The Worst Wedding Date

Is this what being awake feels like?

I’m exhilarated.

Not just dreaming about being free but feeling free. Feeling like I’m enough. Like I’m understood and accepted and imperfect and celebrated for being imperfect.

Like I finally know what that thing is that I’ve wanted but have been afraid of putting into words.

I didn’t have to put it into words though. Theo did it for me.

And it’s not wrong. It’s so right it hurts but in the best way.

I want my entire purpose on this earth to be loving someone with everything I have. Fuck happy. I want a love that’s so much more.

It’s so simple, but so everything.

Meaning.

I want meaning. A purpose. Not just in my work life, but in my home life.

“Here. This way.” I pull his hand as we duck back out of the little alcove where I left him cross-eyed and tug him toward a small restaurant with an Open sign in the window. It’s adorable, a cute little blue shack with a sign hanging in the window proclaiming it has the island’s best bacon.

Theo resists.

I ignore him.

I heard his stomach grumble the minute we stepped off of the boat. Heard it again right before I pulled him off the path. And I hear it now, even as he’s resisting.

“Should get back,” he says.

“We went parasailing and nothing went wrong. We’re keeping this streak up, and I’m feeding you bacon, because that will turn me on.”

He whimpers.

He actually whimpers.

I pause and turn to face him, and oh my god.

I thought he looked at me like he was falling in love.

Nope.

Start over, Laney.

You are not a plate of bacon.

I pat his ass. “You earned it. Let’s go.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He makes a frustrated noise, then points at his abs while he looks up at the blue, blue sky.

I make quick work of buttoning his shirt, sad to see his skin and tats disappearing behind the bright Hawaiian fabric. “There. Now you’re suitable to go inside.”

His lips flatten and he tries to glare at me.

I grin.

He’s so satisfied that he can’t even be mad at me. “I meant I need to look good, Laney.”

“I’ll take a picture of you eating the bacon. You’ll look great.”

“That is not—never mind.”

And everything clicks. “Oh my god. Oh my god. You’re a model.”

He briefly closes his eyes.

“I mean, I don’t care what you do, but it seems like you’re not eating enough, and—”

“It’s a side thing,” he says.

“That makes sense. It’s probably a lot like acting, right? Not something you do every day since they have to pick you? What have you—where would I—” I cut myself off with a squeak. Flap my hands. Shake my head. “Never mind. Never mind. The only thing that matters about a job is that it makes you happy. If you want to talk about it, you’ll talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I can understand that. It’s probably something that makes people act—um…like this?”

I am such an idiot and I need to stop talking.

But one corner of his mouth hitches up like he’s amused.

Not all the way amused.

But some amused.

The woman at the doctor’s office.

Of course.

She recognized him because he’s a model.

His stomach rumbles again.

I give him a stern librarian look even though I want to google him and see what he’s been in. Like, now.

“Fuck me, that’s hot,” he mutters. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go have bacon.”

I squeal and clap my hands—even models need to eat, don’t they?—and ten minutes later, we’re having coffee and a plate of bacon while we wait for pineapple pancakes and loco moco, which is apparently a Hawaiian breakfast dish that I declared we both have to try while we’re here.

Theo eyes the bacon.

I pick up a piece and bite into it, and oh my god.

Is it being in paradise?

Is it the effect of multiple orgasms and parasailing?

Is it being here with Theo?

Or is this the most freaking delicious bacon I’ve ever had in my life? It’s salty and just a little sweet and the perfect kind of crunchy and oh my god, I am moving here and living in this kitchen where Theo will make me chocolate chip cookies and the chef here will make me bacon and I will love everyone with everything I have and life will be complete.

“Are you coming over that bacon?” Theo asks.

“Mm-hmm.”

If I grab the whole plate and declare it to be mine, will that be enough to spark him to steal a piece?

Wait. Why are there two of him? Even getting drunk off my ass didn’t result in two of him.

Oh.

Because my eyes are crossed from how perfect this bacon is. “You should definitely not eat this,” I tell him. “It’s terrible. You’ll hate it.”

He laughs.

Theo.

Laughing at my awful dad joke.

I grab the plate and wrap my arms around it. “You can have the rest of breakfast.”

“Mind games?” His eyes are getting warmer. No, hotter. And he’s working that smile in ways that are guaranteed to make me forget about this bacon.

And this is fucking awesome bacon.

“No,” I lie. “I want all of this for myself. Sorry. I thought maybe we had something, but I’m going to run away with this bacon instead.”

He snickers.

And I smile.

I made Theo laugh. Again. Considering how many years he’s called me Princess Plainy-Laney, it’s a sweet triumph to cause any kind of amusement for the man who basically redefined fun in our hometown.

I lift a piece and rub it all over my lips, and I’m not pretending much when my eyes slide shut and I moan in appreciation.

“Do it again,” Theo croaks.

“Not until you eat a piece and I get to watch you do the same.”

“I hate bacon.”

“Theo Monroe. You are a lot of things, but you are not a liar. Don’t start now.”

He visibly swallows.

I dart my tongue out to lick the bacon.

Holy hell.

That is good bacon.

We’re getting another plate. And six more to go.

He growls softly to himself, reaches across the table, snags a piece of bacon, and shoves the whole thing into his mouth.

And then he growls again.

This one’s feral and erotic and desperate and everything.

“Holy fuck,” he says.

His eyelids droop, and he chews slower, like he’s savoring it.

And I get hot and bothered in every single freaking cell in my body.

My skin is on fire. My vagina is legit throbbing. My clit is heavy. My nipples are tight. My breasts ache. My lips and tongue want to be on him. I can’t take my eyes off of him as he whimpers softly, rubbing his mouth like he can make it last longer, or experience it with more parts of himself.

Even my hair roots are turned on.

And watching a hot, tatted god of a man be reduced to a whimpering pile of need by bacon while he reaches across the table to grip my wrist with his free hand after I went down on him in public?

I will never, ever be the same.

“Don’t. Touch. That. Bacon,” he orders.

I squeeze my legs together, old Laney whispering you’re going to get thrown out if you both have orgasms right here at the table, new Laney shoving the prudish poor thing back into a corner.

“This bacon?” I stroke it with my free hand.

He swallows, moans, and then scoots his chair around the square table until he’s so close to me that our thighs are lined up. He wraps one arm firmly around my back, then picks up one of the two remaining pieces of bacon. “One bite,” he says as he touches it to my lips.

“A big bite?” I feel myself talking, but I hear Marilyn Monroe coming out of my mouth.

“A small bite. I’m the only fucking big bite you get today.”

So I need to change my panties now.

And I don’t really care.

I part my lips and let him feed me the bacon, but I lick the whole underside before I bite the tip off.

“Naughty Laney is my favorite,” he says hoarsely. “I need you to know that before this hard-on you and the bacon are giving me kills me.”

“Your turn.” I grip his hand and guide the bacon to his mouth.

His eyes slide shut while he, too, licks it, then bites off a piece.

A much larger piece than I took.

But I don’t mind. Not when he’s acting like he hasn’t had food in months.

“Theo with a hard-on for me and bacon is my favorite,” I whisper while I nuzzle his ear with my nose.

“I just came ten minutes ago,” he mutters around the bacon.

“I’m aware.”

“Fuck me. Who are you?”

“I don’t know, but I like finding out. Want another nibble?”

His gaze dips to my chest.

Then lower.

He can’t see my pussy, but I get another throb deep inside at knowing he’s thinking about nibbling on me.

“Pancakes and loco moco,” our server says, making both of us jump.

“More bacon too,” I stutter out.

She smirks.

“Four plates of it,” Theo says.

His voice is thick and husky and raw, and our server pauses to squint at him with one eye. “This your first time in here?”

His ears go red.

Not just pink.

Red.

“Yep,” he says.

“You’re familiar.”

Oh my god.

He’s famous in Hawaii.

Theo’s a famous model in Hawaii.

And he’s clearly uncomfortable with it. “One of those faces,” he says without looking at her. Or me.

“No, I don’t think that’s it. But you’re familiar.”

Weird. But also, he’s clearly suffering here, so I’ll help the poor guy out. “I see him in my dreams all the time,” I say.

Theo’s eyes flare wide while he whips his head to look at me, and then drops his head, laughs, and attacks breakfast like a starving man.

“He just got out of prison,” I add in a whisper. “We were pen pals. Never met before today.”

She looks at me.

Then at him.

I stroke his arm. “Not bad for slammer ink, is it?”

He snorts over his pancake, then moans as he shovels it into his mouth.

The server stares at his arm. “Probably right. He must have one of those faces,” she finally says. “More coffee?”

“And bacon. Please.” I give her my best good girl smile.

She nods and heads back to the kitchen, tossing glances back at us as she goes.

“You’re ruining me, Laney,” Theo says between gulps of pancakes.

“One meal will not ruin you, and while I sincerely hate having people tell me what I should and shouldn’t eat, I’m still going to tell you that you do need to eat, and on top of that, you deserve to enjoy a meal here and there, especially with all of the stress this week.”

I don’t think he hears a word I say while he’s shoveling in the pancakes. He pauses, blinks, and then sticks a forkful of pancake in my mouth. “Is that as good as I think it is?”

I chew slowly. And then I give him my best naughty Laney grin. “I make better.”

“Fuck me,” he mutters again.

“Come over sometime when we get back. I’ll show you.”

His gaze lifts to mine.

And holds.

It’s not deer-in-the-headlights.

It’s don’t fuck with me.

It’s I’ve always liked you but never thought this would happen.

It’s I told you what I want out of a relationship.

“We can try to break the code on the magic bacon too,” I whisper.

He keeps staring like he wasn’t the one who said just an hour or so ago that he’d take me on a hot-air balloon ride when we get back home. “There are a lot of parts of me you won’t like when we get to know each other better.”

“That’s a pretty large assumption. I thought I’d been pretty clear that perfection is bullshit and I don’t want to be Princess Plainy-Laney anymore.”

He flinches like it hurts him to remember he’s called me that all his life. “You’re not worried about what Emma will say?”

“Emma adores you.”

“Or what your parents will say?”

“I can’t live for them. And if they expect me to…” Then I have a hard road ahead of me.

But it’ll be hard no matter what. I’ve known that for a year, and I’ve been sitting on my hands not living out of fear.

Screw the fear.

Fuck the fear.

His brown eyes study me like he knows so much more about life than I can even begin to imagine. Like he knows what I’m facing with choosing me over my parents’ expectations. Like he can see my future playing out in ways I would never expect, and he could tell me all of his hard-earned wisdom, but he knows I need to face it for myself in the moment for it to truly change me from who I’ve been to who I want to be.

One corner of his mouth hitches up in a smile. “Good for you.”

And once again, I wonder who this man is. Because I don’t feel like I’m sitting next to the guy who gave me the orgasm of my life last night.

I feel like I’m sitting next to a life coach. Or a therapist. Or at least someone who understands so much more about the world than my sheltered ass can even begin to comprehend.

He shoves the pancakes in front of me, then snags the plate of loco moco, which is like a breakfast hamburger with eggs and all the trimmings on it.

And he eats.

And moans.

And eats.

And moans.

And feeds me until I’m stuffed.

And eats some more, until he finally collapses back in his chair and lets his eyes slide shut while he rests a hand on his belly.

I squeeze his thigh. “Happy?” I murmur.

“Gonna regret this so much later.”

“But are you happy now?”

One eye peeks open and aims at me. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I’m happy now.”

The sentiment lights my whole heart brighter than all of the stars in the universe combined.

But it’s short-lived.

Because my phone is suddenly exploding.

Based on the way his face twitches, his might be too.

“Wedding SOS, I’d bet,” I say quietly.

He loops a hand behind my neck and pulls me in for a long, deep kiss.

Not the answer I expect to my guess.

But I love it. I want more of it.

And I hope I’m not fooling myself in thinking we can continue exploring all of what this is once Emma’s happily married and we’re all back home.