by Cara McKenna
No, this is best. They’d part before either of them had a chance to disappoint the other. Before they discovered what quirks began to grate, given the time. Before secrets ever demanded sharing. Before the heaviness of two lives came to light and cast this perfect affair in the predictable shadows of reality.
He turned, smiled to find her watching him and crossed the floor. His hand was warm when it claimed hers.
“Where’ve you been sleeping, then?” he asked.
She led him by the hand, up the stairs and down the hall to the guest room. “I just need the bathroom.”
He nodded, inspecting the view out the rear windows.
She freshened up, noting how her nerves had kicked in. Silly, after all this time—night after night of going to bed with this man. But it wasn’t quite that anxiety, was it? Not the edgy excitement of hoping for a sexual connection with a guy. They had that, a thousand times over. She couldn’t say what it was that made this afternoon feel different. She only knew she felt naked while standing fully dressed.
He was sitting on her bed leafing through her passport when she returned.
“Has this been your game all along?” she teased, sitting beside him. “Identity theft?”
“Never.”
“Don’t look at my photo—it’s awful. And it’s like six years old.”
“I know. You look about twelve. Not many stamps in this thing,” he said, flipping pages. “And here I’d fancied you were so worldly. But just Ireland and France.”
“That was my senior trip—Paris.”
“You kiss any swarthy Frenchmen over there?” he asked, feigning outrageous jealousy.
She shook her head. “I had a boyfriend. Plus I was eighteen—I wouldn’t have known what to do with some lusty European guy if I’d had the chance.”
“Come off it.” He set her passport back on the side table. “You seduced me like a seasoned pro.”
“Well, I’d never been on the rebound before. That does do things to a girl.”
He took her face in his hands and spoke softly, a chiding edge to his words. “Is that all I am to you? A rebound?”
“Did you want to be more?”
“You know I would, if not for that whole issue of us living in completely different countries.”
She nodded. “And long distance...I don’t know if I’ve ever been this crazy about a guy, but that doesn’t feel like the thing I need to be doing, at this point in my life. Not after ending a long relationship. I should be focusing on all the stuff I put on hold for my ex. Not trying to make stuff work with...”
“With a man you’ve known a week.”
She smiled miserably. “Eight days.”
“It’s not the right thing for me, either.” He said it sadly, as though he really did wish it were. “Not when I’m about to move to a new city and get my head wrapped around this whole college thing. We’ve both got too much going on. And we’ve both picked the worst possible time to fall for somebody.”
“And we’ve both picked the worst possible person to fall for.”
“Don’t blame me for that—I was just minding my business, in the proper hemisphere. You’re the one who came poaching.” He kissed her temple.
The talk was making her feel equally buoyant and bummed out. Distraction was needed. “How long before you need to be at the pub?”
He pulled his phone from his back pocket, checked the screen then set it on the table. “Forty minutes.”
“Damn. We better be quick.”
Scandal bloomed innocence all over his handsome face. “Quick? Why, whatever do you mean, Miss Webb?”
She swatted his shoulder. Then pushed. With just the pressure of her fingertip he flopped grandly backward across the mattress, chuckling softly.
“No time to flirt,” she told him. “This is a quickie.”
He turned, welcoming her body as she lay beside him, their legs tangling. “Feels like a crime, rushing things with you.”
A soft mmm was all she managed before his mouth took hers. And he didn’t rush, not a bit. His kisses were deep and searching, luxuriating, even as his deft fingers made steady work of her clothes. They were naked inside a minute, yet nothing about it felt hurried.
His mouth abandoned hers, bound for other erotic territories as he edged down the bed.
“No time for that,” she said, though she clutched his hair tight and moaned as his mouth found her sex.
“I’ll get you ready, at least,” he murmured.
He wouldn’t need much time—she’d barely been able to drive them back for all the distracting thoughts she’d imagined during the return trip. She held his head and let the world go away, nothing left in her universe outside of the slippery lap of his tongue and the firm dig of his fingers at the flesh of her hips. She sensed the tension run through him as he felt or tasted the evidence of her desire, heard it in his soft groan. Though she’d been with him this way perhaps four times in the past week, it always struck her anew how much he clearly loved doing this. Reveled in it as another guy might revel in being spoiled. As though this was for him.
All at once she wished they had all night to enjoy one another’s bodies. But alas...
She tugged at his arm.
“In a moment,” came his murmured protest.
“You’ll be late.”
“I’ve been late before.”
“C’mere,” she insisted, tugging harder. Her impatience was real now. Just this smallest of arguments had her wanting him—wanting their bodies locked in an intimate struggle, the sweetest conflict and the only kind they were likely to engage in for the short time they’d been gifted together.
Connor sighed his defeat and gave her a final, toe-curling stroke with his tongue.
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She touched his face as he settled above her, gave him faint, flirting kisses that didn’t match the explicit stroke of his cock against her folds. He was as hard as she was wet, and she wondered if maybe she hadn’t been the only one with their mind in the gutter during the drive back from Dingle. His hips spoke to her, making promises of their own—dark ones. Cocky ones.
“Did you come prepared?” she asked.
“My wallet.”
She knew where that item lived. He let her go so she could twist around and find his jeans and their well-worn back pocket. The old leather was still warm from his body, and she found the condom. His thighs spread hers wider as he knelt, stroking himself as she got the packet opened. He was stunning in the cool afternoon light that slipped through the curtains, those eyes so blue they seemed more obscene somehow than the thick erection demanding her attention.
She got him ready, then he took the reins. He knew their angles after just these few days, sinking deep in a single fluid push. And in turn she knew his rhythms—the way he liked to revel in the first minute of the action before turning his focus to her pleasure. He took her quickly, arms braced and flexing, hips working fast, the entire length of his body taut and greedy and glorious. Then with a loud groan, he pulled out, sounding like the deprivation pained him.
“Turn over,” he said. He showed her what he wanted, settling her on her side, one leg propped up so he could lie behind her and drive deep. He arched her back and slid his thigh between hers, perfecting their angle before seeking her clit. The contact was a sizzling shock—not just the friction of his fingertips but the hunger of his body, the neediness of his touch. This was a quickie, to be sure, but not only a race against the clock—a race against his own surrender, she could tell.
Suddenly, he was turning her again, onto her hands and knees. They hadn’t done this yet, and it felt sinful. It felt selfish on his part, deliciously so, despite those fingers working at her arousal, desperate to please. It was the bump of his hips against her backside, the feel of him behind her and above her, seeming to use her. Seeming so in control. He was so many lovers in one—worshipping, needy, selfish, rough, tender, sensual, playful. A dozen flavors of male in a single body.
Anything she could wish for. Some guys seemed to boil down to one reliable mode in bed. One gear. Connor would be anything she could dream of and name, and eagerly. Just the feel of this aggressor behind her had the climax brewing as no physical touch could.
“Take me,” she muttered.
The bumping turned to pounding, marring the expert motions of his fingers but doing nothing to dampen her excitement. She could almost detect some message in this sex, as though his body were telling her, Before you fly home, I’m going to be every last thing a man can be for a woman. And she’d remember each of those men with a fondness that broke her heart.
An unsteady hand stroked her from the shoulder blade to the thigh. “You look so good.”
She whipped her hair back and craned her neck to meet his eyes. The connection drew his brows tight and sped his hips.
“Is this too hard?” he asked, voice strained.
“Never.”
With a grunt, he let her go, a soft slap on her butt telling her, On your back. It was wild, the way she could read these unspoken signals from him, as though they’d been doing this for ages. Even as it all felt so new.
Barely a breath after the cool covers found her back, she welcomed him deep.
“Touch yourself,” he muttered, lost in the action. He was close. Too close to think he could get her there himself, and it thrilled her beyond belief. She slid a hand between them, circling his cock with two fingers, feeling how fast he was pumping before turning her attention to her clit.
She nearly didn’t need the stimulation; she was close from watching him alone. Probably the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen or touched or kissed, and here he was before her—inside her—going mad from the things their bodies did together. She memorized him, every laboring muscle, every shadow, every tendon, and when she came it was slow and deep and long, tinged with something that felt nearly like heartache. He followed her, letting himself go before she’d even come down from the release. He sealed their bodies tight as he came, the pressure making arousal rise anew in her pulsing flesh—embers flaring pink, if not catching fire.
She held him, welcoming him to rest against her. Stroked his damp back, mussed his hair, felt the way his ribs heaved with every racing breath as he came down. A soft swear heated her throat and she laughed.
He pushed back up on straight arms with a spent sigh. “What d’you reckon?” he asked. “Think we beat the clock?”
She reached for his phone. “Twenty-three minutes until your shift starts.”
“Loads of time.” He did a sort of push-up, kissing her mouth before carefully easing himself out. When he returned from the bathroom she was lounging on her side, blissed out and content to watch him dress.
“I hate to love you and leave you like this,” he said, hopping to pull on a sock.
“I hope you’ve got my pheromones all over you,” she returned. “And that it makes you crazy all through your shift.”
He smiled, the gesture lost as he tugged on his shirt. “No doubt. You visiting me tonight, or have you finally had enough?”
“Never. I’ll be by later, once the farmers head home. Maybe ten-ish?”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
“Unless the nap I’m about to take turns into a coma.”
He grinned at that and took a seat on the edge of the mattress. She sat up to receive his kiss, liking how it all felt—her still nude but him fully clothed, save for his shoes.
“I’ll see you in a few hours,” she said.
“I hope you will.”
“Man...” She sighed, leaning into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love it here. When I landed and I first saw this place, I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake. But now I can barely stand to imagine going home.”
She heard and felt it when his lips parted, words poised to follow but not arriving. At first he seemed to be assembling a poignant farewell-for-now quip, then perhaps wording a question. But after long moments and nothing spoken, she sat up straight and prompted, “Yes?”
“We...” He took a tight breath, gaze fleeing, then returning.
He was about to say something heartfelt, she thought. Or something that intimidated him, at the very least. She held her own breath, waiting the longest ten seconds in human history for what came next.
“We have architecture programs here, you know,” he said, his tone teasing. His smile was shy now, but those words chilled her. Not the I love you she’d braced herself for. No less profound, but so infinitely more upending. Her world tipped upside down and her nakedness drove bone deep.
Connor must have caught her face go pale. “Sorry...was that too bold? The way we’ve been talking, I didn’t reckon that was too much.”
“You want me to move here? To be with you?”
His smile grew nervous. “I can’t tell if you’re flattered beyond belief or utterly terrified.”
“Both, I think.”
He turned and took her hands. “Sorry. I meant it to sound like a mad wish. I didn’t really expect you’d want to do that. Though if somehow you magically did, I’d be thrilled. But also shocked. I’m talking too much, aren’t I? It’s just what you said, about how much you love it here.”
I don’t love Ireland—I love us.
Shit.
I love you.
Shit shit shit.
She couldn’t reply—she was too frightened. Frightened to feel in her heart that, yes, part of her did want that, to take a chance on this man, on how she felt for him. Uproot her life, delay her schooling to get settled, to gamble on the two of them...
But no. She’d done that once. Never again. She’d crossed a country for a man before, but an ocean was too far. Too much to ask and too much to consider, no matter how much she loved what she’d found on this trip. Connor’s plans were here, but she had her own back home. Plans she’d carefully rebuilt in the wake of four forfeited years. She wasn’t changing them for a man again—and one she’d known all of eight days!
Christ, what was wrong with her?
“Jamie?” His soft voice drew her from the heavy gray mantle of her thoughts. He took her hands.
“Sorry.” She shook her head, clearing the clouds. Suddenly cold, she instinctively bent to grab her shirt. She pulled it on, tugging the hem to her thighs, clutching it tight.
“Jamie?”
“This is just all too much like what I did for my ex. I know it’s just talk, but... Even just joking around with you, I can’t...I can’t joke about that, period. Sorry,” she repeated, her throat so tight it hurt. She wasn’t explaining this right at all. “Fuck. You’re just trying to be romantic, I know, but...”
“I put my foot in it,” he said gently. “It’s okay. Just pretend I never said it.”
She huffed out a mighty breath, mustering clarity. “Part of me loves that you said it, that you were thinking it. It’s just too close to home. God, I’m ruining this entire day.”
“Of course not.”
“I’m sor—”
“No more sorries,” he insisted. “And no more of me making an arse of myself, with my head off in the clouds. You wanted your fling,” he said with a goofy, sad smile. “And I’m a lucky man to have fit the bill. I won’t make a mess of things, talking like it’s anything more.”
“That’s probably best.”
So why did it feel as though her heart were being ripped to pieces?
A wall came down then, drawn like a drape over his face. As if he’d shut a window between them—letting her see him, but not reach him. But no, she’d shut it herself, hadn’t she? Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He picked up his phone from where she’d left it on the covers. “I really better head in. If I didn’t just bugger all this up, I hope I’ll see you later...?”
She nodded too breezily, panicking on the inside. “Yeah, of course. You didn’t mess anything up, either—you’re perfect.” She stroked his hair, some of the ice melting, but not enough to quell her fears. You’re perfect. As perfect as a ma
n got in this world, perfect in every way except the sacrifices that loving him would demand.
“Thank you for saying what you did,” she added, but even she could hear the melancholy weighing down the words, dulling their sincerity. “Really.” I’m just sad they’re not enough to make this anything more than what it’s meant to be.
“Sure,” he said softly. His kiss was much the same, faint and a touch distant, feeling so nearly like a stranger’s lips on her cheek, she felt tears brewing. Not now. Not yet.
“Go on,” she said, faking levity. “I’ll come bug you in a few hours.”
“I look forward to it.” He got to his feet, and with final stroke of his finger down her cheek, a last smile at the threshold, he was gone. Just the echo of his feet on the steps, the squeak and click of the front door. The rev of an engine and a skittering of gravel, then nothing. Nothing at all.
Far away as another continent, for the loneliness closing around Jamie’s heart.
You loved a man for four years and lost him in slow motion, she thought. Now you’ve loved a man at a hundred miles an hour, so fast you could never have kept pace. How strange that the latter should ache in a way the former never quite had. An unexpected gift wrenched away before the thrill of unwrapping it had even faded. No time for bitterness or regret, the slow-growing ivy of romantic mourning. Not time for anything except a ripping, shocking grief. As cruel as it was blessedly quick.
She’d see him tonight, and tomorrow. She’d accept his offer of a ride to the airport the following dawn. She’d be with him, she knew that. She was scared of these feelings, but she wasn’t a coward. Every minute she could get with him, she’d take. Every minute that might add another full day to the time it’d take to get over him—she’d take them all.
She’d love fully, love him deep enough to drown, for the time they still had. She’d love him without holding back, with no regrets. Nothing to mar the memories she’d take home with her, carry with her through the next phase of her life, the one she’d denied herself once already. Any future romances would be held to an impossible standard now. An attraction to wreck all others.