Page 119 of Backlash

“This way,” she says with the easy smile of someone beginning to feel their champagne.

“I can see that. Where will we end up?”

“Shh. Shh.” She places an index finger on my lips and looks around in exaggerated paranoia. “It’s a secret.”

Definitely feeling the champagne.

The country club building is huge, and the more stairs we climb, the fewer people we see.

“Don’t you want to dance?” I ask.

“It’s a kind of dancing, yes,” she says with a devilish grin, pulling me into a room marked linen.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Lucky. I don’t have protection, and there are people—”

“What’s wrong with lots of people?” She says with the slow precision of a person determined to sound less tipsy than they really are. “There should be lots of people at a wedding. They’re there to look at you and tell you how happy you look. Oh, and the presents. They give presents. Presents are good.”

“We don’t want a wedding like this, Lucky. Weddings should be small and intimate. Only the people you really care about should come.”

Her breath hitches, her eyes sparkling with something other than champagne. “You’re planning our wedding, huh?”

“Adair MacLaine, I’ve known you were it for me since the moment I first saw you.” I cup her chin in my hand. “And then you were a bitch, and I was a dick—and maybe we just both knew and it scared us. But we couldn’t fight it. We’ll never be able to fight this.”

“How can you…?” She searches my face.

“I’ve stopped thinking about my future. There’s only our future. I can’t see it any other way.”

“Sterling, I…” she trails off, at a loss.

“I’m all in, Adair. I love you.”

She pulls me to her like I’m the air she needs to breathe.

That’s how it should be. Her need fills me with purpose: to live a better life, to be a better person, to make her happy, safe, fulfilled. And it’s not just the obvious things—her sense of humor, her intelligence, her perfect body. It’s the little things I can’t get enough of. How the downy fuzz on the back of her neck stands up when I whisper in her ear. How the corners of her eyes crinkle when I tease her. How she opens for me when we make love, trusting me so completely. Each day there’s a new discovery, a new detail I never noticed. I want to spend the rest of my life discovering as many of them as I can.

“I need you inside me.” Her body hums with nervous energy. She tosses a pile of neatly folded towels to the ground, clearing space on a narrow counter set against the wall. There’s a moment of frenzied movement as I hike her skirt to her hips and lift her onto the edge of the counter. Her fingers fumble with my belt, unbuckling it and shoving my pants open enough to free me. Everything happens on instinct, each movement as inexorable as gravity.

Her gaze meets mine, and I know I would do anything to have her look at me this way forever.

I thrust, instantly relieved to be inside her. Adair’s arms coil around my shoulders as she melts against me. For a moment I wonder what I did to deserve her, how I could be lucky enough to be here now with her, promising each other forever with our bodies.

We’re not in a linen closet. We’re in our own special place, entirely within ourselves.

No one can find us here.

We have all the time we need.

And when we come down from our great heights, it is to a world laying at our feet, waiting for us to make it what we will.

“It’s so…much…better,” Adair pants, “that way.”

No, not better.

Perfect.

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Adair