Off-Limits

Chapter Five: Two Kinds of First Night

The bridal suite door had barely clicked shut behind them before Cassidy had Mason's bow tie undone, tossing it somewhere over her shoulder without looking to see where it landed.

"Mrs. Cole," Mason murmured against her throat, and she laughed — that loud, unguarded laugh he'd fallen for a year ago and never once gotten tired of — and pulled him backward toward the enormous bed with its ridiculous amount of rose petals someone on the venue staff had clearly gone overboard with.

"Say it again," she said, working his shirt buttons open one by one, deliberately slow, watching his face while she did it.

"Mrs. Cole." He caught her hands, stilling them, and kissed her instead — slower than the urgency of the moment technically called for, but a year of knowing each other had taught him that Cassidy liked to be made to wait sometimes, liked the anticipation dragged out even when neither of them had the patience for it. "You planned a hell of a wedding, Cassidy Cole."

"I planned a hell of a wedding night," she corrected, and reached behind herself for the zipper of her dress.

He got there first, sliding it down slow, pressing a kiss to every inch of newly bared skin as the dress loosened and finally slipped from her shoulders, pooling around her feet in white silk. She stood in front of him in nothing but lace the same ivory color as the dress, tattoos winding up one arm and disappearing under the thin strap at her shoulder, and even after a year together, even after more nights than either of them could count, the sight of her still hit him like the first time — maybe more, now, knowing every inch of what came next and wanting it anyway.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm allowed. It's my wedding day."

"Fair point." She reached for him, pulling his shirt the rest of the way off, her palms flat against his chest, walking him backward until his knees hit the mattress and he sat, and she climbed into his lap, straddling him, her mouth finding his again with none of the earlier patience left in either of them.

He got the clasp of her bra open with practiced ease, and she shrugged out of it, arching into his hands when they found her breasts, thumbs dragging over n*****s already stiff, her hips grinding down against him in a slow, deliberate roll that had him groaning against her collarbone. A year of marriage-in-waiting had taught them both exactly what worked, and neither of them had any interest in reinventing the wheel tonight — just savoring, with the particular hunger of two people who knew the whole night stretched out ahead of them and no reason to rush.

She slid off his lap only to push him fully onto his back and go to work on his belt, and when she finally freed him, she wrapped her hand around him first, slow, watching his reaction before she lowered her mouth, taking him in with the same unhurried confidence she'd had that very first night. He fisted a hand in her loose hair, hips flexing up into the heat of her mouth, and let himself enjoy exactly how well his wife knew what she was doing.

"Cassidy —" His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "If you keep doing that I'm not going to last."

She pulled back, lips kiss-swollen, grinning up at him with wicked satisfaction. "Good thing we've got all night, then."

He flipped her onto her back before she could argue, peeling the last scrap of ivory lace down her long legs and settling between her thighs, and when he put his mouth on her she arched clean off the rose-petal-strewn sheets with a moan that probably carried further than either of them cared about at that moment. He took his time — slow, deliberate, building her toward the edge and backing off twice just to hear the frustrated curse she threw at him each time — until finally he let her have it, and she came apart against his mouth with a cry that echoed off the suite's high ceilings.

"Condom," she managed, breathless, already reaching for the nightstand where they'd stashed a small, deliberate stockpile earlier that week. "Husband. Now."

He laughed, rolling it on, and when he finally sank into her, she wrapped her legs around him with a satisfied groan, pulling him deep. They moved together the way they always did — hard, unhurried about none of it, her nails dragging down his back, his name breaking on her lips somewhere in the middle of it, the two of them finding a rhythm that had built over a year and hadn't gotten anywhere close to boring yet. She came again with his name and a fistful of the sheets, clenching tight around him, and he followed soon after, groaning into her shoulder, both of them collapsing into rose petals and tangled ivory silk, breathless and thoroughly, happily wrecked.

"Best wedding night in the history of weddings," Cassidy said, into his chest, already half-asleep.

"Second best," Mason said. "First one's tomorrow."

She swatted him, laughing, and didn't argue.

• • •

Jake picked a restaurant two blocks from Veronica's apartment — quiet, unpretentious, nothing that looked like it was trying to impress anyone, because he'd decided, somewhere around 4 p.m. that afternoon, that trying too hard was exactly the wrong move with this particular woman.

She showed up in a simple dark dress, hair down, and something in Jake's chest tightened the second he saw her walking toward the table — not the old familiar hum of a night about to go a certain way, but something steadier, more unsettling in its own fashion, the particular vertigo of actually wanting to get something right.

"You look nervous," she said, sliding into the seat across from him.

"I am nervous."

"That's new."

"Everything about this is new," Jake said. "I don't really have a playbook for it."

That got a real smile out of her — not the guarded almost-smile from the wedding, something warmer — and dinner unspooled easily after that, conversation moving without the old effort he used to put into it, no lines, no performance, just two people who'd apparently been circling each other for a year finally allowed to stop pretending they weren't.

She told him about her job — creative director at a boutique branding agency, fiercely protective of her team, the specifics she'd been cagey about the first night finally filled in. He told her, more honestly than he'd told anyone in years, about the version of himself he'd spent the last year trying to leave behind, and why, and she listened without the wariness he'd half-expected, like she'd already done the work of deciding whether to believe him and had landed somewhere generous.

"I looked you up, you know," she admitted, over the last of the wine. "After the wedding. Asked around a little."

"That's not creepy at all."

"I wanted to know if 'the legend retired' was actually true, or just a line."

"And?"

"Mason confirmed it," she said. "Very reluctantly. He seemed personally offended that his best friend's reformation storyline didn't get more screen time."

Jake laughed, and reached across the table, and this time she let him take her hand, her fingers lacing through his like it was the easiest, most obvious thing in the world.

"Walk me home?" she said, when the check was long paid and neither of them had found a reason to leave.

He did. The night was cool and quiet, her hand still in his, and outside her building she stopped, turning to face him under the streetlight the same way she'd studied him that very first night at the party — except there was nothing guarded in it now.

"I had a good time," she said.

"Me too."

"Don't ruin it by being smooth about the next part."

"I wasn't going to be smooth," Jake said, and meant it, and when he leaned down and kissed her — slow, careful, like something he'd been waiting a year to get right — there was nothing practiced in it at all, just a kind of quiet, overwhelming relief, her hand fisting gently in the front of his jacket, pulling him closer, the kiss deepening into something neither of them seemed in any hurry to end.

When they finally broke apart, breathless, her forehead resting against his, she let out a small, disbelieving laugh.

"So," she said. "Second date?"

"Absolutely," Jake said. "Whenever you want it."

"Good," Veronica said, and kissed him again before she let herself through the door, leaving him standing on the sidewalk grinning like an i***t, feeling, for the first time in over a year, like he'd finally stopped chasing something and actually caught it.

• • •

Chapter Six: Weeks of dating in secret — until Mason finds out, and it doesn't go the way either of them hoped.