“Where’d you come from?”
“Back door,” he said with a shrug. “Couldn’t leave from the same door you did. Might’ve drawn attention.”
“Ah,” she said, turning to face him. “So, you’ve done this before?”
“Snogged a lass at a wedding? Sure. Who hasn’t?” He lifted his chin, which made him look cocky. “You had a glad eye for me inside.”
“A glad eye?”
“You were lookin’ at me like somethin’ you wanted to eat.”
She wasn’t offended. She laughed softly at his arrogant tone. “I wasn’t the only one.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, his teasing grin lingering. “I mighta noticed you too.”
He took a step closer to her, close enough that she could smell him, and his cologne made her gulp softly. Sandlewood. Her favorite.
“I’m Tate,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Finian,” he said, taking it.
His palm was rough and warm, dwarfing hers, and though he wasn’t as tall as his cousins, he was muscular and lean, and there was an evident strength in his grip.
“I know,” she said, stepping closer to him.
His hand slid from hers, landing on her waist, his other hand doing the same. He pulled her firmly against his chest, so that her breasts—through a thin blouse—pressed against his shirt.
“Your nips is rocks,” he noted.
The words made her wet. So simple. So true.
His hands slipped to her ass, pulling her pelvis flush against his.
“So’s your cock.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to take you against this tree?” he asked, rotating his hips a touch to grind into her.
He was stone hard, long and rigid, and her mouth watered. “Maybe.”
“The bark’ll scratch your bum, cailleach.”
She had no idea what the last word meant, but her “bum” was suddenly aching to be scratched. “I’ll take my chances.”
“So be it,” he muttered, his lips dropping to hers in low growl of possession as he lifted her easily, sandwiching her between the tree and his body and groaning as she locked her ankles around his back.
Still breathless from exertion, Finian pulled up his pants, zipped the fly and fastened the button on his pants. Jaysus, what a ride.
Flicking a glance up at her, he watched Tate smooth her dress and slip her feet back into her shoes.
Her face was serene in the moonlight, her platinum head a cool blue, almost glowing in the soft light. For no good reason he could fathom, it made him feel a sudden tenderness for her.
“You all good?” he asked.
She nodded. “Sure.”
He had no reason not to believe her, and having dispensed with gentility, his mind moved swiftly on to the next order of business: his ego. “So…was it, um, okay?”
She reached behind and rubbed her backside through her dress, offering him a cryptic smile. “Scratched bum, as promised.”
It wasn’t the declaration he was looking for but asking again would seem desperate. Besides, he knew the truth: he’d come too quickly.
But hell! It had all happened so damn fast. They shook hands. Suddenly he had her pressed against the tree and they were kissing. Her fingers grappled for his buckle. He shoved her panties aside. Bam! He was in. He’d thrusted four or fives times and then—Wait! Fuck!
“Shit! We didn’t use a—”
“I’m on the pill,” she said. She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Are you the type of asshole who would fuck a girl if he wasn’t clean?”
“N-No.”
“Then we’re all good,” she said, leaning back against the tree with a sigh.
It was dark, but the ambient light from the barn shone on her face, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a tiny, almost invisible, tick in her jaw.
“Sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Right as rain,” she said. She glanced up at the path, lit by tiki torches to show the way back to the cabins. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
Something in him flared—something like chivalry, but slightly less noble, making him wonder: Did he fear for her safety? Or was he hoping for seconds?
“I’ll walk with you.”
She smiled at him, but it wasn’t a real smile, not like the one she’d given him inside the barn. Her eyes didn’t sparkle. “No, thanks. Not necessary.”
“Hey, now! I’m being a gentleman. I’m offering.”
“You’re no gentleman,” she said, pushing away from the tree. “And I’m declining.”
“So that’s it?”
“Did you want me to write you a poem?” she asked, an edge in her voice. “I’m all out of stickers.”
He stared at her. “Seems like…I don’t know…a bit cold.”
She chuckled at him, but it wasn’t a warm, confident sound. It was tinny. Hollow. Like the smile she’d just given him. “I’m okay with that. ‘Night, Fin.”
He watched her go—the way her dark skirt, which had been hitched around her hips only moments before, now brushed the back of her thighs as she walked away, up the path and out of sight.
And damn it all if he didn’t feel a little used, a little bruised, and a lot wondering if his performance was so underwhelming that she didn’t even accept his offer to escort her home. Was it that bad? Christ, it had felt great to him no matter how fast it had happened. And hadn’t she bitten his ear? What was that all about? Hmm. Fin pulled at his ear lobe with his thumb and forefinger. It had been months since he’d been with someone. Maybe his fat dick wasn’t enough if he came in under five minutes. Shite. Maybe she was going to tell Brittany how much it had sucked, and Brittany would tell Rory, and Rory would tell Ian, and—Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!—it’d be all over Limerick by the time it got back to him.
He could hear it now: his brother and sisters heckling him about it until the end of time. Remember the lass from New Hampshire? From Rory’s wedding? Should have named you Johnny-Come-Quickly!
Shite, shite, shite.
He needed to prove to her that he could do better.
Next time, he’d go slow.
Next time, he’d show her that he was capable of bringing a woman to the very brink of heaven before opening the pearly gates and shoving her in. He’d make her see fireworks. He’d make her see goddamned bloody stars.
“Next time,” he muttered, turning back to the barn and wondering if “next time” was even in the cards.
4
“How was that?” asked Fin, panting in Tate’s ear.
They’d seen each other at the wedding, of course, her eyes unable to stop seeking his throughout the ceremony, and his having the same problem. As Rory and Britt made their way back down the aisle as man and wife, Fin had grabbed her hand, pulled her through a side door and down a flight of stairs, into the basement of the church.
Tearing at one another’s clothes, their teeth clashing as they kissed, he’d spun her around in front of a long table covered with choir music, leaning over her, his front to her back.
“You want it?” he’d demanded roughly, his breath hot against the back of her neck. “Say it.”
“Yes!” she’d cried, soaked with anticipation after forty-five minutes of hot glances in the sanctuary upstairs. “I want it!”
“How much?”
“Now!” she’d yelled, her voice breaking with frustration.
He’d hiked up her dress, yanked down his pants, lined himself up and thrust into her, his teeth biting into her shoulder as she gasped. He was huge and throbbing, hard as a rock, but smooth as velvet, massaging the walls of her sex with every successive pump of his hips. Reaching around, he’d put two fingers in her mouth and she’d sucked them greedily. When he reached for her breasts and tweaked her nipples through the bodice of her dress, she’d bitten down on one so hard that he’d growled in pain, then slammed deeply into her body just like she wanted him to.
And fuck, i
t was fast and furious and…delightful.
All of it. Right up until the very end, when he took his fingers, slick from her mouth and rubbed them in raspy circles against her throbbing clit. She’d screamed then, unable to hold back the maelstrom inside.
He’d come violently into her, groaning like a dying man, the hot spurts of his cum satisfying to both of them on a base and visceral level.
She only had two gripes.
One, it was over too soon, the latent waves of bliss, of wildly contracting muscles, perfect, yet maddening, as they slowed.
And two, as her heart rate returned to normal, she felt so terribly, indescribably lonely, she closed her eyes against an unexpected rush of tears and forced her mind to go blank.
His voice, asking about his performance, made her refocus her attention.
How was that?
He leaned over her back, the buttons of his shirt digging through the thin material of her dress, his cock still deeply embedded within her. “Tate. Was it okay?”
Was it ‘okay’? No, Fin. It was excellent. It was first-rate, grade-A fucking.
“Let me up,” she said softly.
He backed away from her, and she felt his hot flesh slip from her body. Her palms were flat on the table, and she used them to push herself upright on shaky legs, pulling down and smoothing her dress with her back to him.
She looked up, and before her, on the wall, was a poster of a rainbow. Under it, it read: God is Love. God is Real. Love is Real.
Tate clenched her jaw.
“Hey,” said Finian from behind her, tapping her on the shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She spun to face him. “Fine.”
“Sure?”
She nodded, uncertain if she trusted her voice not to waver.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, reaching for her flushed cheek.
Tate sidestepped his touch. “You don’t need to say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
Whatever. She grabbed her purse off the table.
“I hope…” he started.
She could see what he wanted. She knew that he needed some sort of reassurance that she’d enjoyed herself, that he’d performed well. But the sign on the wall made her batten down the hatches, made her feel frightened, made her feel mean.
Her tone was terse. “You hope what?”
“I hope that was good for you,” he said simply, his hands loose by his sides.
It occurred to her to ask him if he’d ever fucked a woman before. Didn’t he feel the bites on his fingers? The way she’d come apart when he fondled her clit? The way her body had shaken uncontrollably, her innermost muscles clenching around him like a glove? The sounds of her moans and cries? The scream when she’d orgasmed? Had he missed all of that? Was it necessary to rehash it?
She wasn’t in the mood to stroke his ego. If he somehow missed the fact that she’d orgasmed big, that wasn’t her problem. She took a deep breath and sighed. “Reception starts soon. We better go.”
He’d been smiling hopefully at her, but now he frowned. “You’re hard to please.”
Oh, Lord. “I didn’t say I was unhappy.”
“Didn’t say you were happy either.” He took a deep breath and let it go loudly, in consternation. “Why’d you say yes in the first place?”
“Because I wanted you to fuck me.”
He blinked at her. “Jaysus, but you’re stone cold.”
That was, in fact, what she was trying to project, but for whatever reason, it really bothered her to hear him say it. It stung for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand and had no interest in unpacking. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Isn’t that what every guy wants?”
“Is it?” His brows knitted together as he looked at her. “I don’t know.”
She laughed at him. “It is. I promise.”
“Me last girlfriend,” he said, reaching down to fasten his tuxedo pants, “was clingy as shit. Demanded to know where I was goin’, and when, and with whom. Constantly ridin’ my ass, you know? I thought I hated it. But now…”
“Now what?”
His eyes were sad as he stared back at her. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t seem to know very much,” she muttered, heading for the door, careful not to look up at the poster that proclaimed: Love is Real, which—in her opinion—was irresponsible as fuck. Sure, it might be real, but it could die, and when it did, it flattened a person. Tate knew the anguish of that loss, and she never wanted to experience it again.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, his footsteps quick as he caught up with her on the stairs. “Wait up.”
“Why?”
“I…Jaysus, I don’t get you.”
“What don’t you get?”
“It’s like you don’t even want to chat. You only want…”
“What?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder. “Sex? What’s wrong with that? I can’t have needs like you? I can’t feed the need without getting—what was it, again?—'clingy as shit’?”
She continued up the stairs, grateful to find a mirror at the top. Wearing her hair in a bob had some definite pluses, like the fact that she could run her hands through the thin, silvery-gold strands and voila! Her coif was like new.
Behind her, Fin’s face appeared, and she looked their reflections for a moment: at the tempting pout of his lips, at the mixture of satiety, warmth and confusion in his green eyes. It was his eyes that had first captivated her last night in the candlelit barn—the way they’d held hers with such earnestness, like he’d never seen anything as remotely wondrous as Tate. It had coaxed real emotion from her, and she’d given him a rare and genuine smile in thanks for the compliment of his admiration.
“You ever been in love?” he asked her reflection.
Her nostrils flared. “Don’t believe in it.”
“What?” he asked, his lips tilting up like she was kidding. “How can you not believe in it?”
“Because it doesn’t exist,” she said, running her hand through her hair again before sidestepping away from the mirror. “Love is a myth.”
“Jaysus, you’re cagey.”
“I’m…cagey?” she asked him, looking around for a door that wouldn’t force her to parade past the wedding party, who were greeting guests at the front of the church. She spied a double door down the corridor that appeared to lead directly out to the parking lot. Bingo.
“Never met a girl who didn’t believe in love,” said Fin, following at her heels.
“Now you have,” she said, pushing open the doors and stepping outside.
“Why is that?” he asked. “Why don’t you believe in it?”
Tate huffed in annoyance. “What’s with the third degree?”
“We’ve fucked twice. I feel like we should get to know each other.”
“Ha! What for?”
He chortled behind her and she turned to face him, raising her eyebrows like she expected an answer.
“You’re somethin’,” he said.
“Everyone’s something.”
“Somethin’ different,” he clarified. His lips twitched and he offered her a teasing smile. “Give me a ride back to camp?”
“Why are you smiling?”
“Can’t I smile?” he asked. “Or do you not believe in smiles either?”
She lowered her chin and put her hands on her hips. “You can smile. And you can have a ride back, but let’s just be super clear about one thing, okay? We’re having a fling this weekend, Finian. It’s fucking. We’re not friends. We’re not anything.”
He stared at her, as though processing her words.
“To be clear, we may fuck again or we might not. Either way, it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t read into it. Don’t get attached,” she said, leveling him with her eyes. “Understand?”
He took a deep breath, his jaw clenched, his eyebrows still furrowed, his index finger sliding slowly across his lips in thought.
“I have a question,” he said.
“Can we go back to the part about ‘fuckin’ again’?”
Suddenly—without any warning and for the second time since she met him—she felt real emotion course through her veins, warming her body, catching her off-guard. Surprise. Amusement. Happiness. And she did something she rarely did with a man she was fucking: she laughed. Or, more accurately, she snorted. The sound chortled through her nose, thoroughly surprising her and leading to a gale of unexpected giggles.
When she looked up at him, she saw he was laughing too. Not as hard as her. Not as much. But the smile on his face reached his eyes…and made them sparkle.
“We’ll discuss it in the car,” she said, leading the way.
Halfway back to the camp, Tate had reached for Fin’s cock and started stroking it through his pants. When he was about to come, he’d pushed her hands away and demanded that she pull over. As soon as she cut the engine, he’d released the beast, dragged her onto his lap, and speared her quickly.
Rocking against him, she’d taken his load again, mewling against his neck as she came, and this time Fin hadn’t needed to ask. She’d come. He’d felt the gathering, the quivering, and the tight clench of her pussy around his cock before she cried out. Only then had he given himself over to his own orgasm, holding her tightly and whispering filthy things in her ear.
When they arrived at Summerhaven, she’d parked in the far side of the camp parking lot and they’d kissed and groped for a while before she had preceded him to the reception, though he arrived soon after, straightening his shirt and running a hand through his hair.
He couldn’t get enough of her.
He knew she was leaving tomorrow.
He knew she lived in Florida.
He knew he would, likely, never see her again.
But for the first time in his life, Finian was learning that there was a sort of intensely delicious love affair you could have with someone when your time was finite. The distance that would imminently separate them made every second precious, heightened the fleeting sense of every touch, and made every word powerful. In the strangest way, she belonged to him for this millisecond in time; and he welcomed that sense of possession because it was only temporary. For now, and only for now, she was his, and he wanted to soak up every second with her.
Going to the Chapel Page 14