The DJ was playing the song every wedding plays at ten o’clock, and two hundred people were shouting the chorus, and nobody saw the bride gather her skirt and slip out the side door.
Nobody but Darnell.
He was leaning against the long white limo in the parking lot, jacket off, tie loose, a college friend of the groom’s who had spent the entire reception catching her eye across the room. Every time she looked, he was already looking. Every time, she looked a little longer.
“You lost, Mrs. Whitaker?” he said as she crossed the asphalt, her heels clicking.
“Don’t call me that yet.” Jenna was breathless, glowing, a little drunk on champagne and a lot drunk on nerve. “I’ve been married for five hours. I want one more secret first.”
He pushed off the car and opened the back door for her like a gentleman. “Then you’d better tell me exactly what you want.”
“You,” she said simply. “Right now. Before anyone counts heads.”
Something shifted in his face, heat and a kind of wonder. “Say it one more time, so I know it’s the champagne talking and you mean it.”
“It’s not the champagne.” She took his loosened tie in her fist. “I’ve wanted you since the rehearsal dinner. Get in.”
The limo was dim and cool and smelled of leather and roses from the boutonnieres someone had left on the seat. Her dress was an absurd thing, all satin and tulle, and it filled half the back of the car. Darnell laughed as he tried to find her under it, and she laughed too, giddy, until he found her mouth and the laughter turned into something else.
He kissed like he had all night, even though they had eight minutes. One hand at the back of her neck, the other working patiently through layers of skirt until his fingers found the lace garter on her thigh. He paused there, smiling against her lips.
“Something blue?”
“Something borrowed,” she whispered, and pulled him down.
She wanted him so badly she was shaking. She helped him with his zipper, her diamond catching the light from the parking lot, and when she finally guided him to her, she had to cover her own mouth with her hand. He moved into her slowly, carefully, watching her face the whole time, and she nodded hard, eyes stinging, yes, yes, more, until he was all the way there and she could barely breathe for how full she felt.
“You okay?” he asked against her ear.
“Better than okay. Don’t you dare stop.”
He didn’t. The limo rocked gently on its springs. Muffled through the walls came the bass of the next song, and she rode the beat of it with her heels digging into the backs of his thighs, the tulle hissing around them like a wave. He whispered how beautiful she was, how she’d been driving him crazy all day in that dress, and she believed every word. When she came, she bit down on his shoulder and saw stars against the limo’s tinted roof. He held her through it, then let go himself with a deep shudder, his face buried in her hair.
They lay tangled for exactly thirty seconds. She counted.
“I have to go,” she said, and started laughing again.
“Go.” He helped her sit up, smoothed her veil, tucked one escaped pin back into place with surprising tenderness. “You look perfect. Nobody will know.”
She checked her lipstick in the limo’s little mirror. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes. She looked like a bride who had been dancing.
At the side door, she glanced back once. Darnell was leaning on the car again, jacket over his shoulder, smiling at her like they’d gotten away with something enormous.
They had.
Inside, her new husband spun her onto the dance floor. “Where’d you go?”
“Fresh air,” she said, and kissed him, and kept the secret warm inside her for the rest of the night like something borrowed she never intended to give back.
