SCRUMptious: (Dublin Rugby #3)

by Rebecca Norinne

  Her dismissive attitude raised my hackles. “What does that mean? I never lied about it.”

  She finally turned to face me. “No, but then again, I didn’t think I needed to ask if you were a virgin. Nothing about you—about the way you talk to me—led me to believe you would be.”

  “What did you want me to say?” I asked, my exasperation mounting. She had no idea what it was like trying to keep this big a secret, to be living a lie.

  “For starters, you shouldn’t have asked me—repeatedly, I might add—if I wanted your cock if you had no intention of ever giving it to me.” She sighed again and blinked long and slow. When she opened her eyes, the angry heat that’d been there before had been tamped down. now, her expression was filled with regret and resignation. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Don’t say that. This doesn’t change anything.”

  “But it does, can’t you see that? I already felt weird about our age difference, but knowing you’re a virgin too makes me feel like a dirty old lady, like I’m stealing your virtue or something.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. If that’s the way Lauren felt, that was the way she felt. But I needed her to know how I felt too.

  “Don’t you even want to know why?”

  She studied me for a few long seconds, her eyes flicking over my face. “Honestly, yeah.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. The only other person I’d ever talked about this with was Eoin, and he’d been great about it. But Eoin wasn’t someone I wanted to be with; the weight of responsibility associated with my virginity would never rest on his shoulders. If things went the way I wanted them to, Lauren was the woman I was going to be with. We might not have a lot of time left together, but I had every intention of making it count. But first, I had to get her to understand where I was coming from and then I had to make sure the idea of being with me didn’t freak her out.

  “It’s a long, complicated story but it comes down to not wanting to be like my dad; not wanting to be with the type of girls who wanted to be with a guy like him.”

  “Look, I get family issues. Trust me, I’ve got my own. But you should have told me what I was walking into here, especially since you knew I wasn’t entirely comfortable with things between us.”

  “Again, what did you want me to say?”

  Lauren loosened her grip on the steering wheel and ran her hands back through her hair. “I don’t know.” She flicked her gaze back to me. “I’m just caught off guard is all.”

  “I get that, I do. Which is why I want to talk about it with you. I want to make sure we’re okay.”

  She twisted in her seat and rested her back against the door. “I’m trying to figure out what to say here without coming off like a bitch.”

  Fuck. This wasn’t going to be good.

  “I don’t care that you’re a virgin.” I opened my mouth to tell her she was lying to both of us if she thought that was true, but she shook her head and started over. “Okay, I care, but only because of our age difference. If I was a 22-year-old girl, I’d probably be swooning right now. But seriously, this makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t want to be your Mrs. Robinson.”

  I didn’t tell her I didn’t know who that was because if I did, it’d only strengthen the point she was attempting to make. Taken in context, I figured she was some famous cougar who had a string of young boy toys in her past. I’d have to remember to look her up once I got home.

  To hide my ignorance, I asked, “What do you want?”

  She sighed again. “I kind of want you to be the manwhore I thought you were.”

  “Sorry,” I chuckled. “That’s not me.”

  Lauren stared at me and I could practically see the wheels turning in her pretty little head. “What do you want to know?”

  Absentmindedly, she ran the pad of her thumb over her bottom lip, like she was remembering what it had felt like to kiss me, how electric it had been when our mouths had fused. She blinked, and shook her head. “I believe you when you say you had your reasons for not having had sex before, but clearly you’re not entirely innocent either. I mean …” she trailed off, her cheeks turning pink.

  I leaned forward as best as I could and rested my hand on her inner thigh, my fingers petting her through the denim she wore. “You mean I eat pussy like a fucking champ and you’ve never come that hard in your life?”

  Her pupils flared with desire and her chest rose and fell with deeper breaths. She nodded. “Yes, that.”

  Good. At least she hadn’t denied how I’d made her feel, how good it had been between us. With just my fingers and my tongue, I’d taken her to places no other man before me had been able to. As long as I could keep her trembling with desire, I thought I still stood a chance.

  “I’m a virgin, Lauren, not a monk. I like women. I like making them come. I loved making you come. I want to do it again, and again, and again.”

  “I must be crazy,” she said, “because if you told any of my friends there was someone who looked like you who only wanted to pleasure them, they’d fall backwards, open their legs, and say ‘yes please.’ And yet, here I am, thinking about all the ways that’s wrong. How that’d be taking advantage of you in some way. How I can’t just take from you. I need to be able to give too.”

  How I can’t just take from you.

  Hearing those words, everything clicked into place. That right there is what I’d been afraid of all my life. All those women back in Los Angeles and here in Dublin who’d fucked my dad for their chance at fame or fortune. Even though he was a married man with a family, they gave themselves to him with the expectation that he’d give them something in return. And the girls who’d hoped to fuck me had been the same. They hadn’t want me—they wanted what I could do for them, what I could give them. But not Lauren.

  “You’re fucking perfect,” I blurted, and then felt immediately embarrassed. It seemed where Lauren was concerned, I couldn’t keep my humiliating confessions at bay. With anyone else, I was cool as a cucumber, completely unaffected, but with her I was an excited little puppy.

  “I am?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

  “I don’t fuck those girls because they don’t care about me. They just want what I can do for them, how I can improve their social standing. They’d be happy to lay back and let me take whatever I wanted from them—whenever—all with the expectation that I’d so something for them in return. That’s exactly why I haven’t been with anyone. Why I haven’t wanted to until now.”

  “Until now?” she squeaked.

  “I want you, Lauren. You don’t know how bad. You’re all I think about.” I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. Just talking about how bad I wanted to be with this woman was giving me the most painful erection. “Fuck,” I muttered, scrubbing my hand over my face. “I just found out my rugby career is over, and I can’t be bothered because there is nothing more important to me right now then making you understand I’m not fucking around here. I plan to do everything in my power to make you see how right this is, even though you think it’s wrong.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, the black of her pupils bleeding into the green of her irises.

  “Take me back to your place and let me show you how fucking sure I am.”

  Our gazes locked, the challenge hanging between us. This was it, the moment our fate was decided. Lauren licked her lips and then twisted in her seat. When she started the car, my heart stopped, the pendulum poised to swing one way or the other. She cast me one last glance and then smiled shyly. “It’s tiny, but my bed is big enough.”

  I fell back in my seat with a sigh of relief.

  Thank fucking Christ.

  Chapter 8

  L A U R E N

  Donal dropped his crutches to the ground, and we stumbled through the narrow hallway of my minuscule apartment toward my bedroom, our lips locked and our hands tugging at each other’s clothes. I pulled Donal’s shirt over his head and sucked in a surprised gasp. I'd known his body was
tight--he was a professional athlete after all--but this was next level stuff. He made Marky Mark’s Calvin Klein ad look like Homer Simpson on a bad day. Donal had lines and grooves where I didn’t know lines and grooves could exist. I stared at him in hungry amazement, and with his chest sawing in and out and his eyes black with desire, rubbed my fingers over those rippling waves.

  As my hand made contact with his torso, Donal sucked in a breath of his own. “Fuck,” he groaned, pressing my palm to his heated flesh. “I can’t wait to have your hands all over me.”

  I raised my eyes from an eight pack I’d only ever seen carved in marble. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered, my voice awed. I’d been with a couple of very handsome men in my time, but they paled in comparison to the one standing shirtless in front of me now.

  Donal snaked his hands through my hair and pulled me close. Our lips nearly touching, he said, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I felt the color rising in my cheeks and knew my chest would be a blotchy mess of embarrassment if I looked down. I was passably pretty in a natural, girl-next-door kind of way, but there was no denying Donal was way out of my league. Instead of basking in the compliment he’d just given me, I felt unworthy of it. I shook my head, our lips brushing together as I did.

  “Don’t you dare say no,” he admonished me, pulling back to stare into my eyes. With his large hands cradling my head, he asked, “Do you know what I see when I look at you?” I shook my head. “I see a woman whose sparkling eyes and wide, bright smile took my breath away from the very first moment I saw it. I look at you and I’m amazed at your effortless beauty, how comfortable you are in your own skin.”

  I felt tears welling up in my eyes and tried to bite them back with several deep breaths through my nose. Javier had told me I was beautiful too—at first. I should have known something was off with our relationship when he changed his tune ... when he started asking me to wear different clothes, do my makeup more dramatically, shove my feet into five-inch heels. But I didn’t want to think about Javier anymore. Not while I was being worshipped and adored by a man like Donal. He might be ten years my junior, but I knew in my soul that he was more of a man that Javier ever would be. And I’d wanted to marry the guy.

  “But more than that,” he continued, “I see someone so fucking good that I don’t know if I’ll ever be worthy of you. Nothing stops you, nothing keeps you from your dreams.”

  A fat tear slipped down my cheek. “My dad’s death did,” I reminded him.

  “No,” he said, swiping the tear away with the pad of his thumb. “You found a new dream, a better dream. And you’re chasing it with a single-minded purpose that is inspiring.”

  My gut sank when he said that. Donal had had a dream too and mere hours ago, it’d been taken away from him. Because of me.

  I leaned into him and rested my cheek against his bare skin. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I ruined your dream,” I said, wrapping my arms tight around his middle and never wanting to let go. “If it weren't for me, you’d be weeks away from making your comeback.”

  “Ah, baby … no. This injury was always going to happen. I’d bet you anything in the world, my first scrum back, the same thing would have happened. I hadn’t said anything to anyone, but I’ve been expecting this.”

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked, remembering how lost I’d felt when I had to drop out of Harvard.

  Donal chuckled and I felt the rumble of his chest under my cheek. Sliding his hands down my body to rest at the base of my spine, he pulled me tighter. Dropping his head forward, he whispered in my ear, “Now, Lauren, I’m going to take you into your bedroom and you’re going to make a man of me.”

  I smiled, and slowly led Donal the rest of the way down the hall and into my bedroom, which was the size of my closet in my house back in Los Feliz. This apartment had come fully furnished—if you could even call it that—but I’d insisted on supplying my own mattress when I’d moved in. It had seemed like an indulgence at the time, but now I silently thanked for forethought.

  Dropping Donal’s hand, I flipped on the bedside lamp—so much better than the harsh overhead light for hiding my flaws and casting shadows where I wouldn’t want them—and did a quick inventory of the room. I hadn’t brought many belongings with me when I’d moved here; just a framed picture of my family before my dad had died, a small abstract painting that was done by my friend Will, and a vintage silk scarf I’d hung over my headboard to bring some color to the otherwise stark room. Briefly, I wondered what Donal saw when he looked at it. This apartment wasn’t the home of a successful 32-year-old woman. It should be occupied by a girl who’d just graduated college and was striking out on her own for the very first time.

  I turned to him, suddenly shy. “So …”

  “So,” he answered, his voice gruff, as he took a lumbering step toward me and linked our fingers together, his thumb drawing patterns on my skin. “You okay?”

  Am I? I asked myself, giving serious thought to the question. I was about to make love … err, have sex … with the most handsome man I’d ever met, someone who was kind and funny and charming and … a man who wanted me. All things considered, I was better than okay. I was good. Sure, this wasn’t the life I’d imagined for myself, but then again, who actually got that? Certainly not Donal. Not unless you counted what was happening between us now, because if he was to be believed—and I very much thought he was—he was about to get everything he’d wanted from the first moment our eyes had met and locked.

  I nodded. “I’m great.” Unclasping our hands and pulling his head down, I tried to convey just how much I wanted this.

  He slowed our kiss and brushed my hair back from my face. “I can’t promise this is going to be great for you,” he whispered, “but I plan on making up for it all night long if you’ll let me.”

  I traced the slope of his trapezius and goose bumps broke out along his skin. He shivered beneath my touch, his whole body shaking. “It’ll be great,” I told him, “because it’s with you.”

  I dropped my head forward and kissed an open-mouthed path across his chest. God, I was obsessed with his body. We had so little time left together, I wanted to lick and touch it and play with it until I boarded my plane back home in a couple of weeks. When I reached his nipple, I circled it with my tongue and Donal let out a long, deep moan.

  He grabbed my ass and pulled me in tight, rolling his hips. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to come before I get anywhere near your pussy.”

  I paused and flicked my eyes up to find him staring down at me, his jaw clenched. With wicked intent, I circled my lips over the tight little nub and sucked.

  Donal wrapped my hair around his fist and yanked, pulling my neck taut. “You’re going to pay for that,” he growled, backing us up toward my mattress. When the back of my thighs hit the edge, he pushed me down. “Scoot all the way back,” he commanded, and I did as he bid until my shoulders hit the headboard. He pressed the knee of his good leg into the mattress and reached forward to grab the waistband of my leggings and underwear. With one good tug, he divested me of both until I lay there, my chest covered and my bottom half completely bared to him.

  “Now open your legs, baby.”

  Briefly, I considered making him beg and then tossed that notion aside. I already knew what was coming and that it was going to be fucking amazing. This man had a mouth made for sin. Why would I want to delay all that goodness?

  As I slid my legs open, Donal climbed atop my mattress, his booted foot hanging off the end, and settled himself between my thighs. He looked up the length of my body and licked his lips. “I want you to come first since I don’t know how long I’ll last,” he said, revealing his vulnerability, just before he licked a path along my seam. Parting my folds with his thumbs, he made another pass with his tongue. “Shit, I’ll never get over how good you taste. Like ripe peaches and vanilla ice cream.”

  I seriously
doubted that was true, but if he was enjoying himself, who was I to call him on his bullshit?

  For the next several minutes, Donal feasted on my pussy until I was writhing on the mattress like a woman possessed by the devil. With alternating licks, sucks, and nibbles, he brought me to the edge of reason and then backed me away—only to do it all over again as soon as I’d caught my breath.

  “Please,” I begged, reaching for him. If he didn’t fuck me soon, I might expire from desperation. “I need you.”

  Donal raised his head and our gazes locked. Staring back at me was a mixture of greed, lust … and apprehension.

  “Come here,” I whispered, drawing him up my body until I could roll him over. “Lay back.”

  His eyes flashed with apprehension as I straddled his lap. He was strung tight like a bow, so worried about his ability to perform, that I was afraid to do anything too sudden lest he come prematurely.

  “Relax,” I told him, running my hand down his middle to wrap it around the base of his cock. “I got you.” I twisted my wrist and stroked upward, making his back bow off the mattress. He sucked in a hiss between his teeth. I reached into my nightstand and pulled out a condom. After tearing the foil packet with my teeth, I slid it down over the prettiest cock I’d ever set eyes on—long and thick with a shiny head that I couldn’t wait to wrap my lips around.

  But first …

  I moved onto my knees and guided him to my entrance, coating him with my juices. When I pressed his crown to my clit, Donal screwed his eyes shut and groaned.

  “Look at me.” When he did, I pulled a breath into my lungs and slid down the length of him, sheathing him to the root. I held still, giving myself time accommodate to his size.

  The entire time, his eyes stayed locked on mine, his jaw clenched tight. Even though I’d wanted to see his face when I took him into my body for the first time, I had to eventually look away, the intensity of his gaze making me think and feel things I had no business thinking or feeling. I cared for Donal, but I couldn’t let this be anything more than it was—a brief fling that would end in a handful of weeks when I returned to my real life in California.