Thunder - Willow Summers Page 0,32

her.” The man shook his finger at Colton.

“I have to get her to move in with me first.” Colton smiled down on Madison, but the joke was short-lived. The realization that he wanted that felt like an elephant settling on his chest. He wanted this woman in his arms in a way he’d never wanted anyone.

“I think I’ve gone insane,” he muttered without meaning to, looking over her beautiful face and losing himself in her intelligent hazel eyes. There was no way he should feel this strongly about a perfect stranger.

“I’ll say,” the man said. “Snatch her up. That’s the way to do it.”

Madison chuckled as their drinks came, easily shrugging off the light banter. If only it were so easy for him.

A cheer went up, an echo from a distant room.

“Uh oh, I think we’re missing the cake.” The woman patted her husband. “You get the drinks and I’ll go take pictures.”

“Sure, sure.” The man waved her away. When she was gone, he leaned a little closer to Colton, as though about to impart some secret information. “It’s women who care about all this stuff, isn’t it? Weddings and flowers and cake. Give me a cold brewski, my chair, and Monday Night Football. If only they wanted to get married during the intermissions.”

Madison laughed. “Not all women care about those things.”

The man straightened up with a smile. “You say that now, but wait until he proposes. Then suddenly you’ll have to have all those things, and he’ll say yes to absolutely everything because he wants to give you the world. Take it from me. I’ve been there. Heck, I’m still there whenever she wants something. I just can’t say no. Don’t want to. She makes me happy, so I’ll do anything to make her happy. That’s all you can ask for.”

Madison leaned her head on Colton’s shoulder. “That’s sweet.”

“Two glasses of Merlot, please,” the man said to the bartender. “But something better than that stuff in the reception hall.” The bartender stalked away. “You aren’t married for fifty years without learning what’s important, let me tell you. The good times far outweigh the bad. When you have someone to weather the storms with, the thunder doesn’t seem so bad, do you know what I mean?” Colton started at the guy’s choice in words. The man waved his hand through the air. “Give her whatever she wants. Trust me. It’ll help you in the end.”

“Within reason.” Madison narrowed her eyes at Colton. “I can go crazy, baby. You’ll need to put your foot down when I start talking about a stuffed teddy bear the same size as me.”

The man laughed as his drinks arrived. “A real pistol.”

“Let’s go dance, Maddie,” Colton said, liking how her eyes lit up when he used the nickname.

She said goodbye to the man and entwined her fingers with Colton’s. “How do you know it’s time for dancing?” she asked as they made their way back to the reception hall. “They’re probably still doing the cake.”

“A hunch.”

After a moment, she said, “That old man was nice. I’ve never heard someone talk like that. Usually men make light of love and sentimentality and everything.”

“Maybe he stopped caring what people think.” Someone had dimmed the lights in the reception hall and the music was flowing. “I’m always right.”

“Is that a challenge?” She scrunched her nose at him. “Because I will prove you wrong at some point.”

“We’ll see.”

The song was fast, but it wouldn’t matter if it were slow. He’d always owned the dance floor. He swung her around, twirling her before pulling her close to grind against her. Her dress pulled across her chest, letting more cleavage peek out. When the beat slowed, so did they, their movements perfectly in sync with the music and each other.

He slid his lips down her neck and nibbled at the base. She shivered in his arms and brought her face around, her lips glancing off his. He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her, coarsely sticking his tongue in her mouth. She moaned and tugged at his neck, keeping him there. Gyrating against his leg.

They were so far gone it wasn’t funny. Tonight may have started innocently—with a literal handshake—but that felt like the distant past. They’d joked about sex on the cake table, but sex on the dance floor was starting to seem like a real possibility.

Come the morning, he was terrified she’d look back on all this and reality would come crashing down. The temporariness of it