“I’m fucking serious. I was an idiot. I wanted to hurt you after you’d hurt me with Bad Suit…with Asher,” he ground out the name. “You hurt me. I told you I wasn’t jealous, that I didn’t care, and it was a bold-faced lie. I was blind with jealousy that you’d gone home with someone else when you could have been with me. I wanted you to feel that. It was wrong. I get it now. All right? I get it.”

“That doesn’t change anything though,” she said, but the venom had left her voice. “So you were jealous? Mission accomplished. Didn’t change shit.”

“You haven’t been around. You don’t know whether or not I’ve changed.”

Andrea rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”

“So, you can change, but I can’t? You can want love, marriage, and kids after ten years, but I can’t? Somehow, I’m standing still, the same guy you went to Yale with, but you get to grow up?” he demanded.

“I didn’t say that…”

“You did. And I’m here to tell you, that’s bullshit. I’ve been standing in Brady’s shadow for a long fucking time. But, watching him with Liz, I feel more like I’m on the sidelines of something great. It never felt like a difference to me before now. But he’s happy. She’s happy. They’re so in love that it’s practically sickening,” he admitted. “Yeah, I’m happy for them. Not jealous or angry about Brady getting everything he’s ever wanted. All I know is that…what I’ve always wanted is standing right in front of me. And I’m not letting you walk away again.”

Then, before she could say another word to contradict him, he dropped his mouth down on hers, kissing her with every ounce of passion flooding between them from four months of missing her and fifteen years of being desperately in love.

Chapter 23

THEN TAKE ME

Andrea gasped against his lips.

She tasted like heaven and smelled even better. It was as if Clay had spent the last decade with her, yet she had just reawakened all of his senses. His hand ran down the side of her body. It ignited something between them, and soon, she was clinging to the front of his suit.

His tongue ravaged her mouth, taking everything she was giving back. It had been so damn long. The way he’d had her back in his townhouse just hadn’t been enough, and it had been interrupted way too soon. There was no way he was going to let that happen now.

“I need you,” he groaned deep in the back of his throat.

“Then, take me.”

That was all the confirmation he needed.

Clay grasped the backs of her thighs and hoisted her legs up and around his waist. She made the most amazing squeak he had ever heard. He could die a happy man with that noise.

“Fuck, that’s sexy.”

He started walking them farther away from the party, and Andrea’s head popped up. “Where are we going?”

“Who fucking cares? I need you. Right now.”

She had never cared about public fornication before…and, technically, it was a private event.

She ran her hand down his cheek, scraping her nails across the soft stubble that had come in along his jawline. “Dirty boy.”

He grinned and kicked open the door to the waiting area they had used earlier. The girls’ stuff was still scattered across the room, but his mind was set on the large black couch along the windowed wall. If it had been up to him, he would have fucked her right there against the wall of the Biltmore mansion. But he didn’t want to disrupt Brady’s wedding. He owed his brother that much.

But not enough to stop.

He needed to be in his woman. He needed her with a fiery passion that he hadn’t even known existed. He just needed her.

All of her.

He didn’t want there to be anything left hanging between them by the end of this. She needed to know how he felt about her. No more games. No more miscommunication. No more fucking time apart. Just him and her in this moment.

Without preamble, they crashed back onto the couch. Andrea still had her legs wrapped around his waist, and he bucked against her as they fell. She moaned with her head back on the cushion. Then, she grasped his face and brought his lips back down on hers. He wasn’t complaining.

He couldn’t get enough of her. Four months had been an eternity. Not from the lack of sex. He’d had some of that, and it hadn’t mattered. It hadn’t quenched a damn thing inside him. It hadn’t released him from this thing eating away at his insides. For those months, all he had wanted was one thing. One thing to fix him.

Andrea.

And, now, she was here.

His hands ran down her dress. Fuck, he had missed her perfect body. All lithe and bendy. Gorgeous. Just for him.

He slipped a finger inside the top of her dress and flicked it across her nipple until she gasped again.

“Don’t you dare tease me,” she told him.

“I’d never dream of it.”

But he didn’t stop. She liked it. She was practically writhing beneath him. Without another thought, he yanked the material aside completely and brought the erect nipple into his mouth. Her legs tightened around his waist. A whimper escaped her lips but no words about stopping him.

He flicked his tongue across the sensitive skin while he worked on the other one, fiddling with the bud between his fingers. He gently drew it between his teeth while he pulled the other one, being less than gentle. And her entire body tightened around him.

“Clay,” she whispered, “I can’t…I can’t wait.”

He continued to hold one of her nipples between his fingers while his other hand trailed between them. He pushed up the skirt of her dress and found her without panties again.

Fuck.

He would never buy her panties again if this was going to keep happening. As much as he enjoyed ripping them off of her…the thought of her never wearing them was just as appealing.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, slipping a finger between the folds of her body.

“Oh God,” she murmured.

She clearly did want him very bad. She was soaked, and all he wanted to do was bury himself deep inside her and never leave.

But this wasn’t only about him. He wanted her to get off, too. More than once if he could help it.

He circled two fingers around in her wetness until her hips started bucking against his hand, demanding him to enter. He ran his thumb across her already sensitive clit, and she shivered all over. It was goddamn sexy as hell. Not that he had her in submission, but that she was allowing him to give her this pleasure. That he could bring this out of her. That they could bring this out of each other because, frankly, he was as hard as a rock beneath this goddamn suit.