Wildcard (Stacked Deck Book 1)

by Emilia Finn

  I’ve earned every single ridge and muscle I possess.

  “I do.” I nod and continue eating. “I totally check myself out every night before bed.”

  “You check yourself out every night before bed?” She swallows a bite of pizza, takes a sip to wash it down, then glances up into my eyes. “And then, minutes after that, you crawl into bed and call me?”

  “You’re my first and last step every single day. Now I can’t sleep unless you’ve already passed out, and I hear your breathing in my ear.”

  “Creep.”

  I press a smiling kiss to her hair and luxuriate in the warmth that radiates between us. The snow will come again at some point tonight, and yet, we’re cozy and warm for now. “I’m a little creepy sometimes. I can admit it.”

  “No shame.”

  I shake my head and continue to smile. She makes me happy, even when she’s teasing me. “No shame. I creep for you. I’ve had a lot of practice at it, to be honest. I’ve been looking since I was fifteen.”

  “Really?” She peeks up under her long lashes. “Since you came back to town?”

  “Mmhm. The first time I saw you in that gym, you were sweaty and gross, sparring with Bean, and wearing far too little clothing. Six-pack abs on a fourteen-year-old girl, shoulders that prove you’re no weakling. The very first thing I saw, even through the red haze of anger I was feeling over my own circumstances, was you and that pink sports bra.”

  “You told me to fuck off.”

  “Because you were so pretty,” I laugh. “I’m an asshole when I’m insecure. I was thrown into that gym with people I knew, but I had a bad attitude because I figured they’d all be weird and judgmental about what happened between my mom and sperm donor. Then there you were, all of my hot dreams in one tidy package, and the hair…” I shake my head. “Jesus, your hair. It was like a flashback to when I was four.”

  “You mean the time you tried to kill me?”

  I laugh. “I shoved you in the pool. Though, you were three, so I could have killed you.”

  “Asshole,” she rumbles. “Cold, hard murderer.”

  “That’s why I was mean to you,” I whisper, turning serious. “It’s no excuse, of course. But I’ve been so set against being like my father, and the first girl I see when stepping back into that gym was you, the girl I shoved into a pool when we were little. You could have so easily drowned. Jesus, Evie. You were three, just a fucking baby, and I could have done to you exactly what my dad tried to do to my mom.”

  “You’ve put way too much thought into this.” She sets her dinner aside and turns to face me. Grinning, she presses the gentlest peck of a kiss on my chin. “I could swim, and my mom was literally six feet away. You act like it was a lot worse than it was.”

  “In my head, it was the worst thing I could have ever done. I was old enough to know better.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You were four.”

  I shrug. “Anyway. I walk into this fucking gym that I already decided I hated, and there you were. Proud and strong and none the worse because of that asshole who shoved you into a pool.”

  “I’m resilient,” she jokes. “Nine lives. They should’ve called me Cat.”

  “That’s why I was mean; because you made me face my mistakes. I didn’t say sorry to you, but in my head, I was working through my shitty behavior. I was somewhere I didn’t wanna be, with people I didn’t wanna be with.”

  “And now?”

  I grin. “I’m exactly where I wanna be.” I run a fingertip along the narrow column of her neck and bask in the way she shivers under my touch. “With exactly who I want to be with. Life doesn’t get much better for me.”

  “It will,” she whispers. “Everything is just beginning.”

  Bravely – because that’s who she is – she digs under the blankets for a moment, fluffing them up and sucking frigid air into the cocoon of warmth we’ve created. Goosebumps race along my skin, but then they’re gone, because she climbs into my lap and pulls the blankets close again to place us in the same cocoon.

  Her legs straddle mine much the same way they have in the gym when we’re grappling. This position itself isn’t foreign to us, but the way she slides over my thighs and forces the extra touching is.

  In the gym, we straddle, we fight for the better position, and then we continue with our fight.

  Here, she’s straddling me, but the warmth between her legs pulses through her jeans and mine until my dick is rock hard and determined to embarrass me. Her hair blocks out the entire town I brought her up to see. Her smile draws my eyes, and before I can tell her to sit down before we make bad choices, her cold lips slide against mine, and she plasters her chest against my pecs.

  Just one kiss, I reason with myself. Just for a minute.

  Her hand slides over my chest and up to my face, but when she gets frustrated with my passivity, she grabs my hands and slams them onto her hips. “Here.”

  “Evie… don’t–”

  She dives back in and silences me with her sweet tongue. She tastes like the bubbly we’ve been drinking. She tastes like strawberry lip gloss. More than that, she tastes like Evie, and not even my wildest imagination could have prepared me for that.

  I’ve wanted her for so long that my mind has conjured her tastes and smells and textures over the years. I was certain I’d perfected everything in my mind, only for it to all be blown away the first time we actually kissed.

  The real version is infinitely better than anything my mind made up. And now she lowers in my lap, grinds her core over my dick, and sends me into a tailspin I’m not sure I want to break free from.

  “Jesus, Evie.” I break our kiss and pull my face away. I try to lift her off my lap, but she’s strong, and she’s determined. “Stop for a sec.”

  “Hang on.” She stops grinding on me, but she is still straddling me, and her eyes refuse to release mine. “Have you ever wondered…” She grabs my hand from her hip, opens it, and with a smile, presses a kiss to the pad of each finger. When I figure that’s as far as she’s planning to take it, she pulls my hand forward and places it over her breast. “Have you ever wanted to touch?”

  “Oh god!” My entire arm spasms against her chest. My body rejects what she’s giving me, but then my baser instincts take over and instead of letting go, I squeeze.

  I let my thumb slide over the puckered nipple that pushes through her bra and top, and when she cries out, I sit taller and take her lips with mine, if only to catch her cry.

  Those are for me, and I refuse to let them escape for someone else to hear when they didn’t earn them.

  “Have you wondered, Ben?” She peppers kisses over my jaw, and as though by instinct, begins a rhythmic slide over my cock. It proves that men and women know how to be together. Even if they’ve never done it before, our bodies know what to do, which is both amazing and a big fucking problem for me. She moves closer when I don’t answer, and slides her tongue into my mouth. “Answer me.”

  “Yes.” I should be telling her to get off, but instead, I grab her hip and pull her down until my dick threatens to break free of my jeans. “Yes, I’ve wondered. I’ve thought about it for years.” My breath comes out on a pant when she picks up the rhythm of her movements. “I’ve wanted to touch you for as long as I remember.”

  “Thank god,” she groans. “Because I’ve thought about you. And I didn’t want to be the only one.” She pulls back and sits tall. Her harsh movements continue to suck cold air beneath the blankets, but then she fucks me right up. She drags her sweater and shirt up to reveal the coveted six-pack abs, and when the cold touches her skin and she squeaks, she tosses the fabric aside and presses her chest against mine.

  I pull the blankets back up and tuck her in so she can warm up again, and when that doesn’t feel like enough, I bring the blankets right over us and tuck them under the back of my head. We’re truly cocooned now, and though it’s pitch black, I see her with my hands. I see her with my touch.

  “I’m so glad we
’re here,” she murmurs. Her hands move between us, squished and restricted, but she moves and makes me realize she’s undoing the zipper on my coat.

  “Evie…” I shake my head. My heart begs me not to stop this, but my brain knows better. “You have to stop.”

  “You need to start,” she giggles. She lifts just a little higher to create space between us, and in the dark, her teeth clang against mine when she dives in to kiss. “I love you, Ben.”

  “I love you, too.” I grab her hips, exciting her when she thinks I’m finally playing, and flip us so she ends up on the bottom and I’m able to slow her moves. The truck squeaks beneath us, the hydraulics on the poor old thing telegraphing to the outside world that we’re in here. But now I’m in charge, and though she’s without a shirt, I’m able to slow her from removing mine. “You need to chill the fuck out, Evelyn. You’re gonna kill us both.”

  “I wanna know what this feels like,” she murmurs. Reaching high above her head, she lifts the blankets just an inch or two to allow muffled light to come in and illuminate her eyes. “I want to know what you feel like.”

  “Evie…”

  “We’re old enough, Ben. And I’m away for ninety percent of the year. I don’t want to wait until next Christmas to know what this is like.”

  “You. Are. Seventeen.” I drop my forehead to her chest and concentrate on my breathing. “You are seventeen, Evie.”

  “And I was seventeen yesterday when I touched your dick and helped you come.”

  “God…” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I knew that was too much. I knew I should have sent you to a therapist or something.”

  Snickering, she grabs my face and tries to pull me back up. “I’m not scarred by what we did. But I’m curious. I want to do more. And I want to do it with you.”

  “You will do it with me,” I snarl. “You will do it with only me, and not one single other guy on this planet.”

  “So what’s the proble–”

  “When you’re old enough to make these decisions,” I press. “When you’re old enough to know what you want and not regret it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t regret kissing you.” She pushes up to press her lips to mine.

  “But kissing is just kissing,” I argue. “You can only ever lose your virginity once.”

  “I can only ever kiss you for the first time once. The whole world is caught up on this mythical thing called virginity, like a female becomes less valuable once we lose it. But you know what? It’s not a real thing. Not physically, anyway. My body doesn’t change just because we have sex. My heart changes, my feelings change, but those changed when we first kissed and I realized you were willing to see me the same way I see you.”

  “You’re selling steak to a starving man, Evelyn.” I can’t help the way my hips jut forward and press against her thigh. “You’re trying to convince me to do something my body desperately wants. But my heart has changed too, and your well-being is far more important to me than my own.” I reach up and brush locks of hair from her eyes. “I’m desperate to be with you, and I have been for a long time. But your feelings matter the most, and I can’t be okay with fucking you in the back of my truck, and then dropping you off at home like you’re disposable.”

  “Not fucking,” her bottom lip quivers. “Making love.” She reaches up and wraps her arms around my neck to keep me close. Pulling me closer, and sighing when our lips touch, she lifts her legs and wraps them around my hips in the way all of my teenage fantasies conjured. When I try to pull away, she holds on the way she’s been trained her whole life, and silently promises that if we don’t make love, we’ll grapple.

  “Evie…”

  “Touch me, at least.” Her eyes meet mine in the dark. “Do for me the thing I did for you yesterday. Show me what that feels like.”

  Lord, have mercy on my soul.

  I nod. “Okay.” Hesitantly, I continue to nod and lower her back to the bed of the truck. “Okay, I’ll do that thing you did for me. I’ll show you what that feels like.” Once she’s flat on her back and her legs loosen from around my hips, I study her eyes and unsnap her jeans with shaking hands.

  Everyone is so focused on her, on her virginity, on her feelings, on her sensibilities. Meanwhile, I’m over here with shaking hands and a heart that feels like it might explode. I’ll only ever unsnap Evie Kincaid’s jeans for the first time, once. And now it’s done. Gone. Never to be repeated.

  I hold my breath and slowly begin peeling the denim down her hips. Her breath comes out on hitching stops and starts, and her hands shake as they rest on my shoulders, but then the denim makes way for black lace panties and the sexiest smattering of freckles on her hipbone.

  I’ve seen these freckles before. When swimming. When working out.

  In the gym, she wears the tiniest outfit known to man, so it’s not like I haven’t seen almost every inch of her body. But those workout clothes aren’t made of lace, nor does she ever ask me to take her pants off with the express intention to touch.

  This is different. This is the start of something big for us. And when I get the jeans down to her ankles and have to work on her shoes, I set it all aside and glance back up her pale thighs. She’s never been truly tan. Even in the dead of summer when we’ve been frolicking in the sun for two months straight, her skin remains a perfect peaches and cream pale. It’s flawless, she’s never been through the teenage acne stage. She has no visible scars, nothing marring her perfect skin, but here she is, asking me to take something she can only give once.

  “Hey, Ben?”

  She says those magical words and draws my gaze up.

  “I trust you.” She nibbles on her bottom lip and stares into my eyes. “I don’t trust anybody the way I trust you. I know you’ll take care of me.”

  “I will,” I promise. “There’s no man on this planet who would lay here and say no to what you’re offering.”

  “Probably makes you an asshole.”

  I laugh and slowly, gently, slide the tips of my fingers beneath the lace of her waistband. “Probably. But we already knew that. Are you…” I glance up when she shivers. “You okay?”

  She nods and creates a double chin. “I know how to say stop.”

  “Okay.” Bolstered, I take the sides of her panties between my fingers and slowly begin to lower them. So many years of wanting. So many years of dreaming. So many fucking years of imagining, I now lay just inches from her, and my tongue instinctively darts out to wet my lip.

  I’m hungry for her. I’m fucking ferocious, and the only thing that can satisfy my hunger is tasting her.

  “Are you ready?”

  She squirms and tries to slide her thighs together, but I hold them apart and send myself crazy wondering if I can actually see the moisture between her legs, or if that’s my imagination and wishful thinking.

  “I’m ready.” She nods in jerky movements. “Holy hell, Ben Conner’s face is right next to my vag.”

  I chuckle, but that turns to a groan when my dick reacts to her words and grinds against the stacked pillows beneath us. “You need to stop announcing these things. It’s weird.”

  “I’m not going to stop,” she giggles. “I’ve waited a long time for this, so as we unlock each new level, I need to have my mini crisis. Ben Conner… Ben effing Conner, my crush and best friend, is about to… ya know… my vagina.”

  Her voice cracks with nerves, but it comes with a sweet twist of laughter. Everything we do together is as new to me as it is to her. I have no experience to draw on as I touch her, but I use my common sense and – Well, that’s not true. If I was using my common sense, I’d have left her jeans on and driven her back home – but I use my imagination, and come closer to her heated core. I slide my tongue over her wet slit, and take my victory in the way her every sound cuts off. Her thighs tighten and tense, and her knees try to squeeze me.

  I’ve never done anything like this before, so I make it up. But if the sounds coming from her chest are any indication, I’m doing somet
hing right, so I keep going and grind my dick against the cushions beneath us.

  Her clit pulses against my top lip, and the moisture I was certain I could see is confirmed when her flavor penetrates my senses. “Oh god.”

  “Yeah.” Her breath races out in jerky exhales as she flattens her feet to the bed of the truck and tries to push up. “Keep going,” she begs. “Do that again.”

  So I do. I lean in closer and run the tip of my tongue from top to bottom, and smile when her knees try to lock me in. My heart pounds so hard that I’m certain we can hear it slamming against the metal of my truck, and my dick pulses to the same tune, seeping into my underwear and begging for release.

  She’s my steak. And I’m denying myself a feast.

  “Can I…?” Mostly the question is for me, as I bring my hand up between her legs, and groan when dipping my fingertip inside sends her wild.

  She bucks beneath me, and grabs onto my hair so tight, I’m certain she tears strands from the roots.

  I’m aware of the fact she’s never been touched so intimately, but I use her moisture and distraction to slide my finger further inside.

  She lets out a string of cussing that would get her into trouble at home. Because that’s who she is; a swearer, rather than a whisperer of the sweet nothings some couples might share in this moment.

  I slide my finger in as far as it can go and allow her a second to relax. Then I begin drawing it back out again, and grit my teeth at the way she clamps down and tries to hold me inside.

  “You’re so perfect,” I whisper when a new wash of pleasure fills my hand. “So fucking perfect, Evie. You’re everything I ever dreamed of.”

  Instead of answering, she grabs the back of my head and shoves my face down until my tongue joins in with my finger.

  I could be a little mad that she doesn’t return my words, but the fact she’s so mindlessly incapable of anything but demanding her pleasure also does good things for my soul. It means I command her pleasure, it means she’s powerless to me, and when I wrap my lips around her clit and suckle, when she bucks so wild that I have to hold her down, I bask in the fact we’re perfect for each other.