Page 104 of Doing It for Love

Landon: Yeah…I’ll be having those nightmares too.

“Put your phone away!” Theresa bats at my hand. “It’s singles night.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I tease, but I turn the screen off and tuck it away. The stage performers are dancing to “Wild Thing,” and the guy in the assless chaps keeps making eyes at me. At least he’s just got scruff and not a full-out ten-incher.

Normally, I’d give Theresa a “hell no” to a place like this, but maybe bachelorette nights are more for the best friend than they are for the bride. Tonight will be our last night together like this. She’s keeping me company while Landon crashes at Alec’s, and I’m going to make sure she’s okay after the robbery. They still haven’t caught the guy, and though Theresa puts on a brave face and says she’s over it, I find her rubbing her neck and frowning at times. And I wonder just who that necklace was from and why it’s so important. I’ve asked, but she told me it wasn’t a big deal. She just really liked it.

“Hey!” Theresa calls over the music, and I lean in close. “I wanna know…who caved?”

“What?”

“We didn’t exactly catch y’all clothed this morning.”

The music thumps louder, covering my laugh.

“Looks like I’ll be packing a winter coat.”

Her mouth drops open and she tosses her hands in the air. “Liz! You had two days! You couldn’t waittwo days?”

I shrug with a wide grin, and bring my rum and Coke to my lips.

“Well, damn you. All this attitude, all the chocolate, everything you went through just to give in two days before. And you don’t even look sorry about it!”

“I’m not.”

“You should at least apologize to me. I had to deal with your uptight ass.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

She’s right. “It was well worth it.”

“It better have been. Now, give me that veil so I can get a group lap dance.” She fights the veil from my head, since that thing has been attracting almost every stripper in the place, and Mom and Jaycee come join me at the table. Mom doesn’t sit down, but leans right up against the stage, and her Southern accent really comes out when she starts yelling at the dancers to “take off them clothes!”

I take a sip of my drink, trying to stay in the moment and be single for one more night, but the truth is, I haven’t been single since I met Landon. And my mind keeps drifting to last night.

He washed me in the shower. I don’t remember the last time he did that for me. I washed him too, and there weren’t many kisses shared, but we touched in other ways. His fingers ran over every inch of me, and I did the same to him. And I knew when I’d hit his hills, his valleys, his ridges, and though it didn’t feel new…it felt better. I knew the stories behind all the marks and muscles. I knew why he had a tattoo and why he hated it. I knew about the roller-coaster scar and the table-saw scar and the tattoo hewisheshe had but hasn’t been able to afford.

And because I knew every one of these things, and he knew every inch of my body and the stories under the skin, we didn’t have to say anything. We did, because both Landon and I can’t help but open our mouths during foreplay, but during the quiet moments I knew I didn’t have to ask about anything to bring us closer.

He helped me out of the shower, and we didn’t make it out of the bathroom for another twenty minutes. He laid a towel across the counter and his strong arms lifted me from my feet and he kissed me as deep as he ever has. It was swimming in an ocean of fire, and it swept me into a storm of heat that leaves me breathless just thinking about it.

Then I felt it kick in my stomach. That need and desire for so much more than peas-and-carrots lovemaking, and suddenly we were the main course, the appetizer, the palate cleanser, and we had moved from room to room, from floor to couch to bed, touching and kissing and loving each other so much I thought I’d burst from the fill I was getting.

But when we got to the bed, and he laid me down on the pillows, Lord Landon ready to enter at last after the most erotic foreplay we’d ever had, Landon tucked me in, pulled me against his chest, and said, “I want to save it.”

“Save it?”

“We’re so close, and I want to save it till our wedding night.”

I nearly laughed at him, but I was so deeply satisfied with what we’d done already that I couldn’t find it in me.

“Can we have a sexfest?”

He smiled. “You can have whatever you want.”

I wanted to tell him he just gave me everything I wanted. But as always, I chose sarcastic comment over cheesy honesty. However, I think that’s part of the reason he loves me, because it’s definitely part of the reason I love him.

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