting my memory of the old, frazzled man take shape. He’d met us at the wedding site when we went out to see it last fall, and got lost on each of three trips to the men’s room in under an hour, returning with his fly open each time. “But do you think he’ll remember our na—”
Bennett cut me off with a stern look before he realized I was only wearing my bra and underwear, and then his expression went a completely different kind of dark.
“I’m just saying,” I started, reaching behind me to unfasten my bra, “it would be at least a little amusing if he forgot what he was doing halfway through the ceremony.”
He managed to turn his attention back to folding the program before my breasts were exposed; he made a crisp seam as he slid his thumb along the edge. “You’re being a pain in the ass.”
“I know. I also don’t care.”
He quirked an eyebrow as he looked up at me. “We’re almost done.”
I bit back my response, which was to point out that folding the programs was the least of our worries; the next week with our two families together had the potential to be a disaster of Griswold-family holiday proportions, and wouldn’t sex right now be a lot better than thinking about that? My father and his two boozy divorcée sisters alone could make us crazy, but add in Bennett’s side of the family, Max, and Will, and we’d be lucky to get out of there without a felony under our communal belt.
Instead I whispered, “Just really quick? Can’t we take a little break?”
He leaned forward, inhaling between my breasts before moving to the side and kissing a path to my left nipple. “Once I start, I don’t relish stopping.”
“You don’t like interruptions, I don’t like delayed gratification. Which of us do you think will get her way?”