How to Ruin a Wedding(27)

“What did you say to him?” I ask as I try to grab my carry-on from him.

“A secret.” He winks at me. Did you charm him or threaten him or both?

He grabs my hand I’m aiming toward my carry-on and guides it toward the side of my jeans. The warmth of his large palm presses against my hand as he places it inside my pocket before pulling his away.

“You know I was wrong, though. I did kick his luggage.”

“He should have moved it,” he says.

“I should have been patient,” I say.

“And he should have been understanding.”

A laugh rumbles through me. “I think we both know the truth here.”

“Maybe,” he says as the automatic doors slide open for us, “but I’m team Lucinda, right or wrong.”

Heat slides down my body. I look sidelong at him while we walk to the airport garage.

“I’m thirty minutes early,” I say as we cross the roadway, turn signals blinking, cars honking, people chatting, and guards yelling at people not to park for more than literally five seconds at a time. “How early did you get here?”

“I was tracking your flight, so I knew you’d be landing.”

“Of course you were,” I mutter.

He shoots out his arm, and my chest bumps into it. Better his body than the metal doors I nearly walked into. When I right myself, we walk to the elevator, and he presses the top button. He whistles softly as we wait.

A bundle of voices joins us in one wave of loud noise just as the elevator doors open. Funnily, it’s a bachelorette party. One girl has a Bride banner draped across her white minidress, and all the other girls, in pink miniskirts, stumble over each other as one—the maid of honor, probably—leads the charge.

“All right, ladies,” she says as Anders walks in first. “There will be no stopping, no breaks, straight to the bar, and we will not sleep until tomorrow.”

They all cheer, and I swear they don’t even see me. Like the most beautiful NFL football team made of perfectly curled hair and six-inch stilettoes, they charge into the elevator. I’m tackled by their bodies and herded in like a sheep.

Anders looks up from dropping my carry-on on my suitcase and reaches out to me as I try to avoid being trampled.

He catches me and pulls me into his chest. The girls shuffle in. The scent of vanilla and tequila engulfs us as the doors shut, and everyone squishes against each other like sardines in a can.

His arms snake around my waist. I grip the fabric of his shirt as we’re pressed up against the back wall of the tiny box.

“Guys, there are other people here,” the girl right beside us says.

“Who wants shots?” someone else asks.

The brunette beside us gives me an apologetic smile as a body shoves me so close to Anders that there is scientifically no way we can be any closer without merging into one person.

My blood hums. I look up and catch Anders’s jaw clenching. I try to move so I’m not making him too uncomfortable.

My hands slide up his chest, and his pulse quickens beneath my palm. I move my legs, but Anders must have the same thought because he adjusts himself, too, and I end up with his thigh between both of mine.

Heat, blazing and fast, flares between my thighs. The shock of it makes a needy whimper bundle at the base of my throat. He hardens against me and I freeze. The way my heartbeat pounds in my ears and the shot of need throbbing at my crotch steals my breath. The slightest movement will wrench the moan from my lips.

Anders clears his throat. I press my forehead against his chest and hold my breath.

An insane, irrational, idiotic brain cell screams at me to move. To learn how it would feel to free myself of the tension simmering under my skin. To place just the slightest pressure where my currently pulsing center begs for it.

I start counting backward from ten. The lack of free space is the reason for my nipples tightening and straining against the fabric of my shirt, and simultaneously, the only reason Anders can’t see my body’s reaction to him, to us.

A bing echoes around us. The girls shuffle out. As soon as cool air swirls behind me, I push myself off Anders and whirl around so fast my vision blurs.

I’m out of the elevator in half a second, crossing arms against my chest, trying to hide my nipples. Anders moves past me, pulling my luggage behind him.

“I’m just up here,” he says tightly as he leads. Veins peek through the skin of his hand as he grips my suitcase.

“Right.”

My stomach is doing Olympic-worthy gymnastics while I continue to count backward and forward, trying to lower my blood pressure to an acceptable rate. We pause at what I think is a Jeep, but the back is a bit bigger than the Wranglers I’ve seen before.

He pops open the trunk and lifts up my bag with an ease that undoes whatever minuscule cooling-off progress I managed to achieve. If I were connected to a monitor in the hospital, the staff would assume I was having a stroke.

I swallow and keep my legs far apart to prevent the slightest bit of friction.

Anders walks toward the passenger side and opens the door. I can’t hold back my groan. When I reach him, he smiles. I grab his hand, remove it from the handle, shut the door, and then open it again.

My finger points accusingly at him. “I told you not to do this.”

He chuckles a low rumble that brings a victorious blush to my cheeks. “I never said I wouldn’t.”