Page 49 of When You Are Mine

“Yeah.” She nodded her silvered head, green eyes gleaming with building desire. “You know why?”

She didn’t wait for him to ask, but lowered herself onto the couch beside him, leaning in to slip a hot-breathed whisper in his ear.

“I think of how the bride and groom are going to be fucking all night, all day for the next week.” Her lips brushed his ear with her words. “I’m pretty sure Kerris was holding out on Cam. There’s just something so…innocent about her, don’t you think? Like she’s never been touched. But Cam’ll touch her tonight, won’t he? All over her, inside her. Riding her. Doesn’t it make you just a little bit horny, too?”

It made him sick to his stomach. He closed his eyes, his jaws wired together with tension. Sofie leaned one perky breast into his shoulder, followed closely by a mile-long white leg over his thigh, exposed by the short dress she wore. She grabbed his hand, dragging it under her dress and between her legs.

“Weddings make me so horny, I don’t even bother to wear underwear.”

She tilted her head as if she hadn’t placed his hand on what should be most private. He didn’t move a muscle, waiting for desire, repulsion, disgust, passion—anything.

Nothing.

He hated that Kerris had neutered him this way, that he could remain completely numb in such an intimate position with a woman whose picture half the men in America jerked off to at night. Taking his stillness as compliance, Sofie pulled herself up to straddle his lap, her fingers working at the buttons of his stiff white shirt like she could do it with her eyes closed, apparently not noticing or caring that it was the only thingstiffin this situation.

He didn’t stop her wandering, insisting, deft hands from unzipping his trousers. Sofie was no innocent. She’d been around the block more than once. Blocks in New York, Paris, Milan, LA. Surely in all of her sexual travels, she had figured out how to arouse one physically disinterested male. He looked up into the eagerness of her clear eyes, wanting to ignore the emotion he saw there.

Guilt was a bayonet piercing his gut. This was Sofie, who’d knocked a hole the size of Manhattan in the piñata at his sixth birthday party. Sofie, who’d gone with his family to Disney World the last happy summer of his parents’ ill-fated marriage. Sofie, who had cried when he took Greta Von Stratton to the prom instead of her. He knew because Sofie’s maid told Sofie’s mom, who told his mom, who had told him. He’d pretended not to notice the long looks she had cast over her date’s shoulder at him that night. He couldn’t do this to Sofie.

“Sof, get off.” He gritted the words out, grasping her hips to move her off him.

“No, Walsh.” She moved his hands from her hips to cup her ass. “You shouldn’t be in here drinking alone. Let me make it better.”

Nothing could make it better. Certainly not a quickie with his longtime friend.

“Sofie, I can’t take advantage of you this way.”

“It’s only taking advantage if I don’t know what I’m getting into.” She leaned down to suckle his earlobe before sitting back up to stare at him. “My eyes are wide open.”

Walsh averted his eyes from the vulnerability he saw behind all that bravado. A glimpse of yellow caught and held his attention.

Beneath the table was a single orchid. Discarded, left on the floor, trampled. And he knew that it had been Kerris’s first choice, not the lily she’d carried in her bouquet. She’d discarded the choice of her heart, allowed herself to be persuaded by other forces, other factors, other priorities. Just like she’d ruthlessly trampled on the possibilities brewing between them since the first time they’d laid eyes on each other.

Anger surged in his veins, a ruthless battalion squashing the rebel tenderness he felt for Kerris. Squashing the kindness of his refusal when he looked into Sofie’s eyes again. He no longer saw the girl he’d grown up with, but the supermodel siren who knew the score. He slid his hands up her thoroughbred thighs, pushing the silk of her dress even higher.

“Why the hell not?”

He possessed the mouth poised over his, ignoring the howl of his darkening soul.

Chapter Nineteen

One Year Later

Walsh opened one eye and then, carefully, the other. Either his head was having contractions, or he was really hungover. In addition to the bass drum echoing inside his mind, whatever he drank last night roiled around in his stomach. He drew a quick, stale breath, fighting back nausea. Worst of all, the night before was a huge, dark, gaping void. The last lucid memory he had was of Sofie dragging him into his bedroom as he’d complained that the party in the living room was getting out of control. He had come home from a late meeting with the Merrist VP only to find Sofie already there directing a caterer on the best placement of canapés.

They needed to have the talk.

They’d been dating for almost a year. She slept at his apartment most nights and had carved out a niche in his closet for a full quarter of her wardrobe. Walsh focused enough to see her silver-blond head lying peacefully on the pillow beside him. He knew they were coming to a fork in their relationship road when the sight of her naked body barely covered by the sheet did nothing for him, even this early, when he pretty much woke up at attention. He kicked himself for letting it go on for as long as it had. After the wedding—

He pressed his swollen eyelids back together. Despite the pounding headache, the thought of Cam married to Kerris made him long for the oblivion of his vodka. He was drinking too much. Fucking too much. Playing too hard. Working even harder. Hoping something would ease the near-constant ache surrounding his heart.

Kerris.

Could he not wake up one morning without thinking of her before even getting out of bed? He shoved the thought of her aside, focusing on the svelte form beside him. If he was pushing the envelope, Sofie was ripping it up and tossing the shreds in the air like confetti. She had never been a shy girl, but her meteoric modeling success jettisoned her into another social stratosphere. Unfortunately, as her plus one, he’d been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the spotlight with her.

He hated the attention they received wherever they went. Couldn’t get used to finding photographers waiting at the entrance of Bennett Enterprises. Despised their frequent appearances on Page Six. Abhorred the stupid moniker the media had given him once they discovered his philanthropic leanings.Do-Good.That was maybe the worst part of all. He wanted out.

Yes, it was time for the talk.

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