Firefly Hollow

by Haddix, T. L.

  “Owen, please…” Her hands were curled tightly around his shoulders, and she forced herself to relax.

  He raised his head to look at her. “Please what? Stop?”

  “No. Please don’t stop.”

  The hand that had been in her hair slipped down, curving around her neck. His thumb brushed against the place he’d just kissed. With his eyes on hers, he brought up his other hand and unbuttoned the bodice of her sundress. He moved her hands off his shoulders and pushed the straps of the dress down over her shoulders, leaving the top of her swimsuit exposed.

  He tugged on the dress. “Take this off.”

  Sarah looked down at where his hand rested against her stomach, under her breasts. “The whole thing?”

  He smiled. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

  Tamping down her nerves, Sarah put her hand over his. “What about you? You’ll still have your shirt on.”

  “That’s easy enough to fix.” He pulled the T-shirt off over his head. Sarah made a low sound of admiration as his muscled chest came into view. Even so early in the year, his skin was darker than hers, and a light dusting of black hair covered his chest. The patch narrowed to a point as it disappeared into the waistband of his pants. “Your turn.”

  Cheeks warm, Sarah rose to her knees and drew the sundress over her head. Clad only in the bathing suit, she fought the need to cross her arms over her chest. Instead, she reached tentatively out and placed her hand just over his heart.

  “You can touch me if you want,” he whispered. “As a matter of fact, I’d really, really like it if you did.”

  Growing bolder, she let her hands roam across his chest. As her confidence increased, she explored his muscles with a less tentative touch. When she skimmed the skin above his belly button, Owen sucked in a breath. Sarah stopped, her eyes flying to his.

  “You’re getting into slightly dangerous territory there,” he explained.

  “Oh. Do you want me to stop?”

  The shake of his head was slow and definitive. “No.”

  Ducking her head, Sarah pressed her palms against his belly. “The hair’s softer than I expected it to be. I thought it would be rougher, like the hair on my—” As she realized what hair she was going to compare it to, she stopped. The wicked grin that flashed across Owen’s face told her that he knew exactly what hair she meant. His hands came up to her hips, and he pulled her into him, arranging her so that she straddled his legs.

  “Sarah Jane. Do you want to finish that sentence?”

  With an embarrassed laugh, she buried her face in his neck. “No.” Thinking about how he’d kissed her neck, she opened her mouth and touched her tongue briefly to his skin. His throat was slightly damp and a little salty. When his hands tightened around her hips, she did it again.

  “Now what happens?” she whispered against the underside of his chin. She nipped lightly with her teeth, then drew back to see whether or not he liked that. From the way his pupils dilated and his gaze focused on her mouth, she thought he probably did.

  “Now… it’s up to you.” He slid his hands up her back. When he reached her swimsuit top, he slowly moved his hands around her sides. He didn’t stop until he was fully cupping her breasts. Sarah whimpered.

  “Do you want to take this off?” he asked, tugging on the edge of the top. His thumbs dove inside to brush against her skin, coming perilously close to her nipples.

  “Will you close your eyes?”

  He blinked a couple of times, and then cleared his throat. “I don’t think I can force myself to not look at you.” Then, in a voice so low Sarah could barely hear him, “I dream about your breasts.”

  “You do?”

  He gave a single nod. “Oh, yes.”

  “Then would it be okay if I closed my eyes? The top fastens in the back.”

  Shifting so that his back was braced against the bed, Owen raised his hands. He lightly skimmed his fingers over her eyes, and Sarah closed them. She hardly breathed as she waited for him to remove the upper half of her suit. The top had four eyelet latches, and as he slid them unhooked, one by one, the anticipation was almost too much to bear.

  Before she knew it, the top was undone, and Owen slid the straps down her shoulders. The air touched her bare skin, feeling cool where the damp swimsuit had been. The sensation was brief, as Owen’s hands once again came up to touch her. He didn’t cup her, but traced her skin with his fingers. Needing to see his face, Sarah opened her eyes. The reverence in his expression surprised her.

  “You are so beautiful, Sarah. Absolutely perfect.” He finally cupped her breasts, and the sensation made her moan.

  The dark lock of hair that always seemed to plague him fell down onto his forehead, and Sarah reached to push it back. She let her hands linger in his hair, threading her fingers through the dark silk. Gripping his hair as he’d done to hers, she pulled his head back and kissed him.

  When Owen’s hands left her breasts and he pulled her against his chest, they both moaned. The skin-on-skin contact was overwhelming, and the kiss turned deeper than anything Sarah had ever experienced. His hands moved to cup her hips, and he pressed her down. Though she’d never felt a fully aroused male so intimately, Sarah’s body seemed to know what to do, and she rocked against him. The hard ridge of his erection pressed against her just so, sending a wave of pleasure through her. She pulled away from the kiss with a long moan, and Owen growled.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” he said, pulling back enough to bury his face in her throat. “Very much of that, and I’ll explode.”

  “I thought that was the point.” When he looked up at her, surprise on his face, Sarah deliberately rocked against him again. Her entire body felt as if it were on fire. All her nerves beat a straight path to the tips of her breasts and to the pulsing spot between her legs. The sounds of their breathing were loud until the quiet of the bedroom was broken by the sudden pounding of rain on the metal roof on the porch outside.

  “Do you trust me?” Owen asked.

  Sarah tilted her head to the side. “Of course I do. Why?”

  He stood in one smooth motion and turned, Sarah in his arms. He laid her on the bed and snagged the bottom of her swimsuit with his fingers. Without saying a word, he eased it off her hips and down her legs, then tossed them aside. Embarrassed to find herself naked, Sarah’s arms came up to cover her breasts and her pubic area.

  She felt her eyes widen as Owen undid his belt and pants and, moving with slow deliberation, he pushed them past his hips. His erection sprang forward, bouncing a little as he moved. Sarah couldn’t look away as he joined her on the bed.

  “Oh, my.” Sitting up, she kept one arm across her breasts and turned so that she was looking down at him. Owen, apparently sensing her need to explore, held out a hand, and when Sarah took it, he placed her hand on his arousal.

  “Um, I didn’t expect you to be so… well, so big. The illustrations in the book weren’t this well-endowed.”

  With a strangled laugh, Owen tightened his hand around hers, showing her how to touch him. Once she had the movement down, he rose up and pushed her back. Propped up on one elbow, he moved his other hand down her body in a slow, soothing motion.

  “Keep touching me,” he whispered. “Please.” Sarah returned her hand to his erection, and Owen sighed. “Like that, yes.”

  He moved his hand slowly, but confidently, his touch making Sarah restless. She was on the verge of begging him to do something else, to touch her where she ached, when he slipped his fingers into the folds between her legs with a bold, sure touch. Sarah stopped breathing.

  “Do you ever touch yourself here?”

  “Y-yes,” she confessed, too focused on the sensations he was creating with his hand to be embarrassed by the question or her answer.

  “What do you think of
when you touch yourself?”

  Sarah tossed her head back and forth on the pillow, and her hips left the bed. Owen stopped moving his fingers, and she whimpered, her hand flying to cover his.

  “What do you think of, Sarah?”

  His arm was like iron, and she couldn’t budge him. With a frustrated growl, she answered, “You. I think of you.”

  As soon as she answered, he started the wonderful, torturous motions again, and she nearly wept with relief.

  “Every night, I can’t think of anything else except you,” he said. “I go to bed, stiff as a pike, and I have to jerk myself off before I can sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night, sheets wet because I’ve dreamt about you again. You and that damned book, and all the things we could do to each other.”

  His breath was hot in her ear, and as his words penetrated her mind, Sarah climaxed. Ripples of pleasure spread out from her center, on and on, until she thought she would pass out.

  When she finally came back down, every muscle in her body trembled from the effort not to fly into a million pieces. Owen, however, was unnaturally still, his eyes closed. It took Sarah three attempts to raise her hand to touch him. With a muted growl, he moved over her.

  “Owen?”

  “Trust me, Sarah, please.”

  “Okay.” The word had no sooner left her mouth than he was kissing her, using his tongue in her mouth to mimic the motion he’d made with his fingers. He spread her legs wide, resting his arousal firmly against the nub that was still pulsing with pleasure, and then he started to move.

  The next climax caught Sarah unaware. It burst through her, and she screamed, her hands coming up to claw at Owen’s shoulders. His movements grew jerky, and seconds after he sent her over, his own climax followed.

  Giving a hoarse shout, he buried his face in the pillow beside her head. Sarah felt a warm liquid spurt onto her belly, and then Owen’s full weight was on her, pressing her into the mattress.

  They stayed like that, not moving except to brush little touches across each other, for a long time. Finally, Owen lifted himself off her, and they both looked down.

  “Um, we made a little bit of a mess,” she commented.

  With his eyebrows raised, Owen reached over the side of the bed and snagged his T-shirt off the floor. Sitting back on his haunches, he used the soft fabric to clean her, then himself.

  “You could say that. Are you okay?”

  Too limp to move, Sarah said, “I can’t believe we did that.”

  “Do you regret that we did?”

  “No. Not in the least. Do you?”

  “No.” Tossing the shirt to the floor, he stretched out beside her and brushed her hair back off her face. “You’re going to have to marry me, you know.”

  Sarah was stunned. It took her a long minute to recover enough to speak. “Is that a proposal?”

  “No. But it’s coming. I wanted you to know that.” He kissed her. The kiss had a different feel to it, a deeper intimacy, than the kisses they’d shared previously. Sarah rolled onto her side so that she was facing him. She slid her leg between his and closed her eyes at the feeling of his muscled, hairy legs against hers.

  “Is that what sex feels like?” she whispered.

  Owen hesitated. “Not exactly. It’s more intrusive, more personal. Not in a bad way, but it’s different.”

  Sarah ran her hand down his chest. “Did you do this sort of thing with her?”

  “I don’t want to talk about her. That was years ago, in the past. Let it stay there?” He traced his finger around her nipple.

  Sarah frowned. “It’s not that I’m asking for details. I’m asking... oh, hell. This is embarrassing.” She covered her face with her hands, but Owen tugged them down.

  “Don’t hide. We can talk about anything here, no fear of judgment or reprisal, as long as we don’t deliberately set out to hurt each other. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  She moved her shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess what I’m asking is… you said you’ve read The Kama Sutra. Did you try any of that with her?” From the red flush that spread across his face and the way he winced, Sarah knew that he had. She felt a flare of jealousy, but more than that, of curiosity. “Can you show me?”

  Owen stared at her. “Show you…?”

  “What I mean is, if you tried the things in the book, then you know how they work. Or how they don’t work. So can you show me those things?” She would never know where she found the courage to ask him.

  “All of them?” Owen rose up on his elbow to look down at her.

  “Um, maybe not quite all.”

  Looking as though he couldn’t quite believe he was having the conversation, Owen shook his head. “We are definitely going to have to get married.”

  Sarah sat up and planted a kiss on his bare shoulder. “And then you’ll show me?”

  When Owen turned and pounced on her, bearing her backward on the bed, Sarah shrieked. He tickled her, his touch quickly turning into a caress.

  “Yes, minx. And then I’ll show you.”

  They spent the rest of the day in bed, something Sarah felt she should probably be embarrassed by, but she couldn’t muster the emotion. Mostly they talked, but they also touched each other, loved each other. For the rest of her life, Sarah knew she would look back on that day as one filled with magic and love.

  When dusk finally settled in and Owen reluctantly said good-bye at the back door, Sarah almost wept.

  “Soon, Sarah. Very soon, I’ll have you installed on the top of the mountain with me, and we’ll never have to say good-bye again.” He pressed her against the doorjamb with an intense kiss. “I love you. Love you so much.”

  “I love you,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening after work?”

  “Of course. Be careful on the road tomorrow. And call me if you need me tonight.” He came back for another kiss. “I don’t want to go.”

  “You could stay.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I’ve compromised you enough as things stand. I won’t give the neighbors anything more to talk about.”

  With one last, intense kiss, he was gone. Sarah locked the house for the night and went upstairs. As she laid her clothes out for work and drew a hot bath, she couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had happened. Owen had as good as proposed to her. If things continued as they were, she’d not be surprised to find herself married by the end of the month.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  OWEN COULDN’T STOP SMILING AS he walked home. Last week, he’d reached out to a contact in Laurel County who designed jewelry to start the man on creating a ring for Sarah. When he’d hugged Eliza goodbye the night before, he asked her to call him with Sarah’s ring size, a task Eliza had been all too happy to perform.

  All he had to do was plan how and when he wanted to propose. The ring would be ready in a couple of weeks, but Owen wasn’t sure he could wait that long.

  The only shadow on his happiness was the knowledge that he’d have to confess to Sarah that he was a shifter, and that any children they had could possibly be like him. Though he was fairly confident that Sarah would accept him for who he was, there was still a niggling self-doubt in the back of his mind.

  When the phone rang at six the next morning, though, everything changed.

  Sarah had just gotten up and stumbled downstairs to the kitchen to start the coffee when someone knocked on the back door. Startled, she cautiously approached the door and flipped on the porch light.

  “Sarah, it’s me.”

  Sarah recognized Owen’s voice and quickly undid the lock. As soon as she opened the door, she knew from the look on his face something was drastically wrong. Her heart stuttered, then took off. “What’s wrong?”


  “I just got a call. My uncle’s house burned down last night. I have to go Laurel County.”

  Sarah stood back and let him in, then wrapped her arms around his waist. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. Is everyone okay?”

  “No.” Holding on to her as though she were the only anchor in a turbulent sea, he said, “Eli’s in bad shape, from what his son Trent said. They’re taking him to Lexington. Everyone else got out okay, but Eli went back to get something, and a timber fell on him. They barely managed to get him out.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. If his uncle didn’t survive, it would devastate Owen. She said a quick prayer for the man and his family. “Is there anything I can do?”

  With one last squeeze, Owen pulled back. “No. Just pray. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Five of their kids, teenagers, are still at home, and I’m probably going to be helping watch them.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is Trent’s in-law’s number, and their address. They don’t live far from my uncle’s farm. If you need to get up with me, they’ll know how.”

  “Okay. I wish there was something I could do. Do you need me to go with you?”

  Owen kissed her hard. “I would love to have you go with me, but I don’t know what I’m going to find when I get there. We might all end up sleeping in the barn until we can figure something out. Besides, you have obligations here. I won’t ask you to give them up.”

  “Well, if you get down there and need me, promise me you’ll call. Obligations be hanged, Owen.”