Instead, I pull back. She falls forward, her body leaning into mine. I catch her and ask, “Do you want to dance?”
Eyes still closed, she nods with a dreamy smile. Her arms around my neck and mine around her waist, she lets me lead her to a slow song.
“Just this one,” I whisper in her ear. “Don’t expect me to start cutting it up like Hart.”
She laughs, eyes bright under the dim ballroom lights. “Absolutely. I have no idea how Rylie and Levi do it. I have two left feet.”
“Me, too,” I admit. She rests her head on my shoulder, and we take a minute, just to enjoy holding each other.
“Kennedy?” I say when the minute’s up. “You have ‘qualities of aesthetic pleasure’.”
I hear a sharp inhale. She wipes a finger under one hazel eye and refuses to raise her head. When I hear a sniff, I ask, “Are you crying?”
“No,” comes the muffle from where she digs her nose in my lapel.
“Because I called you beautiful?”
“No.” She pulls back, enough for me to see her eyes glittering with water. “Because you’re so… so ‘good as it is possible to be’.”
Not for the first time tonight, the wind’s knocked out of me.
A little like I’d been hit. Quickly. Over and over again.
Until I’m stunned.
Because Kennedy Fucking Walsh, with never a hair out of place, who knows every word for any occasion, whose body melts into mine with every kiss… who plans everything down to the last detail and mixes the best coffee and wears wholesome plaid and pinches you on St. Patrick’s Day and cares about her family and cries over romance movies and has hands that never, ever stay warm when they’re not in mine…
She thinks I’m perfect.
“Spencer,” she whispers as the song winds down. “How much longer?”
“An hour.” Because all night, when my eyes haven’t been on her, they’d been on the clock. Waiting to strike that hour. Waiting for her.
“Too long,” she shakes her head.
“It’ll take that long before you’re done saying goodnight to your family.”
Kennedy’s lips slowly widen. She presses into me. Grips my hand and begins leading me off the dance floor. Towards the ballroom door.
“Who said anything about saying goodnight? Spencer, let me tell you this little thing called an Irish goodbye.”
31
Kennedy
We leave without anyone noticing. Since, by now, my family’s enjoying the flowing alcohol and the music and dancing and celebrating my sister’s happiness. No one’s looking for me or Spencer.
And now, after a day of glimpsing Spencer across rooms, I finally get him all to myself.
We’re silent in the elevator. Barely touching, apart from our joined hands. And although I should be tired after such a long day, I don’t feel it. My body hums with activity. With heat and energy and pulsing and excited breaths.
“How are your knees?” Spencer asks when we reach our floor.
“Weak,” I tell him. “So weak. I’m about to fall where I stand.”
“Can’t have that,” he mumbles. Without another thought, he lifts me in his arms. He shushes me from giggling too loudly in the hallway as he carries me to our room. At the door, I expect him to set me down to open it, but he shifts my weight until I’m pressed against it. He holds me up, my legs clinging to his hips, muscles clamping around him as he fishes the room key from his pocket.
Only now my hands ruffle his hair, distracting him as I drag my mouth over his neck and hike my bridesmaid skirt a little more so I can shift my center closer to his growing bulge. He palms my ass, keeping me in place as he fumbles with the key, until the door is open and he storms into the middle of the room, dropping me on the bed.
Spencer glances at the clock. “Forty-five minutes.”
I sit up, reaching for his tie and tugging his face down to mine. “You are not keeping me waiting for forty-five more minutes, Armstrong.”
“Can’t I?” His eyebrow raises. With a smirk, he trails a finger over my neckline, over the curve of my breast. “I want to win this bet. I like winning. Some say I’m really fucking good at it.”
If it weren’t for that wayward finger, I’d laugh. Because he doesn’t know. Doesn’t realize at all.
He’s already won.
I want him. More than I thought physically and emotionally possible. He’s never far in my thoughts. Always on my mind, his name on the tip of my tongue. Even when I sleep, I dream of him. His kisses. His rare smiles and rarer laughs. The words he says, all the right ones to make me crazy with longing for him.
And tonight… Tonight is better than any dream. Better than anything I could have planned. From the way he looks so devastatingly handsome in his tux, how easily and seamlessly he’d fit in with my family, when he called me beautiful in the best way imaginable, to all the quick glances he’d sent me in passing through the day. His gaze always piercing mine with admiration. With fierce pride. Even when, during my speech, he’d looked a bit suckerpunched himself that I’d gone with his advice. Each and every moment I turned my head to him, Spencer was there. Waiting for me. Like he never wanted to be anywhere else but where he stood, glowing at me.
The perfect boyfriend, Natalie had once called him.
Tonight, he’s mine.
And for one excruciatingly long, dragging month, he’s held himself from me. Turned down every time I tried to tempt him with what we both want. Waiting for this exact moment, when I’m about to start begging, I ache so much to be one with him again.
Summer Prescott is wrong. Spencer isn’t a snack. He’s a latte. Warm and comforting and filling and energizing. A blend of bitter and sweet, with a jolt
