Page 84 of Just Come Over
“Yeh. Everybody’s going to know. Except about Casey. I think we keep Casey to ourselves. She doesn’t need to worry that she doesn’t belong to anybody, and that one more person will leave, and she’ll be alone again. She’s my daughter in every way that counts anyway. She’s my chance to get it right. And everything else? You and me? We’re going to say—” He grinned. Like a pirate. Or a dragon. “Fuck ’em.”
She didn’t tell him she loved him, too, like another woman would have. Instead, she turned to him, put her hand against his face, and said, “Then—could you kiss me?”
They were on a bench beside the visitors’ center. Only a few people around, but some of those few were watching. He didn’t care. He brushed a thumb slowly under one eye, then the other, catching the last of the tears, then moved his hand slowly around until his palm was on her nape and his fingers in her hair. And then he tipped her head up, bent his head, and kissed her.
She tasted like ginger, spicy and sweet. She tasted like Christmas morning, and she felt like that, too. Her soft mouth opening under his, her eyes drifting shut. He kissed a slow, sweet path across her cheek, touched his lips to her temple, where her pulse beat, and thought of the words he’d read again and again in the dark hours on the plane, while exhausted men slept all around him, and he and the flight crew seemed to be the only ones awake on the black plane painted with a silver fern as it flew through the endless, lonely night.
“O my dove,” he said, “that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice.” He kissed her temple again. “I read that, sometime in the wee hours, in the dark, and I wanted to be with you. In the secret places.”
She had both hands on his shoulders, and this time, she was the one finding his mouth. Gentle, and slow, and sweet, but the heat was burning anyway. She buried her face in his neck and kissed him there, and he shuddered.
“Take me home,” she said. “Please, Rhys.”
He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his trousers, and she said, “I don’t want to wait. I want to be with you now. I need your hands on me. I need you inside me. Please.”
Surely, there was a limit to what a man could take before he actually went up in flames. He said, “One second,” and texted Hayden,I will pay you five hundred dollars to stay with the kids until eight.Then waited, not quite holding his breath, while the screen said a response was being typed, tantalizing him, and didn’t form into words.
Finally, the bubble popped up.No worries. Just be good to my sister.
There was a blockage in his throat. He typed,Always.Then he put the phone back in his pocket, took her hand, and said, “Let’s go.”
It wasn’t even ten minutes to his house, and once again, they didn’t talk. He drove, and she put her hand on his hard thigh, felt the muscle bunch under her palm, and didn’t think at all. It wasn’t even sunset yet, and all she wanted to do was to fall across his big white bed and feel his hand in her hair and his mouth on hers.
They didn’t make it.
He pulled off the road, rolled down the curved drive to his house, pushed the button for the garage, then drove inside, turned the car off, and pushed the button again.
The rattle and crash behind them of the garage door closing, the faint light illuminating his hard face, and she leaned across the seat, pulled his head down, and kissed his mouth, letting her hunger free, and her hand, too, as she tugged his T-shirt up, found warm skin beneath, and ran her palm up his hard torso. He made a low noise in his throat, and she had her tongue in his mouth and both hands on his body, greedy to touch all of him, yanking at his shirt. She couldn’t get it over his head, because his hands were wrapped around her head, pulling her into him.
She needed to feel more. She needed to see all of him, and to feel him, too. She dragged her mouth away from his and said, “Take your shirt off,” even as she tugged some more, and he pulled it over his head impatiently and dropped it over the back of the seat. Which meant her hands were free to roam.
Above them, the garage light winked out. The darkness was heavy, absolutely complete, but she stroked her hands over the bunched muscle of Rhys’s shoulders, down the planes of his heavy chest, over his solid sides, the ridges of his abs, feeling her way. Silken skin, the roughness of hair, and the hard muscle beneath. She could hear his harsh breathing, feel his hands on her, now, yanking her own shirt up.
“Get it off,” he said through his teeth, so she did. Then he was reaching around, unfastening her bra with one hand, pulling it down her arms. His hand was on her breast, cupping it, teasing a nipple with his thumb, and she was shifting in the seat, forgetting that she was meant to be exploring him. That would be because he was dragging her halfway across the leather console between them, turning her face-up, lifting her for him, and sucking her nipple into his mouth while his other hand found the snap of her jeans and pulled down the zip.
She shifted, trying to get her balance, but he had his hand inside her bikinis now, and his mouth was still at her breast. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a moan. His finger was inside her, plunging and retreating, while his palm ground against her. A big hand, and the long middle finger was pressing on that perfect spot, the one that made you twist and turn. She cried out, and his mouth shifted until he was kissing her again, his tongue plunging to the rhythm of his hand. She had one foot against the door, was trying to get him further inside her, opening her mouth wider, taking him deeper, and now, he was swallowing up her cries. The blood pounded in her head, and the hand that held her up was hard as iron, but his other hand never stopped moving inside her.
She wanted to say,“Rhys.”She wanted to say,“Wait.”She couldn’t say anything, because he had her mouth, and her words. Then he set her head on his thigh, got his other hand on her breast, began to pinch the nipple, and kept on doing it. Now, she could call out, and she did. Her hips were pumping, and she was keening.
His hands stopped, his finger slid out of her, and she uttered a sound of protest and said, “Rhys. No. Don’t stop.”
“Get your shoes and jeans off.” His voice was harsh, but his hands were gentle, lifting her back over to her side of the car again. She could barely see a silhouette of his body, but she could hear his breathing, and the rustle of fabric as he took off his own clothes. She had her shoes and socks off, was tugging her jeans down, trying to get them down her calves, over her feet, when the flash of light, bright as neon, announced the opening of his door. She cried out and flung a hand up, the door slammed shut, and she could see him coming around the front of the car. Naked and huge, a warrior advancing. Her door opened, and he pulled her up with one hand, wrenched her clothes the rest of the way off with the other, and pulled her out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
Her legs went around him, and so did her arms, and he turned her against the car and held her there. She gasped, yelped, and said, “Cold,” and he said, “Yeh,” as the light in the car winked out and plunged them into blackness again.
She’d forgotten, surely, how big he was. He stood stock-still a moment, sucking the air in between his teeth. She kissed his mouth, moved her teeth over his neck, and said, “Come on. Please.”
“Condom.”
“I can’t wait. Ican’t.Now.”
He swore, carried her around the car as the light vanished, and they were in the blackness again. He set her down on the bonnet, the metal hard under her bottom, and said, “Put your feet on the bumper. I’m going to lay you down.”
A surge of excitement, and she found the bumper in the dark, felt his hands on her shoulders, and went down onto her back.
He said, “Grab behind your knees. Pull them in,” and she whimpered, unable to stop herself, and did it.
His hands, in the darkness, stroking down the backs of her thighs, over her bum, then spreading her wide, opening her up. A shift of his weight, and something else touching her. His tongue, and he was shoving her legs higher again, holding her thighs in hard hands.
