Oh, for crying out loud. Not again, she thought as she burst into tears.
Chapter Eight: The Wedding Night
TEARS ROLLED down her cheeks. She tried squeezing her eyes but they wouldn’t stop coming. Finally she gave in to a full-blown crying jag. There was no point in pretending she was brave or strong. She wasn’t.
Ryder sat down on the cot behind her. He cradled her between his legs, hugging her against his chest. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. It’s okay.”
His kindness only made it worse. Scout’s cry rose, the keening of a deeply wounded woman. She believed she was rescuing her groom, a man who loved her more than anything. She was willing to endure being stood up in church and made to look like a fool because she believed Noel was the real thing. Maybe he was until Delores jumped out of the cake at his bachelor party. Scout bowed her head. This was too much to come to terms with. The wedding, the pregnancy she was looking forward to—how could she have wanted to have children with that man? And she had forced Ryder into a dangerous situation by refusing to go to the police. What if he got hurt? Ryder had his own life to live. She had to stop thinking of him as an extension of herself. He was his own man.
“I’m sorry, Ryder.”
“What have you got to be sorry about? None of this is your fault.”
He was hugging her hard, protecting and comforting her at the same time.
“They’re going to have a field day with this back in Mandrake Falls: I can hear it now: ‘Can you imagine Scout almost marrying that lying, philandering Noel Trace? I never liked that boy. His eyes were set too close together. What Scout saw in him, I’ll never know. Well, the poor girl is desperate. A pulse is all she is checking for these days.’”
Ryder stroked the hair from her face. “The shock must be wearing off. That was a passable imitation of Mrs. Gurney.”
Scout shifted and leaned back against his chest. The scotch was warming her, blurring the edges of the day. “What’s wrong with me, Ryder? What is it about me that men run away from?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s the men you pick. You’re in too much of a hurry. Guys mean more to you than they should after a couple of dates. Losers like Noel and before him it was that Russian poet, what’s his name—Igor.”
“Gregor, and he wasn’t a poet; he was a performance artist.”
Ryder shuddered. “Worse. What you want, Scout, these men can’t give you. You’re wasting your time with them.”
“Is there a secret clan of good men who want to get married and have children and don’t expect the woman they fall in love with to look like a super model? Write my number on the bathroom wall where they hold their meetings, will you? Face it, Ryder. Marrying men don’t exist anymore. I was born in the wrong decade. I should have been born when this tower was built. I’m through with wanting what I can’t have. Being stood up at the altar has to be some kind of sign.”
“A sign of what?”
Scout disengaged herself from Ryder’s arms, got to her feet and hugged her arms across her chest. “I’m not going to have a husband who leaves the toilet seat up and squeezes the toothpaste in the middle. I’m not going to have the PTA and Little League and Thanksgiving dinners. I’m not going to have a kid named Charlie. I’ll have my business and one day, maybe a parakeet.”
Scout moved to the middle of the room, the gloomy shadows cast by the lantern wrapped around her like a blanket.
“It’s not that bad.”
“This is my wedding night, Ryder. It’s pretty bad. I’m supposed to be dancing with my new husband on the terrace at the Plaza. Instead, I find out he’s had sex with another woman, lied to me about what he does and who he is, and then puts me in danger. He said he was in love with me and I believed in him. I’m a fool. I don’t believe in love anymore.”
Ryder contemplated her silently and then he reached over to the lantern and twisted the knob. The darkness that fell over them was instant and thick.
“What’d you do that for?” Scout whispered. She could hear him feeling his way to the plywood panel over the cot. Had they been discovered? Ryder had always had the ears of a cat. In the forest he was almost psychic in the way he could identify sounds a long way off.
His voice floated to her in the dark. “It’s a full moon tonight. We don’t need the lantern. We shouldn’t have it on anyway, in case they’re still out there.” He lifted the panel free and set it against the wall. Shiny bluish white light flooded the tower.
Scout drew to his side. “That is a beautiful sight,” she murmured, gazing at the moonlit forest.
“You are.”
His voice was husky. Scout could feel his eyes on her. “Don’t do that. Don’t be nice to me. I’d rather face Terry and Roy than your pity. I’ll be fine eventually. It’ll take awhile.”
Ryder watched her press her palms to her eyes as if she were trying to push the tears back into her head. He hated to see her in pain. Noel Trace would have more than the mob and the FBI to deal with when Ryder caught up with him. But it was a stupid empty threat for all the good it was doing Scout. She didn’t need him to revenge her or even to protect her. Ryder knew what Scout needed from him.
He pulled her to him and she buried her face against his chest, clutching his shirt, hanging onto him for dear life. He liked the feeling more than he wanted to.
Ryder knew then he couldn’t be anywhere else but where she was. Running away hadn’t worked, insulting her hadn’t worked, fighting her—nothing worked. The feelings she stirred in him whenever he saw her were still there, rolling through him, setting him on fire.
With no conscious motive or plan in mind, Ryder began swaying to music only he could hear.
“Are we dancing?” she asked softly.
“If you have to ask then I must be doing it wrong.”
Scout sighed, a wet phlegm sound that made Ryder wish he had a handkerchief, and leaned into him.
They moved in a slow tight circle in the pool of moonlight. Scout followed him, step for step, molding her body to his. Soft dark curls, wet with tears, were plastered to the side of her face. Ryder brushed them back revealing the pale sweep of her neck. Warning bells sounded somewhere in his brain but he ignored them; he dropped his mouth to her skin and kissed her tenderly. Scout tilted her head in response and moaned. The sound reached deep inside Ryder, freeing a desire he had fought for years to control.
He lifted his hand to her face thinking he would brush the hair out of her eyes but instead his fingers found her lips, tracing their plump softness. He ached for her and his body reacted, involuntarily pulling her tighter until he could feel her breasts crushing against his chest. Eyes closed, Scout lifted her mouth to his. Her face was smeared with dirt and tears and she never looked more beautiful. He didn’t have the strength this time. He couldn’t stop. He wanted her and she wanted him. They were both going up in flames.
His mouth met hers and the moment was an electric realization for both of them. He could feel Scout’s breath catch under his lips. He moved his mouth over her soft flesh, his tongue tasting her with the eagerness of a starving man. She was liquid heat in his arms.
“This is crazy, Scout,” he breathed. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Please, Ryder. Please don’t stop. Please.” She formed her body to his, taking from his mouth as much as he could give.
Ryder felt like he was going to explode—spontaneously combust—if he didn’t have her. “I couldn’t stop if I wanted to,” he choked, half-carrying her, half-dragging her to the narrow cot in the corner. Scout was clinging to him like a drowning woman.
Ryder laid her down and stretched his body over hers. He wanted to take his time, touching and caressing her every groove and hollow, her skin under his hands. She was perfect. They were perfect together. He never imagined it this way—he didn’t know they had this passion between them. He thought they’d be clumsy or awkward with each other. Was it there all along, in all those years? Nothing in his
experience prepared him for making love to this girl who had only ever been a friend.
Scout moved beneath him, sensuous grace that banished any lingering adolescent visions of her he might have had. Ryder kissed her closed lids and marveled that she could give herself to him so completely. And when it was over, what then? He forced the question from his mind. He wanted Scout and the devil himself wouldn’t stop him this time.
The moonlight bleached her blue tee shirt white and turned her skin to amber. Deep shadows creased the curves under her breasts. Mesmerized, Ryder stroked the mounds that lifted and pressed against the thin cotton, exhaling sharply when her nipples hardened to buds.
Scout moaned and arched beneath his hands. Was this really happening? After years of longing and wanting, was Ryder really touching her, kissing her, loving her? She reacted to his fondling of her breasts with feverish pleasure. His mouth found hers again and again, his lips and tongue probing and demanding in unbelievably sensuous kisses.
“Scout, can I...?” He fumbled with the hem of her shirt. “I want to take this off. I want to see you.”
She swallowed hard but allowed him to slip his hands under her shirt and draw it over her head. Scout bit her lip, tensing under his close scrutiny of her body.
Ryder moaned. “Oh Scout. You are beautiful.”
He eased her shorts over her hips and down her legs with a reverence that was erotic. How was it possible to be aroused by the boy she used to have mud fights with? A shiver of anxiety coiled through her. Was this still Ryder? Who was this man touching her? Scout searched her friend’s face and the boy she had known her whole life shone through his gray-green eyes. Scout smiled, relieved and happy, tears springing to her eyes.
“Are you going to cry again?” Ryder’s voice was rough. He held himself a tense fraction of an inch away from her body. Scout moved her mouth soundlessly, riveted by the controlled sexuality he possessed until she couldn’t stand it anymore and gave up trying to communicate with words. She wrapped her legs around his tight jean-clad buttocks and ground him down against her satin panties.
Ryder crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her until her lips were bruised and her insides turned to water.
Scout clawed at his shirt. “Take this off.”
She watched his face as he concentrated on opening the buttons of the green twill. His eyes glowed in the moonlight, dark and unreadable; almost feral. Scout could feel his power pulsating through his clothing. Too impatient to bother with the rest of the buttons, Ryder yanked the shirt over his head. They were close enough to each other that his silky chest hair tickled against Scout’s nipples as he flung the shirt away.
Naked from the waist up, with his heart only a beat away from her own, his body seemed like a dark wild force waiting for her in the moonlight.
Suddenly, Scout felt ridiculously hot. Was it her imagination or were the tower walls closing in on them? The inky night sky spread out behind his head and the wind curled over their skin. Clusters of stars brushed the tops of black trees and the moon hung huge and yellow. Scout’s breath had stopped in her chest and she wondered dimly if she would ever breathe again. For a moment they sat unmoving, caught in the watery blue glow of the moon, gazing at each other in frightened awe.
“Are you sure?” Ryder asked. His voice garbled in his throat.
Scout clung to his neck and dragged him down to cover her with his reassuring weight.
He was marvelous. Beautiful and sweet-smelling. His hair had always smelled like the air and sun but tonight the scent was erotic. His mouth moved over her neck trailing tingly kisses down to her breasts. Then, after a brief hesitation, he took her nipple in his mouth with a moan that seemed to come from his pores.
Ryder suckled and nipped her tender flesh until Scout wept with arousal. When she was ready, he slid his hand between her legs, stroking the sensitive skin between her thighs. Scout caught her lip and bit down hard. When his hand slipped further, under her panties, she almost screamed with desire. His touch was far more devastating than anything she expected, imagined, or had read about. Being with Ryder, like this, was like finding the last piece of a complicated puzzle, the completion of something that was begun a long time ago.
He moved his fingers between the folds of her velvety female flesh. His fingers fluttered over her, stroking and caressing the sensitive nub between her legs to life. Scout whimpered and gripped his shoulders, digging her nails into his skin. She thrashed and arched beneath him but he held her down, his fingers, slick with her fluid, working faster and faster until Scout cried out and waves of release crashed over her.
She fell back panting, weak with arousal and throbbing with need for him. Ryder slipped her panties off and shucked himself free of his jeans. He stood over her, silent and beautiful in the moonlight. His need warred with his uncertainty. Scout could see a question in his eyes.
“I don’t have anything, Scout. I never expected this.”
Scout was confused. “Don’t have what?”
Ryder lifted an eyebrow. “A condom, what do you think. Don’t you usually use protection? Most women insist on it. What did you and Noel use?”
Scout looked to the moon for courage and took a breath. “Here’s the thing, Ryder. I’m a virgin. Don’t laugh. I really am. I wasn’t saving myself for marriage or anything—I’m not a virgin because I wanted to be—it just happened. I haven’t told anyone. Not even Noel. I was going to tell him on our wedding night. So ... there you have it. A virgin.”
“Holy shit. You mean this is your first time? You’ve never had sex before?”
“That is what is usually meant by ‘I am a virgin’.” She shrugged with what she hoped was nonchalance. “I am untouched. Literally. In fact, this is the first time a man has even seen me naked, so it really is a red letter day.”
Ryder shook his head slowly, obviously in awe. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”
Scout laughed. “I’m excited. I’ve wanted to do this for a ridiculously long time. I’m glad it’s you, Ryder. I don’t think I could feel this safe with another man.” She lifted her arms up to him. “So please, do not change your mind. Don’t leave me again.” She whispered. “It’ll be all right. I promise everything will be all right.”
This was madness.
“You’re a virgin. I can’t take that from you.”
“I’m giving it. I’m giving it to you and me. We probably won’t spend the rest of our lives together, but we have to finish what we started on Prom night or we’ll never get free of it. I haven’t been free of you since that night. Have you been free of me?”
No, he hadn’t. How did she know that? “I could get you pregnant,” he said. And for reasons he couldn’t understand, the thought of getting her pregnant hardened and thickened his cock until he was wild to be inside her.
“I’m not afraid, Ryder.”
Her arms lifted to him, the look in her eyes, Ryder dropped over her with relief, weak and slightly sick from restraining himself. He positioned himself between Scout’s thighs, aware that he had to take her very slowly, very gently. The pain could be bad. She was ready, wet and wide open for him. His body was rigid with tension. He should hold off, teach her to manipulate him to orgasm as he had done for her. He had to slow things down somehow. He’d hurt her if he started and couldn’t control himself.
Scout lifted her hips and eased his rigid flesh toward her wet heat. Blood pounded between his legs. A virgin. Scout of all people. This impulsive girl, who had broken both her arm and her leg, had never broken her hymen.
don’t think about it, don’t think about, think of something else.
She was vibrating. Every nerve-ending in her slender body was sparking under his hands. Knowing he was giving her pleasure almost made him come right then before he’d finished the job. Control was easier with an experienced woman; he was challenged to be as good as the guys she’d been with. But Scout was feeling all of this for the first time. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Her breasts, her buttock
s, her mouth, her thighs were all his—only his.
But only for this night.
There would be someone else one day. Scout and Ryder would get this out of their system and they would move on to other people. Cool restraint came over him. He wanted her but he wanted to keep her as his friend too. She’d have a husband one day. It was a little perverse, but it cooled him down to think of teaching Scout about sex the way he’d taught her to swim. He moved slower, whispering instructions in her ear to touch him, to stroke his shaft. And then he shifted up and straddled her face and she took him in her mouth without a word. Like he belonged there and it broke him. Scout loving him with her mouth broke him.
“I love you,” he whispered in a voice so low she could not hear him.
He disengaged and moved over her body. She was still, marble like in the moonlight. “Are you ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
He opened her legs and she let him. Ryder pressed into her flesh, pushing the knob of his penis with deliberate force until her wet warmth folded over him and he trembled. It was hard to hold back, his muscles shuddered with the strain. Her hips lifted and she caught his buttocks and urged him deeper.
“Ryder, Ryder.”
He thrust—hard. Her scream filled the tower.
Ryder waited, pulsing, fighting the instinct to pound deeper between her legs—he had the power, she didn’t. She was in pain. Scout gasped, her voice returning.
“Yes. Again. Yes.”
Ryder pressed deeper inside and withdrew slowly, like the tide. She was tight, a vise around him and wet, juice running down her legs. But she wasn’t moving. Scout lay still, allowing him do the work of plundering her. He wondered if she was experiencing any pleasure with the pain. Probably not. Her eyes were open and held his as he moved in and out, a steady and unrelenting invasion that she couldn’t escape now. This is what it is, he wanted to reassure her. This is what it is for a woman the first time.
The Jilting: Summer (Mandrake Falls Series Romance Book 1) Page 8
