The Guy Most Likely To...: Underneath It All / Can't Get You Out of My Head / A Moment Like This
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“Oh, come on, Seth, you have to come with us. You owe me a dance. After all, we never got to finish dancing at the spring formal in our junior year, remember?” She cast Lauren a catty look. “We left early.”
“I remember you leaving early,” Lauren said, meowing back as good as she got. “Weren’t you the one who got so drunk, you passed out and didn’t even realize a freshman drove you home?”
Beside her, Seth chuckled and whispered, “That was Sixteen Candles.”
“Shut up,” she hissed back, enjoying watching Roseanne sputter.
“That’s not funny!”
“Sure it is,” Lauren replied. “Come on, Roseanne, you were totally wasted. And Seth wasn’t even your date that year. He went with, hmm, who was it?”
“Sharon Stillwater,” he said, unabashed, obviously enjoying himself.
“You were such a dog,” Lauren couldn’t help replying.
“Only until you finally gave me the time of day.”
His smile tender, he slipped an arm around her waist, visibly saying to everyone else what hadn’t yet been put into words: the prom king had finally claimed his queen. At least for tonight.
Even Roseanne shut her mouth as Seth led Lauren toward their tower, heading for the elevators. Lauren imagined there would be a lot of gossip flying around this place tonight. Tomorrow’s carnival and formal dance would probably turn into interrogation sessions, and her friend Maggie would probably be lead inquisitor.
But she’d worry about that tomorrow. Tonight, she didn’t have a care in the world. She was going to live, to take what she had wanted for such a long time, and enjoy the hell out of it.
As they waited for the elevators, Seth murmured, “I really was a bit of a player, wasn’t I?”
“Not really. Just a typical high school superstar.”
“Why’d you ever agree to go out with me?” he asked, looking truly curious. “I must have asked you a dozen times before you finally said yes in our senior year.”
She didn’t have to think about it. The memory was emblazoned in her mind. “I saw you with Em, comforting her.”
He raised a curious brow.
“It was about a week after 9/11, when classes started again.”
He swallowed visibly, the way everyone probably did when thinking about those awful days.
“I was walking to the bus stop, and passed you sitting on a bench, holding her hands. She looked like she’d been crying, and you were reassuring her that she would be all right, that you wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
He nodded. “She had bad dreams for weeks. My parents were in New York when it happened. It took them two days to think about their children, to call and tell us they weren’t dead.”
She remembered him telling her that, later. Remembered the quiver in his voice, the moisture in his eyes.
But not as well as she remembered that September afternoon, passing by them as they sat on the bench, witnessing Seth’s tender care of his sister. That was the moment she’d realized there was so much more to him than the rest of the world ever gave him credit for. It was also probably the moment she started to fall in love with him.
She turned toward him, rose on tiptoe and brushed her lips across his jaw. His sandpapery skin was rough against her mouth, but she loved the roughness, the raw masculine power of him and couldn’t wait to experience it on other parts of her body.
“I saw the real you that day,” she whispered. “I decided he was somebody I wanted to know better.”
And soon, she was going to know him as thoroughly and completely as a woman could ever know a man.
It was their long-promised night. At last.
4
SETH MANAGED TO KEEP his hands to himself, at least until they were inside the elevator. Alone. The minute the doors swished shut, however, all bets were off.
There was a camera above them. He didn’t give a damn.
“Come here,” he ordered, grabbing her waist and pulling her close.
Lauren didn’t resist. Melting against him, she lifted her arms around his neck. Their mouths came together in a fast, hard kiss, their tongues plunging in a frenzied mating that had been building for ten years.
She tasted like heaven. Like Lauren. Familiar and sweet and sultry and so impossibly good.
He’d kissed other women over the years, but none had felt as right, as perfectly made for him. He hadn’t imagined it. All the times he’d wondered if there really was such a thing as a soul mate, the one right person for everyone, he’d remembered how it had felt to kiss her. But he’d also wondered if his memories were lying to him.
They weren’t. She was perfect…for him, anyway.
He kissed her hard and deep, as if to remind them both of that, to drive thoughts of any other man out of her head for good, and to imprint her on his own, lest he ever have doubts again.
Lauren writhed against him, her soft body curving into all his angles, asking and answering all at the same time. They shared breaths and their heartbeats pounded in unison. The silence was broken only by their sighs, and by the ding of the elevator as it went up, up, up, taking them toward what he was sure must be heaven on earth.
But not fast enough. He needed more. Needed to taste her, touch her. “God, Lauren, I’ve wanted you forever,” he said as he moved his mouth to her neck.
She twined her fingers in his hair and held him tight, as if unwilling to let him go. “Ditto.”
Their mouths came together again, slower this time. He dropped his hands to her hips, pulling her more firmly against his groin, and heard her groan as she felt how hard and ready he was for her.
“Ahem.”
They’d been so lost in the kiss, they hadn’t even noticed that the elevator had stopped and someone had boarded it. Seth forced himself to let her go. Glancing over, he saw an older couple eyeing them speculatively. The man was grinning, the woman—mid-forties and very attractive—was studying the number panel on the side of the elevator. But Seth noticed the way a flush of color rose in her face, and how her companion slipped an arm around her waist, giving her bottom a familiar pat.
Once the other couple got off a few floors later, he heard Lauren begin to laugh.
“I think if we hadn’t been here, they’d have been the ones shocking the security camera guys. Something about this place makes everyone want to…celebrate.”
That was true. He’d seen cozy couples in the lounges, and sitting on plush couches in the lobby. The resort might have been made for group reunions, but it seemed to also invite gatherings of a more intimate sort.
“Maybe it’s because a reunion, by definition, brings you back to your younger years, when you were freer, more willing to take risks.” He nuzzled her neck. “And indulge in pleasures. Take what you most want.”
She gazed up at him, licking her reddened lips. “Makes sense to me.”
They at last arrived on their floor. Seth grabbed her hand and practically dragged her after him. Her room was closer, but he didn’t want to wait long enough for her to dig the key out of her purse. His was in his pocket, and then, a second later, in his hand.
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