Page 56 of Brewbies
She cupped the smooth, hard expense of his jaw, tracing down the sandpapery skin over the raised tendons of his neck. She let her hands play outward on the slope of his bare shoulders. His knotted trapezius muscles flexed beneath her fingertips, bearing the weight of the world, even now. A burden he’d likely taken on too young.
Her heart ached for him. He was strong, so strong, and yet there was a fragility to him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
But she wanted to. She wanted to peel back every layer of his being until she knew him inside and out. She wanted to tell him that she understood.
That she knew how heavy heritage could be. To make him see her as a harbor, a haven, even if just for a moment.
Ethan was already pulling away.
The air around them seemed suddenly heavier with anticipation as he spun her around to face the swing.
No accident, she knew, that he didn’t want to look her in the eye.
His big hands braced her ribcage, moving down to her waist and sliding around to the small of her back. With one hand planted in the dip at the base of her spine, he guided her torso down so the swing notched itself against her lower belly.
“I was wondering why you mounted it so high,” Darby teased, glancing at Ethan over her shoulder.
His face remained stony. Serious. The look of a man who had traveled deep within himself. Circling her wrists, he drew her arms back and anchored her hand on the rope. When she had steadied herself, he lifted her legs wheelbarrow style and hooked her ankles over the crooks of his elbows. Her knees bent and widened as he gripped the sides of the swing’s wooden seat on either side of her hips.
She doubted whether Ethan knew the name magazines likeCosmohad assigned to this position—flying doggy—but felt a grudging jolt of pride for the unexpected burst of creativity on his part.
The silky wood bit into the crease of her hips as he drew the swing backward. She felt him notched against her, this silky heat of his head probing gently, maddeningly, as he gave her the barest taste of his full length.
And all at once, Darby knew.
He was taking this slowly to prove to himself that he could.
To prove that even now, he could tighten the iron cables of his self-control.
She felt a pang of sadness as he rocked the swing back and forth in a gentle rhythm. Building, but slowly. Carefully. Not a hint of the wild abandon they’d known when he put the border of a country between him and the town that shared his name.
Fuck that.
Darby shifted her weight and leaned forward, elevating her hips to enhance his view. His breath caught in his throat, and she felt him tense behind her as he gripped the swing’s wooden seat until his knuckles turned white.
Before Ethan could catch on to what Darby intended, she slipped her ankles from his arms and hooked them behind his hips, using her heels to drive him deeper.
“Darby,” he warned, his voice thick with warring desire and restraint.
“I know,” she whispered, craning to look back at him.
“No,” he groaned. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” she insisted. “I know what you’re afraid of, because I’m afraid of it too.”
And that was the truth. The whole truth.
“I know this is the worst possible idea in the history of terrible fucking ideas. I know that you want me off this land and out of your town. I know that I shouldn’t want you, but I do. I want you, Ethan Townsend. I wantallof you.”
Ethan’s eyes darkened, his gaze burning straight through to her soul. The swing creaked as he pulled back, sliding out of her, and for one terrible moment, Darby thought he was going to leave her there, suspended and wanting. Weak with desire.
But then he surged forward, gripping her hips as he drove into her with a force that tore an ecstatic cry from her throat.
“Like that?” he growled.
He didn’t give her time to answer. Instead, he set a brutal rhythm, punctuated by the rapid slap of his hips against her ass.
“More.”
