Page 19 of No Angels

Everything about the farm looks different. The barn’s been restored, the oaks lining the driveway have been pruned into some semblance of uniformity, and the front porch has been recently painted. The soft white paint glows under the rays of the setting sun, and as I park I notice the swing hanging in the far corner.

I knock on the door, and there’s no response. I hear music, so I assume he’s there. I let myself in.

I follow the trail of notes and find him crouched in front of the wainscot in the hallway.

“I’m disappointed a butler didn’t greet me,” I tell him.

He whirls around, startled. When he recognizes me, he grins and rises to his feet.

He’s not the boy I knew and I can’t help wondering if his lips are still like pillows and steel. I can’t help wondering if his kiss still tastes like the cinnamon flavored toothpicks he always had hanging from the corner of his mouth.

When he crowded me against the scaffolding and braced his arms over my head, I wanted to close my eyes. I could almost feel the scratchy straw of the hay bale against my back, the trickle of sweat that pooled at my nape, and the ghost of that long ago kiss haunting the sliver of space between our bodies.

He’s streaked with paint and sweat. He has a bandsaw in one hand and a hammer in the other one.

I want to tackle him to the floor.

He’s even sexier now than he was twenty years ago, because all that rugged confidence is warranted. If we were stranded on a desert island he’d hack down trees, build us a shelter and then catch me dinner with his bare hands.

He’ll have my back and protect me unto death when the zombie apocalypse comes.

The guys I dated in the city are nothing like him. They were polished suits and five-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne and I bought you a tennis bracelet. He’s an old t-shirt and battered Levis so worn they’re molded to the thighs I can’t stop looking at like a second skin. He’s I’ll catch you when you fall and I know how you like your coffee and I remember every word you’ve ever said.

He’sI’ve known you were mine since we were fifteen and I’ve waited long enough for you to realize it too.

“You’re early. I wasn’t expecting that.”

I lift my right shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I don’t.”

He doesn’t drop the tools, he carefully lays them on a folding chair. He stalks toward me and I know it’s a date beyond the shadow of a doubt and he’s going to kiss me.

And before I can take another breath, he’s on me. This kiss is hotter and sweeter than the one he gave me when we were eighteen. This kiss is like the edge of a blade or the white-hot flames that can burn everything to ash in seconds. Dangerous. So dangerous.

He scoops his hands beneath me and my legs slip around his waist as he backs me into the wall.

I can’t believe he still smells the same. Like lemonade stands in the summer and a fresh cut field in the spring. Like the farm I grew up on. Like home.

He dips his head and scrapes my throat with the edge of his teeth and murmurs, “So fucking sweet.”

He nips the tendon and then laves it with his tongue and wedges himself against me. I can feel the long, hard, thick ridge of his cock through the seam of my threadbare yoga pants. I want to pull him out and revel in the way he thrusts against me because he’s undone.

“So fucking perfect,” I murmur back. “The way you feel.”

“You took the words outta my mouth, Bumble Bee.”

“Are we going to hump against a wall, Callihan?”

“We just might, Cassidy. Especially since I’ve been dreaming about sinking into you since 2002.”

“You had dirty dreams about me when you were sixteen?”

He kisses the hollow of my throat, the softness of his beard tickling my collarbones. “Since the day we traded ice cream.”

“But, what about…”

He silences me with the blunt press of his lips against mine. Hard and quick. “No more questions, Bumble Bee,” he admonishes as he slides his hand underneath the hem of my shirt.

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