by Sophia Ryan
Before turning to walk toward Sean, she glanced heavenward. Ask and ye shall receive, yeah, thanks. But couldn’t I have been clean and dressed nicer before he was delivered?
“Hi.” Sweat ran into her eyes, and she swiped her arm across her brow, the sleeve of her sweatshirt absorbing some of the moisture from her flushed face. Her breath was ragged, as much from seeing him as from her run.
“How are you, darlin’?” he asked.
“Good. A little sweaty,” she said with a laugh, “but good. You?”
“I’m good, too. Nice shorts.”
His eyes on her legs warmed them a bit. “Thanks. I like your outfit, too. Where are you headed this early all dressed up?”
The grin on his blushing face gave him an endearing look that caressed her heart. “I’m headed to church.” He nodded toward the chapel.
She loved the sound of the word coming from his mouth—it sounded like “charch.” But she wasn’t as crazy about his being religious enough to actually step into the chapel for a service. One of God’s tricks—sending her a pious man? Her mother always said that the universe sends you what you need. Maybe Sean would tap an undiscovered part of herself.
“Oh.” She dropped her eyes to the sidewalk, nodded, swallowing her laughter. “Right.” She raised her eyes to his. “Going in to confess your sins?”
His smile grew and he nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on hers. “I am.”
“Any of them about me?” she asked.
“All of them.”
Those three little words squeezed her heart and tossed it into the air. She moved closer to him, ran her hands up the front of his knobby sweater, and settled her palms atop the thudding beat in his chest.
“Am I the evil temptation you’re praying God will deliver you from?”
His blue eyes grew dark and heavy, and he stepped closer to her so that their bodies touched, chest to thigh. He smelled clean and fresh and innocent, and she felt like the forbidden fruit.
“You are my temptation, Kristin. But God won’t keep me from you. He and I made a deal about that the night I first laid eyes on you.”
Before she could protest how sweaty she was, he cupped his hand at the side of her face, leaned in, and gave her a very non-pious kiss on the mouth that made her blood run hot.
Organ music rang out from the small chapel, which seemed to be the signal to end the kiss, because he did. He touched his forehead with hers. “See you tonight, darlin’,” he whispered against her mouth.
“I’ll be clean by then,” she whispered back and brushed her open mouth across his lips, just barely touching them.
“So will I.” He kissed her once more, twirling his tongue with hers, then backed away. Giving her a cherubic smile, he heeded the hymn that called him to come to the table.
Her muscles seemed to have atrophied at his confession, locking her in place as she watched the man of her dreams slip into the chapel. For a split second, she felt a tug pulling her to join him. To share something pure with him. Only when the doors closed was she able to shake off the feeling and move toward her dorm. The gym would have to wait. She needed a long, cold shower to get her body, if not her soul, clean.
****
Kristin shut off the blow dryer and listened intently. Sean’s ringtone blared from her phone. Wearing nothing but a smile on her face, she raced to grab the device from the charger on her nightstand. The time was 7:02. He was early.
“Hey, darlin’. You clean?”
She chuckled. “I’m clean, but I need another twenty-eight minutes to get ready.”
“I’ll take you as you are right this second…gorgeous or merely beautiful.”
“Right this second, my hair is wet and I’m naked.”
“Naked’s good…Heloise.”
She laughed. “No! See you in twenty.”
“Hurry! I can’t wait to see you.”
She couldn’t wait to see him, either, and that was the only reason she made it downstairs fifteen minutes earlier than their agreed upon time.
****
The smell of popcorn and candy, perfume and cologne, sex and desire greeted Sean and Kristen as they strolled hand in hand into the tiny but packed makeshift theater in the Student Union Building a little before eight. They had kept stopping along the way there to kiss and touch or they would have arrived sooner. Sean pointed to a few empty seats in the last row by the corner. Kristin nodded, and he led them that way.
Zoe, her boyfriend Mason in tow, intercepted them, grabbing Kristin’s hand.
While Kristin tried to withdraw her hand from her grip, she noticed Sean and Mason did the fist pumping male greeting ritual as if they knew each other.
“Come sit with me up front,” Zoe insisted. “We have a whole row of seats saved, and we’re going to throw popcorn at the screen.”
“Thanks, but we’ve already got a couple of seats picked out.” Kristin nodded to the dark corner.
Zoe stared at the seats with disgust. “You can’t even see the screen from there.”
“We’re fine, but maybe we’ll catch up with you guys later.” She hugged her and stepped away to give Mason a brief hug. “Bye, Mason.”
“But—” Zoe started.
“See ya, Kris. Sean.” Mason interrupted Zoe’s protest by taking her hand and leading her away before she could throw a fit.
“Mason’ll have his hands full tonight,” Kristin whispered to Sean. “She is not happy.”
“Hey, if you want to go up front—”
“No, I don’t. I mean, unless you want to?”
“I don’t want to share you tonight.”
She smiled. “Good answer. Let’s get to our seats.”
They slid into the back row and headed toward their seats, but only one chair remained. Someone had nabbed the other while they’d been fending off Zoe.
Kristin stared at the chair, then at him. “We could take turns sitting.”
He shook his head. “You take the chair. I’ll sit on the floor.”
“You won’t be able to see the screen.”
He looked toward the front. Sighed. “There’s always those seats up front with your friends.”
She put her hands on his chest and moved in close to whisper against his neck. “I could sit on your lap. If it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable for you.”
“I like the way your mind works…Hermione.”
Laughing, she shook her head.
He sat in the chair, she eased onto his lap, and he wrapped his arms around her. Cradled in his arms with her back resting against him, she could hear his heart beating, could smell the just-from-the-shower-clean of his skin, could feel the heat of his body wrapping around her like it always did when they were together. With a smile and a contented sigh, she held onto his hands, which were clasped around her waist.
“How do you know Mason?” he asked out of the blue, his breath brushing her ear.
“We went to high school together, and he’s Zoe’s boyfriend. How do you know him?”
“He’s on my floor…right next door, actually.”
She grinned. “No kidding?”
“No, why?”
“That night you walked me home from Randy’s and I couldn’t call my roommate because she was with her boyfriend somewhere in your dorm?”
“Yeah.”
“She was with Mason.”
He grinned. “Those two have kept me awake many nights, her instructing him how to do it better, him calling out his thanks to God.”
She chuckled. “Sounds about right.” Her mind flew back to Randy’s comments about the screamers who had visited Sean’s room, and she couldn’t resist. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you keep your neighbors awake at night?”
The room went dark and the movie started, but their eyes remained locked.
“Not since I met you.”
Her heart skipped a beat and, in the space of that missed beat, she fell a little more for Sean O’Ne
ill. She touched his face, kissed his mouth, softly, tenderly, letting him know he was the only one she wanted to make noise with, too.
They settled in to watch the loud, action-adventure. From their corner seat in the back row, only the upper half of the screen was visible and a pole bisected the screen, which made it difficult to keep up with what was going on and who the characters were.
“Is that the bad guy?” Sean whispered against her hair about a third of the way through the movie.
She turned her face toward him to whisper back and found his lips inches from hers.
“No, that’s the hero.”
Nearly a half an hour later, he whispered again. “How can he be the hero? He just shot that woman.”
“She’s a bad woman.”
She saw his gaze fall to her lips as she responded.
“Oh, yeah? What did she do?”
She licked her lips. “Cheated on him.”
“With the bad guy?”
“Yes.”
In the middle of a love scene, he again whispered. “Anybody watching this movie would think American girls like bad guys.”
She chuckled at his half question. “Some do.”
“Do you?”
“I like guys who go after what they want.”
“Even if what they want is you?”
“Only if I want them back.”
He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her palm, swirling his tongue at her wrist.
“Do you want me?”
At his question her heart rose in her chest like a helium balloon, and shivers spread like fire across her body. His eyes were hot, needy as they held hers, and she felt dizzy with the desire she saw and felt.
“Are you a bad guy?” She’d meant the words to be funny and light, but they came out scratchy and almost inaudible as they passed through the need stuck in her dry throat.
“I’ll tell you plain, Kristin…it’s you I want. And it’s you I’ll have. If that makes me a bad guy, then so be it.”
His mouth found hers, giving sweet hot kisses that ignited her blood. He held her head closer, opened his mouth wider over hers, and tilted his head to better fit their mouths together. His tongue found hers, and together they conducted a symphony of carnal delight.
She slipped her hand inside his T-shirt and ran her fingers across his hard stomach, up to his smooth chest where she traced the flat button of his nipple until it peaked. Feeling his heart pounding against her hand, she explored his chest thoroughly, letting her fingers dance across his ribs and the defined muscles of his stomach, before moving down to the band of his jeans that barricaded the part of him she wanted most.
The very part stiffening beneath her bottom.
She couldn’t help but give a little wiggle, just to entice him. His sharp intake of breath pleased her, telling her that despite the control he seemed to have over his urges, he wasn’t immune to her.
Breaking the kiss, he shifted her around in his lap so that her back faced their neighbor, giving them more privacy. She watched as his fingers went to work undoing the closed buttons of her shirt. His fingers moved slowly, taking care and building the heat and tension in her body.
“Since that first night I saw your breasts, I’ve wanted to see them again. Wanted to taste them,” he said when all the buttons were loose and her shirt hung open almost to her navel. “I’m going to do that tonight.”
She was nearly breathless from his words and his actions, so she nodded her acceptance of his plan. He slid a finger under the flap of material and moved it aside, then moved the material on the other side, too. He made no move to touch the two rounded breasts heaving out of her lacy bra like she hoped he would, but lowered his head and brushed his lips along her jaw line, against her neck, and across her chest.
“I want you, Kristin,” he whispered into her feverish skin.
“I want you, too,” left her lips just as his mouth reached her breasts, and she gasped and grabbed his head in anticipation. His mouth swept across each half-moon in a languid crawl, his tongue tracing the path his parted lips traveled. He rolled his tongue around her hard nipples through her bra, sucking and nipping each one in turn.
Fingers in his hair, she held his head to her breast in case he was tempted to stop. Then he did stop, and she heard herself whimper a protest.
Biting the front clasp of her bra with his teeth, he twisted it until it popped open, releasing her breasts. He buried his face between them and turned his head back and forth to nudge aside the cups with his nose and chin. Her breasts exposed, nipples reaching up to his mouth, he stared at them, a hungry grin on his shadowed face. Then his eyes met hers. They were soft and drowsy as if he were drunk on the taste of her. “Ready, darlin’?” he whispered.
At her nod, he kissed her mouth then kissed down her face, her neck, her chest. He licked the nipple of one breast, and she about came out of his lap. He put his mouth on it, sucking it lightly into his mouth, nipping the point with his teeth, circling it with his tongue. His hand cupped the other breast, bringing it closer to his mouth so he could treat it with the same attention. When both tips were hard and wet, he breathed on them, the cool breath tightening the points further. He sucked each of them hard, sending pleasure roaring deep inside her body.
Kristin bit down on her lip to keep a chorus of moans from escaping her mouth. She was torn between enjoying everything he had in mind and ripping his jeans down and sucking his cock—the crowd be damned. But his mouth shifting from breast to breast had caught her up in a frenzy of feeling that she didn’t want to let go of.
Wetness dampened the crotch of her jeans and she squirmed in his lap, pressing her thighs together, trying to relieve a tingling pussy that cried out for attention. She was panting, unable to catch a full breath. Her eyes and ears were unfocused, but her mind was sharp on the tornado of pleasure roaring inside her.
His mouth left her breasts and found her mouth seconds before the lights came up. With a muffled curse, he broke off the kiss and hugged her to his chest, helping to hide her breasts until she could adjust her clothing.
In a blinding, dizzying fog of desire, with fingers that didn’t seem to belong to her, she snapped her bra then buttoned her shirt. Her legs felt boneless and unable to stand. By the feel of the bulge tightening his jeans, he would need a few minutes as well. They remained seated while everyone around them filed out.
Embarrassed to let him see the raw and naked desire so close to the surface, she avoided his eyes, but she could feel his gaze on her hot face. His finger brushed along her jaw. Her face burned but she raised her eyes to his.
“That wasn’t on the schedule,” she teased. “I would have remembered.”
“It’s part of the movie experience,” he said, his breath finally returning to normal.
“Hmm. Like snacks?”
He laughed. “Exactly.”
“Here in the U.S., we just grab a bag of popcorn and a soft drink.”
“I like the Irish way better.” The way his gaze shifted to her breasts then back to her face made her crave his touch.
She dropped her eyes. “Me, too.”
He pulled her back against him and pressed his cheek to her head, inhaling deep as if he were breathing in the scent of her.
“Are you sniffing me?” she asked, touched by the tender act.
“Makes me hungry, you smell so good.”
Sharp need replaced soft tenderness as she imagined him satisfying that hunger.
After the movie crowd cleared, they stood and walked out, arms around each other. It staggered her how much closer she felt to him. As if one simple act of intimacy had opened their hearts to each other, giving each other a bigger slice of real estate to claim as their own.
Although what she wanted more than anything was to run back to her dorm so she could convince him to deviate from the schedule, he took his time, talking to her, taking time to stop and kiss and hug in the cool night air. It was as if he knew her plan and wasn’t g
oing to let it happen.
****
The woman was driving him mad with need. And she knew it. Was pulling out all the stops to get him to deviate from their schedule and make love to her. Having her lovely arse sitting on his cock during the movie had turned him inside out. He hadn’t planned to suck her breasts in the middle of the fucking movie but they were right there, her nipples hard and practically begging him to take them. When he’d started unbuttoning her shirt and she didn’t stop him, he couldn’t stop himself. He would have them or die. The taste of her nipples in his mouth almost sent him over the edge. He had been ready to take her right there when the lights came up. Now, he was this close to saying to hell with the schedule.
He drew in a deep breath, trying to get control restored to his system so he wouldn’t act out of pure emotion, pure lust. He’d never felt this discombobulated before. Not with a woman. What spell had this American woman cast on him? In such a short time, he already saw her as his. His heart did somersaults when he realized he didn’t want it to end. He stopped and pulled her in for another kiss. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her mouth. With her, he felt right. It felt easy. Fun. And really good.
“Next time, we’ll get there early so we can get a seat where we can see the screen,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “I thought we had the best seat in the place.”
It pleased him that she meant their back-row love making. “You liked it, huh?”
She nodded.
“What was your favorite part?”
“Chris Hemsworth.”
She chuckled at the look of surprise and disgust that he was sure had materialized on his face at her answer.
“Hemsworth? He’s what does it for ya, huh?”
She grinned at him. “As a matter of fact—”
“No, don’t even say it. You’ll pay for that nasty remark.”
“Oh, will I, now?” she said, mimicking his accent. “And just who will be collecting from me? You, Sean Patrick O’Neill?”
“Glad to see you got the name right, love.”
He took a step toward her, and she retreated. He took another, and the fire in her eyes sent him chasing her across the crusty grass, her laughing the whole way. She zigged, he zagged. He rushed, she swerved. Rounding a light pole, she grabbed hold of it and swung back around and into him where he easily caught her. Giggling at their fun, she taunted him. Kissed him. Teased him.