His mouth was on mine.
It was nothing like the soft, nostalgic memory of Marcus.
This was a blistering, forbidden collision. It was wild and demanding, a furious clash of teeth and tongue. The taste of him—whiskey and smoke and raw want—was overwhelming, flooding my senses and short-circuiting every rational thought.
He wasn’t asking for permission.
He was taking, consuming, pulling a response from a deep, hidden well inside me I never knew existed.
My hands, which should have pushed him away, fisted in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.
A desperate, broken sound escaped my throat and he swallowed it, his groan a low vibration against my lips. This wasn’t a kiss; it was a confession.
An admission of the frantic, unspoken thing that had been simmering between us since the moment we met.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping my mouth with an expert’s confidence, stealing the air from my lungs. His thumb stroked the sensitive skin behind my ear, sending shivers cascading down my spine. My entire body came alive, humming with a dangerous, terrifying electricity.
This was chaos.
This was a bonfire in the middle of my perfectly manicd garden.
When he finally pulled back, we were both breathing in ragged, desperate gasps.
My lips were swollen, tingling, and the front of his shirt was hopelessly wrinkled from my grip.
The sounds of the party—the music, the laughter—filtered back in, a jarring reminder of the world just a few feet away.
Rhys rested his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. “Now,” he rasped, his voice rough with emotion, “tell me that’s not what you want. ”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He straightened up, his gaze sweeping over my kiss-bruised mouth one last time, a look of dark, possessive satisfaction on his face.
Then he turned and walked back through the French doors, disappearing into the light and noise of the party as if he hadn’t just detonated my entire world.
I stood there, trembling, my fingers flying to my lips. I could still feel him, still taste him.
My legs were unsteady, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.
I looked through the glass and saw him at the bar, ordering another drink.
A few yards away, Marcus was laughing with Chloe, a flute of champagne in his hand, presumably for me.
My ex-boyfriend. His bride-to-be. His best man. And me, their planner.
One man was a carefully constructed promise of a future I understood. The other was a question I was terrified to answer. One was a slow dance; the other was a free fall.
And I had just kissed the best man at my ex-boyfriend’s engagement party.
My perfectly planned life was officially, irrevocably, catastrophically off the rails.