“You look so serious.” His voice is groggy, and the just-woken-up sound of it tugs at a need that’s low in my gut.
I want to wake up with him.
I have to strike that thought from my mind immediately.
I tighten my fingers into a fist, even though I want to loosen them and run them through his hair.
“I’m really sorry.” I keep busy organizing and reorganizing the bag we packed for this picnic, this picnic that turned into an emotional, embarrassing, drunk proposition. “About before. About everything. I had a great time, but I really don’t think we should see each other again.”
“You’re too tense to be tipsy.” His voice is like fine-grit sandpaper on my nerves.
“I’m incredibly sober. And, I guess, hung over.” My temples are swollen and tender feeling.
Cormac sits up, disheveled and gorgeous in the intimate way a guy is gorgeous when you’re seeing him just awake and alone, like you own rights to his secret, pre-dressed, pre-world self. It’s an intimacy I don’t deserve, but it doesn’t stop me from appreciating the moment.
“Come here.” He crooks his finger, and I should hop down to the stream and wade far away from him before I cause more problems than we can weather.
But I go to him instead.
He pats his thigh. “Lie down here.”
“On your lap?” It’s so far from a sexual invitation, my horny thoughts make my heart jump.
“I can see how badly your head hurts from the look on your face. I had a very foxy professor, a cougar I guess, who taught me some pressure points.”
There is no reason for me to scowl, but it’s like my lips aren’t mine to control anymore.
“Do you hate pressure points?” Cormac jokes, smoothing his hands over my forehead and rubbing my temples with sure, steady pressure.
“Mmmm.” I don’t mean to moan, but it’s like his hands are unhinging me, and the pain that filled my cranium seconds before is melting away and leaving me fuzzy. “I don’t hate pressure points. I hate her.”
“Her?” His fingers creep to the center of my forehead, and I could break down and sob over the relief. “Who is she again?”
“The cougar,” I mumble, not caring what I say or how stupid I sound. All I can focus on is the feel of his hands on my head and my one repeated wish: that Cormac never stop touching me.
“Well, it was over a year ago. And it never amounted to more than a few massages and some very raunchy innuendos on her part.” He chuckles and moves back to my temples.
“You don’t like…mmm…older women?” I arch my back, though it’s completely vulgar and strange, because my body was wire-tight, but it’s like Cormac’s magic has relaxed it into coil of soft rope.
Rope he could tie me up with anytime he likes.
Ugh! No! I need to keep focused on—
“I don’t know. I didn’t take her up on her invitation because I had a fiancée at the time.”
My bleary thoughts dart and swim like a confused school of fish. “What?” I ask, grasping through the murkiness, through those fingers rubbing my head until I have to bite my bottom lip to hold back another moan. “You were engaged?”
“Yes.” The answer is short, and his hands seem to speed up their tempo and break the spell a little more.
“Engaged to be married?” I ask, netting all the facts so slowly it’s painful.
“Yes.” It’s not like Cormac to be so short and direct. Usually when he talks to me, it’s some kind of long-winded story or factual explanation dump.
What reason would he have for being so cautious and secretive?
Unless, of course, he still harbored feelings for her.
I sit up in an abrupt rush, giving my brain a stern scolding for missing the feel of Cormac’s hands when they fall away.
“I’m sorry.” How many times will I say this today? I need to follow my mother’s good advice and stop doing the things I have to apologize for instead of throwing around empty ‘sorrys.’
“What for?” Cormac’s voice has lost the lilt that makes it so easy to drown in. I shiver as the knife’s edge of it slides up and down my spine.
“Just…what I wanted…before. It was so, so stupid. Even then. And now that I know—”
“Know what?”
And there’s the professor again, the calculating teacher who has me pinned and knows I don’t have the right answer but is going to make an example out of me for the class.
It’s infuriating and tongue-tying…which is even more infuriating, and I scramble for the words to untie this and make it…less infuriatingly embarrassing!
“I didn’t know you had been with someone and that it was so serious. I never would have asked for what I did if I’d known. And I understand why you were…why you didn’t want it…me. Now I feel stupid.”
The night around us is loud as I wait for his response. I focus on the sounds of the wind rustling the leaves, the crickets screeching as they jump out of the way of the hungry, croaking frogs. I’ve wandered these forests all night for nights on end nearly every summer of my life, so the noise is a comfort, but also a distraction from what I really want to hear. Which is Cormac’s reaction to my confession.
He takes my hand with a blasé attitude, like it belongs to him. I fight back the part of me that wars with my general good sense and argues that, you do belong to him. Before I can wrap my mouth around the words to tell him to back off, he does something to the skin between my thumb and index finger that makes it feel like my legs are rushing, puddling water.
And all the time he unravels my handle on sanity, he’s talking, his voice keeping this crisp, efficient running dialogue like he’s going over safety procedures before a skydive.
“I want you.” The words and his hands and the look in his clear, green eyes strips me. “I want you, but I said no because you were drunk, and I would never take advantage of you like that. Also, you want a fuckbuddy, and I don’t particularly enjoy heartbreak, so I’m trying to convince myself to sidestep your very appealing offer. And, trust me, it’s very appealing. As for my engagement, it was a crash course in the many detriments of getting married too young. I dodged a hollow point bullet on that one, and I don’t regret the way it ended. Or that it ended at all.”
The headache that was the epicenter of my every thought fifteen minutes ago is a hazy memory.
“Does it hurt to talk about it? Her?” I ask, and curl my toes as he kneads with more specific pressure.
“No.” He takes my other hand, and I roll my head back on my neck and groan. “Please stop doing that.” His voice snaps like a metal trap.
I rip my hand from his grasp. “No problem at all. Stop rubbing me, then.”
He rakes his fingers through his hair and paces, back and forth, scarily close to the edge of the rock more than a few times.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mutters, then points at me. “You’re making me crazy.”
I lean down and swipe up the grocery bag. “Fine. Let’s go. We need to get home sometime before dawn anyway, and I’d hate to be responsible for making you any crazier than you already are.” I’m sitting on the edge of the rock, about to jump into the freezing water and wade back when he grabs my hand.
“No. Let me finish.” His voice is begging, and I’m curious to hear, so I wait, tapping one foot.
“Fine. Finish.” Exhaustion and confusion beat away at all my smarter instincts. I know better than to be out here with him right now, but it’s like I’m the waves and he’s the moon. The pull he has on me is tidal, and I want to surge and recede with it. I want to savor the escape that being with him brings me, finally, after so many years of being the good girl and doing the right thing.
“I need your foot. Shoeless, please.” He kneels in front of me and starts to take my shoe off, but I swing my foot back, so I’m standing like an awkward flamingo in front of him.
“What does me wearing my shoe or not have to do with you finishing explaining how your en
gagement went south?” I need to put my foot down before I lose my balance and break something serious, but I want answers.
Each word travels out of his mouth with slow, deliberate precision. “I meant I’d finish helping you relieve your headache.”
“Fuck my headache!” I yell, instantly embarrassed when the echo of my words resounds through the forest and causes a small flurry of bats to flap frantically into the darkening sky. “I’m going. This is—”
Before I can lower myself into the water, his voice slices in, weighted with the lodestone of regret and sadness. I know that particular poundage well.
“Her name was Nina.”
I swivel back toward him.
“She jumped horses for fun. She was fluent in French and liked to show off about it, and she particularly loved when French waiters treated her like a native. Her father wanted her to marry an investment banker. She was set to be engaged to him, but I got the drift he was all crazy over some girl he met at a coffee shop. I realized after I’d used a considerable chunk of my savings to buy her a ring she didn’t bother to pretend to appreciate that I was actually just the lure she needed to bring the investment banker running back. And lure him I did. She dumped me promptly, and the details of our engagement were swept up with the rubbish and tossed out. She and her banker were married as if our engagement had never happened, and the wedding was in all the major papers. I landed this internship and got to leave before I accidentally bumped into the happy couple. Come sit here and give me your foot.”
I do what he asks, because I can hear the hurt in his voice, and I know it sweeps wide and gathers currents of fury and sadness and confusion with it. His fingers are strong, and, though my headache is gone, his manipulation of this one last pressure point makes my breath escape in a gasp of pure, deep contentment I’m afraid he’ll hear.
“I’m sorry about Nina.” I bite my lips to keep any pleasure noises at bay. As amazing as the things he’s doing to my body by focusing on a square inch of skin on my foot are, I don’t want to keep wading into those waters with him. Especially now that I know his heart was so recently pulverized.
“I never cared about Nina,” he growls.
I understand what it’s like to need to protect yourself.
“I thought Damian was the one. It hurts to know you can be so blindsided by someone.” I’m trying for empathy, but his stony face doesn’t give me a single inch.
“I didn’t think Nina was the one.” He’s as stubborn as a toddler.
I roll my eyes, partially because he’s being ridiculous, and partially because I am about to have a body-shaking orgasm if he continues to rub my feet the way he’s been.
“You bought her a ring,” I point out.
“Yes.” He applies torture/ecstasty-inducing pressure. “But I didn’t love her.”
“It’s normal to deny it once it’s over, especially in your case. You were kind of left, and that sucks. But there’s no point in pretending you didn’t feel what you felt.” He lets go of my foot and I stretch it at the arch and wiggle my tingling toes, marvelling at how this foot I’ve abused with sexily high heels for too many years can reward me with such intensely good feelings. “You’re a magician.”
He picks up my other foot and the ecstasy cycle starts all over. “Maybe. As long as you’re impressed, I’m happy.”
“I’m glad we talked about all this,” I venture. It’s getting easier to say all the things that are embarrassing to me, because the dark obscures everything and veils the reality a little.
“My foot rub abilities? Not the most scintillating conversation, but it can’t all be dissections of Sappho’s poems, I guess.” I hate the wry bend of his words, because it means he’s brushing me off.
“You don’t have to hide what you feel with me, Cormac. I’ve cried on your shoulder about ridiculous amounts of stuff and I get it if you—”
“I didn’t love her, Benelli,” he interrupts with a firm, final swing of his eyes on mine. “Listen to me. I loved this girl, this wild, lovely girl with gorgeous eyes and a warm laugh. And that wasn’t Nina. Not the real Nina. She researched me like a freaky science experiment, got me to fall head over stupid-ass heels in love with her, then used me like the sap I was.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but he’s somewhere else, his hands rubbing at an incredibly fast speed, his eyes bright and unblinking in the low light.
“She actually stocked her shelves with used editions of The Iliad and The Odyssey and ancient mythology, because she wanted it to look like she was interested, and she thought the old books would be more believable.” His words are laced with disgust so thick, it sounds like it’s coating his mouth and tongue. “She photoshopped pictures of herself in front of the Parthenon, because she knew I’d gone the summer before. She told this whole made-up story about how she swore she’d seen a guy with dark hair and green eyes, right around my build, and I swallowed it. Hook, line, idiotic sinker. I thought that sociopath was actually maybe, like, some serendipitous soul mate of mine or something.”
“Oh, Cormac, I’m so sorry.” Again with that lame word, that useless, stupid word.
“Don’t be,” he sneers, and, though I know the barb in his voice is probably just a byproduct of his angry memories, it stings. “I fell for a make believe version of a very messed up girl. My mistake.”
“So…what now?” I tug my foot back and rub it a little myself.
“What what?” His slow, sleepy blink and smile complete his look better than a tie and cufflinks would for most guys.
“What do you do after something like that?” I don’t shrink away when he comes too close, almost predatorily close.
“You move on. You dig your heels in for a highly competitive position with one of the finest professors in your field. You travel to a beautiful place. You meet an even more beautiful girl and make some awkward attempts to sweep her off her feet.”
Heat sizzles through my entire body. It know he’s going to kiss me, and my eyes are low-lidded and my lips puckered, ready for him. But he only takes the bag out of my hands and splashes down into the water below, then turns with an arm up so he can help me down
I slide close to him, closer than I would have before he told me about Nina, but something’s off. It’s as if he didn’t just just admit to wanting to sweep me off my feet.
We trek back through the greying dawn and, by the time our feet hit the cobblestones, the confusing, gorgeous, sexy, revealing sparkle of the night before has lost its luster. We’re at my aunt’s front door before I want to be, and I feel him unwinding all the tiny ties that bound us the evening before.
“You’re probably the only girl alive who makes those dark under-eye circles sexy, but I still think you should get some sleep. In a bed, not on a rock,” he adds, his mouth twisted up in a slight grin that doesn’t even graze his eyes.
“I didn’t sleep on a rock. I slept on you.” The words wind out with the tight coil of desperation instead of the sexy wrap of intimacy.
“I apologize for being a drooling, snoring pillow.” He tucks my hair behind my ears, which I hate, but I also love the reconnection, so I nuzzle into his touch.
“You were perfect. Did you want to come—”
“Benelli! Benelli! Where the hell have you been, hon?”
I whirl around and the intersection of my two worlds, my two lives, is dizzying.
“Lala!” I let her grab me in a tight hug. Her hazel eyes comb me up and down, and her smile pulls to one side, wary and confused.
“You were out on a run?” She eyeballs my clothes, then flicks a lingering glance toward Cormac, and I feel a sudden jostle of…jealousy? “My uncle got me off the red-eye, and I asked him to bring me here. Abony was blitzed, as usual, so I was just about to hunt you down. I need someone to keep me awake so I can beat this damn jetlag.” Her smile widens, slow and hot. “Who’s your friend, hon?”
“Oh, this is, um, this is Cormac. Cormac, this is Lala, my best friend.”
; He reaches one hand out, and she takes just the edges of his fingers and radiates arousal.
“Lala, it’s lovely to meet you. And, much as I am overwhelmed by this much gorgeous female beauty this early in the morning, I’m a shade away from narcolepsy, sadly.” I know the smile he directs at Lala is only appropriately friendly, but it makes something uncomfortable simmer low in my gut.
When his eyes turn back to me, there are a thousand questions I need to ask, and a million refusals in his hard stare. His voice is low, for my ears exclusively. “Benelli. If I was stranded on a desert island with a single book, I’d want it to be yours.” He rubs his thumb in a light caress over the dip between my collar bones, a touch that’s simultaneously too intimate and not nearly intimate enough. “It was all perfect.” His words are dismissing me, and the kiss he deposits on the side of my mouth seals his intent and throws the key away.
“Don’t leave,” Lala begs, her voice rising an octave, then slipping into a purr that makes me bristle.
“I really should be—” he begins.
“Stop.” Lala shakes her head. “I’m already half in love with you over that accent. I’m hungry, I hate going out without a hot guy, and you seem like you’ll be a riot. Come with us, and that’s not a question. You’re coming.” She nods at me. “Babe, go change into something decent. Does that little cafe in the middle of town still open at sunup? I want one of those coffees with the peppermint syrup. Do you think that’s only a Christmas thing?”
“Um…” I glance at Cormac, waiting for any indication from him that this is strange or not something he’s ready to do or that he only wants to hang out with me and not with Lala in tow. But he’s already laughing at some story Lala’s telling, and I’m left with no alternative but to head up the stairs, skipping the ones that creak under my feet by habit, and strip off all my absurdly comfortable clothes for a barely there sundress and cork-soled wedges. I twist my hair into a high bun, put on several necklaces and chunky bracelets, and apply a full face of makeup.
Perfectly Unmatched (A Youngblood Book) Page 11
