CHAPTER 3

 

“How was that?” asked Fin, panting in Tate’s ear.

They’d seen each other at the wedding, of course, her eyes unable to stop seeking his throughout the ceremony and his having the same problem. As Rory and Britt made their way back down the aisle as man and wife, Fin had grabbed her hand, pulled her through a side door, down a flight of stairs, and into the basement of the church.

Tearing at one another’s clothes, their teeth clashing as they kissed, he’d spun her around in front of a long table covered with choir music, leaning over her, his front to her back.

“You want it?” he’d demanded roughly, his breath hot against the back of her neck. “Say it.”

“Yes!” she’d cried, soaked with anticipation after forty-five minutes of hot glances in the sanctuary upstairs. “I want it!”

“How much?”

“Now!” she’d yelled, her voice breaking with frustration.

He’d hiked up her dress, yanked down his pants, lined himself up, and thrust into her, his teeth biting into her shoulder as she gasped. He was huge and throbbing, hard as a rock but smooth as velvet, massaging the walls of her sex with every successive pump of his hips. Reaching around, he’d put two fingers in her mouth, and she’d sucked them greedily. When he’d reached for her breasts and tweaked her nipples through the bodice of her dress, she’d bitten down on one so hard that he’d growled in pain, then slammed deeply into her body just like she wanted him to.

And fuck, it was fast and furious and…delightful.

All of it. Right up until the very end, when he took his fingers, slick from her mouth, and rubbed them in raspy circles against her throbbing clit. She’d screamed then, unable to hold back the maelstrom inside.

He’d come violently into her, groaning like a dying man, the hot spurts of his cum satisfying to both of them on a base and visceral level.

Now she only had two gripes.

One, it was over too soon—the latent waves of bliss, of wildly contracting muscles, perfect yet maddening as they slowed.

And two, as her heart rate returned to normal, she felt so terribly, indescribably lonely that she closed her eyes against an unexpected rush of tears and forced her mind to go blank.

His voice, asking about his performance, made her refocus her attention.

How was that?

He leaned over her back, the buttons of his shirt digging through the thin material of her dress, his cock still deeply embedded within her. “Tate. Was it okay?”

Was it “okay”? No, Fin. It was excellent. It was first-rate, grade-A fucking.

“Let me up,” she said softly.

He backed away from her, and she felt his hot flesh slip from her body. Her palms were flat on the table, and she used them to push herself upright on shaky legs, pulling down and smoothing her dress with her back to him.

She looked up, and before her, on the wall, was a poster of a rainbow. Under it, it read, “God is Love. God is Real. Love is Real.”

Tate clenched her jaw.

“Hey,” said Finian from behind her, tapping her on the shoulder. “Are you okay?”

She spun to face him. “Fine.”

“Sure?”

She nodded, uncertain if she trusted her voice not to waver.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, reaching for her flushed cheek.

Tate sidestepped his touch. “You don’t need to say that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

Whatever. She grabbed her purse off the table.

“I hope…” he started.

She could see what he wanted. She knew that he needed some sort of reassurance that she’d enjoyed herself, that he’d performed well. But the sign on the wall made her batten down the hatches, made her feel frightened and mean.

Her tone was terse. “You hope what?”

“I hope that was good for you,” he said simply, his hands loose by his sides.

It occurred to her to ask him if he’d ever fucked a woman before. Didn’t he feel the bites on his fingers? The way she’d come apart when he’d fondled her clit? The way her body had shaken uncontrollably, her innermost muscles clenching around him like an obscenely tight glove? The sounds of her moans and cries? The scream when she’d orgasmed? Had he missed all of that? Was it necessary to rehash it?

She wasn’t in the mood to stroke his ego. If he’d somehow missed the fact that she’d orgasmed big, that wasn’t her problem. She took a deep breath and sighed. “Reception starts soon. We better go.”

He’d been smiling hopefully at her, but now he frowned. “You’re hard to please.”

Oh, Lord. “I didn’t say I was unhappy.”

“Didn’t say you were happy either.” He took a deep breath and let it go loudly in consternation. “Why’d you say yes in the first place?”

“Because I wanted you to fuck me.”

He blinked at her. “Jaysus, but you’re stone cold.”

That was, in fact, what she was trying to project, but it really bothered her to hear him say it. It stung for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand and had no interest in unpacking. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Isn’t that what every guy wants?”

“Is it?” His brows knitted together as he looked at her. “I don’t know.”

She laughed at him. “It is. I promise.”

“Me last girlfriend,” he said, reaching down to fasten his tuxedo pants, “was clingy as shit. Demanded to know where I was goin’, and when, and with whom. Constantly ridin’ my ass, you know? I thought I hated it. But now…”

“Now what?”

His eyes were sad as he stared back at her. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to know very much,” she muttered, heading for the door, careful not to look up at the poster that proclaimed, “Love is Real,” which—in her opinion—was irresponsible as fuck. Sure, it might be real, but it could die, and when it did, it flattened a person. Tate knew the anguish of that loss, and she never wanted to experience it again.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, his footsteps quick as he caught up with her on the stairs. “Wait up.”

“Why?”

“I…Jaysus, I don’t get you.”

“What don’t you get?”

“It’s like you don’t even want to chat. You only want…”

“What?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder. “Sex? What’s wrong with that? I can’t have needs like you? I can’t feed the need without getting—what was it, again?—‘clingy as shit’?”

She continued up the stairs, grateful to find a mirror at the top. Wearing her hair in a bob had some definite pluses, like the fact that she could run her hands through the thin, silvery-gold strands and voilà! Her coif was like new.

Behind her, Fin’s face appeared, and she looked their reflections for a moment: at the tempting pout of his lips, at the mixture of satiety, warmth, and confusion in his green eyes. It was his eyes that had first captivated her last night in the candlelit barn—the way they’d held hers with such earnestness, like he’d never seen anything as remotely wondrous as Tate. It had coaxed real emotion from her, and she’d given him a rare and genuine smile in thanks for the compliment of his admiration.

“You ever been in love?” he asked her reflection.

Her nostrils flared. “Don’t believe in it.”

“What?” he asked, his lips tilting up like she was kidding. “How can you not believe in it?”

“Because it doesn’t exist,” she said, running her hand through her hair again before sidestepping away from the mirror. “Love is a myth.”

“Jaysus, you’re cagey.”

“I’m…cagey?” she asked him, looking around for a door that wouldn’t force her to parade past the wedding party, who were greeting guests at the front of the church. She spied a double door down the corridor that appeared to lead directly out to the parking lot. Bingo.

“Never met a girl who didn’t believe in love,” said Fin, following at her heels.

“Now you have,” she said, pushing open the doors and stepping outside.

“Why is that?” he asked. “Why don’t you believe in it?”

Tate huffed in annoyance. “What’s with the third degree?”

“We’ve fucked twice. I feel like we should get to know each other.”

“Ha! What for?”

He chortled behind her, and she turned to face him, raising her eyebrows like she expected an answer.

“You’re somethin’,” he said.

“Everyone’s something.”

“Somethin’ different,” he clarified. His lips twitched, and he offered her a teasing smile. “Give me a ride back to camp?”

“What kind?”

“Car’ll do.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Can’t I smile?” he asked. “Or do you not believe in smiles either?”

She lowered her chin and put her hands on her hips. “You can smile. And you can have a ride back, but let’s just be super clear about one thing, okay? We’re having a fling this weekend, Finian. It’s fucking. We’re not friends. We’re not anything.”

He stared at her, as though processing her words.

“To be clear, we may fuck again, or we might not. Either way, it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t read into it. Don’t get attached,” she said, leveling him with her eyes. “Understand?”

He took a deep breath, his jaw clenched, his eyebrows still furrowed, his index finger sliding slowly across his lips in thought.

“I have a question,” he said.

“For God’s sake! What?”

“Can we go back to the part about fuckin’ again?”

Suddenly—without any warning and for the second time since she’d met him—she felt real emotion course through her veins, warming her body, catching her off-guard. Surprise. Amusement. Happiness. And she did something she rarely did with a man she was fucking: she laughed. Or more accurately, she snorted. The sound chortled through her nose, thoroughly surprising her and leading to a gale of unexpected giggles.

When she looked up at him, she saw he was laughing too. Not as hard as her. Not as much. But the smile on his face reached his eyes…and made them sparkle.

“We’ll discuss it in the car,” she said, leading the way.

***

Halfway back to the camp, Tate had reached for Fin’s cock and started stroking it through his pants. When he’d been about to come, he’d pushed her hands away and demanded that she pull over. As soon as she’d cut the engine, he’d released the beast, dragged her onto his lap, and speared her quickly.

Rocking against him, she’d taken his load again, mewling against his neck as she came, and this time Fin hadn’t needed to ask. She’d come. He’d felt the gathering, the quivering, and the tight clench of her pussy around his cock before she cried out. Only then had he given himself over to his own orgasm, holding her tightly and whispering filthy things in her ear.

When they’d arrived at Summerhaven, she’d parked at the far side of the camp parking lot, and they’d kissed and groped for a while before she had preceded him to the reception. He’d arrived soon after, straightening his shirt and running a hand through his hair.

He couldn’t get enough of her.

He knew she was leaving tomorrow.

He knew she lived in Florida.

He knew he would likely never see her again.

But for the first time in his life, Finian was learning that there was a delicious sort of intensity in a love affair when your time was finite. The distance that would imminently separate them made every second precious, heightened the fleeting sense of every touch, and made every word powerful. In the strangest way, this girl who disavowed love and wanted so badly to belong to no one belonged to him for this millisecond in time, and he welcomed that sense of possession because it was only temporary. For now, and only for now, she was his, and he wanted to soak up every second with her.

Seated at the same table, they sat side by side, fondling each other under the table near constantly and tacitly daring one another not to react openly or draw attention to what they were doing. It was a torturous but delectable game, a shared and dirty secret that kept him semierect throughout toasts and dinner.

Twice they’d danced, though both times he’d needed to head outside afterward to cool down. She smelled like him. She smelled like his cum and some perfume that she was wearing, and fuck if it didn’t make it impossible not to want her again, though he’d already had her thrice in twenty-four hours.

As the reception wound down, she visited across the room with her friend Hallie, and Finian found himself staring at her like a lovesick teenager, wondering if she’d invite him to stay overnight with her and desperately hoping that she would. Whereas he shared lodgings with his cousin Ian, Tate had her own cabin with a big, queen-sized bed. For all that they’d fucked, they hadn’t been naked with each other, and it was all Finian could think about—their bodies entwined, skin to skin, until dawn rent the skies.

The sweet torment of will-she or won’t-she kept him on his toes, his cock leaping with hope when she paused in her conversation with Hallie to look over at him. But he had a distinct feeling that if he pushed her, she’d push him away. He didn’t know if he bought her whole “love is a myth” routine, but he was certain that she believed it. He also had a feeling that her theories on love were more about self-preservation than grounded conviction, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t playing a long game here, so he needed to step lightly. If he pressured her, she’d tell him to go fuck himself, and that’d be the end of the hottest and most spontaneous weekend of sex he’d ever had.

So what’s the killer move? he wondered, watching her smile at her friend.

Space.

Distance.

Feigned indifference.

If he acted like he didn’t care whether they fucked or not, he had a feeling that she’d be ten times more likely to invite him over.

“Well, that’s me,” said Finian to his Uncle Ted, who sat beside him at the table. “I’m knackered.”

“Headed to bed, Finian?”

“Yeah. Think so,” he said. “Are ya drivin’ back to Dartmouth tonight?”

“Colleen sleeps best at home,” said his uncle. “I guess we’ll see you at Christmas?”

Finian nodded, though he felt a sharp twinge in his heart. Being away from his family at Christmastime this year was going to be hard. “I guess so.”

“You know,” said his uncle, “you should see Boston before you head home. It’s a great city.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Sure. Visit the Druid. Colleen says it’s the best Guinness in America.”

And since—aside from fucking Tate again—a pint of Guinness was presently at the top of Fin’s longings, he nodded. “You know? I think I’ll do just that. Ian said it’s quiet here next week. Maybe I’ll take a few days off.”

“You should!” said Uncle Ted. “Make the most of your visit. Before you know it, you’ll be home, son.”

The pain in his heart eased at this suggestion, and he felt gratitude toward his uncle.

After kissing his aunt on the cheek and wishing her a safe trip home, Finian made his way across the room, careful to lock eyes with Tate as he passed her but also quick to look away. If she wanted to see him later tonight, it was up to her to suggest it, though he’d be lying if he didn’t confess that he was hoping—with every fiber in his body—for an invitation.