Lips weren’t enough. He needed tongues. Needed to slide one hand into her hair to tilt her head at just the right angle to take what she’d been about to offer some other worthless guy. Needed to grip the luscious curve of her hips with his other hand to drag her in closer.
Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew he was moving too fast for her to possibly enjoy the kiss, let alone keep up with him. But even though she should have been fighting him, her arms were twined around his neck and she was moaning softly against his mouth as her tongue pressed out to slide against his.
Sweet Lord, Sophie was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. Her scent, her taste, the feel of her. He couldn’t stop his hand from creeping up from her hips to her waist, to the bottom of her rib cage and then—
holy hell, she felt good
—the curve of one breast in his palm.
She gasped into his mouth, shivering with pleasure as his thumb crested the aroused tip, and Jake knew he was barely a breath away from lowering her to the grass and pulling her dress up her long legs, until he could touch and lick and—
What the hell was he doing?
Knowing Sophie didn’t stand a chance of fighting off a guy like him if he put her in his sights, his gut churned with self-hatred as he abruptly released her, so quickly that she stumbled back in her heels. Even though he knew better than to ever touch her again, he couldn’t let her fall. As soon as he knew she was steady on her feet, he forced himself to let go, the need to pull her back into his arms so strong it felt like it was clawing at his insides.
Sophie’s mouth was swollen from his rough kiss, her cheeks were flaming, and her eyes were shining with what he assumed were budding tears. He expected her to slap him, or at the very least, to turn and run to her brothers to tell them what had just happened.
So that they could kill him.
Which was exactly what he deserved for daring to kiss those too-sweet lips.
But she didn’t run. And she wasn’t crying. Instead, she stood in front of him looking more beautiful than she ever had before. One part vulnerable, the other part stunned.
“No one has ever kissed me like that,” she said in a breathless voice, “like you couldn’t get enough, like you couldn’t stop yourself and I was driving you crazy. All these years and I never knew it would be like that.”
Jesus, it was hot when she replayed their kiss by turning it into words. But his chest twisted at the way she was acting—like he hadn’t been mauling her, like he hadn’t been seconds away from ripping her dress off and taking something from her she should never, ever give a guy like him. She was enough of a romantic to have made him out to be something other than the bastard he really was all these years.
Jake knew the truth. He came from a long line of bastards.
“Sophie,” he said in low, remorseful voice. “I never should have kissed you. Especially not like that.”
He’d been a crazed man without any self-control at all. A few more seconds and she would have been beneath him on the grass, her dress hiked up around her hips and pulled down beneath her breasts. If he’d done that to her, if he’d marked her with his out-of-control lust, he wouldn’t have waited for her brothers to kill him.
He would have done the job on himself, with pleasure.
“We were both part of what happened.” Her voice was soft, but surprisingly firm. Her eyes were clear and steady on his as she surprised the hell out of him, yet again, by actually saying the words, “I have wanted you to kiss me for a long time. A very long time.”
As she took another one of those deep breaths that nearly popped her out of her dress, Jake knew this was the universe paying him back for every bad thing he’d ever done. He felt like his collar was too tight, even though it was unbuttoned and he wasn’t wearing his tie any longer.
She moved closer. Too close. But he couldn’t make himself back away from her. Not when every last cell in his body wanted to erase the distance and go back to that place where she was finally in his arms.
“My brothers were losing it before the wedding when they saw me.” Jake couldn’t help but be impressed by her courage as she gestured to her dress, her hair, her face. “They kept asking me what was going on and I told them it was nothing. I told them all I wanted was to have fun with the hairdresser and makeup artist. But I was lying to them. And to myself.” She looked him straight in the eye. “I did it for you, Jake. To see if I could finally get you to notice that I was alive. To see that I’m not a little girl anymore with a silly crush. That I’m a woman.”
Jake didn’t have any experience with this kind of honesty, with a women opening up her heart to him like this and laying it at his feet. He could run a business worth millions. He could pilot a 70-foot yacht through rough waters after three sleepless nights. But he couldn’t keep up with the beautiful girl standing in front of him.
He knew his limits, knew that despite the success he’d had with his Irish pubs, he was still just a dumb kid of a bartender. Sophie deserved better, belonged with a guy who had as many college degrees as she did. One day, Jake knew, he’d be here at her wedding, watching her walk down the aisle, even though the vision of Sophie in another man’s arms—in another man’s bed—had him seeing red.
Hadn’t he known better than to let her get too close?
“The dress, the makeup, they look great, Nice.” He purposefully used her nickname, wanting her to remember who he was to her. “But they don’t change the fact that you’re going to have plenty of crushes on guys before you find the one who’s right for you.”
Something flared in her eyes, a look he’d seen flashes of over the past few months. “Do you really think so?” She ran her tongue over her full bottom lip and his blood pressure spiked another ten points. He could have sworn she was purposefully screwing with him when she leaned a little closer and said, “Do you really think I’m going to feel that way again with some other guy?”
Didn’t she realize there was nothing she could have said that would have gotten to him more? He couldn’t have her, but damn it, there wasn’t another man alive who was good enough for her, either. The thought of anyone else kissing her the way he had—the thought of her actively going out there to look for that kind of treatment—made him want to lock her up in a tower.
There was no way she could still be a virgin at twenty-five. But Jake still felt like he’d taken something from her with that rough kiss. That he’d dirtied up her innocence by shoving his tongue in her mouth and putting his hands on her.
“You deserve better.”
Sophie cocked her head to the side and frowned at him just as Lori hurried around the corner of the shed.
“There you are, Soph! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Lori skidded to a stop when she realized her twin wasn’t alone. “Jake? What are you doing with—” Sophie’s sister didn’t finish her question as she frowned, looking between the two of them.
The Sullivan boys were bound to tear him apart with their bare hands for this.
But Lori? Her punishment was going to be even worse to make him pay for kissing her twin.
“The speeches are about to start. Everyone is wondering where you are, Soph, especially Ellen.” She pinned Jake with a look so sharp it could have sliced right through him. “And you, too.”
“Okay,” Sophie said in an overly bright voice. “Thanks for letting us know. We’ll be there in just a minute.”
But instead of leaving them alone, Lori stepped in front of Sophie. “You can’t go back in there looking like this.” She ran her hands through Sophie’s hair, fixing the mess Jake had made of it when he was pawing her. She brushed off a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her sister’s mouth, and shifted the dress an inch to the right. “That’s better. And, seriously, you should get back there before Ellen has a heart attack thinking some unruly loser of a guest was stupid enough to pull you off into the vines.”
Sophie was silent for a moment. “You’re right. I don’t want anything to fall through the cracks today. It wouldn’t be fair to Chase and Chloe.”
“We’ll be there in a sec,” Lori said. “I need to talk to Jake about something.”
“He kissed me,” Sophie told her sister, her expression stubborn as she faced her. “Now you don’t have to talk about it. Let’s go.” She grabbed her sister’s hand and made sure they walked together past the shed.
Yet again, Jake was impressed with Sophie. Lori had a will strong enough to push most people around. He’d always assumed Sophie was the beta to her sister’s alpha.
Had he gotten it wrong all these years? Had he made the mistake of underestimating Sophie just because she didn’t feel the need to be the center of attention like the rest of them?
“Oh no!” Sophie exclaimed. “That little boy is about to knock over the chocolate Eiffel Tower.” She quickly moving toward the long food table and the hungry boy, leaving Jake alone with Sergeant Lori.
He was a dead man.
“What the hell was going on back there?” She narrowed her eyes and snarled, “What were you doing to my sister?”
Jake wished he knew. One moment he’d been trying to protect Sophie from some worthless wedding guest who only wanted her in his bed...the next she’d been in his arms and he’d been kissing her as if his life depended on it.
Lori took a step closer and he had to fight the urge to take a step back in retreat. “If you hurt her, I will hunt you down and take great pleasure in hurting you, too. Badly.” She smiled at him, a turning up of the lips that promised a great deal of future pain should he ever screw up again where Sophie was concerned. “And you’d better believe that I’ll keep you alive just so that I can send my brothers in to finish you off.” She cleared her face of murder before saying, “Now walk me back to my table and make it look believable that you and I were off getting into our usual trouble.”
She slid her hand into the crook of his arm and pinched him hard, just in case he needed a reminder that tangling with Sophie was where the real trouble was.
Bigger trouble than any a screwup like him had ever been in before.
Chapter Five
After righting the fondue tower in the nick of time, and pointing the little boy toward a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, Sophie went to wash her hands and to take a few extra moments to compose herself. She put her hand on her belly as butterflies flew at the memory of how deliciously sensual she’d felt in Jake’s arms. He was even yummier, even more dangerous, even more potent, than she’d dreamed he’d be.
If only Lori hadn’t come searching for them, then maybe Sophie could have gotten past Jake’s all-too-clear remorse.
“You deserve better,”
was what he’d said to her just after the sweetness of his kiss had shot straight past her heart, all the way to her soul. At the very least, she wished she’d had time to convince him that his guilt and remorse were both misplaced.
She’d wanted that kiss just as much as he had. And they were two full-grown adults who could kiss whomever they wanted.
In any case, for the next few hours, she needed to push Jake’s kiss to the back of her mind and concentrate her attention where it should be: on making sure Chase and Chloe’s wedding was absolutely perfect. Later, she’d relive those moments when all her dreams came true, when she’d been in Jake’s arms and it felt like the sun was never going to stop shining, and it seemed utterly impossible that he might not actually want her beyond that kiss.
She let the guests’ laughter warm her before she headed to the big round table she was sharing with her siblings and their significant others. Noting that her mother, who was sitting with her close friends, had a worried look on her face, Sophie made sure to stop by her seat.
“It was a beautiful wedding, wasn’t it, Mom?”
“It was,” her mother agreed. But Mary’s eyes were too perceptive by half. “You’ve done enough work, Sophie. Have some fun.”
“I am,” she told her mother. And she was.
Kissing Jake McCann was the most fun she’d ever had in her life.
Lori and Jake walked by just then, arm in arm, Lori laughing at something he’d said, then punching him in the shoulder, hard enough that Sophie was fairly certain he was hiding a wince of pain behind his smile.
“Tell Jake he needs to get out from behind that bar, too. I want him to celebrate with the rest of us.”
Her mother had never asked her about her feelings for Jake. But Sophie had never been able to hide what was in her heart from her mother. Especially not now, when she was feeling more than she ever had for the man who had stolen her heart when she’d been a little girl, and had taken more of it every year that passed.
“I know how much you love to dance, and he’s the perfect height to be your partner,” Mary Sullivan suggested before kissing her daughter’s cheek.
Sophie felt her eyes grow wet. Of course her mother hadn’t commented on her makeup, her hair, or the dress. She’d simply seen beneath everything on the outside straight to what was going on inside.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” Mary Sullivan kissed her again. “Now, be sure to tell your brothers to keep those speeches clean.”
Budding tears gave way to laughter as Sophie said, “Would it be bad if I told Zach and Ryan they’re needed on the other side of town, instead?”
Her mother laughed with her at the thought that her brothers would even think about staying in line when given the chance to say something shocking about Chase in front of such a large crowd.
Sophie quickly stopped by Chase and Chloe’s seats. “Is everything going okay so far?”
Chloe hugged her tight. “It’s the most beautiful wedding in the world. I can hardly believe it’s mine.”
“Thanks, sis,” Chase said, “You’re one heck of a wedding planner.”
Sophie didn’t bother to hide her wide grin. She adored Chloe and was beyond thrilled for Chase. “If it’s okay with both of you, I’d like to get rolling on the speeches.”
When they agreed, Sophie walked up to the table where her brothers and sister were waiting for her to set them loose. Before anyone could ask her where she’d been for the past half hour, she gave the microphone to Marcus. “You’re first, and then pass the microphone to the next oldest. Jake will go after the boys, then Lori and I will go last.”