The Game of Love: (BWWM Romance) (6 page)

The organ began to
play, and Reese and Marcie shared a kiss before walking back down the aisle as husband and wife. Sommer followed with the rest of the wedding party, hooking arms with one of the groomsmen. As they passed the row where Austin was seated, he pretended to be heartbroken that she was on the arm of another man, causing her to playfully cozy up to the groomsman even more. He then signaled for her to meet him outside, and her body tingled in anticipation of the feeling of his fingers against her skin.

As the reception proceeded ahead in full speed, everyone mingled underneath the decorated white tent that had been set up on the church’s expansive acreage, while Marcie and her father twirled all over the dance floor to an upbeat 1940s swing melody. She’d wanted her father-daughter dance to be nontraditional
. With the split that her father had just attempted, despite being a man well into his seventies, she was getting just that.

“You’ve been hiding from me,” Austin’s voice cut through the noise. He stood a few inches behind her which allowed the distance to appear friendly to those who weren’t close enough to hear the mischievous things he was saying. He was still close enough, however, for
Sommer to feel the heat pouring from his skin, and it took mountains of self-control not to turn around and tug him out of the tailored suit-jacket that he wore.

“I’ve been looking for you, I swear,” she whispered back. “I just got caught up in the festivities.”

He chuckled. “Lucky you that I’m not so beautiful that you could barely focus on anything but me all evening. Even in that god-awful dress, you still manage to outshine everyone here.”

Mrs. Waters walked by with a glass of champagne in her hand
. Austin and Sommer smiled innocently until she was out of earshot.

“I want to peel that dress off of you,” he continued. “I’ve wanted you ever since that night on the beach.”

Her nostrils filled with the scent of his cologne mixed with his natural spice. “Is that so?”

“That’s so.”

“Well, what do you say we get out of here?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I want you to soak with anticipation.”

As the father-daughter dance ended, the DJ switched to a slow, 90s love ballad, and couples flooded the dance floor. Reese navigated through the crowd to reunite with his bride and the lights underneath the tent were dimmed. Austin touched Sommer on the small of her back.

“Dance with me?”

She looked up at him. “You’re serious?”

“This can make up for the prom that we wanted to attend together, but didn’t have a chance to,” he said, glancing out at the burgeoning crowd.

“I hardly think that I would have worn this get-up to prom.”

Austin gently pulled her by the hand as he walked backwards toward the dance floor. “What do you mean? I could
definitely see you in that at prom. With some neon pink heels. You’d be the envy of all of the women in the room.”

Sommer
looked around the room at how the women seemed to follow Austin’s every move. For no other reason, they probably envied her because of the attention that he was giving her that they wished they had.

Squaring away a spot in the middle of the wooden dance floor, he drew her into his chest, placed one hand at her waist, and secured the other with her smaller hand, lacing their fingers together. As they swayed, he kept his gaze so affixed with hers that
Sommer felt as though he was trying to look directly through her.

“Relax,
Sommer.”

“Promise you won’t step on my toes?”
she asked.

“I promise. And if I do, I’ll kiss them and make it better later.”

Eventually, Sommer allowed herself to relax and become absorbed by the music floating around them. When Austin pulled her closer into his chest and wrapped both arms around her waist, she responded by wrapping her arms around him and laying her head against his firmness. Eyes would definitely be on them now, which was something Sommer had initially been preoccupied with. But as she felt the strength pulsating in the arms he’d secured around her, she no longer gave a damn. Even if people talked, it wouldn’t matter. She was swirling, swooning, stumbling, and falling. He’d already been firmly lodged inside her heart before he even returned to Yearwood. The weeks they’d spent together had only allowed the dormant feelings she had for him to flow freely from their chasm. 

“
Sommer? Are you ready?”

She didn’t even realize that her eyes had closed as she opened them to look up at him. She
nodded, and he took her by the hand and led her from the tent. Several pairs of eyes followed them as they left together, but Sommer still didn’t care. She’d already done enough simply for the benefit of everyone around town. Now, she would shirk their judgmental stares and bask in her own enjoyment.

When they reached the car, he positioned her against the passenger door and possessively captured her lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, sucking, nibbling, and tasting every essence of him. When he pulled away, she immediately missed the embrace and found some satisfaction in pressing her lips along the base of his neck.

“I don’t know how you do it, Sommer. It’s like your lips call out to me.”

She grinned. “Something else is calling out to you
too if you want to answer.”

She wrapped a leg around his waist and felt his need grow against her. Austin pressed himself harder into her body, wanting to tear her clothes off and fill her right there within view of anyone from the wedding party that came walking over the hill.

“We have to go,” he told her, pressing a firm kiss against her lips before pulling her off the door, tugging it open, and quickly helping her inside. As he hopped in on the other side, Sommer reached over and ran her hands down the front of his slacks.

“You’re going to mess around and get yourself in trouble,” he warned, his lids lowering as she wrapped her fingers around him.

“I’m counting on it,” she answered and replaced her touch with a kiss before leaning back into the seat. Austin smiled, shook his head, and sped out of the parking lot.

He drove for a few miles before he left the road and pulled onto a paved redbrick driveway flanked by colorful rosebushes, pruned shrubs, and neatly
shorn hedges. Above them, tall birch trees grew towards each other on either side of the brick to create a natural arched entrance. At the end of the driveway stood an old, white Victorian mansion. From the sign posted in the yard, Sommer realized that it was a converted bed and breakfast; its historic elegance preserved as a wraparound porch, dressed in spindles and posts, housed a wicker settee and matching rocking chairs at the front. An elderly woman came rushing over to them before they had a chance to exit the car, and stopped when she was a few feet in front of the hood.

“Mr. Riley?”

Austin stepped forward and gently shook her hand, afraid that applying any more pressure might break her. The woman looked to be in her eighties and wore a knitted cap on her head with a few wisps of white hair poking out underneath. A pair of large framed glasses obscured half of her small face and sapphire eyes, which contrasted sharply against her brown skin and peered from behind the black rims.

“Yes, but please call me Austin and this is my girlfriend,
Sommer. I called earlier about spending the weekend. I talked to your granddaughter, and she said that even though it was short notice, she could help us out.”

Sommer’s
stomach quivered at the word “girlfriend.” In the past six weeks, they’d never mentioned having any titles or had any talk about a relationship, but she never pressed the issue since she knew their romance would be short-lived with him living in a different state. Once he was gone, it would end, and she’d spent more than one night preparing herself for when that would happen. She figured that he’d probably only used the girlfriend title since many of the elderly owners of the bed-and-breakfasts in the area often did their best to deter one-night standers. It was even more common to find those who preferred that only married couples slept between their sheets.

“Yes. My granddaughter, Faye,” the woman responded. “I’m Rose Westwood. My husband and I have owned this place for years. Decided to turn it into a bed and breakfast when the kids moved out.
Was the best decision we ever made.”

She turned around and waved for them to follow her
, and then stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch. “No bags?”

Austin snapped his fingers. “Yes.
One minute while I—”

“No need,” Rose reassured. “We have a service for that. Someone will bring them up. The two of you look tired. Let me show you where you will be staying.”

Austin took Sommer’s hand, a gesture that she’d fallen in love with, and followed Rose into the house and up a long, carpeted stairwell. As they walked past the windows, they noticed a covered pavilion out back, a secluded hot tub and several acres of lush greenery.

“Your room,” Rose announced, pushing open a set of doors at the end of the hallway. A massive four-poster king-sized bed in the middle of the room commanded the most attention, its mahogany posts stretching nearly as high as the ceiling, an
d a padded window seat ran the length of the wall furthest from the bed. The furniture was antique but well-cared for, from the checkered drapes hanging from the windows to the beaded gray wingback chairs and matching ottoman. An open bathroom door revealed rose petals lining an oversized Jacuzzi tub, and when Rose caught Sommer’s wide-eyed fascination at the romantic set-up, she chuckled. 

“Young love, I tell you,” was all that she said before touching Austin briefly on the forearm and
exiting.

Sommer
walked to the window and peered out to find more greenery that stretched farther than she could see, and hammocks set up between sturdy oak trees just off of the east corner.

“Do you like it?” Austin asked, wrapping his arms around her from behind and placing a kiss on her cheek.

“I love it,” she replied. “It’s more than I expected.”

He placed another kiss against her cheek. “I told you that I wanted us to spend the weekend together. What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “A quickie in the lot behind the hardware store or on the swings at Flatwoods?”

Austin spun her around and pressed her back against the window. “What am I going to do with you, woman?”

He smoothed her hair away from her face and studied her features. The way he stared, it was as though nothing else mattered at that precise moment except her presence in front of him. And it wasn’t that Sommer didn’t think that he was somewhat smitten with her. All the time that they’d spent together had proven that he at least was to some degree. However, she knew that his feelings didn’t run as deep as the ones she felt. It had even surprised her when she realized how she felt, as she didn’t think her years of juvenile infatuation would have amounted to anything. Yet, whenever they sat, talked and laughed, she never noticed the hours passing by. Then, their chemistry was so apparent that it was almost tangible, and she had no idea how people didn’t feel the heat sizzling between them whenever they looked at each other from across a room. He was funny and affectionate, kind and loving. She’d even envisioned him asking her to come to Texas with him, but she knew that she would never leave her mother and the bakery. Her responsibilities were much more important than a fling, no matter how far she’d fallen.

“So, beautiful, what’s the first thing you want to do?”
he asked, his eyes darting over to the bed.

“You’re not giving me much of a choice.”

“What do you mean? We can do whatever you want. This weekend is all about you.”

His eyes darted to the bed once more.

“You want to make the bed?” she asked, pulling him out of his blazer and tugging his shirt from his slacks. She ran her hands across his stomach and almost cried out at the perfect outline of abs she felt hidden underneath the fabric.

“I don’t know how to make a bed,” he answered, walking her over to the bed. “Ma will vouch for me on that one. So, I’ll need a lot of help.”

He sat along the edge, pulled her between his legs, and touched a kiss against her chest, connecting with her warm skin through a keyhole opening beneath the turtleneck of the dress.

“Is this how I start?”
he asked, his lips still against her chest.

“You’re moving too far ahead.”

“Oh.” He moved his lips to her neck. “Here?”

Her eyes fluttered against the heat of his tongue. “That’s a good place to start.”

He continued his onslaught to her senses and reached around for the zipper in the back of the dress, slowly pulling it as far south as it could go. He then let the ghastly fabric fall to her feet before moving his lips back to the spot on her chest, a few inches away from the mound of flesh peeking from its lacy fabric enclosure.

“I think I remember this part. This
…,” he fingered the fabric of her bra, “…comes off. I definitely think that this comes off.”

Sommer
reached for the buttons on his shirt and began to undo them one by one.