“Your brothers would kill me if anything happened to you.” Hell, they’d kill him if they ever suspected the way he was thinking about her.

“Actually,” she said as she looked over his shoulder, “I think my brother’s guests might kill both of us if we don’t keep serving them drinks.”

Very reluctantly, Jake shifted back into position. But even though he didn’t spill a drop and his fingers didn’t slip on any more bottles, his attention was wholly focused on Sophie. Which was why he saw her shoot a glance at the a-hole who had been flirting with her just before saying, “I think he looks perfectly harmless. In fact...”

Jake tossed an empty bottle into the bin beneath the bar with a loud crash. “In fact what?”

“Since you don’t want to help me out with my plan to make my ex jealous, maybe I should use that guy instead.”

“Sammy,” he called out across the reception area, motioning for his employee to take over the bar again. He didn’t wait for Sam to make it to the bar before wrapping his hand around Sophie’s wrist and pulling her out from behind the bar. He didn’t stop walking until they were hidden behind a large storage shed, just on the edge of the reception area.

“No.”

She looked down at his hand where it was still clamped around her wrist. “There are thousands of other words in the English language, you know.”

He ignored her sarcasm and told her flat out, “You are not getting within a hundred feet of that guy again.”

Anger flared in her eyes. Eyes that had been full of happy tears, full of pure joy, just a short while ago. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Like hell I can’t.”

She yanked her arm from his and started to walk away, but he couldn’t let her go. Not when she was bound to do something stupid, like kiss a smarmy doctor. And maybe even offer him her body, those sweet curves slipping and sliding beneath him as she gave herself to him.

Furious at the picture of anyone touching Sophie like that, instead of just grabbing her wrist or her shoulders, this time Jake wrapped his arms all the way around her and pulled her into him. He held her tight, her chest pushing into his forearms, her height matching his so that her hips fit perfectly between his open legs, her soft hips pressing into his groin.

“Let go of me.”

“No.”

His new favorite word was muffled by her hair, so soft, so silky against his chin and lips. And the truth was, he couldn’t have let go of her for the world. Not just because he didn’t want that other guy touching her...but because he’d never wanted to hold anyone more than he did Sophie.

How long had he dreamed of holding her? Too many years to keep count. And yet, he’d never had a clue just how incredibly good she would feel in his arms, her dangerous curves pressed into him, her chest rising and falling against his arms.

“I’m not going to let you go until you promise me you’ll stay away from him.”

Now it was her turn to say, “No.”

He shifted his hand enough to slip a finger beneath her chin and turn her face so that he could look into her eyes. “Promise me, Sophie. It’s for your own good.”

Sophie yanked her face away from his hand, then her whole body, and when she turned to face him head-on, her eyes were flashing. “I can’t believe you just said that! Especially since you of all people have no idea whatsoever what’s good for me.”

“Wanna bet?”

His mouth was on hers before he could put the brakes on his desire. He was too angry, too frustrated with himself for wanting her this much—and her infuriating stubbornness—to be gentle.

Lips weren’t enough. He needed tongues. Needed to slide one hand into her hair to tilt her head at just the right angle to take what she’d been about to offer some other worthless guy. Needed to grip the luscious curve of her hips with his other hand to drag her in closer.

Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew he was moving too fast for her to possibly enjoy the kiss, let alone keep up with him. But even though she should have been fighting him, her arms were twined around his neck and she was moaning softly against his mouth as her tongue pressed out to slide against his.

Sweet Lord, Sophie was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. Her scent, her taste, the feel of her. He couldn’t stop his hand from creeping up from her hips to her waist, to the bottom of her rib cage and then—holy hell, she felt good—the curve of one breast in his palm.

She gasped into his mouth, shivering with pleasure as his thumb crested the aroused tip, and Jake knew he was barely a breath away from lowering her to the grass and pulling her dress up her long legs, until he could touch and lick and—

What the hell was he doing?

Knowing Sophie didn’t stand a chance of fighting off a guy like him if he put her in his sights, his gut churned with self-hatred as he abruptly released her, so quickly that she stumbled back in her heels. Even though he knew better than to ever touch her again, he couldn’t let her fall. As soon as he knew she was steady on her feet, he forced himself to let go, the need to pull her back into his arms so strong it felt like it was clawing at his insides.

Sophie’s mouth was swollen from his rough kiss, her cheeks were flaming, and her eyes were shining with what he assumed were budding tears. He expected her to slap him, or at the very least, to turn and run to her brothers to tell them what had just happened.

So that they could kill him.

Which was exactly what he deserved for daring to kiss those too-sweet lips.

But she didn’t run. And she wasn’t crying. Instead, she stood in front of him looking more beautiful than she ever had before. One part vulnerable, the other part stunned.

“No one has ever kissed me like that,” she said in a breathless voice, “like you couldn’t get enough, like you couldn’t stop yourself and I was driving you crazy. All these years and I never knew it would be like that.”

Jesus, it was hot when she replayed their kiss by turning it into words. But his chest twisted at the way she was acting—like he hadn’t been mauling her, like he hadn’t been seconds away from ripping her dress off and taking something from her she should never, ever give a guy like him. She was enough of a romantic to have made him out to be something other than the bastard he really was all these years.

Jake knew the truth. He came from a long line of bastards.

“Sophie,” he said in low, remorseful voice. “I never should have kissed you. Especially not like that.”

He’d been a crazed man without any self-control at all. A few more seconds and she would have been beneath him on the grass, her dress hiked up around her hips and pulled down beneath her breasts. If he’d done that to her, if he’d marked her with his out-of-control lust, he wouldn’t have waited for her brothers to kill him.

He would have done the job on himself, with pleasure.

“We were both part of what happened.” Her voice was soft, but surprisingly firm. Her eyes were clear and steady on his as she surprised the hell out of him, yet again, by actually saying the words, “I have wanted you to kiss me for a long time. A very long time.”

As she took another one of those deep breaths that nearly popped her out of her dress, Jake knew this was the universe paying him back for every bad thing he’d ever done. He felt like his collar was too tight, even though it was unbuttoned and he wasn’t wearing his tie any longer.

She moved closer. Too close. But he couldn’t make himself back away from her. Not when every last cell in his body wanted to erase the distance and go back to that place where she was finally in his arms.

“My brothers were losing it before the wedding when they saw me.” Jake couldn’t help but be impressed by her courage as she gestured to her dress, her hair, her face. “They kept asking me what was going on and I told them it was nothing. I told them all I wanted was to have fun with the hairdresser and makeup artist. But I was lying to them. And to myself.” She looked him straight in the eye. “I did it for you, Jake. To see if I could finally get you to notice that I was alive. To see that I’m not a little girl anymore with a silly crush. That I’m a woman.”

Jake didn’t have any experience with this kind of honesty, with a women opening up her heart to him like this and laying it at his feet. He could run a business worth millions. He could pilot a 70-foot yacht through rough waters after three sleepless nights. But he couldn’t keep up with the beautiful girl standing in front of him.

He knew his limits, knew that despite the success he’d had with his Irish pubs, he was still just a dumb kid of a bartender. Sophie deserved better, belonged with a guy who had as many college degrees as she did. One day, Jake knew, he’d be here at her wedding, watching her walk down the aisle, even though the vision of Sophie in another man’s arms—in another man’s bed—had him seeing red.

Hadn’t he known better than to let her get too close?

“The dress, the makeup, they look great, Nice.” He purposefully used her nickname, wanting her to remember who he was to her. “But they don’t change the fact that you’re going to have plenty of crushes on guys before you find the one who’s right for you.”

Something flared in her eyes, a look he’d seen flashes of over the past few months. “Do you really think so?” She ran her tongue over her full bottom lip and his blood pressure spiked another ten points. He could have sworn she was purposefully screwing with him when she leaned a little closer and said, “Do you really think I’m going to feel that way again with some other guy?”

Didn’t she realize there was nothing she could have said that would have gotten to him more? He couldn’t have her, but damn it, there wasn’t another man alive who was good enough for her, either. The thought of anyone else kissing her the way he had—the thought of her actively going out there to look for that kind of treatment—made him want to lock her up in a tower.

There was no way she could still be a virgin at twenty-five. But Jake still felt like he’d taken something from her with that rough kiss. That he’d dirtied up her innocence by shoving his tongue in her mouth and putting his hands on her.

“You deserve better.”

Sophie cocked her head to the side and frowned at him just as Lori hurried around the corner of the shed.

“There you are, Soph! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Lori skidded to a stop when she realized her twin wasn’t alone. “Jake? What are you doing with—” Sophie’s sister didn’t finish her question as she frowned, looking between the two of them.

The Sullivan boys were bound to tear him apart with their bare hands for this.

But Lori? Her punishment was going to be even worse to make him pay for kissing her twin.

“The speeches are about to start. Everyone is wondering where you are, Soph, especially Ellen.” She pinned Jake with a look so sharp it could have sliced right through him. “And you, too.”

“Okay,” Sophie said in an overly bright voice. “Thanks for letting us know. We’ll be there in just a minute.”

But instead of leaving them alone, Lori stepped in front of Sophie. “You can’t go back in there looking like this.” She ran her hands through Sophie’s hair, fixing the mess Jake had made of it when he was pawing her. She brushed off a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her sister’s mouth, and shifted the dress an inch to the right. “That’s better. And, seriously, you should get back there before Ellen has a heart attack thinking some unruly loser of a guest was stupid enough to pull you off into the vines.”

Sophie was silent for a moment. “You’re right. I don’t want anything to fall through the cracks today. It wouldn’t be fair to Chase and Chloe.”

“We’ll be there in a sec,” Lori said. “I need to talk to Jake about something.”