The Engagement Gift An After Dark Standalone Romance - Lauren Blakely Page 0,17

soon Jake ordered another round for all of us. We all seemed to flow in and out of each other’s conversations—Adam and Nina were wrapped up in a conversation about the best new podcasts on science and travel, with Kate and Finn weighing in, while I took the lead when the talk turned to sports.

As I knocked back more of the drink, Finn banded an arm around my waist possessively. He dipped his face to my neck, kissing me. A groan seemed to rumble up his chest as I turned to face him.

He sealed his mouth to mine, hard and rough in front of our friends, something he’d done countless times before.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was claiming me. I wasn’t sure if his roughness meant something or nothing.

When he broke the kiss, I arched a brow. “Are you marking me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have to mark you to know you’re mine.” That answered my question; he wasn’t marking me. And it reconfirmed that his faith in us as a forever thing was so damn strong, he didn’t have to claim me.

He’d already done so for all intents and purposes.

“I’m always yours,” I said. I grabbed his hand and tugged him to the dance floor, eager to feel that sultry freedom.

We joined the sea of beautiful people on the dance floor. Time to get lost in the music, to let it move through me.

Finn danced smoothly. His hips swayed side to side as he brought me close, my ass against his pelvis. He was subtle, moving in a long, indulgent kind of rhythm, and I was even more aroused in seconds.

That was when I took the next step.

My eyes wandered, roaming the club, picturing male bodies, moving them like chess pieces around my sexual fantasy board. A knight here, a bishop there.

None got me closer to what I’d envisioned earlier until my gaze drifted to the bar.

To our crew of friends.

Jake’s crooked grin had spread on his face as he chatted with them, oblivious to us. Stubble lined his jaw, and I wondered briefly what that faint trace of a beard would feel like on my breasts, my belly, my thighs.

Yes, he was the third person.

It had to be him.

I shivered, and Finn gripped my waist tighter, yanking my body closer. “You’re watching our friends,” he whispered roughly in my ear.

I swallowed, and worried briefly that I’d been caught stealing.

But nothing in his voice suggested anger. Everything in it spoke of desire, underlined by that same confidence he possessed when he’d talked about marking me, about not needing to. Perhaps the reason he wasn’t jealous was that he knew who I went home to.

Who I’d always go home to.

And because he had his fantasies, and I had mine. “Yes, I’m watching them,” I said, admitting the barest of truths. A start.

“And what are you thinking?”

“How pretty they all are,” I said, grinning as I glanced back at him.

“Yes, they’re all so very pretty,” he said, joking.

Kate looked over at us, and her eyes locked with mine. They seemed to say something. Something like I know what you want.

A few seconds later, Jake pulled his gaze away from the others. His dark eyes locked with . . . mine?

I startled. Did they really, or did I imagine it?

My breath caught in my throat, and Finn noticed, because he dusted his lips up my neck to my ear. “You like when people watch us.”

It was a statement, clear and commanding. He knew the answer.

“Yes,” I said, and a small knot of worry in me loosened as we danced closer to the secret wish inside me. “Don’t you?”

He nodded against my neck, his hands circling my waist tighter. “Love it. Love it so damn much, because I know what we have.”

“What do we have?”

“Love, trust, faith,” he whispered, and the words were charged with sensuality, as if trust were a black lace garter and faith were our king-size bed.

Maybe they were one and the same.

“We do have that. Does that turn you on?” I asked.

“It does, because I know nothing will change it,” he said, and those words were iron, they were stone.

He didn’t need to keep me all to himself, because he knew I belonged to him. But would he share me?

I danced against him, raising my arms into the air, my body moving like water. “What if someone did watch us?” I asked, taking a chance, another small step out of the realm of imagination.

“I bet