Her smile slips a little and she drops her hand to her waist, where she runs abstracted lines along the silk. “I just turned twenty-one last week.”
What’s the rule again? Half my age, plus seven?
Shit, she is definitely way too young for me.
“So you can drink,” I say, “but I’m too old to be bringing you drinks, which is the real problem.”
She arches an eyebrow, her voice gently teasing. “Well, you are really old.”
“Hey!”
That smile again. Christ. I could watch that mouth move from a scrumptious little moue to a giant smile and back again for the rest of my life.
“Anything but wine,” she says, still smiling. “Please.”
“Okay,” I say, smiling back too. Grinning as if I’m a kid who’s just gotten asked to dance for the first time at a middle-school mixer. What is wrong with me? One pretty twenty-one-year-old and my victory lap has turned into a hike through eager newbie territory. And I’m anything but a newbie.
But still, my heart is pounding fast and my cock is stirring against my pants as I go get this woman a drink. Even though she’s too young. Even though I don’t know her. Even though she laughed at me.
I kind of like that she laughed at me, actually. Usually I’m taken very, very seriously—in bed and out of it—and I’m surprised at how good it feels to have to work for this girl’s admiration.
That’s it, I decide. That’s what I want: to win her over the tiniest bit. Maybe it would be wrong to take her home, but if I can make her leave tonight wishing I would’ve taken her home, that will be enough for me. Enough to scratch the itch.
I get her a gin and tonic from the bar, asking the bartender to take it easy on the gin, and get myself another scotch, and then I return to the terrace, relieved to see her still there, staring pensively out at the skyline with her arms wrapped around her chest.
“Cold?” I ask, prepared to shrug out of my tuxedo jacket and hand it to her, but she waves me off.
“I’m okay.” She takes the gin from me, taking a careful sip, then making a face. “Is there any gin in this?”
“You’re young,” I say, a bit defensively. “Your tolerance is low.”
“Are you this protective of every woman you meet?” she asks. “Or am I special?”
“You’re definitely special.” I deliver the line with all the charm and panache I’ve collected over the years, throwing in the dimple for good measure, and then she laughs at me.
Again.
I sigh. “Is it just utterly hopeless?”
“Is what utterly hopeless?”
I take a sip of my scotch, giving her my best puppy eyes. “Getting you to like me.”
She takes a sip of her own drink to mask her smile. “I think I like you just fine. But you don’t have to do the charming guy thing with me.”
“Well then. What thing works for you?”
She thinks for a moment, and the breeze toys with the ends of her hair, making them sway and dance. That strange feeling pulls at my chest again, as if the play of her hair in the wind is some kind of spell, conjuring up memories of stained glass and whispered prayers.
“I like honesty,” she decides aloud. “Try the honest guy thing.”
“Hmm,” I muse, tapping my finger against my scotch glass. “Honest guy thing. I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“It’s the only thing that works for me,” she warns, an impish grin playing across her features. “I need complete honesty.”
“I’ll tell you what—I’ll be honest with you if you’ll be honest with me.”
She sticks out her hand. “Deal.”
I take her hand in mine to shake it, and it’s warm and soft. I let my fingertips graze against the pulse point on her wrist as I end the handshake, and I’m gratified to see a small shiver move through her.
“You have to go first though,” she says, pulling her hand back. She narrows her eyes at me. “And no cheating.”
“Cheating? Moi?” I put a hand to my heart as if staggered by her accusation, although I’m actually having more fun than I’ve had in ages. “I would never.”
“Good. Because this only works if you really do it. Don’t use it as an excuse to feed me some flirty line about how pretty I am and how you’d like to get to know me better.”
My hand still on my chest, I drop my head forward in mock defeat. “You’ve got me.” Because that’s exactly what I was planning on saying—which technically wouldn’t have been cheating. “Those things are also true though,” I add, lifting my eyes to hers.
She makes a circling gesture with her hand, yeah-yeah-yeah, and gives me another one of those arched eyebrows. “Say something you wouldn’t say to just any girl you wanted to get into bed.”
“Fine,” I say, and I set my glass down on the ledge next to us. “I think you’re more than pretty. I think you’re fucking gorgeous, and you’re not impressed by me, which makes me want to work very, very hard to impress you. I want to impress you with my mouth…” I take a step toward her, my hands safely in my pockets, so she sees I’m not going to touch her. “…and impress you with my fingers…”
Another step forward, and she lifts her face up to see mine better, her mouth parted and her eyes wide and blinking. I can see the vulnerable place where her pulse thrums in her throat, the rapid rise and fall of her chest. The tight furls of her nipples against the silk dress.
“…and with every other part of my body.”
We’re so close now that my shoes brush against the hem of her dress, and I keep the distance just as it is—no touching, no pressing, no grinding, just my words and the electricity sparking between us. “And I do want to get to know you better. I want to know if you scream or if you moan when you come, I want to know if you prefer my mouth or my hands, I want to know if you like it deep and slow or fast and hard.”
She swallows, her eyes searching mine in fast, dazed flicks.
“And right now I can see the V between your thighs under that dress, and all I want to do is press my cock against it. I want to see if you’re sensitive enough that I can get you off through the silk, I want to see if I can lick you through the fabric.” I lower my voice. “I want to taste you. I want to taste you so badly that I’m hard just thinking about it. I want to see how your little pussy unfurls when I part it with my fingers, I want to know if your clit gets hard and plump when I suck on it. I want you to feel the place my nose presses into you as I eat you out from the front…and from behind.”
Her eyes are huge now, copper-brown rings around massive pools of black. “You can…you can do that?”
I cock my head a little, amused. “Do what?”
Her feet do a little shuffle as she looks down. “The, um. The eating. From behind.”
Jesus. She’s young, but surely not that young? Twenty-one is more than old enough to have found at least one boy who’s decent in bed. And oh God, what does it say about me that this sudden revelation of innocence is such a fucking turn-on? That she doesn’t know…that I could be the first to show her…my cock is pushing against the placket of my zipper like it’s ready to burst the seams, and my skin feels hot and achy and tight. And my tongue is desperate for the satin texture of her secret place, for the hidden taste of her, and I run it along my teeth, needing some kind of sensation to quiet the rioting storm inside me.
She watches my mouth, entranced. I watch her watching me.
“Yes,” I say huskily. “Yes, you can do that.”
“I, ah,” she says, and even in the indirect light, I can see a new rosy hue blossoming underneath the warm tones of her skin. “I didn’t know.”
I can show you, I want to say. Let me take you up to a deserted balcony. Let me show you how to brace your hands on the railing and present your ass to me. Let me show you exactly how a man uses his mouth on a woman from behind.
I don’t say that, though. Instead, I lower my head ever so slightly, just enough to make her lips part even more, a
nd I murmur, “Your turn.”
The rosy hues are even more pronounced now, spreading across the sweet skin along her collarbone and up her neck. “My turn?” she asks breathlessly.
“To be honest. Remember?”
“Oh,” she exhales, blinking. “Right. Honest.”
“No cheating,” I remind her. “I was honest with you.”
“Yes,” she agrees, nodding, her eyes dropping to my mouth again. “You were honest with me.”
I give her a moment, even though all I want to do is crowd her against the cable and rub my aching erection against her silk-clad dress. Even though all I want to do is bury my face in her neck and suck at the sensitive skin there as I ruck up her skirt and cup her heat in my palm.
“Okay. Honesty.” She takes a deep breath and then peers up at me. “I want you to kiss me.”
“Right now?”
“Right now,” she confirms. There’s the tiniest bit of quaking bravado in her voice, and I don’t like it. I mean, I’m halfway to dropping to my knees and begging her to let me see her cunt, but the better part of me wants her to be completely ready and certain. I don’t want her to fake bravery in order to be kissed—I don’t want her to require bravery at all. I pluck her drink from her hands and set it next to my scotch on the ledge, then I hold out my hand for her to take.
She looks confused. “Are you not going to kiss me? I thought—after all you said—”
“I want to kiss you very much. But right now can be as long as we want to make it, right? Maybe it’s the next ten minutes, maybe it’s the next twenty. However long it is, I don’t want to rush it. What if this is the only kiss I get to have from you for the rest of my life? I want to take my time. Savor it.”
“Savor it,” she repeats. And then she nods, relaxing. “I like that.”
She takes my hand and I lead her farther onto the terrace, where a tent with a dance floor has been erected, waiting for the after-dinner crowd to come for drinks and dancing. But it’s mostly empty now, and there’s only a lone employee carrying out trays of waiting champagne flutes and a speaker piping in music from the sextet in the lobby.
“How about a dance first?” I ask.
She looks around the tent, and some of her earlier confidence creeps back into her expression. “Are you sure you’re any good at dancing?”
“I’m excellent at dancing,” I say, nettled. “I’m like, probably the best in the world at it.”
“Prove it,” she dares, and so I do. I do what I’ve been hungry to do since I saw her, and I slide my hand around the dip of her waist, resting it against the tempting dimples at the small of her back and fighting the urge to slide my hand even lower. And then I pull her close to me as my other hand tightens around hers.
She shivers again. I smile.
It doesn’t take me long to find the music and sweep us into a simple two-step. I’m a serviceable dancer—some cousin demanded all the Bell boys take dancing lessons before her wedding, and I’ve managed to squeeze some use out of that exhausting experience at functions like this—and I’m pleased to find that the beautiful woman in my arms looks suitably impressed by it.
“You’re not bad,” she admits. As we move across the empty floor, the city glittering around us and the cicadas chirruping merrily, she meets my eyes with a look I can’t read. It feels like so much, like there’s so much there, history and weight and meaning, and I can almost hear the hymns in the back of my mind, taste the stale-sweet paste of a communion wafer on my tongue.
“You’re not bad yourself,” I say back, but they are just placeholder words, nothing-words, words to fill the air because the air is already filled with something thick and nameless and ancient and my heart and my gut are responding with a kind of keen fervor I haven’t felt in years. And it scares me. It scares me and thrills me, and then she moves her hand from my shoulder to the nape of my neck in a gesture both tentative and determined, and it feels important, it feels adorable, it feels like my body is going to rocket apart from the lust and the protectiveness and the sheer mystery of what I feel right now.
“What’s your name?” I murmur. I need to know. I need to know her name because I don’t think I can walk away tonight not knowing.
I don’t think I can walk away at all.
But something about my question makes her stiffen, and suddenly she’s guarded again, a careful shell in my arms. “I’m about to change it,” she says cryptically.
“You’re about to change your name?” I ask. “Like…for witness protection or something?”
That makes her laugh a little. “No. It’s for work.”
“Work? Are you even out of college?”
“I’m about to start my senior year. But,” she says sternly, “a girl can work and go to school at the same time, you know.”
“But the kind of job where you have to change your name?” I study her face. “Are you sure it’s not for witness protection? Like super sure?”
“I’m super sure,” she says. “It’s just a very unusual job.”
“Are you going to tell me about this job?”
She tilts her head, thinking. “No,” she decides aloud. “Not right now, at least.”
“No fair,” I accuse. “That was clickbait-y and you know it. Plus I still don’t know what to call you.”
“Mary,” she replies after a moment. “You can call me Mary.”
I give her a skeptical look. “That sounds fake.”
She shrugs, and the movement makes her fingers tighten ever so slightly around the back of my neck, and it feels so fucking good I want to purr. I’ve been in bed with gorgeous women, experienced women, more than one woman at a time, and somehow the play of Mary’s fingers through the short hair at the nape of my neck is more intense, more stirring, than anything I can remember ever feeling. I pull her in a little closer as the music sweeps into a softer, more melancholy song; the cicadas whirr along with the strings as if they’ve invited themselves into the sextet, loud and comforting and familiar.
“I haven’t danced like this in years,” Mary admits as we step easily around the floor.
“You’re too young to sound so old,” I tell her.
She gives me a sad smile. “It’s true.”
“That you haven’t danced like this in years or that you’re too young to sound so old?”
“Both,” she says, still with that sad smile. “Both are true.”
I urge her into a small spin, selfishly wanting to see the flare and wrap of her dress along her body, and when I see it, I have to trap the growl rumbling in my chest. God, those hips. That waist. Those small, high tits, braless and palm-sized under her dress. I yank her back into me, sliding my hand slowly across her back, teasing my fingers along the straps crisscrossing her spine.
She shudders at my touch, her lips parting and her eyelids going heavy. I slow our dancing steps, releasing her hand so I can trace the line of her jaw.
“Mary,” I rumble.
“Sean,” she sighs, and she says it like she’s been waiting to say it, she says it without hesitation, without worry, without the usual clumsiness of someone saying a name they’ve just learned. And the sound of my name on her lips unlocks a deep, heady need, something familiar and unfamiliar all at once, like a prayer chanted in a new tongue.
“Do you still want that kiss?” I ask her in a low voice. All of her seems ready now, there’s no fear anywhere in her face, but I want to make certain, I want her to want this as much as I do, I want her to burn with needing my mouth on hers.
She blinks up at me, her eyes pure liquid heat, and when I run my finger across the plump line of that full upper lip, she shivers again. “I want it,” she whispers. “Kiss me.”
I bend my head down, pulling her flush against my body so that every tight curve of hers is smashed against the muscled length of me, and I am about to replace my finger with my lips, about to finally taste her, about to kiss her until she can’t stand on her own two feet anymore…when a jarring bar of flat
tened pop music ricochets through the air.
And then suddenly Kesha is singing from my pocket. (Yes, I like Kesha. Who doesn’t? She’s great.)
“Um,” Mary says.
“Shit,” I say, letting go of her to fumble for my phone, taking a step away as I finally manage to accept the call and put the phone to my ear.
“Sean,” my dad says from the other line. “We’re at the ER.”
I give my arm an impatient shake to clear the tuxedo cuff away from my watch so I can see the time. “KU Med?”
“Yeah.”
“I can see the hospital from here. I’ll be there in ten.”
“Okay,” Dad says. “Be safe getting here…I mean, it won’t change anything if it takes you an extra five minutes…”
He trails off, lost. I know how he feels. I know exactly how thoughts get fuzzy and stumbling after the adrenaline of rushing someone to the hospital.
I hang up the phone and look back at Mary, who is chewing on her lower lip with her brow furrowed in concern. “Is everything okay?” she asks.
I run a hand over my face, suddenly feeling very, very tired. “Uh, it’s not actually. I have to go.”
“Oh.” But even though she seems disappointed, she doesn’t seem annoyed that I’m abruptly breaking away from our moment, like some women would be. If anything, her expression is—well, it’s kind. Her eyes are warm and worried and her lips are pulled into a little frown that I’ll forever regret not being able to kiss off her face.
“If you were older, I’d ask for your number,” I murmur. “I’d make sure we finished this.”
“We wouldn’t be able to,” she says, glancing away, something vulnerable and very young in her face, and fuck if it doesn’t pull at every corner of my lust and also at the bizarrely intense protectiveness I feel toward her. “This is kind of my last night out,” she clarifies. “For a while, anyway.”
Last night out? And then I remember that it’s August, that she’s a student, that she seems like the kind of woman to take her studies seriously. “Of course. The semester’s starting soon.”
Sinner (Priest Book 3) Page 2
