What the hell was he doing?
Knowing Sophie didn’t stand a chance of fighting off a guy like him if he put her in his sights, his gut churned with self-hatred as he abruptly released her, so quickly that she stumbled back in her heels. Even though he knew better than to ever touch her again, he couldn’t let her fall. As soon as he knew she was steady on her feet, he forced himself to let go, the need to pull her back into his arms so strong it felt like it was clawing at his insides.
Sophie’s mouth was swollen from his rough kiss, her cheeks were flaming, and her eyes were shining with what he assumed were budding tears. He expected her to slap him, or at the very least, to turn and run to her brothers to tell them what had just happened.
So that they could kill him.
Which was exactly what he deserved for daring to kiss those too-sweet lips.
But she didn’t run. And she wasn’t crying. Instead, she stood in front of him looking more beautiful than she ever had before. One part vulnerable, the other part stunned.
“No one has ever kissed me like that,” she said in a breathless voice, “like you couldn’t get enough, like you couldn’t stop yourself and I was driving you crazy. All these years and I never knew it would be like that.”
Jesus, it was hot when she replayed their kiss by turning it into words. But his chest twisted at the way she was acting—like he hadn’t been mauling her, like he hadn’t been seconds away from ripping her dress off and taking something from her she should never, ever give a guy like him. She was enough of a romantic to have made him out to be something other than the bastard he really was all these years.
Jake knew the truth. He came from a long line of bastards.
“Sophie,” he said in low, remorseful voice. “I never should have kissed you. Especially not like that.”
He’d been a crazed man without any self-control at all. A few more seconds and she would have been beneath him on the grass, her dress hiked up around her hips and pulled down beneath her br**sts. If he’d done that to her, if he’d marked her with his out-of-control lust, he wouldn’t have waited for her brothers to kill him.
He would have done the job on himself, with pleasure.
“We were both part of what happened.” Her voice was soft, but surprisingly firm. Her eyes were clear and steady on his as she surprised the hell out of him, yet again, by actually saying the words, “I have wanted you to kiss me for a long time. A very long time.”
As she took another one of those deep breaths that nearly popped her out of her dress, Jake knew this was the universe paying him back for every bad thing he’d ever done. He felt like his collar was too tight, even though it was unbuttoned and he wasn’t wearing his tie any longer.
She moved closer. Too close. But he couldn’t make himself back away from her. Not when every last cell in his body wanted to erase the distance and go back to that place where she was finally in his arms.
“My brothers were losing it before the wedding when they saw me.” Jake couldn’t help but be impressed by her courage as she gestured to her dress, her hair, her face. “They kept asking me what was going on and I told them it was nothing. I told them all I wanted was to have fun with the hairdresser and makeup artist. But I was lying to them. And to myself.” She looked him straight in the eye. “I did it for you, Jake. To see if I could finally get you to notice that I was alive. To see that I’m not a little girl anymore with a silly crush. That I’m a woman.”
Jake didn’t have any experience with this kind of honesty, with a women opening up her heart to him like this and laying it at his feet. He could run a business worth millions. He could pilot a 70-foot yacht through rough waters after three sleepless nights. But he couldn’t keep up with the beautiful girl standing in front of him.
He knew his limits, knew that despite the success he’d had with his Irish pubs, he was still just a dumb kid of a bartender. Sophie deserved better, belonged with a guy who had as many college degrees as she did. One day, Jake knew, he’d be here at her wedding, watching her walk down the aisle, even though the vision of Sophie in another man’s arms—in another man’s bed—had him seeing red.
Hadn’t he known better than to let her get too close?
“The dress, the makeup, they look great, Nice.” He purposefully used her nickname, wanting her to remember who he was to her. “But they don’t change the fact that you’re going to have plenty of crushes on guys before you find the one who’s right for you.”
Something flared in her eyes, a look he’d seen flashes of over the past few months. “Do you really think so?” She ran her tongue over her full bottom lip and his blood pressure spiked another ten points. He could have sworn she was purposefully screwing with him when she leaned a little closer and said, “Do you really think I’m going to feel that way again with some other guy?”
Didn’t she realize there was nothing she could have said that would have gotten to him more? He couldn’t have her, but damn it, there wasn’t another man alive who was good enough for her, either. The thought of anyone else kissing her the way he had—the thought of her actively going out there to look for that kind of treatment—made him want to lock her up in a tower.
There was no way she could still be a virgin at twenty-five. But Jake still felt like he’d taken something from her with that rough kiss. That he’d dirtied up her innocence by shoving his tongue in her mouth and putting his hands on her.
“You deserve better.”
Sophie cocked her head to the side and frowned at him just as Lori hurried around the corner of the shed.
“There you are, Soph! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Lori skidded to a stop when she realized her twin wasn’t alone. “Jake? What are you doing with—” Sophie’s sister didn’t finish her question as she frowned, looking between the two of them.
The Sullivan boys were bound to tear him apart with their bare hands for this.
But Lori? Her punishment was going to be even worse to make him pay for kissing her twin.
“The speeches are about to start. Everyone is wondering where you are, Soph, especially Ellen.” She pinned Jake with a look so sharp it could have sliced right through him. “And you, too.”
“Okay,” Sophie said in an overly bright voice. “Thanks for letting us know. We’ll be there in just a minute.”
But instead of leaving them alone, Lori stepped in front of Sophie. “You can’t go back in there looking like this.” She ran her hands through Sophie’s hair, fixing the mess Jake had made of it when he was pawing her. She brushed off a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her sister’s mouth, and shifted the dress an inch to the right. “That’s better. And, seriously, you should get back there before Ellen has a heart attack thinking some unruly loser of a guest was stupid enough to pull you off into the vines.”