Wedding Bet (Fixer Brothers Construction Co #8)

6. Landry

6

LANDRY

I took a long, slow sip of scotch as Jamie came out into the living room, the clear ice cubes clinking in the short glass. I was thinking only one thing: do not hit on him. Do not hit on him. No matter what, do not hit on him .

His hair was all ruffled up from wearing a hat earlier tonight, and the wild tufts of hair only made him more attractive. He looked cozy and goddamn adorable in his makeshift marshmallow sweats set, and I let my eyes travel up and down his body as he walked over toward me.

“This one for me?” he asked, nodding at the glass on the table.

“Bet your ass it is.”

He picked it up and took a bigger drink of it than I’d expected him to. At that moment I realized he was watching me— really watching—and it was way more exciting than it should have been.

Nope. Do not hit on him , my brain repeated like a mantra. But how was I supposed to follow my own rules when he looked at me like that?

I’d turned on some of my favorite jazz music lightly in the background, and it mixed perfectly with the crackling sound of the fire.

And then Jamie took a step toward me.

And then another.

Then, he stepped directly between my legs, pushing them open slightly in front of the couch.

My body temperature was suddenly higher, and it wasn’t just from the liquor or the fire.

Jamie was standing directly between my legs, looking down at me, his eyes half-lidded and utterly fucking hypnotizing. How was this the same person who’d looked at me with bashful blue eyes, the first night we’d met in the elevator?

“Hello there,” I murmured up at him, my mind in a million places at once.

“Hi,” he replied softly, a twinkle in his eyes.

I didn’t know what he was doing, and I knew I should push him away if I was trying to stick to my number one goal for the evening.

But I didn’t want to push him away. I desperately wanted to see where he was going with this.

Involuntarily, I sat up a little straighter on the couch and reached out to set my glass of scotch down on the table. I leaned forward, running one palm along the side of Jamie’s body. Slowly. Taking my time. Just feeling him there right in front of me.

And then, before I knew what he was doing, he had slid one knee down onto the couch, and then another, straddling my thighs. He slowly sank down onto my lap.

My heart was pounding like a drum now. I wanted him so damn badly, and when he was like this —just inches in front of me, so close I could smell the fresh scent of my own clothes on his body… I was done for.

My palm rested on his chest. He dipped lower, his face so close to mine. Every muscle in my body was aching for him, and if he’d been anyone else, I’d have pounced on him like a damn tiger already.

But he wasn’t just anybody.

This was Jamie .

And that’s why my heart felt about two sizes too large for my chest. Why my body was thrumming with desire for him that I didn’t know what to do with.

I swallowed hard. “I’m glad you came up to my suite,” I said, my voice coming out a whisper.

“I’m really glad, too.”

“I thought you didn’t want to do anything like this—”

“I think I was wrong,” he said, a wildness in his eyes like nothing I’d seen before. “I think I really do want it.”

An unexpected rush of heat flooded my body as he closed the distance between us, pressing his lips to mine.

I melted back against the couch, gripping the front of his hoodie in my fist and giving it a tug. His lips parted for mine, and I realized in a flash that this kiss was nothing like the one we’d shared out in the snow, innocent and calm and sweet.

This kiss was fire.

Jamie let out a low moan as I slid my tongue along his lower lip, and the sound was enough to make me want infinitely more of what he was giving me. I clutched at his body, scrambling to touch any part of him that I could.

I wanted all of him. In a deep, visceral way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. So much that it made me a little nervous.

He kissed me like he was claiming me, and a moment later he had pushed me sideways down onto the couch, still straddling me from above but now with me lying down flat.

“You smell so fucking good,” he murmured as his lips broke away from mine and he pressed little kisses down the side of my jaw. I arched my back without thinking, making a whole lot more contact with the front of his body.

“Speak for yourself,” I said, my body practically shuddering.

“God,” Jamie said against my skin, tucking against the crook of my neck. “I should have started having meaningless hookups long ago.”

His words made me pause, freezing me in place.

I brought my hand to the back of his head, gently stroking my fingers through his hair.

“Hey,” I said. “I think we should stop for a second.”

Jamie leaned upward right away, looking down at me. His lips were a little redder and more swollen than usual, his eyes still all sultry, and his hair even more tousled than it already had been. Fuck , it was so hard to deny myself when he looked like he did right now, but something hadn’t felt right when he’d all but called this a “meaningless hookup.”

Because Jamie didn’t feel meaningless to me, at all.

And I didn’t want to do anything that would lead to him getting hurt.

“Is everything okay?” Jamie asked, stark confusion in his eyes. “I—I thought we were having fun. It felt good, right?”

I groaned deeply as I sat up straight again on the couch and Jamie settled in next to me. “It felt a whole lot more than just good .”

He bit his lower lip and dove in again, claiming my mouth with his.

My cock throbbed as he parted his lips, letting his tongue slide out onto mine.

Fuck .

How was I supposed to resist this? Resist him? My hands found their way to the sides of his waist and I squeezed him, going against every instinct I should have listened to.

I’d never been the type to crave what I couldn’t have.

But with Jamie, I’d been doomed from the start.

He pulled off, giving my lower lip a little nibble before he moved away, sitting beside me again. Our eyes locked onto one another for a heated moment.

More.

Give me more , I begged internally, knowing I had to stop myself. My body already missed the heat of his, the warm weight of his thighs and chest pressed up against my own.

The fire crackled across from us as I reached for my scotch again, taking a sip. The last thing I needed was more alcohol, but I had to do something with my hands that didn’t involve touching his perfect, warm waist again. I couldn’t stop staring at the light freckles beneath his eyes. At every inch of his soft skin.

I sucked in a long breath, briefly closing my eyes.

“I want to ask you something,” I finally said, trying hard not to let words spill out of me like a downpour.

He nodded quickly. “Sure. Yes. Anything.”

“You haven’t had many hookups, and certainly not many recently, right?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek, then finally agreed. “Not recently.”

“So why does it really seem like you want to do it now?” I asked. “Our little bet isn’t over. Nothing’s changed. Why tonight, and with me?”

A worry circled its way around my heart.

The obvious answer: Jamie was drunk, and he was doing something that he might deeply regret tomorrow.

I watched the reflection of the fireplace in his eyes as he stared off for a moment, lost in thought.

“This place seems like the perfect time to do it,” he finally offered. He reached for one of the nearby throw blankets on the couch, pulling it around his legs. “I can’t do anything like this in my normal life. What am I supposed to do, bring a guy home to my tiny beach house with my roommates’ empty takeout boxes all over the coffee table? Hell, half of the time when I come home, one of them already has a woman over for a date, anyway.”

“Trust me,” I said, “Plenty of people have had hookups next to empty takeout boxes.”

He snorted. “Fine. True. If a guy is hot enough, I wouldn’t care about that either.”

“Okay, okay, so here at Snowcock Resort would be a good place for it,” I said. “But why me?”

He just shrugged a shoulder. “Because you do this all the time, don’t you?”

I let out a long breath, scooting forward on the couch and rubbing my palms across my face. “Most hookups don’t feel like this, Jamie.”

With most hookups, I don’t feel a strange urge to hug them close and take care of them as much as I want to pull them to bed.

During most hookups, my heart isn’t pounding in my chest like I’m a teenager all over again.

Most hookups aren’t with my friend’s brother.

“So, you’re saying I’m special,” he continued, “but because I’m special, you’re not going to sleep with me? Unless I win the bet, of course.”

“I guess that is what I’m saying. Even though I truly hate putting it that way.”

In fact, all I could think about right now was how much I wanted to slide over to the other side of the couch and cover him in kisses. But I didn’t have to tell him that.

Jamie let out a long breath, lounging back on the couch and somehow getting even cozier, which I hadn’t known was possible.

God, I was dumb.

I was definitely insane for not having sex with him, wasn’t I?

“My cock is so hard,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else so I can stop focusing on how hard my cock is.”

I sucked in a breath.

I felt like I had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other: suck his hard cock, for God’s sake. But, no! Don’t suck it! Don’t interact with it at all!

“Yes. Okay. We can talk,” I said. “Um… how was your day?”

He smiled slightly. “Good.”

“Good.”

There was a pause, and all I was thinking about was his very hard cock, just inches away from me.

“Well. I can’t believe I actually had fun in the snow today,” he finally said, shifting on the couch. “Being cold and having fun used to sound like an impossible thing to me.”

“Hey, are you saying skiing with me wasn’t fun the other day?”

He got up and started walking around the room, which only made it slightly easier for me to stop thinking about his cock. But then he made his way to the window and all I could focus on was his ass, which certainly wasn’t helping.

“You’re great at teaching skiing, Landry, but I don’t think I’m going to be an avid skier anytime soon,” he told me, giving me a wry look. “I felt like I was going to topple over even when I was standing still.”

“Well, if you ever get a random urge to give it another try, just call me up. I’m in my Los Angeles house often. We can go to Tahoe.”

Or we could have sex for seven days straight, or something. No big deal.

I swatted my urgent thoughts away like a fly.

“God,” Jamie said. “I still can’t believe you exist in California, too.”

I snorted. “What am I, some sort of rare monster that only comes out at weddings in the Rocky Mountains?”

He reached over and kicked me gently with his foot. “I’m just saying it’s hard to picture you anywhere but here. My own life in California feels like a completely different world than this.”

“Your roommate situation sounds like it might be kind of rough, too.”

Watching him walk around my suite was an exercise in self-control. I was the one who’d said we shouldn’t hook up, but now I was wondering if I was the dumbest man alive.

I was cockblocking myself , for fuck’s sake.

“I’m used to it by now,” Jamie was saying. “My roommates are good people, but I definitely don’t get much in the way of personal space. That was part of the reason I was so excited to come to this wedding. Getting a hotel room all to myself . It’s about a tenth the size of this one, but it’s been fucking incredible.”

I bit my lower lip. “Do you want to know something horrible?”

“I’m intrigued,” Jamie said. “I failed to put the moves on you, but hearing some juicy secrets might make up for it.”

I held up a finger. “First of all, you did not ‘fail’ to put the moves on me,” I corrected him. “Your moves worked, very, very well. I just think—”

“You think it’s not a good idea, and that I’ll get all feelsy on you, I know, I know.”

I bit down on my lip.

…Or it terrifies me that I actually like the idea of you getting feelsy, and my brain can’t handle that right now .

“In any case,” I said, “my dirty secret is that I was absolutely dreading coming to this wedding.”

Jamie’s jaw dropped. “What? I knew you hated weddings in general, but I didn’t think you could hate this one.”

“Do not repeat a word of this to Chase or Adam, because they’re awesome and I’m genuinely so fucking happy for them,” I said, lifting my brows. “But the idea of going to yet another wedding where everyone around me is so happy and celebratory and I’m here after another failed attempt to find my person … it all just sounded like torture.”

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head slowly. “I feel the opposite way.”

“Really? How?”

He leaned against the side of the couch. “Even when I’m single, weddings give me so much hope. They remind me that there’s true love in the world. I haven’t been to many weddings, but I’ve loved every single one.”

“And that is why you’re a better person than I am.”

“How many weddings have you been to?”

“I couldn’t even tell you if I tried,” I said. “At least a dozen, just in the past few years.”

“Christ,” Jamie said.

“For so long, I yearned for what the couples had. I wanted my forever person so, so badly that it made me sick. And then after my proposal to Parker imploded, something broke inside me. I couldn’t do it anymore. And I’ve been better off alone ever since.”

Jamie watched me with a scrutinizing eye, like he barely believed what I was telling him.

“Well, I won’t tell Chase or Adam your deep, dark secrets,” Jamie finally said. “If you don’t tell them mine.”

“And what’s that?”

“That I totally tried to make something happen with you tonight, even though you’re a skyscraper out of my league.”

I didn’t even try to hide my eye roll. “That whole ‘out of my league’ shit is so ridiculous. You’re well within mine, trust me, Jamie.”

“Oh, really?” he challenged me, a sparkle in his eye. “You want to know how much I pay for most of my clothes? Five dollars for T-shirts at the thrift store, and sometimes an eight-dollar splurge for a long-sleeve. After I pay rent and help out my mom with money every month, I have to choose what to eat based on which coupons are reusable that week. And I’m pretty sure my roommates have heard my favorite adult viewing material through our paper-thin walls, even when I try to keep it at low volume.”

I bit back a smile. “And none of this makes you ‘out of my league,’ Jamie,” I said. “I assure you. You’re smarter, funnier, and more attractive than just about every multimillionaire I’ve met.”

A slight blush appeared on his cheeks and it gave me way more satisfaction than it should have.

“Well, you’re the most attractive person I’ve ever met, without a doubt, so there,” he said. “You don’t want to hook up with me, but I can at least compliment you back.”

“Hey, I said you were smart and funny, too,” I teased him, squeezing his leg. “And I’m just some hot piece of meat?”

He was laughing, giving me a playful look. “I don’t know, Landry. You haven’t met my mom yet. I think she’d give you a run for your money on humor and intelligence,” he joked.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Well, I hope I’ll finally get to meet her tomorrow.”

Jamie hummed. He was giving me that same look he had earlier, where he wasn’t sure if he could believe me or not.

“You’re very kind,” he finally said.

As I watched him, my mind swam with ideas and thoughts and so many things I wished I could say to him. He seemed so stressed about his monetary situation, and having to live with roommates, especially.

“You know,” I offered, “if your roommate situation ever gets to you too much, I do rent out a home in southern California. It’s in Orange County, really close to the water. It usually goes for around eight grand a month, but I could give you a killer deal because, well, I like you, and I think you might like the house, too.”

Jamie suddenly tensed up, and he pulled back his leg from under my hand. The air between us suddenly felt colder. Worse, somehow.

He cleared his throat and reached down to grab his glass, finishing off the last of his scotch. “Um. Thanks, really, but I don’t think that would work out for me.”

Something twisted in my gut.

Fuck . I really shouldn’t have said that.

“I just wanted to offer it up,” I told him. “Sorry if that was out of line.”

He shook his head, looking over at the fireplace instead of meeting my eyes. “I know you were just trying to be nice. I do appreciate it, really. But I definitely think you were right when you said we’re better off as friends. I’m not in the market for a landlord , you know?”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Even though I did like the idea of being his friend, something about the way he’d said it didn’t sound very happy.

“Right.”

He stood up, draping the blanket over the side of the couch again. “I think I should get back to my room,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “The rehearsal dinner is tomorrow, and Chase asked me for some help setting up, and then the next day is the big wedding. I want to be fresh.”

“Right,” I said again, sounding like a broken record because I didn’t know what else to say. I knew I’d veered somewhere way far off track, because the warm closeness I’d felt earlier in the night had suddenly evaporated into thin air.

“I can come by and grab my dried clothes sometime tomorrow morning, if that’s all right?” he asked.

“Anytime,” I said. “Just call or shoot me a text when you’re around.”

He left so fast I felt like a storm had just ripped through my hotel suite.

Usually I liked the peace and calm of having the place to myself at the end of a night, but suddenly, without Jamie here, the room just felt empty.

Fitting. That had seemed to be the theme of my life for the past year.

Empty, empty, empty .