Free His Plus One by Winter Gemissant Page B

mint in the bottom of her glass, and the way he gently plucked a final branch from the small plant that sat at the end of the bar, sliding in whole into the drink before approaching her with it. 
     
    “At least when you’re indecisive you’re easy,” he said.  “Some girls, they don’t know what drink they want, so they revert to some drink that’s got fifteen steps and twenty ingredients.”
     
    “You don’t mean your wife-to-be do you?” Samantha gasped with mock horror. 
     
    “Lark’s a sweet girl, but her drink preferences are a bit...”
     
    “High maintenance?” Samantha offered.
     
    Marcus chuckled.  “I was going to say specific, but I guess you could call it high maintenance.”
     
    Samantha eyed the direction of the front door, waiting to hear Tom come back, but then remembered that they were staying in one of the small cottages close to the beach house, and not the beach house itself -- most of the guests were housed in the cottages, and would be coming and going from the home base of the mansion throughout the wedding weekend. 
     
    She couldn’t help herself, and let the question fly from her mouth before she could stop herself.  “Don’t you ever wish for something a little simpler?  Some... one maybe?”
     
    Samantha watched as his hazel eyes grew slightly larger.  She shouldn’t have said it.  She just knew it.  She was a terrible guest and had stepped over that line that normally she was so very good at toeing.  The rest of this wedding weekend was going to be awful.  She took a long sip of her mojito, readying herself to make an embarrassed exit in search of Tom, but when she looked up over the rim of her glass for an instant, she realized that the look she had at first thought to be shock on his face was, in actuality, a look of interest.  Marcus was looking at her with those hazel eyes not with wary disbelief, but with lips slightly pursed, as though contemplating whether she was serious or not.
     
    Well.
     
    Samantha swallowed, then licked her lips, tasting the ruby-red lipstick she had applied earlier.
     
    “Because I hear there’s someone at your wedding -- in your kitchen -- who’s very easy and knows what she wants.”
     
    It sounded bad.  It sounded so wrong.  And yet...
     
    Marcus set his drink down on the island.  Samantha didn’t expect his hands to be so strong, for some reason she wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been obvious to her that they would be, considering his height and the way his arms were thick beneath the sleeves of his dress shirt -- but they were strong and firm as they touched her forearm.  He guided her out of the room, and she set her mojito down on the island as they passed by it together.  Out of the room they went, at which point he let his arm fall from hers, probably, she reasoned, so that if they were seen, nobody would think anything of them being together.  After all, as the groom and host, he was surely expected to be all over the mansion at any given time, with any given number of people.  She could be anyone to him -- a cousin, a childhood friend.  That she was simply a Plus One would not be apparent to anyone at a glance.  It was all so decadently deviant.  A thrill raced through her body.
     
    Marcus and Samantha wound around the seemingly endless corridors of the beach mansion.  The hallways were painted calming colors, all tranquil turquoises and sea-glass, and flowers were everywhere in bright splashes of yellow and pink.  Above one arched doorway was strung a curling, entwined vine of what looked to be small miniature rose blooms of the palest, most delicate pink.  It was here that Marcus stopped, and Samantha pulled to a halt behind him.  He turned to look down at her.  Even in her cute peep-toe heels, she was almost a foot shorter than he was. 
     
    It was wrong.  Wrong, dirty, sinful.  She knew it was desperately bad, even as he leaned his body into hers, his fingertips smelling of the mint from