Chapter Fourteen
If walls could talk, Sinclair mused as she pulled up to the curb in front of the Oglethorpe Inn. The last time she’d been here, she’d been resolutely single, attending the Daughters of Magnolia Grove’s annual Christmas Eve dinner with her family, watching Beau and Savannah crack apart when Mrs. Pinkerton had congratulated them on the new baby Beau hadn’t yet known they were expecting. Little oops. Beau hadn’t taken it well, to say the least. He’d let fear left over from a tragedy in his past dictate his reaction.
At the time, she’d been furious on her sister’s behalf, and not especially concerned with the reasons behind his ugly accusations or hasty retreat. She understood fear and distrust better now than she had at Christmas—or at least understood she shouldn’t hurl stones while standing in the middle of her own house of glass. Fear and distrust had been invisible copilots of her life since the summer when letting her heart take the controls had crash-landed her in a truly awful place. She and Beau actually had a lot in common when it came to coping mechanisms.
But people changed. Beau had. Shane definitely had. Maybe she could, too?
She cut the engine and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Maybe she already was changing? Not bravely, or particularly gracefully, she had to admit, but then again, if someone had told her last Christmas that the very near future would find her on her knees under the willow tree where she’d surrendered her virginity, telling Shane Maguire she forgave him, she would have laughed her ass off. A week after putting her feelings for Shane into words—and accepting the words from him—and nothing disastrous had happened. Fate wasn’t using them as chew toys, so far. She’d survived his version of a tour of downtown Magnolia Grove, the highlight of which had involved some very sinful acts in the parking lot behind the Presbyterian Church—yes, they could still do it in a car. He’d survived another Sunday dinner at her parents’ house before catching a red-eye to Los Angeles for a client in need. When she’d walked him out, he’d seemed a little tense and unsettled. Mind already on his work, she’d assumed, and then he’d thanked her for dinner and kissed her senseless, and she’d let it go. It wasn’t until a day later, when she’d driven downtown and passed the inn that she’d realized he was essentially living like a visitor in his own hometown—hotel, suitcase, rental car, laptop. Other than the view out the window, was it really so different than being in Los Angeles, or Virginia, or wherever?
The thought had left a slippery feeling in her stomach. It was. Of course, it was. He had connections to Magnolia Grove. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to remind him?
When he’d called yesterday to let her know he’d be back in town this afternoon, she’d informed him she’d meet him at his hotel at three p.m. sharp. She was taking charge of their next tour.
Now that the moment had arrived, however, a part of her wished she’d planned their tour for tomorrow, so they could spend this Saturday afternoon making up for six days of separation. Well, several parts of her, actually. She’d missed him. Her phone dinged with an incoming text. She lifted it from the inside pocket of her purse, and checked the screen.
I’m ready for my tour.
Her eyes automatically lifted to scan the three orderly rows of shutter-flanked windows decorating the front of inn above the lobby level. Nothing…nothing…then her eyes stalled and her heart cartwheeled. Top floor, end window. Shane stood there, staring at her, his wide, bare chest filling the window, his torso tapering down to where a white towel hung from his hips, only a hairsbreadth above indecent. Her throat went dry, and one of those parts of her that had missed him badly went very, very wet. But she’d made arrangements, and backing out at the last minute repaid someone’s kindness with rudeness. Manners forbade canceling the plans, even for the sake of her…parts.
She tore her eyes away from the mouthwatering view and started typing.
You pervert. Stop flashing people from your hotel window, and get your ass down here.
When she looked up again, he was reading his screen. She was too far away to see his expression, but a quick second later her phone dinged again.
I’m not wearing a stitch, and you’re ordering me to the street. Who’s the pervert? And what does she have in store for my ass?
Okay, she was definitely the pervert for all the highly depraved ideas polluting her mind. Ideas she’d spell out for him in intimate detail. Later.
Put some clothes on that ass first. Then get down here, and you’ll find out.
He braced an arm on the window frame and leaned forward—no doubt to glare down at her. The pose turned his torso into a lean, rippled monument of masculine beauty and slid the towel so low it disappeared from view. Finally, he lifted his phone and texted her, one-handed. Just thinking about his nimble thumb left her a little sweaty despite the mild, partly sunny day.
Bossy. Sure I can’t tempt you upstairs? I’m told it’s a damn fine ass.
She grinned in spite of herself but shook her head.
Put something pretty on it. Quickly. My tour starts in ten minutes, and I don’t want to be late.
After she hit send, she looked up. He was reading the text. Once he finished, he straightened and gave her a salute. Then he tossed something aside and turned away from the glass, deliberately offering her a view of his rangy shoulders, the long, muscular line of his back, and his stark naked, and damn fine, ass. She slumped against the side of the Tahoe as it disappeared from sight.
A few minutes later one side of the elaborately frosted glass door of the inn swung open. Her heart did more acrobatics as Shane stepped out. Instead of making her forget the staggering abundance of hard muscle hidden beneath, the long-sleeved black polo he wore emphasized the expanse of his shoulders, the loose-limbed strength of his arms, and the formidable wall of his chest. A triangle of white T-shirt peeking out from his collar teased her with the knowledge two layers of fabric now separated her from his warm, vital flesh. He’d haphazardly tucked the very front of his shirt into the waist of his jeans—wash-whitened at the stress points along the button fly and a shade darker just below, where the denim cupped a truly impressive bulge.
Long, powerful thighs flexed as the bulge drew closer. A deep voice drawled in her ear. “You keep looking at your favorite toy like that, baby girl, and it’s going to want to come out and play.”
She ran her tongue along her suddenly dry lips, and he groaned. “Too late.” A big hand closed around the lapel of her jacket and dragged her to him. “It’s good to see you,” he murmured and then waited a beat for her to say it as well, but her breath deserted her. Before she ruined a perfect moment due to emotional clumsiness, she closed the space between them and kissed him. If he noticed her fumble, he didn’t hold it against her, just kissed her back, and kept right on kissing her until she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him so she could have more. More of his lips, his tongue…more of him. When he trailed his mouth over her chin, a moan erupted from deep in her throat. When he nibbled his way along her jaw, the moan turned to a sigh of surrender.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered around her earlobe.
“My, my. This sure is interesting.”
Shane’s muffled curse vibrated in her ear, but he lifted his head slowly, unhurried. She opened her eyes and turned to face Ricky Pinkerton. A couple of men she recognized as some of his cohorts…okay…co-investors, walked with him.
“Pinkerton,” Shane said with the briefest of nods. “Gentlemen.”
“Maguire,” Ricky returned. “Sinclair, always a pleasure. I didn’t realize you two were so…friendly.”
“Surprise,” she shot back.
“It is,” he replied. “It explains a lot, too.”
She heard something snide in Ricky’s tone, but Shane answered with a disinterested, “You think?”
“Uh-huh. Now I understand why we’re making a mountain out of a molehill over a little creek water.”
Shane’s eyebrows went up. “Because I’m doing my job?”
“Right. You’re Mr. Ethics. No personal interests in play for you.”
She opened her mouth to tell Ricky he wouldn’t know ethics if they smacked him in the face, but Shane beat her to the reply. “None that conflict with my professional duties, which is more than I can say for some.”
Red rushed into Ricky’s face. He stepped into Shane’s space and puffed his chest. “I live here. I work here. My family is here. So, you bet your ass it’s personal for me. I don’t need you showing up after all these years and interfering just to convince people you’re some kind of big shot. Everybody knows the creek isn’t a problem.”
“Fine, Pinkerton.” Shane stepped up, too, and Ricky immediately retreated a half step. “Don’t fortify the creek banks. Roll the dice. See what happens. I’m sure your personal opinion will satisfy the planning commission, and the other investors. They probably don’t even care what a certified water resources engineer has to say on the matter.”
Silence ruled for a full ten seconds. Then one of the cohorts cleared his throat and mumbled, “Ricky, we’re gonna miss our tee time if we don’t shake a leg.”
“Don’t let us hold you up,” she said. The closest course was at the country club two towns over and thirty minutes away. “Enjoy your drive. Better not cancel that membership any time soon,” she added under her breath as Ricky passed.
“Sinclair, kiss my—”
“Watch it.” Shane directed the warning to Ricky and held the Tahoe’s driver’s side door open for her.
She laughed as she climbed in. Then, just to remind Ricky who really called the shots, she taunted, “Give my regards to your grandma.”
The slam of the door didn’t quite cover Ricky’s response.
“Go on and go, Maguire. You don’t belong here. You didn’t belong ten years ago when we kicked your ass out, and you don’t belong here now.”
…
Shane sat in Sinclair’s passenger seat, watching the scenery pass by without really seeing it. Ricky rubbed him the wrong way just by breathing, but the motherfucker had taken irritation to a whole new level in less than three minutes, simultaneously cockblocking him, insinuating he had personal motives for bringing up the flood risk created by the golf course, and being a prick to Sinclair. If Pinkerton had half a brain in his inflated head, he’d be helping find a solution to the situation instead of pretending no problem existed. Instead, Shane was going back and forth with an architect, a structural engineer, and a contractor about how to retrofit a two-hundred-year-old foundation to raise the barn to an appropriate flood-protection elevation.
“It’s good to see you, too,” a voice said softly from beside him.
Well, there was that. Irritation faded. He turned and regarded her, taking in her perfect profile and the pretty blush decorating her cheek. He decided to push his luck. “And exactly why is it good to see me, Sinclair?”
“Because of the sex.”
He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Stubborn woman. “I don’t buy it. We could be back at the inn, scratching that itch, but you refused my personal invitation. Try again. Why are you happy to see me?”
“Um…” She bit her lip and stared through the windshield. “It might have something to do with the fact that I missed you.”
Irritation gone. But now he regretted more than ever that they weren’t back at his room, where he could reward her lavishly for volunteering the words he knew scared the crap out of her. He slid his hand over her leg, squeezing her thigh through the baggy jeans she wore. How quickly could he have them undone? Pooled around her ankles? All he needed to do was get her to stop the car.
He leaned in and nuzzled behind her ear. “I missed you, too.” He swept his palm up her leg, to her hip, and then fiddled with the tab of her zipper. “Pull over.”
Surprisingly, she slowed the car. He’d figured on this requiring more effort on his part, because back at the inn she’d been so dead set on taking the tour she’d arranged. He skimmed his tongue along the rim of her ear. She shivered and applied the brake.
“We’re here.”
A distinctly cautious tone had crept into her voice. He lifted his head to see how secluded a spot she’d chosen…and froze. The heat licking along his veins fizzled. “Here?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“This place doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“Of course, it does, Shane. This place helped shape you.” With that, she opened her door and hopped out.
He sat still for another moment, inspecting the small post-war house where he’d grown up, with its sagging porch, faded paint, and cracked asphalt driveway. Ten years hadn’t altered much. Someone had planted a raggedy-looking pine tree in the front yard at some point, and the screen door was different, but otherwise, no big changes. Certainly no big improvements.
But apparently, that was about to change. Mayor Campbell’s wife, Deanne, came down the drive to greet Sinclair. A realtor by trade, the mayor’s other half had leveraged the collective Campbell talents and created a healthy side business buying, remodeling, and flipping underappreciated properties. He opened his door and unfolded himself from the passenger seat.
“Shane, sweetie,” she called to him when he started up the drive, “it’s good to see you outside of city hall.” He took the hand she offered and accepted the encouraging little squeeze she gave him. “When Sinclair called me and said y’all would like to swing by and take a look around, I was surprised at first, but then she reminded me your family lived here.”
He nodded. “About twenty years, I think. They moved in when Derek was a baby.”
“Well, I can understand you wanting to look the place over before Jim and I whip it into shape. Not much has been done yet.” She turned and led the way along the narrow concrete walkway to the front door. “The guys have mostly just hauled junk out. Old Roy Hamilton’s family rented it after your parents left, and he spent about eight years here, hoarding away, before he passed on—God rest his soul. Watch yourselves here,” she interjected and pointed at the bowing porch steps. “Then it sat empty for a couple years before I finally convinced Ethel Finch to sell it to me because its days as a rental were O-V-E-R. So, anyway”—she swung the front door open—“I warn you two, it’s a dingy mess in here.”
Sinclair took his hand and cast a careful look at him as they followed Deanne inside.
“We’re keeping the floors—that’s good, solid oak under all the dust and scratches,” the older woman chattered. “The kitchen’s this way,” she went on, like she was showing the house, and then laughed at herself and looked at him before adding, “but, of course, you know the layout.”
“It’s coming back to me,” he replied, still not sure how he felt about being there—or why Sinclair had felt the need to bring them here.
“Well…” Deanna peeked at her watch. “I’d better be on my way so I’m not late to an open house. I’m going to lock the front door behind me. The kitchen door can be locked from the inside, so if you could exit from there when you’re done exploring, and just be sure it’s shut tight, I’d really appreciate it.”
Sinclair spared him a glance, and a small smile, and then turned to Deanne. “Will do. Thanks, Deanne.”
“Oh, no problem, hon. I hope you’ll both come back and look around once we’ve remodeled.”
Shane listened with one ear as the ladies exchanged a final round of niceties, while his eyes took in the empty shell of a living room. His mind, however, saw back in time. A door closed, and a second later Sinclair stood beside him.
“This was the living room?”
“Yeah.” He sounded like he’d swallowed gravel. He cleared his throat and went on. “There was a long, brown sofa against this wall, and, over there”—he pointed to the right—“an oversize eyesore of a recliner my dad practically lived in. Over here”—he indicated the wall opposite the sofa—“we had the TV on a fancy cabinet my mom was so proud of because she’d won it at a church raffle and swore it was an antique. I’m pretty sure they still have that ugly old thing.” He laughed. “If it was an antique, it was wasted on us. Half the time, the living room floor looked as though that cabinet had puked PlayStation components all over it.”
“Oh, you were one of the lucky kids,” Sinclair said. “Savannah and I begged, but our parents refused to get us a PlayStation. Dad told us it would be too depressing for him to come home and see his girls glued to a screen, blowing up the planet.”
“Derek and I worked on our mom for the better part of a year before we talked her into buying it.”
“I’m betting she worked you, too.”
He inclined his head. “She tried, extracting promises from us to stop wailing on each other, and keep our rooms clean, and do our chores. We agreed to everything, naturally, and followed through on none of it, but I suspect she knew all along our promises weren’t worth the breath it had taken to utter them.”
Sinclair’s lips curved into a smile. “But she bought it for you anyway.”
“Probably to shut us up. We had fun with it, though. Kyle Grieger and Marc Waggoner from down the street would come over, and we’d all play Final Fantasy, or Grand Theft Auto, until Dad would get home and commandeer the TV.”
“God, Kyle Grieger. There’s a name I haven’t heard in eons. Whatever happened to him?”
Shane racked his brain and came up mostly empty. “I don’t know. He got busted in Atlanta with Derek—for grand theft auto, ironically—and I lost track after that. Marc was my year. He went to college, met a girl, got married, and now he’s an actuary in Philly.”
“Ever see him?”
He nodded. “We grab a beer whenever I’m in town.”
“That’s nice, keeping up a connection from your childhood.” She graced him with a cryptic smile and ambled through the archway leading to the kitchen. He followed.
She stood at the kitchen door. “Can you get to the backyard through here?”
“Uh-huh.” The warped frame protested when he pulled the door open. The wooden step down to the basic concrete slab of a back porch looked rickety. “Careful,” he said and held her elbow while she stepped down. The slat groaned under his weight when he followed, and rotted sections splintered. He gave his next move a moment’s consideration and then shifted his weight to one foot and brought the heel of his other foot down hard. The wood cracked.
Sinclair turned around, startled, and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He stepped down to the concrete, leaned over, and hand-pried the broken halves off the supports. After he stacked them against the wall, he crouched and brushed away leaves and debris that had accumulated under the step. And there they were. Two sets of handprints in the cement. One a little larger than the other, but both small.
Sinclair crouched beside him and used a finger to trace the right hand of the smaller set of handprints, lingering in the valley between the ring finger and little finger. “Are these yours?”
The same valley on his right hand tingled. “Yep.”
She placed her palm over the imprint and rested it there. “How old were you?”
“Five or six. The old slab had pulled away from the house, and after my folks complained enough, the landlord sent a crew over to break it up, haul it off, and pour a new one. Dad told us to stay away from the drying cement, but Derek and I didn’t want to hear that. The next morning, my dad spotted the handprints and was like, ‘What the hell is this?’”
“Busted?”
He laughed. “We gave him our best innocent looks and told him some kids must have come along in the middle of the night. He stuck our hands in the prints and said, ‘Yeah, right.’” Another reluctant laughed rumbled up from his chest. “We didn’t think it through.”
“Well, you were only five. And a pristine, freshly poured expanse of wet concrete is pretty impossible to resist.”
He looked over at her. He’d needed this. He couldn’t say why, but he had, and the fact that she’d known made him want to get her back to that barn of hers, lay her across the big bed, and give her everything she needed. “When I was five. Nowadays there’s something else I find impossible to resist.”
She took his hand and wove her fingers through his. “Come on. Show me the rest of the house you grew up in.”
He got to his feet and tugged her up. “We’re still on the tour?”
“I booked the grand tour, Maguire. I want my money’s worth.”
“All right. Follow me.” He led them inside and down the hall, pausing by the house’s only full bath. “Bathroom,” he said, though the thing spoke for itself.
“Wow. Four people, one bathroom. That must have been challenging at times.”
“My parents had a half bath in their bedroom. Derek and I shared this one. Kind of the way two Rottweilers share a kennel, but we managed.”
“Savannah and I shared a bathroom, too. I don’t imagine yours looked like an Ulta pop-up shop.”
“Not so much. For a long time, the tub was basically an arsenal full of water guns and other weaponry designed to lure us into the bath. Once Derek hit puberty, the clutter migrated over there.” He pointed to the small counter surrounding the sink. “Hair product, zit gel, and some righteously foul cologne Derek used that smelled like vanilla wafers laced with Pine-Sol.”
Sinclair grimaced. “Strangely, I know exactly which one you’re talking about.”
“The first time Derek used it, Dad yelled, ‘What the fuck is that smell?’ This was all the way from the living room, mind you. Derek called back, ‘That’s the smell of me about to get lucky as fuck.’ The old man said, ‘You’ll be lucky somebody doesn’t hose you down with a power sprayer.’” A reluctant laugh bubbled up from his chest. “One of the few times I agreed with him.”
Memories swirling, he continued down the hall. The door to his parents’ bedroom hung open on the right, and to the left, his and Derek’s room. He gestured Sinclair inside and then stepped in behind her. Even empty, the cramped chamber was smaller than he remembered. Two twin beds, two nightstands, and an upright dresser had pretty much spoken for all the space. Curious, he wandered to the closet and ran his hand along the doorframe. A layer of paint had been applied sometime during the last ten years, but his fingertips felt out the ladder of short, thin indentations running up the frame. Sinclair traced one with her fingernail. “What’s this?”
“Derek and I measured ourselves every six months or so, and much to our mom’s dismay, marked our progress with a Swiss Army Knife our grandfather had given us.”
“How do you know which mark goes with which of you?”
“For most of this, Derek’s the higher mark.” He swept his hand up and stopped at shoulder level. “About here, I caught up, and then the marks switch.”
“That happened with me and Savannah, too. She’s still a little bent about not getting her fair share of the height genes.”
“Derek was pissed at first, but then he took to insisting he didn’t care because he had the bigger dick.”
Sinclair raised one dark eyebrow. “I can’t speak with certainty, but I find that hard to believe.”
He slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into him. “I doubt a strict measurement would bear his claim out, but Derek definitely had the bigger mouth.”
“That, I believe.” She turned into him, resting her hands under shirt, along his abs. The feel of her palms on his skin was all it took to have his dick straining painfully against the rivets of his button fly. Her smile turned challenging. “Did you ever sneak a girl in here?”
“Once or twice.”
Her fingers hooked into the waist of his jeans, and she dropped to her knees. His head went light as the rest of the blood in his body flowed directly to his cock, causing it to swell to new dimensions.
“So, I wouldn’t be the first one to give you a blowjob here?”
“No, baby girl, ’fraid not.”
She undid the first button on his fly, then the next, and looked up at him again. “Who wins that distinction?”
His mind spun for a second, working hard to track the conversation, and then skated back almost fifteen years, to pretty, energetic, and, at the time, far more worldly Shannon Grieger. Kyle’s sister. He hadn’t thought of her in well over a decade. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
The earned him an eye roll, but she yanked open the remaining buttons. “I guess I’ll have to settle for being the last.”
“Holy…shit. And the best,” he managed. He hadn’t bothered with underwear, and she didn’t bother with any civilized decencies, either. She wrestled him out and deep-throated him like a pro. Like she’d spent the last six days hungering for him as much as he’d starved for her. Her warmth engulfed him. She cradled him there for a long, extraordinary moment, letting him pulse in the sweet, soft haven of her mouth, and then, keeping her lips sealed tight, she flicked her tongue along his shaft, moving steadily up, up, up to his tip. When she reached it, she cupped his balls and laved the blunt head, lulling him into a false sense of complacency before spearing the tip of her tongue into the agonizingly sensitive opening.
His body went up in flames. His breath exploded from his chest in a harsh grunt that echoed in the cave of a room. She slowly worked her way down, tugging gently, and then not too gently, on his balls as she went. His legs threatened to buckle. Another second of this and he was going to come on his knees in his childhood bedroom, without even understanding what had compelled her to bring him here. No good. He wanted inside her—inside her body and her mind—and getting there required conversation. He threaded his fingers through her hair and tugged her head back until his cock slid out of her mouth and bobbed heavily in the cool air. Little white lights danced around the fringes of his vision, but he blinked them away and brought her beautiful face into focus.
“Why here?” His voice sounded like a rusty hinge.
Her lips curved into the faintest of smiles. “So, the next time you feel like you don’t have roots, you remember two little sets of hand prints on a back porch, and height marks notched in a closet door. The next time Ricky or one of his cohorts calls you an outsider, you remember hours of PlayStation with the neighborhood kids, or three minutes of heaven while some slut who shall not be named went down on you in your boyhood bedroom.”
She was doing her best to keep things light, but his heart literally skipped a beat. He knelt until they were face-to-face. “You wanted to show me I have roots here?”
“Something along those lines.”
That she’d gone to the trouble left him at a loss for words. He considered his upbringing unimportant at best, and depressing at worst. Either way, it had nothing to do with her, but even so she’d taken these memories, dusted them off, handed them back to him, and told him to look again. This was where he came from, whether or not he appreciated the fact. Then she’d gotten down on her knees to show him she appreciated it.
“Thank you,” he finally managed. Thinking it was time he thanked her properly, he shoved his hand under the loose waist of her baggy jeans and into her panties A quick inhale greeted his touch.
“Well, I had selfish motives, too,” she admitted on a breathless exhale.
“Did you?” He eased a finger insider her, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Uh…huh. You’ve not only been inside my house, you’ve been in my childhood home—twice. Seen the embarrassing pictures. Heard the embarrassing stories.” She slid her hand into her pants and covered his. “I had to even the score.”
He moved his hand beneath hers, stroking her in the process, and then pushed deeper. Her body yielded, accepting two fingers this time. Over her gasp, he asked, “Are we even now?”
“Almost.” But then she surprised him by bringing her hand to his cheek and touching her lips to his in a tender kiss. “I wasn’t one of those friends who came over to play video games, or one of those girls who climbed through your window, so I never got to see this side of your life before. I wanted to. I wanted you to share the memories with me.”
“I’ll share anything you want. But to be honest”—he paused and circled his fingers—“I’m more interested in making new memories than revisiting the old ones.”
Sweat sheened her upper lip. Her tongue darted out to lick it away, and his cock throbbed at the very new memory of her tongue licking it from base to tip. “Did you ever sneak a girl in here and have sex?”
“You’re still hung up on the firsts?” He moved his hand again. Kneading her where she was soft. Stretching her where she was tight.
“I want this memory to be unique,” she moaned and rocked her hips. “Missionary?”
“Yes.” He pressed her mound with the heel of his hand. Her eyes went blurry. Her hips rocked against him.
“Okay. All right. Cowgirl?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Jesus, Shane.” She rocked again, finding a steady rhythm now, coating his palm with silky heat. “What haven’t you done here yet?”
“Is that what you’re offering me?”
“Yes.” She bit the word out and rocked with abandon.
“Are you going to ride my hand first?”
That stopped her in her tracks. “Do I need to?”
He wanted to laugh, but schooled his expression to give nothing away. “Kinda seems like you want to. Not a problem if you do. I’ll make you come again…one way or another.”
Those blue eyes went round and a shade wary, but she squared her chin. “First things first, Maguire.”
“Fine. Just remember, this was your idea.” He eased his hand out of her pants and tugged the buttons open. Then he turned her around and positioned her onto all fours. Next, he dragged her jeans and panties down and took his time arranging them before adjusting her knees a little wider. “Comfy?”
She laughed, sounding a little relieved. “Wow. Big, bad Shane Maguire never managed to talk a girl onto her hands and knees in here before now.”
“Oh, I did. You’re not going to be on your hands and knees.” He leaned over her, deliberately letting his cock settle into the valley bisecting her lush, yielding cheeks, and pushed her upper body down until she folded her forearms on the floor. Then, with his hand across the back of her neck, he lowered her forehead to rest on her wrists. Just as slowly, he straightened, closed his fist around his cock, and dragged it down the divide.
“Oh, God.” She stiffened and jerked her head up, trapping his cock mid-journey. “Anal?” She craned her neck and looked at him with wide blue eyes. “Really?” Skittish muscles tightened again, giving him another squeeze.
“If you keep doing that, it’s going to be me shooting six days’ worth of pent-up longing all over your spectacular ass.” And with that threat hanging in the air, he closed his eyes and mentally recited the oath of enlistment, taking that crucial five seconds to get himself under control. “Your suggestion would qualify as a first for me in this room, but no, that wasn’t what I had in mind.” Just to punish her a little for being such a stickler on this “first” business, he tacked on, “But if you want it to be…?”
“Uh, sure. I can’t get enough of that action.” She dropped her head back down to her wrists and with manufactured nonchalance that fell far short of the mark said, “Go for it.”
Yeah, right. No lube. No prep. Just go for it. Little miss voice-of-experience didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. He flexed his hips a millimeter, and when every muscle in her body braced, he worked his cock down those tight cheeks, bypassing the uninitiated territory her pride had offered up without consulting her common sense, and continued to his original destination. She trembled when he slid his head around her soft, slick folds—giving her enough to tease her clit and then pulling back almost all the way to the place she claimed couldn’t get enough attention. “You’ve never had it before, have you?”
“Umm…” She rocked her hips up, back, side to side, keeping up with his roaming cock. “Not in this room, no.”
“Not ever.”
“Okay, no.” Frustration got the better of her. “But I’m dying here. It’s been six days for me, too, Shane. Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it.”
“I appreciate the option, but…”—he sank into her softness—“you’ve got your favorite toy, and I’ve got mine. This is what I’ve been dreaming about for the last six days.”
She moaned her gratitude, and her internal muscles quickened around him in a flurry of welcome. He clamped his hands on her hips and started to move in slow, controlled strokes.
“Well, the offer stands, just so you kno…ooh…oh,” she gasped as he drove deep, letting her have every inch.
“Tell you what, Sinclair, when I take that particular virginity, I’ll do it just as carefully as I took the other. I’ll lay you down on a blanket under our tree. I’ll use my mouth first, and then my fingers, to get you primed, and ready. Once you’re there, I’ll sit you on my lap and let you take me in—as much as you can, as slowly as you need to. When you’re squirming around, when you can’t keep still, can’t think beyond finding some relief for yourself, I’ll put you on your knees, just like this.” He braced an arm by her elbow, skimmed his other hand down to cover her quivering sex, and increased the pace and force of his thrusts. “And give it to you good, just like this.” His hand became her backstop. She grinded against it every time he slammed into her. The breathless sounds she made when she was about to come punctuated each slap of their bodies. “I won’t stop until you press your face into the blanket and come so hard you cry tears of joy.”
She arched up, and her body went stiff an instant before her broken sob assured him he’d gotten her there. That’s all it took to send him over. The bedroom, the house, hell, the entire world receded to just one thing—him, moving inside her like lightning and then coming in a long, violent rush so profound he felt like he surrendered everything inside him. Body, and soul.
This was his. Not the town, or the house, but the woman. He loved her. Maybe he’d never really stopped loving her and he’d just allowed himself believe letting her go had been the right thing to do. This time around he wasn’t letting go. Nobody, including Ricky Pinkerton, could tell him he didn’t belong.