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“I’m just pretending, honey. As instructed.”
Over the next hour, he snaked his arm slowly up her torso, first drawing lines up and down the back of her arm, then draping it across her shoulders, until he finally had his hand wrapped loosely around the back of her neck, his thumb rubbing small circles over the sensitive spot behind her ear.
She wanted to both melt into his touch and knee him in the balls for making her legs so wobbly. She turned to tell him to knock it off when the sound of clinking glassware got her attention.
Declan stood at the front of the room and motioned for the music to be turned down, smiling one of those million-dollar smiles when the crowd quieted and turned to face him.
"I want to thank all of you for coming tonight. Marriage is one of the hardest things I have ever done, and even though I wasn’t sure my baby brother would ever find the woman who could put up with him for the rest of his life, he somehow managed it.”
Viv felt Aidan stiffen beside her, and he dropped his hand from her neck. She looped her arm through his as much to anchor him and his temper as to touch him again.
“Viv,” Declan continued. “I couldn’t ask for a better partner for my brother, and I know you two will do everything in your power to make a strong, lasting relationship. To a lifetime of happiness.”
“To a lifetime of happiness!” The room cheered before downing their glasses.
“Well, that wasn’t very subtle,” Viv muttered, and Aidan huffed out a laugh.
Someone in the crowd started chanting for a kiss, and all eyes pivoted from Declan to where they stood in the center of the room. Jesus Christ, she couldn’t catch a break.
She turned to him and kept her voice low. “Just make it quick, Callahan. A brief moment of suffering.”
But he wouldn’t make it quick. She knew the moment she met his eyes, knew it in the way his hand slid up to cup her jaw. He could have given her a quick, innocent peck to satiate the crowd of hungry onlookers. He didn’t.
He took with an intensity that left her breathless. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she thought she should care that a room full of people was watching them right now, but she couldn’t force herself to. Not as his tongue teased against hers and his hand tightened on her jaw, his thumb pressing under her chin to ease her head back.
He was igniting a fire he would refuse to extinguish. She’d have to remember to hate him for it later. Right now, she was busy.
ChapterTen
When he pulled back, her eyes fluttered open and were cloudy with want. Her lips were swollen from his kiss, her lipstick slightly smudged. He heard chuckles from around the room as the music and conversation resumed. She finally looked as unsettled as he’d felt since seeing her in that damn dress.
“Might want to go touch up your lipstick, princess. Oh, that’s the one, isn’t it?" he asked when her eyes narrowed.
“You cannotcall me that.”
“I can. I will.” His eyes glittered as she met his gaze without flinching. “It’s fitting, I think.” He slid his hand down to the small of her back, grinning when she shivered.
“I need a break, sugar lips.” His lip curled, and she grinned. “Don't like that one? I guess I haven’t found the perfect one for you yet. I’ll have to keep trying. I'm going to make a quick run to the restroom. But you’ll have to actually let go of me first.”
He released her slowly and watched her go until she disappeared around the corner to the bathroom. Exasperating, headstrong, sexy woman. She'd painted her mouth an enticing shade of dark pink that stood out in stark contrast to her white dress—her very tight white dress.
He'd wanted to taste her lips from the moment he'd seen her across the room, could think of little else while he smiled and nodded through their string of polite exchanges with couple after couple. Quick and chaste had been the goal when Declan backed them into a corner, but temper had snapped through him at his brother’s speech, and rather than lashing out, he’d funneled it into her mouth instead.
Her tempting, kissable, heart-shaped mouth. She’d hardly resisted. If they hadn’t been standing in the middle of a room full of people, it wouldn’t have taken much more before he had her dress shoved up around her waist and his cock buried deep inside her.
That was the problem. He shouldn’t want her. He didn’t want to want her. Wanting her was not in his plan for how this marriage would go. And yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself. The sooner he scratched the itch, the sooner he could get it out of his system.
Without her there to stop him, he flagged a waiter down for a glass of scotch and crossed to where the two people he knew as well as his own brothers stood, watching him with knowing expressions.
“That was some kiss,” Rory said.
“Declan wanted a show.”
Liam snorted. “Is that what that was?”
“Shut up.”
He accepted the glass of scotch from the waiter, irritated at the quick pang of guilt in his gut before he brushed it away. The insufferable woman wasn’t his mother. He was allowed to drink at his own engagement party.
