Page 173 of Wild Then Wed
Her breath catches, barely audible over the jets behind us. She’s still watching me, but she doesn’t speak.
“I don’t want to kiss you as your fake husband,” I clarify, tucking a piece of damp hair behind her ear. “I want to kiss you as me, Sawyer. And I want you to kiss me as you, Wren.”
She’s still for a second, the kind of stillness that crackles between us like a live wire.
And then she leans in, and my world as I know it tilts on its axis.
Her lips meet mine, soft at first—just a breath, a hesitation—before she kisses me like she’s been starving for it. Like every glance, every late-night note, everyalmosthas led us here, and she’s done holding back.
She’s still in my lap, still warm and wet and perfect, and I slide my hand around the side of her neck, my thumb brushing her jaw. Her mouth opens against mine and I groan somewhere deep in my throat, because fuck, this isn’t careful or sweet or restrained.
It’s hunger. It’s relief. It’s weeks of pretending we weren’t already drowning in this.
Her tongue tangles with mine, and I grip her waist hard enough to bruise, like I might lose myself in her if I don’t hold on. Her fingers slide into my hair, tugging just enough to drive me fucking insane and her hips roll again, instinctual and needy, as if kissing isn’t nearly enough. Like she’s trying to crawl inside of my skin and live there.
Like she needsmore.
And I’d give it to her.
I’d give her every last thing she wanted.
Chapter 29
WREN
His mouth is on mine and I don’t even remember how we got here.
One second I was on his lap, pretending I still had the upper hand. The next, I was melting into him—his lips warm and insistent against mine. He tastes like champagne and heat and something steadier beneath it all. Something that makes my brain fog and my stomach twist in a way that feels dangerously good.
His hands grip my ass, guiding my hips with a certainty that steals my breath. Every roll of my body drags a moan from his chest, and I feel him beneath me, hard and throbbing. The power of it—of knowing that I make him feel like this—coils low in my belly until I’m moving faster,harder, chasing the way his fingers dig into my skin.
Our mouths are tangled together, hot and open and full of all the things we’ve been holding back. He kisses the way he looks at me—intense, all in, like he’s not thinking about anything else. Like he wouldn’t even know how.
His tongue brushes mine and I nearly whimper. I’m trying not to show how much it affects me, how nervous I still am—because it’s been a long time since anyone’s kissed me like this.Hell, it’s been a long time since anyone’s kissed me at all. It feels so good I have to grip his shoulders just to stay upright.
You can have sex with someone and still not feel them. Not really. Not in the way that matters. Sex can be bodies moving in the dark, a collision of heat and hunger, all friction with no meaning behind any of it. It can be something you walk away from—untouched, unchanged, unscathed.
But a kiss is a surrender.
It’s the moment your breath becomes someone else’s. The second your pulse syncs to the rhythm of theirs. It’s lips parting like a confession, like the truth is something you can only speak skin to skin.
A kiss doesn’t let you dip your toes in—it pulls you whole into the deep end where the water presses against your ribs. It peels back all those careful layers, the polite pretenses, until there’s nothing left but the glorious, messy truth of who you are. Kisses are quiet, holy things. Sacred in their simplicity. Devastating in their tenderness. The universe whispering the same secret against two sets of lips at once.
It’s a tragedy. A travesty, really. We should’ve been kissing since the second we started pretending not to want to. We should’ve kissed in the kitchen. On the porch. That night on the balcony.
It feels like something we’ve been circling—through grief and silence, through all the things we lost before we ever found our way to each other.
But maybe we had to break a little first. Maybe we had to grow into the kind of people who could kiss each other like this—like we mean it, like we’ve always meant it.
I think we were made for kissing, he and I.
Sawyer’s tongue strokes deeper into my mouth, slow and sure, and I moan. The sound slips out of me before I even knowit’s coming, and I don’t care—I’m too far gone to be embarrassed now.
His hand cradles my jaw as he tilts my head and kisses me harder, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth. Like he doesn’t want to miss a single part of this.
I suck gently on his bottom lip and he groans, low and wrecked, pulling back just enough to whisper, “I’m not gonna last much longer if you keep doing that.”
My heart stutters. Everything in me feels hot and wired and alive. I look up at him—because even sitting, he’s taller, broader, taking up space in a way that makes me feel both small and entirely seen—and I say, quietly but without hesitation, “I want more.”
