"God, that's beautiful." Rex's voice seemed to echo inside her. "I can see every part of you from down here, baby. I can see that ass too bare of marks from me. I can see where you're all pink and wet and swollen for me. Did you get that way just from kisses?"
"From missing you," Al said. "I'm aching for you. I've been needing you so badly. I've been feeling so empty."
She heard him taking the stairs in multiples, and then his body was pressed up behind her, on the exact stair where she'd slipped and felt his erection pressing against her ass, the very first time. He felt so much bigger now, so much more arousing now she knew exactly what his body could do to hers.
"I'll fill you up," he growled, crowding her forward toward the bathroom and through the open door. She could see him, a mass of huge, aroused male, dark behind her in the mirror. "I will, I promise, but I need a taste of you on my filthy mouth first."
He turned her to face him and boosted her onto the vanity, stroking his tongue over hers, tangling his hands in her hair to position her where he wanted her. She gave over to him completely, let him angle her head and take her mouth, let him wrap his big hands around her thighs and push them apart. She gasped when he rucked up the skirt of her dress and dragged her to the edge of the bench, released her mouth, and knelt to lick up the line of her slit.
Alannah was so sensitised, so exquisitely aware of his tongue moving over her, stroking her clit, circling her opening, pressing deep inside. He licked her like he was trying to mark her with his tongue, and incoherent noises and pleas to any listening deity tumbled from her lips. Rex pulled away. "You know my name. Use it. I'm the only one you'll be calling out to tonight."
"Rex!" she shouted when he pressed a finger inside her and quirked it upward.
"Fuck, I've missed that. Missed you calling my name so much, baby. Missed the taste of this piece of heaven on my tongue." He drew a hard line upward to circle the tip of her clit. "You taste so good, I can't fucking think, Alannah." He sucked her clit into his mouth, and Al's back arched so violently, she would have fallen from the bench if he hadn't still had one arm wrapped around her hips. He flicked her with his tongue, and his fingers scissored inside her, and he was saying words against her skin like prayers as her cries rose in pitch and volume until she was clenching around him, calling out his name over and over as she shuddered through an orgasm as powerful as her need for him.
Rex rose over her like a breaking wave, and she could see him nearly vibrating with arousal. He stripped with quick economy, rolled on a condom, and tugged her dress from her body. She felt completely boneless with satiation but, somehow, still starved for his touch. He pulled her skin against his own and groaned. "You fit me fucking perfectly, Alannah. Do you feel that?"
"Yes," Al cried, the word a mewl as he drew the head of his cock through her swollen folds. Rex pulled away to flick the shower on, and steam started to fill the room as it warmed, but Al dragged him back to her as soon as his hands were unoccupied. She circled his erection with one shaking hand and worked the head of his dick back and forth against her slickness, never quite letting him inside. He watched as she moved up and back, up and back, never letting him slip inside.
"Fuck, that's good," he growled, fingers digging into her thighs like he was forcing himself not to push against her resistance. "Work those hips for me, sassy girl. Fucking love watching you tease me. I can feel you getting even hotter."
"Take me," she begged.
He picked her up and walked her into the shower, putting her directly under the spray. Al soaped up her hands until they were covered in bubbles. She aligned her body with his, wrapped her arms around him and rubbed circles on his back, nuzzling against the scratch of hair on his chest until he dragged her mouth up for another kiss. She drew trails of lather over his shoulders, down his chest, watching the bubbles drip down around the hard jut of his erection.
"Turn around," she commanded.
"Why?" he asked, but he complied.
"Because I want to do this." Al smoothed her soapy hands over the curve of his hips, dug her nails into the jut of muscles over his hipbones just to hear him growl. She pressed a kiss to one muscled shoulder and stroked the curve of his buttocks down to the crease at the top of his thigh, then she cupped the heavy sac between his legs. When she squeezed gently, Rex choked out a curse. She drew one finger gently backward until she was stroking the pucker of his ass, circling it gently, and then Rex was spinning like she'd electrocuted him, and he had her pinned to the cold tiles again.
"Another time," he promised, panting, "another time, I'll let you do whatever you want to me, but I've never come back from being that close in my life, and if I don't get inside you in the next five seconds, I think I might lose my mind."
"I want you inside me," Al pleaded.
"Then spread your legs and fucking prove it."
She wrapped her thighs around his hips, and his arms wrapped below her knees to spread her even wider, lifting her higher so he could push his erection inside her. They groaned in unison as he breached her entrance, and then he was driving home, filling her so deeply she could hardly breathe, the head of his cock rubbing right where she needed it as he thrust in and out of her. The noises that spilled from her lips were so loud, she went to cover her mouth, but Rex ground into her on a growl, biting at her neck. "Don't you fucking dare. I earned the right to hear what I do to you. I fucking earned it. Didn't I?" he demanded.
"Yes!"
"Didn't I?"
"Rex!" Al cried out, and had she ever come so hard in her life? Their position meant she could do nothing but hold on and take the hard drives of his body into hers, spread her legs wide and feel every inch of him stretching and filling and owning every inch of her. The first orgasm peaked and quickly began to build into a second. Alannah felt when her climax triggered his own, his growls growing shorter and more guttural until his hips began to jerk in short, rough thrusts as he pulsed deep inside her, words spilling from his lips that she was too far gone to interpret.
Eventually, he let her slide down his body. Her feet had barely touched the floor before he pulled her against him, one cheek resting on the top of her head. "Alannah," he kept saying. "Alannah, Alannah."
"Rex," she breathed, pressing kisses to his skin.
"Jesus Christ," he managed eventually, peeling his body away from her but still keeping her in his arms. He stared at her like he was looking at a priceless work of art. "Jesus Christ, I will never be able to look at a shower again."
A giggle burbled from Alannah's throat, and she was struck suddenly by how right it felt to be here, with him. All the wrongness from their time apart had been swept away by this joining. "I missed you so much," she blurted.
Rex pressed a tender kiss to her mouth. "I missed you too. I missed every single inch of you, Alannah Green, and I need to reacquaint myself with every last one of them." He turned the shower off and ducked out, only to return moments later with a towel around his waist and another that he wrapped around her. "Dry off quick, sassy girl," he ordered. "I'm taking you to bed."
Rex woke up before Alannah, as he had each day since she'd let him back into her bed. He'd hardly left her house, other than to go to work, since their reconciliation. He'd returned Harry's car, though the two of them had barely exchanged more than a look when he knocked on Harry's door to hand back the keys. When he saw that Harry wasn't about to offer up much in the way of conversation, Rex had turned away and heard the other man say, "Hope she knows now," before the click of the door closed between them with finality.
"She does," Rex had said to the empty air.
His own car was being fixed, which meant that after Al drove away today, he'd be stranded without one. He'd also technically need to be out of her house in just a few days, when the cleaners came to prepare it for tenants who were arriving in two weeks. Tenants, who would be living in the house he'd shared all-too-briefly with her.
The weight of it was so heavy, he felt like he was drowning, but the
re was something pure in it, like a light shining down through the weight of an ocean worth of water. After his revelations before he came to her, he had obtained a sort of calm in the difficulty of his own decision. He was hurting, but he knew it was for the right reasons.
He would have to remind himself of that a lot after she was gone.
He watched her sleep for a long time, knowing it was his last time to do so. She snuggled into his chest, one hand tucked in a cuddle around his midsection, fitting the spot perfectly.
Today, could well be the hardest thing he'd ever done; he knew that—putting his money where his mouth was and actually letting the woman he loved leave him, watching her go without ruining it for her, without letting the ache that already throbbed in his chest make her departure all about him. This was about her. It was about Alannah and what she needed. It was not about the agony that speared through him at the thought of months, years, without holding her, without telling her that he loved her.
Al's alarm went off, blaring loudly into the still dimness of their last morning. She tucked her head into him more firmly, as though her subconscious knew she could rely on him to protect her, even from her alarm clock.
"Wake up, Alannah," Rex murmured, stroking a hand down her side.
"I'm up," Alannah said against his chest.
"I don't believe you. You'll have to get out of bed. You jump in the shower; I'll make coffee."
She looked up at him as though she might extend an offer to join her in the shower—God knew they'd done that enough times in the last few days—but something in his face gave her pause. "Thank you," she said instead and squeezed him tightly for just a moment before she left the warmth of the bed.
They moved around each other as though in a daze, constantly brushing each other with kisses and touches as they ate breakfast and packed the very last of Alannah's things into her car. As she ducked out of the house a final time, she pressed his key back into his hand. "Will you lock up for me?"
"Of course."
"Stay as long as you want."
"I will."
"The tenants aren't due for a fortnight."
"I promise I won't be squatting when they arrive."
"It's not squatting if you're invited."
His smile felt like a dim ghost on his face. "I'll lock up for you, Alannah." I'll wait for you, he wanted to say.
When she kissed him goodbye, he had to stop himself from holding on to her as if he could meld her into his own body. He pushed his heart into the kiss, knowing that she was taking it with her, knowing that he might never get it back.
When they separated, tears were spilling down her cheeks. He wiped them away gently, trying to hold back any indication that it felt like something was prying his ribs apart. She couldn't seem to look away from him for long as she climbed into the car, and the moment the door closed between them, she wound down the window to reach out and wrap both her hands around his.
"Drive safely," he told her, hearing the shake in his voice and hating that it hurt her. Knowing it would only make the pain worse, he added, "I love you."
"I'll call you as soon as I arrive," she promised.
Not trusting his voice not to break, Rex stepped back from the car. Alannah cast him another look he could hardly decipher, this one full of something that looked like pleading. But then she was gone, and he was walking into a house that felt as lifeless as a tomb. The cavern in his chest throbbed.
She'll call, Rex told himself. She'll call when she's safe.
She'll call from somewhere I can't reach her, because I let her go. Because I had to let her go.
He braced himself on the kitchen bench, struggling to even out his breathing, and noticed the piece of paper she'd propped up for him to find. He unfolded it.
R,
I love you too. If I said it in person, I might not have been able to leave, and I need to do this. I know you know that.
Thank you for everything.
With my heart,
A.
Rex put his head in his hands and lost the battle to hold his battered, splintering heart together.
Chapter 14
Seven Months Later
Rex never asked her not to go.
He called her twice a week, like clockwork, and they kept each other up to date on the goings-on of their respective friends and families. She told him about settling into the construction team that was hesitant to take the word of a woman they'd never worked with before; he talked about his family, who seemed to delight in driving each other insane, and his informal apprenticeship with Jamie Cameron, which was swiftly progressing into more complex, technically challenging work. They didn't talk about their relationship—if that's what it should be called, this continuation of something that started sexual and turned into love all too quickly, only to have the physical element removed. The love was still there, making her ache with its intensity, even though she could say the words only infrequently. It hurt too much to be apart from him if she said it more. She fell for him a little more every time he made her laugh, and it was the kind of falling that made her wonder if anyone had ever felt love so intensely before. He never specifically said he missed her, though it tinted all his words like watercolours bleeding through paper. She knew he was only trying to avoid making her feel guilty, but having the words unspoken was painful too.
He never asked her to come home.
Mansfield—the worksite where she spent up to twelve hours a day, her cosy little apartment, the coffee shop where she was quickly recognised as a local, the Thai eatery down the road—never quite managed to feel like home. Because home was Rex.
In a moment of chardonnay-influenced honesty, she admitted to herself that it would probably be no more than six months before she booked that flight home, the ache of missing him more than she could bear. There was a kind of relief in that admission, because she was no longer trying to deny that she would go back to him—and that had put a delirious jolt of happiness through her chest. A burst of anticipation followed, from the knowledge that it was only a matter of time until she'd be knocking on his door, heart in her mouth, hoping that time hadn't dulled his feelings.
She couldn't imagine that it would change hers.
She hadn't told him, didn't want to put that kind of pressure on him, on his feelings, the knowledge that she was planning so far in advance. But surely, if he felt as strongly for her as he said, time and distance wouldn't be enough to change it.
And if things had changed for him, well, then she'd find a way to live with it. Whether that was in Shepherd's Creek or elsewhere, she'd be the brave girl her mother had known her to be, and she would live with it. She would be happy.
The project that had brought her to Mansfield had drawn to its close, and rather than enjoying the celebratory party and ribbon-cutting that the client was throwing in the building that just months ago had been a flat patch of land, she was hopping on a plane. She'd handed in her access pass to the building site and rolled up the last of her hard-copy plans. The cosy apartment, furnished when she arrived, had been cleaned of any trace of her presence. Her professional clothes—the ones not appropriate to take backpacking—were by now probably stacked in a corner of Kayla's garage, after she and Sam had driven up for the weekend and taken Al's car, with the last of her belongings, back home with them.
Home.
To him.
To the only place her heart wanted to be, even as she left it ever further behind.
Regina Beth Castlereagh was born thirteen days after she was due. "Late," Ivy had been saying since the due date came and went as she waddled around the house. She had grown to roughly fifty percent belly, Rex estimated, and was barely able to climb the half dozen stairs to her own front door. "Late, like her bloody father."
Jared had been alternating between beaming with pride and frantic with the need to care for his wife. Ivy had banned him from carrying her places when he strained a muscle in his back during the sixth month of her pregnancy, so
he enlisted Rex to increase his strength training at the gym until he knew he'd be able to lift her even as she continued to grow. He had every single ultrasound picture framed in their living room and could talk about lactation and placentas for hours, which Rex knew, because he had been enduring it for seven long months.
Seven months, since he'd moved into Eric's spare room. "Got no one to use it," Eric said, and Rex knew this was his quiet brother's way of supporting him through his heartbreak. Seven months, since he'd waved goodbye to Alannah and had to try to rebuild the shattered remains of his heart.
He wondered if this was the kind of love that he would be lamenting on his deathbed, if this sense of The One Who Got Away would ever leave him. Perhaps it was masochistic to still speak to her twice a week, but he couldn't rid himself of the drive to at least remain in her life somehow, to keep part of himself with her just in case she came close to forgetting about him. Because he knew, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that he would never forget her.
Ivy's water broke when she was sitting down to lunch at Rex's worksite, having waddled her way out to eat with him and Jamie. To Rex's utter disbelief, the two of them were actually quite close friends—Jamie's wife, apparently, was a frequent customer at Ivy's shop, and they had struck up a friendship over home décor and brightly patterned scarves. Jamie seemed almost as thrilled about the pregnancy as Jared, and for perhaps the first time since Rex had met him, he had actually spoken more than a hundred words in a single sitting. Ever since they'd moved to a site close to Jared and Ivy's place, she had taken to eating lunch with them once or twice a week—she had been pushed into taking maternity leave from the shop by both Jared, who admitted that he was terrified that she would hurt herself, and her employees, who did not admit that they were sick of her belly destroying carefully curated displays. So, it was no surprise when Ivy lowered her bulk onto a half-unloaded pallet with a brown paper bag in hand, already unwrapping a sandwich the size of her head.
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