Page 92 of For Pleasure Or Worse

Natalia scratched her fingers softly through the hair at the nape of my neck.

“But the real reason I went to hell and made it home was because you were waiting for me here. Like fate. Then I told you that story that night and you turned around and howled at the moon with me and goddammit, Tal, something dormant in my body woke up for the first time. It all connected.”

“You’re the first person who ever stopped and made me look,” she murmured. “I needed you just as much.”

Our car cruised through lighter traffic and Natalia unfurled herself from my lap, waving toward the driver. “Excuse me,” her sweet voice called out as she knocked on the sunroof. “Can you open this?”

The large window retracted and I grabbed Natalia at the knees as she stood, poking her head and shoulders through the vast opening. “Baby, what are you doing?” I couldn’t help the smile that split my mouth in half as she looked back down at me through the feathers on her dress, completely taken with herself.

“Come on, Mateo, be my big bad wolf.”

“Will I even fit?” I laughed and stood. Our bodies pressed flush against one another, which did nothing to tamper that earlier incessant lust as she inadvertently straddled my thigh. I hoisted her higher and held her hips against the edge of the open roof.

There was a mumble of protest from inside the car but it got drowned out by my wife filling her lungs with air and bellowing toward the bright yellow Vegas moon like the tiny she-wolf she was. My chest hurt with happiness. Everything in my body hurt, like my emotions were trying to burst through my skin and getting stuck. I could combust with it. “Fuck, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said softly.

I followed her lead and let the sound rumble to life deep in my chest before howling toward the sky. We took turns letting it out, all the way to our destination.

We foundour wedding party in the dark nightclub and Pike sighed out in relief as if the last two hours of his life had aged him twenty years. “All good, I assume?” he asked.

“All is great, brother.” I smiled so hard I felt my dimple deepen in my cheek. So much for playing it cool. I would keep our little wedding chapel secret for as long as I needed to, but fuck if it wasn’t going to be hard not to tell my best friend. I wanted to shout it. My lips thinned awkwardly and Pike tilted his head. “We worked it out.”

“She chewed your ass out, didn’t she?” He glanced down at a mirthful Natalia. She was loving every second of that assumption, because Pike was used to watching her give me hell. He’d been on the other side of the wall to it for over a year.

“She laid it on really good,” I fibbed. “We had a lot on our minds.”

“Where’d you two run off to?” Echo shouted over the music, then reached down attempting to ball tap me but was thwarted by my hand. “Got anything left in there, Cap?”

Ophelia swatted his arm. “Leave them alone, Tyler. They love each other again.”

“I could go all night, pretty boy,” I said. “You could learn a thing or two.”

Natalia squeezed my fingers and blinked her long eyelashes at me and I leaned down to ravage her with a kiss that quickly put everyone in the wedding party on the same page. Back to our game and our night, at a club somehow louder and more packedthan the previous two. Vegas was becoming one blur of lights and thudding bass with our scavenger list items stuck like pins through a map.

Angelo’s eyes were hidden in a plastic cup full of beer and I crooked a finger toward him. He silently, reluctantly, stepped up to the plate. There was a nervous glint in his eyes, but there was nothing left to say. He knew exactly why I was summoning him. The same way we knew as kids that our father was going to discipline us for stealing gum from the corner store, or riding our bikes down the train tracks. We answered the call, and suffered the consequences. I sighed, because it hurt me as much as it hurt him, and then I gave him one good slap on the side of the head.

His lips thinned and he rolled his neck on his shoulders. “I deserved that.”

“Mia is a hard fucking limit.”

“I’m not interested,” Ang replied, so quickly it gave me pause. “I just don’t feel like doing a jig at your wedding. You should be a little more appreciative.”

“We’ll see when we win.” There wasn’t much left on the list to make a fool of ourselves with, thankfully. A few less daring objectives, and one more salacious one. It wasn’t like we had to do everything there; we just had to doonemore thing than the girls, and I’d lost count of them anyway.

We found a large round booth to sit at and ordered another round of drinks. Every one of us had crossed the threshold from sober to sentimental, entering that weird fuzzy limbo where the trips to the bathroom were like getting off a carnival ride and finding your feet again. My heart was fueled, my chest was warm, I sipped my gin, and across from me my bubbly wife got lost in a martini glass and teased her tongue over her lips to lick off the excess.

Dammit if I didn’t think about licking it off myself.

Natalia’s heel inched out and grazed my shin below the table. When the toe of her shoe crept up to my knee, I snatched her ankle, drawing patterns in the bone with the pad of my thumb. I couldn’t touch her like I wanted to, which was becoming a problem for my body. My manhood was rebelling against my wish to remain cool and collected and instead was playing the pop-a-boner-in-public game. I needed something to alleviate it. A brisk walk, a cold shower, ice down the back of my shirt, anything. I dropped Tally’s ankle and stood.

“Does anyone need anything?”

Everyone at the table declined and I sped off before anyone decided to join me. A small alcove beside the bar was empty, and I stood in it with my hands behind my head and my eyes closed, picturing mangled, boot-bound athlete’s foot and the unattended barracks bathrooms at Fort Liberty.

Yep, that’d do it.

For the time being, at least. Until I caught another glimpse of Tally and my cock decided it wanted to be a real boy again.

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