Page 85 of The Arrangement

“What?”

“I think Miss Maragret is a fully grown woman and can take care of herself.” Okay, he had a point, but he also didn’t know Alex like I did or their rocky history. There was a reason Alex had dubbed her “Thistle.” “I also think that they’re going to be busy for a while, and we have the front of the shop to ourselves. Or, to put it another way: a room without Alex in it.” He couldn’t possibly mean what I thought he meant. Then again, his eyebrows were arched suggestively. “I wouldn’t mind showing you why you subconsciously gave me a flower name with ‘suck’ in it.”

“You’re something else,” I said as he unwrapped his arms from around me in order to grab my hand and lead me to the nearest wall. I darted a look toward the curtain separating the front of the shop from the back. “You can’t be serious.”

He crowded me against the wall. “I assure you I am very serious.”

“What if they come up here?” I argued in a whisper, not interested in examining how fucking hard I already was.

Being the evil man that he secretly was, he palmed my dick. “Then I guess you’ll have to be extra quiet so they don’t come to investigate.” He flicked open my fly with expert precision and sank to his knees. I watched in baffled amazement as he pulled my erection free and slowly stroked it to full hardness. Not that I needed much help. “Besides, flower names are earned, right?” he asked with a wink.

Before I could come up with a legitimate reason ‌why this was averybad idea, he swallowed me down. I clamped a hand over my mouth to muffle the instant groan of pleasure that ripped through me, and my hips reflexively bucked. James’ moan vibrated against my dick and stars danced behind my eyes. Pretty as the stars were, they’d never beat the coastal blue swimming in his eyes.

When I was mostly sure another loud, obscene sound wouldn’t escape, I uncovered my mouth so I could bury both of my hands in his wonderfully curly copper hair. I thrust into his mouth as deep as I dared, stopping shy of gagging him, even though I knew how much he loved it.Thatsound would definitely draw the other two from the back to check on us. I was doing a fairly good job of keeping quiet, so of course, he sucked harder and a gasp slipped out.

“Fuck, James,” I hissed. “You win. Your expert sucking abilities can be part of the reason your flower name is Honeysuckle.” The words were a bit of a garbled mess, but given his throaty chuckle—which was not helping on the quiet frontat all—he got the idea. Sooner than I would have liked, my orgasm barrelled through me, leaving me shaking, spent, and already hungry for more of him. I was barely even aware of him tucking me away and putting me back to rights. “God, I love you,” I panted as I struggled to regain my breath.

He pulled himself back to his feet, wearing a self-satisfied smirk. “Love you too, my budding exhibitionist.” Before I could put enough brain cells together to respond, he captured my mouth with a kiss I gladly dissolved into, that got deeper and deeper until we were practically rutting against each other.

“What about you?” I asked when he let me up for air.

“You can take care of me later.” The glint in his eyes, paired with his wicked smile, said he had ideas on how that would happen.

“Mmm, but what if I want to take care of you now?” I countered like he had earlier.

He gave me a more sedate kiss. “For what I have in mind, baby boy, we’ll need to be upstairs.”

“And?”

He chuckled and took a step back. “And we’ll have to go past your sister and Margaret to get to the stairs. And they’ll know exactlywhywe’re going upstairs. I know Alex won’t care—”

“She’ll probably play fanfare on her phone,” I interjected.

“But Margaret already looks a little scandalized from the kiss she witnessed earlier.”

I snorted and grabbed his hand, already tugging him toward the back of the shop and the stairs. “Maybe, but she’s Alex’s problem now. So we’re going to go upstairs toourapartment, where you’re going to fuck me until I get hard again.”

“Oh yeah? Then what?”

I paused to look at him. He was so ridiculously handsome that I couldn’t help myself from snaring him with another kiss. “Then I’m going to fuck you.” I stole another quick kiss, then tugged us through the dividing curtain, where I promptly ran into a shell-shocked Margaret. “Oops. Sorry, Margaret. We’ll have to catch up another time.” We lingered just long enough to watch her mouth fall open, and a bright rose-red darken her cheeks. Then we were racing up the stairs to the backdrop of Alex’s cackling.

Epilogue

James

Iadjusted the cornflowers amongst the red dahlias until I was happy with the way they settled together. The bow I wasn’t worried about, but I fussed with it just the same. I wanted this to be perfect—more than perfect. Then, because I was paranoid as hell, I took out theLanguage of Flowersbook Marc had gifted me for my birthday.

Damn, was that really only a month ago? It was surreal how time seemed to pass when I was with Marc. We’d technically been dating five months—if you counted the summer, which I absolutely did. Some days it felt like years, as if we’d been together forever. There was no “before,” or at least not one I liked to think about. Other days, it felt impossible that five months had already gone by since that fateful day I showed up in Jones’s stead.

Reassured that the flowers I’d chosen were right, I took a step back from the arrangement and took my life—my future—in my hands. Before I could second-guess myself, I sought out Marc.He was restocking the seed display, filled with every flower imaginable, by the potting station. That little gem had been Rumi’s idea, and Marc had instantly fallen in love with it. She’d even inspired him to create an after-school program to teach kids about gardening and growing flowers. Months or years, he was still too cute for public consumption.

“Hey, Tulip, do you think you could double-check my design?” I asked, silently willing my nerves to calm the fuck down.

“Sure thing. Give me just a sec to wrap this up.” His “just a sec” felt more like a small eternity of torture, but I kept myself in check.Finally, he walked over to inspect my handiwork. “Damn, Honeysuckle, this looks incredible. Interesting choice with the Sweet William and hellebore, but it works really well, especially for a proposal arrangement.” He glanced at me, and I struggled to hide a goofy grin. “It is for a proposal, right?”

I didn’t trust my words wouldn’t prematurely betray me, so simply nodded.

He looked back at the flowers and shook his head with a grin. “Seriously, damn. Whoever is getting this arrangement is one lucky person.”