Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,86

she was going to act like a starving woman being given a meal, and she wasn’t even going to be embarrassed about it. She wrapped her free arm around his neck—he was still pinning her other arm to the wall—and as their tongues tangled, she moaned. Her body was alive all over, overtuned to the sensations of the wall behind her and the air in front of her. She didn’t want that air there, so she tried to hook one of her legs around him to draw him closer. It was a clumsy attempt, and she stumbled, but he got the message and righted them, letting loose a low hum and pressing his body against hers. She gasped so loudly when his erection ground against her stomach that it broke the seal between their lips. He pressed openmouthed kisses along her jaw and down the side of her neck. She tilted her head to give him better access.

“Your pulse is racing,” he bit out as his mouth slid around to the front of her throat.

“How very observant of you,” she managed. Her lungs, constricted by the half corset she was wearing as part of her Beatrice costume, were starting to ache.

He chuckled and went to work on a spot at the base of her throat. He was right. Her pulse was thundering. So much that it almost hurt. She wanted him to move off that spot. She wanted him to move down. She was wearing a blouse under the corset. She grabbed the neckline and pulled, exposing a good amount of cleavage.

“Oh my God,” he bit out, and hearing him like that, at her mercy, made power surge through her.

She shifted against him, standing on her toes to try to get his erection where she wanted it. “You have quite the hard-on.”

“How very observant of you,” he panted, dipping his tongue into her cleavage. Having his mouth there made her nipples, so close to his mouth yet so far, even harder.

She stumbled, and this time it wasn’t her own doing. He’d backed her against the wall next to the kitchen’s swinging door, but they’d migrated a bit as they’d been feasting on each other, so she was blocking the door—the door that someone was trying to push open.

Since she’d been standing on her tiptoes, she pitched forward. He caught her with a mumbled curse and pulled her against his chest, probably to cover the fact that her boobs were half hanging out, and shot out an arm to block the door from opening. “What?” he barked at the intruder.

“Mill Street keg’s empty.” She recognized Carter’s voice.

“Give me a minute.”

He stepped away from her after the door closed, and she wanted to wail. Her body was all wound up. She glanced at the fly of his jeans. His was, too, which was strangely comforting. They were in this together.

“How do I fix this?” He was trying to put her blouse to rights. It was loose and flowy and had fabric tape that could be used to adjust the neckline. She batted his hands away, fixed her shirt, and took a deep breath—or as deep a breath as she could manage. The corset was a short, underbust variety, and since it was purely for visual purposes, she’d had Eve lace it loosely. Or so she’d thought.

“You want to escape out the back?” he asked. “I’ll make your excuses.”

She gave half a thought to going across the street to find Holden to make sure everything was okay with them, but she found she didn’t want to. She could text him. “Nah. I can’t leave my own party.”

He nodded as he adjusted himself and reached for an apron—he did not normally wear an apron—hanging on a peg nearby. He was covering the evidence of his arousal. She smirked.

“Good?” he asked after she’d fixed herself and smoothed her hair.

“Yeah,” she said. “Good.” And even though she’d come into this kitchen discombobulated and pissed off, and even though she was now disheveled and turned on with no relief in sight, she really was.

The rest of the party was interminable. Law had no idea if Maya was still planning to come upstairs for the match. He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t want to anymore. A lot had happened today: her play, her fight with Holden—that absolute asshole.

Their, uh, interlude in the kitchen.

He adjusted his apron. He kept having to do that, every time he caught a glimpse of her standing there in that corset chatting to