“Let’s just get out of here,” Garrick said.
I agreed by looping my arms around his waist and laying my head against his chest.
Rowland said, “At least she’s relaxed now. I did you a favor.”
I was gloriously relaxed, in fact. And I figured . . . maybe we could stretch out this fake plane delay for a little longer, get a little time on our own in the city before I had to walk the plank. I slid my hands down to the leather belt that wrapped around his hips, and lifted up on my tiptoes. Humming, I found the warm crux where the muscles of his shoulder flowed into his neck. This was the perfect part of him. When I took a deep breath, I could almost imagine we were alone, and I was surrounded by him.
Garrick cleared his throat. “Maybe a little too relaxed.”
I opened my lips and tasted perfection, too. A small noise of satisfaction rolled from my lips, and somewhere behind me I heard, “Rowland really did do you a favor.”
Gently, Garrick pushed me down until my feet were flat on the ground, and I could no longer reach his neck.
He held up his middle finger toward his friends. Graham raised his eyebrows, and Garrick seemed to realize we weren’t in the States anymore. He blinked and shook his head, and then added a second finger. It looked like a backward peace sign, but I knew it didn’t mean that. Not here.
Graham shook his head. “Damn it. The Americans got to you.”
Garrick flipped him off with two fingers again, this time with a bit more conviction. I watched on, only vaguely aware of what was happening, until the both of them burst into laughter.
I rolled my eyes.
Men.
Garrick kept a tight hold on my hand as we left the pub, and then we headed back to the car we’d arrived in. Garrick lowered me into the backseat first, and then climbed in after me.
I neglected the seat belt in favor of wrapping myself around Garrick. I found that spot on his neck again and sighed. “You really do smell so good.”
He laughed. “You always say that, especially when you’ve been drinking.”
That’s because it was true. I’d never really gotten scent as a turn-on. When I’d bought cologne for previous boyfriends, it kind of all smelled the same to me. I usually made someone in the store pick for me. But with Garrick . . . God, I just wanted to be surrounded by his smell all the time. If I couldn’t be near him, I wanted to wear his clothes or sleep on his side of the bed.
I was a creeper. I could accept that.
Maybe it was the alcohol or being in a foreign city or the fact that this was the first time we’d really been out drinking together since the night we met; Whatever it was, I wanted him, so bad that my skin itched to touch his. I fiddled with one of the buttons on his shirt, trying to act as innocent as possible. And then ever so slowly, I slipped his top button open. His head didn’t move, so I went for a second button.
Apparently one button was my stealth limit because he totally caught me. I smiled up at him as sweetly as I could and slid my fingers under his shirt to the bare skin of his chest. His chin dipped, and he stared at me in warning, but he didn’t stop me. I trailed my fingers across his collarbone and from his shoulder back down to his chest. He watched me with dark eyes, and the arm draped over the seat behind me came down around me. His fingertips slid under my shirt to curve over my shoulder.
Shifting, I faced him, leaning my other shoulder against the seat and draping my legs over his lap. Immediately, his other hand curved around my calf.
I might be clueless about a lot of things, but I knew my fiancé. He was definitely a leg man.
Between his touch and the alcohol, I felt light-headed.
That might have been mostly the alcohol, considering how heavy my head felt and the way the world in my peripheral vision kept swooping and spinning. His fingertips found the back of my knee, and I giggled at his touch.
“Aw, man.” Rowland said from the front. “You two are like a bunch of randy teenagers.”
I felt like a teenager. I hadn’t been this drunk in ages. I was too busy working and working and then working some more.
Being an adult blows.
I tilted my head up to Garrick and said, “I can’t feel my lips.”
“Here, let me check.” His mouth slanted over mine, his tongue dipping between my lips, tangling with mine. He tasted like beer and himself, and I realized that he’d had almost as much to drink as me. He pulled back. “Nope, they’re still there.”
He grinned playfully, and that was when I knew he’d had plenty to drink. Laughing, I hooked my arms around his neck, and lay back against the seat cushion, pulling him with me.
“Hey, hey now!” Rowland called. “No sex while I’m driving. That’s a public hazard.”
Garrick’s lips ran down my neck, and I couldn’t seem to make myself stop giggling. I called back to Rowland, “So pull over.”
“Are you seriously going to have sex in my car? Because that’s hot. Can she be on top?”
Garrick said, “Eyes on the road, Rowland! No one is having sex.”
I frowned, and he kissed my puckered bottom lip. He muttered, “You are a public hazard.”
Graham leaned around his seat to look at us. “You two don’t need coffee. You need a f**king tranquilizer.”
Groaning, Garrick’s hands slipped off my body to brace against the seat. He pushed himself back into a sitting position, and I whined at the distance.
Whined. I would have been embarrassed if I wasn’t so turned on.