Another cinnamon-sweet smack of pain. Another, and she thought she might scream. Not from the pain, she loved the burn of it, but from the desperation of needing him shoved against and all over and invading her core.
"God, I can feel you rubbing all that sweet up against me. You're so hot and wet, even when you're fighting this fucking skirt. Push a little harder, baby. Let me see you work for it."
"Take it off me. Please." Al tried not to sound like she was begging, though she couldn't stop herself from moving against the not-enough pressure of his thigh as her hands clung to his shoulders, fingertips digging into him. "I need you closer. More."
"I thought you'd never fucking ask."
His hand in her hair pulled her against him again, his tongue laying claim to her mouth as he yanked her skirt upward over her ass. There was something debauched about having him so desperate he didn't even take it off, just shoved it up so he could get between her legs. The relief at finally being able to grind on him properly almost had her sobbing into his mouth, the feel of his ridges of muscle so overwhelming, she tilted her hips away from him.
"No, you fucking don't," Rex growled, grabbing at her ass and shoving her tight against him. "You wanted closer, you got it. Now hold the fuck on."
He moved them before she could blink, trapping her against the wall. He worked her over his thigh in constantly tightening circles, his focus completely on positioning her so that pressure was placed right where she needed, one hand still wrapped in her hair, the other gripping her ass. She tried not to go under, tried not to thrash and scream into his mouth, but she was so primed, so fucking swollen from wanting him, she didn't stand a chance. He used his grip on her ass to lift her higher, so gravity was pressing all her weight on the place his thigh supported her, and when he tensed the muscles there, the pressure was too much.
She came.
It was a rough, harsh climax, like the moment a glass shatters, and she tore her mouth away from his to cry out once, twice, a third time.
The silence afterward was deafening as Alannah kept her eyes squeezed shut, avoiding meeting his gaze. Sure, he'd been down for some vaguely kinky things in the heat of the moment, but that was no guarantee that now he wouldn't look at her like she'd grown an extra head, like she was something disgusting.
She pressed her face against his shoulder, hiding the fact that her breathing had turned ragged from more than just the shockingly powerful orgasm. The fear made her shaky, made her turn her face into his neck and press a kiss there rather than meet his eyes. Rex slowly lowered her to the ground, and a groan burst free from her with the renewal of pressure where she was most sensitive. Her feet met the ground, and when they broke apart, Al made firm eye contact with his collarbone for a long moment before moving up his face inch by inch, steeling herself for the look of horror she remembered far too well.
It wasn't there, but that could have been because Rex wasn't looking at her. He was glaring down at the leg of the shorts she'd lent him, the hemline of which she'd significantly darkened with her arousal.
Jesus, Alannah. You were humping his leg like some kind of… of dog, she thought, suddenly repulsed by her own actions. His expression morphed into something like anger, and the horror of the memory of Harry's disgust had Al pushing out of his hold, away from his angry eyes and downturned brows, from the mouth swollen from her kiss. She muttered some kind of excuse, a goodnight that was lost in the tears rapidly pooling in her eyes and managed to tamp down on the heaving breaths until she was in her own room, blinking owlishly at her own reflection.
Maybe, Al thought miserably, she should have stuck to beige.
Chapter 4
"So, have you spoken to him?" Kayla asked.
"What? Of course, not." Al manoeuvred her shopping trolley around a large display of prematurely festive chocolates and focused on steering with one hand while holding her phone to her ear with the other.
"Why not?"
"Well, what would I say? 'Sorry I humped you like an animal. Let's hang out sometime, platonically, like we did when we were kids.' That would work great."
"The man is living in your house," Kayla said with cruel logic. "You can't avoid him forever."
"Yes, I can," Alannah said, completely reasonably. "He works tradie hours—really early mornings. I just have to be asleep when he leaves and avoid coming home in the evenings until he's gone to bed."
"And you don't think he'll realise something is wrong when you're suddenly conspicuously absent from your own home? He might think you've been kidnapped. The cops could get involved. Wouldn't that make it more awkward?"
"Hey, I never agreed to play hostess," Al said. The trolley had one—or possibly several—damaged wheels, and she had to shove her entire weight against it to avoid crashing into the wall of freezers. "I didn't even really agree he could stay more than a night. It just sort of happened." She paused. "Maybe I can kick him out now."
"You're being silly."
"Am I, though? Do you think there's any way to subtly revoke the invitation without leaving room for argument?"
"I thought you never issued an invitation."
"I didn't; that's the point." She dropped a bag of flour into the trolley, thought about all the sexual frustration-inspired baking she was likely to do with the constant reminder of Rex around, and collected another bag. "Maybe I could just change the locks," she mused. "There's no clearer way to say someone isn't welcome. I wouldn't even have to see him."
"You're impossible to reason with over the phone," Kayla announced. "Come over for dinner. I'm making tacos, and Sam bought an industrial-grade blender because I mentioned margaritas in passing. You can avoid your unwelcome housemate for hours."
"Will I have to watch you kissing every twelve seconds?" Al asked. "Because if so, I will take myself to the movies and sneak in fast food tacos in my handbag. I am not in the mood to have your romantic bliss shoved in my lonely, single face today."
"But you're in the mood for margaritas, right? I'll see you at seven?"
"You didn't answer my question. No kissing, right? Kayla?" Al saw her friend had hung up and swore under her breath. Three large bags of chocolate chips joined the growing pile of baking supplies in the trolley. She wondered idly how many batches of cookies it would take to appease her frustrated libido or at least exhaust it into submission. With the memory of Rex's touch coiling hot in her stomach, she added another bag of the chips to her supply.
During his first deployment, shortly after the first time he'd fired his weapon outside of training, Rex started having a recurring dream. The background details varied—sometimes it was set in a jungle, sometimes in a medieval dungeon, other times with sand swirling around his calves and stinging his face, and once in an empty corporate meeting room, though he'd never sat in one in his life—but the culmination was always the same. He could never remember what he was holding, only the moment when it disappeared, when he realised his hands were empty and that the very important thing had been lost. And then there was panic, blindingly strong, as he tried to recover it or, God, even remember what it looked like, and then the loss would set off an ache in his chest that was fearful in its depth, like charges detonated far below the surface of the sea.
He used the psych services to the extent mandated by his superiors, and a little more besides. He was young when he first joined, but he wasn't stupid; he knew war could twist a man's mind as much as it could damage his body. He discussed the dream once, then twice, then five times, ten times. Eventually, he stopped bringing it up with the professionals, because they never could give him an explanation that wasn't so bleeding obvious he could have said the exact same thing without a thirty-thousand-dollar degree. "You're worried about losing something important," they would say, as though that weren't obvious, or if they were trying to mix it up a little, "You seem to be anticipating something being taken from you."
He tried to tell the doctors they had it wrong, that the only thing he had of value was his life, and
if that was gone, then there wasn't much he could do about it. He had his family, but they were safe back in Shepherd's Creek, skyping him into their Sunday family lunches whenever they got the chance. He had his mates, both back home and with him on deployment, but none of them was intrinsic enough to his very being to warrant the terror and soul-deep misery he woke up to each time he had the dream. Only once, had one of the shrinks said something that Rex could almost believe, an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard who always wore a cardigan with one button fastened. He'd looked down his nose at Rex across the coffee table and said, "Maybe it doesn't matter what it is that disappears. Maybe you're scared of not having anything worth losing."
He hadn't brought the dream up again, with that doctor or any other, but the morning after Alannah fled his arms, he awoke to find himself staring at his own hands as he did every time he had the dream. The panic and misery were still raw in his chest as he fumbled himself dressed, and he told himself it was for that reason that seeing the makings of coffee and breakfast left out with a note stole his breath.
R, the note read, Figured you'd be up earlier than me. Feel free to dig for anything I've forgotten. A.
There was no endearment, no sweetness added to the succinct message, but it was enough that she'd thought of him. That, even though she'd leaped away from him like he had some kind of disease the moment after he had made her come, she'd put in this much effort… it soothed the jagged edges the dream always left in his chest. Not as much as seeing her would have done; he knew she was an early riser from the mornings they'd shared a wave between their separate kitchens, and he couldn't shake the feeling she'd now changed her routine to avoid him. But the breakfast spread was just enough to give him hope that there might be another reason for her lightning-fast disappearance. Surely, a woman who worked herself to orgasm on a man's thigh so fucking sweetly, it made Rex hard just to remember it, and had then gone to the effort to provide him with breakfast, would be open to an amicable discussion of repeating the thigh orgasm. Knowing there was a possibility that he was kidding himself—she might just be trying to be polite, the responsible and reasonable Alannah Green he remembered—he decided to think optimistically about his chances of putting his hands on her again. He got about two hours into his day before the bubble was burst.
He'd been actively avoiding his mother for several days, since firing off a quick text to let her know he was staying at Alannah's. There was no need to even use Al's key to collect his bag, or their planned breaking and entering strategy, though he waited until his parents were out before he ventured into the house. They never even locked the door, which Rex decided he'd speak to them about, just as soon as he could make eye contact with them again.
He should have known that the silence between them couldn't continue, but he was happily deluding himself that he'd have at least a few more days to recover from seeing his parents in the kind of clinch no son should witness.
He was stretching the kinks out of his back partway through helping Jamie lay skirting boards and debating whether he should stand in the hot midday sun just in case Alannah was in the mood to spread Aloe Vera over his sunburn, when his mother's station wagon ground to a halt on the gravel that bordered the site. Jamie flicked Rex a look that clearly stated that her presence was Rex's issue and gave the two of them his back.
"What's up, Mum?" He kissed the air beside her cheek, trying not to touch her with his sweaty, dusty body.
"Do I need a reason to come and visit my son? I brought you a sandwich." She passed him a bag then wound her fingers together. "Are you up to eating lunch with me? Do you get a break?"
"I can take a minute. Is everything okay?"
"Missing you at home is all." Flags of red marked her cheeks, and Rex abandoned his small hope that she didn't realise the reason he'd absconded.
"Maybe I can pop over for dinner or something? I'm only next door."
"I don't want you to feel like you're not welcome in your own home," Gina hedged.
"Mum, I'm twenty-six. Your place will always be home, but it's a bit weird to move back into my childhood bedroom. It's easier at Al's place, and I've rung Simon from the real estate agency. He's going to show me a few places."
"Oh, that's good news." She bit her lip. "I was just looking forward to having you around for a while."
"I'll still be around, Mum. You'd get sick of me if I was in the way all the time. This way, you don't have to worry about me leaving my dirty socks on the floor."
"That would be grounds for eviction. Careful, or Al might kick you out instead." She took a step back and looked Rex over, breaking into a smile. "It's good to have all my boys back in one place. We missed you."
"I won't be gone like that again," Rex said, rubbing the back of his neck with a bit of embarrassment. "It was time and past to come home."
"Well, that's settled. You'll come for dinner tonight, then? Your brothers are coming too. Bring Alannah, so we can feed her up to thank her for having you."
An image formed in Rex's head, of sitting with Alannah at his parents' table, claiming her before his family. Something heavy landed in his chest, and he sucked in a breath. "I'll ask her. She's been pretty busy the last few days."
"I can give her a ring; I have her number."
Rex had to stop himself from jolting at this information. "Can you forward it to me?" He tried not to think about the weirdness of asking his mother for the contact information of the woman he desperately wanted to bed. "So I can ask her if we need, um, milk or anything," he added, knowing the explanation was inadequate as one of Gina's eyebrows quirked. But she didn't ask the obvious question, and Rex wondered if her newfound restraint was the consequence of his seeing things that would send him to therapy.
Still, if it got him Alannah's number, it might almost be worth it.
Al was ruminating over some sketches when the message arrived, so her phone was on her desk. She opened it to see the message from an unfamiliar number.
The typing symbol popped up moments later, and she watched as they stopped and started several times. Another message soon followed.
A: I thought it must be you. How's work?
He started typing immediately, as though he'd been waiting for her response, as captivated by the promise of their communication as she suddenly found herself. Work forgotten, she drew her phone over alongside the notepad that was never far away on her desk, snatching up a pencil and sketching hazy outlines as she waited for his reply.
R: Not bad. I've almost managed this sunscreen thing, without needing to ask anyone else onsite to help.
A: Disappointing. That would have been entertaining to watch.
She reread her response a dozen times, wondering if the hint of innuendo was too much. You're being more spontaneous, she lectured herself. You're following your instincts and trying new things. This is what you wanted. But she was wondering if it was crazy to leave her comfort zone for this nerve-wracking experience, when all she was doing was texting the man. If she stopped hiding and actually had a conversation with him, her skyrocketing blood pressure might land her in hospital.
R: No pressure to come to dinner if you're not up to company tonight. I can represent the House of Green.
A tendril of something Alannah couldn't name unfurled in her chest at his thoughtfulness. She tried not to consider how the same situation would have gone with Harry—as both of them were people pleasers, it wouldn't have mattered if one was bleeding from a gunshot wound, they would have gone and smiled politely and decided they were too tired to spend the night together. Their policy of not pushing to spend time together if either wasn't up to it had started as a way of respecting each other's space, but toward the end, it had felt more like an easy cop out—like being nice to Harry, being receptive to Harry's well-meaning advances, being with Harry altogether, had become a chore to avoid.
<
br /> R: Mum wants to feed you as gratitude for putting me up. She came to the site today, definitely knows why I left home. Most awkward conversation ever.
R: Although, she might be angling to take you hostage for your lemon meringue pie recipe.
A: Wars have been started for less.
A: 7 works for me. Can I bring anything?
R: Just yourself :)
Al spent more time than she wanted to admit staring at the tiny smiley face on her screen. She couldn't imagine Rex typing it, because his face didn't crease into that kind of tiny smile—he had a grin a mile wide and that barely-there smirk that made her heart race but not a quietly polite smile. He was personable, to be sure, but nothing about Rex said gratuitous people-pleasing, the kind Alannah did, that she had done, that she was trying not to do any more.
When she turned her attention back to her sketchpad, it was to see an intricate drawing of a pair of lust-filled eyes, the heavy dark brows contextualising them as his. Below them was a pair of ornate doors that she could hardly remember sketching, opening on to swirling shadows.
She got halfway to disregarding this creation of her subconscious to refocus on her actual work but arrested the movement halfway through. She scrabbled through the files scattered across her desk. When she found what she was looking for after a few brief moments, she strode down the hall to Fiona's office.
Al's boss looked up, perfectly plucked brows raised. "Alannah. Is everything all right?"
"All fine," Al said. "It's just that I was thinking about the plans for the Robertson house and how they wanted a feature in their courtyard."
"The one that doesn't have space, light, or the budget for a feature?" Fiona asked wryly.
He Comes Home Page 6
