First and Tension

by Tara Sivec

  Quinn nods, pulling his hands out of his pockets.

  “Right, right… let me think…” He trails off, staring down at a spot in the driveway with a serious look of concentration on his face, until he finally lets out a huge sigh a few seconds later, shrugging as his eyes meet mine again. “Well, I guess there’s only one thing left to do.”

  “See? I told you.”

  Right when I think we’re on the same page and that getting the hell out of here is the best plan, Quinn stalks toward me, separating the few feet of distance between us in the driveway in the blink of an eye.

  “What are you—?”

  His hands cup my face, and his lips crash against mine so hard and fast I completely forget what I was going to say next.

  My mouth instantly parts for him with a surprised gasp, and Quinn doesn’t even hesitate. He just dives right in, putting everything he has into this kiss, taking everything I have to give in return. It only takes a few seconds for the shock that this is actually happening to leave me, and I remember how to become an equal participant. My hands remember how to work after they flew up in surprise from my hips and just remained suspended in midair, and I move them between us to Quinn’s chest, gripping the front of his shirt in my fists, tugging him closer, and kissing him right back.

  There’s nothing gentle about the way he moves his mouth against mine. It’s hard, hungry, and deep, and he kisses me with an urgency I’ve never known before. Like he can’t get enough, and he never wants to stop, his tongue moving against mine in a rough, commanding way that makes me think about his body moving the same way between my legs.

  “Nope, he just grabs on tight and goes for it! Have you seen the muscles on him?”

  The words from one of the high school cheerleaders flashes through my mind, making me realize a teenager was able to perfectly described what it’s like to kiss this man. This sweet, playful, sarcastic man with a wild intensity hidden inside that perfectly matches my own. The one that’s been screaming to get out for years, feeling like I was trapped in a boring, safe, and easy relationship, dying to know what it felt like to want someone so much that you can’t think straight.

  Quinn devours my mouth, completely wrecks me, and I let him. I let him, because with every demanding clash of his tongue against mine, and with every low, rumbling groan I hear from deep in his chest when I match his fervency, all the cold and lonely parts of me are heated, lighting me on fire from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. Quinn kisses me like he’s been doing it all his life, knowing exactly what to do to turn me inside out, like he’s laying claim to me and reminding me that I’m his. One minute, I was freaking out, and the next minute, I’m seeing stars and forgetting my own name, and I never want this feeling to end.

  But it does… because it’s not real, and I’m not really his.

  Right when I start to get so lost in Quinn’s dizzying, powerful kiss that I seriously contemplate stripping naked out here under the moonlight, he yanks his mouth away from mine, making me let out a pitiful little whimper.

  He’s still tightly gripping my face in his hands, and when I slowly open my eyes, Quinn is panting just as hard as I am, with his eyes glued to my mouth. My entire body shivers when he lets out another low, rumbling groan from deep in his chest when my tongue darts out to wet my now-dry lips from trying to get my breathing back under control. My sanity is completely gone at this point when I can still taste him on my lips, still feel the heat and heaviness of his tongue in my mouth and the rugged scratching of his unshaven face as he moved his mouth against mine.

  “There. That should make it feel more real,” Quinn speaks in a low, hoarse voice. I hold my breath when his face moves slowly back down to mine, hoping to God he plans on putting his mouth back on me. But he just drops one hand from my face and replaces it with his cheek, putting his mouth right by my ear and lowering his voice to a whisper. “Believe me… you will never need to fake anything with me.”

  My breath hitches in my throat when thoughts of hair pulling and orgasmic bliss invade my brain as he drops his other hand from my face. All that heat he spread through my body disappears in an instant when he takes a step back, my hands letting go of the tight grip I still had on his shirt and falling to my sides.

  As he lets out a slow breath and runs one hand through his messy locks, for just one second, I wonder if he’s having as much trouble recovering from that kiss as I am. My knees are threatening to give out, I need a change of underwear, and my heart is racing so fast I feel like I might have a heart attack. But this maddening man just tips the corner of his mouth up until I can see his damn, smirking dimple.

  “You okay now?”

  Okay? I’m anything but okay! I might be in a coma. I should check my pulse… and going by the stupid humor in his voice, he knows damn well I’m not okay!

  In just a few minutes of kissing, he equally calmed me down and threw me into a tailspin. But the cheerleader in me quickly comes back to life, and I remember who the hell I am. And I remember that I don’t lose at anything.

  Pasting a smile on my face, I vow to win the game of who can be the most calm and cool, and I pretend like that kiss was no big deal. If he can do it, so can I. And if the past is anything to go by, I’ll definitely come out of this victorious; I just need to be confident.

  “Oh, I’m great! How about you?” I fire back sweetly.

  “Fine. Just fine.” Quinn nods and smiles, his eyes giving him away when they flicker down to my lips when I wet them again. I do a little silent cheer in my head when I see his throat bob as he swallows a few times and then clears his throat before his eyes dart back up to mine. “We should probably head inside. I think your parents know we’re here. Or that light is just having a stroke.”

  He points to the rapidly blinking decorative lamp post my parents have in the middle of the yard that started going crazy a few seconds ago, flashing off and on repeatedly.

  “Yeah, that’s my mom’s universal sign for ‘I know you’re here, but take your time coming in, because I haven’t fluffed all the pillows or lit all the scented candles in every room to impress our guest,’” I tell Quinn as he steps back up to me, grabbing one of my hands and lacing his fingers through mine.

  Bringing my hand up to his mouth, he kisses the top of it, throwing me completely off my game with how natural he makes this seem, like he does it all the time. He holds his lips against the top of my hand just long enough for my brain to short-circuit, remembering that those warm, wet lips were just inhaling me mere moments ago. Dropping our joined hands back down by his side before I pass out, Quinn starts tugging me up the driveway.

  “And here I thought your mom was maybe just inviting the whole neighborhood to a rave.” He smiles down at me as we make our way past the flashing light and onto the walkway that leads to their front porch.

  “Honestly, if you have any ecstasy on you, it might be beneficial. You’ll have a much more enjoyable evening here tonight on drugs—I promise you.”

  Quinn just laughs softly, the sound warming me back up again and reminding me that, regardless of what he just did to me back in that driveway, he’s still a guy I’m comfortable with and can joke around easily with. I need to stop being nervous and just have a good time with him, like I always do.

  “Come on, fake girlfriend. I’ve got some parents to impress with my sparkling personality.”

  I groan, shaking my head at him as we walk up the steps, the heavy weight of his hand wrapped around mine giving me courage.

  “Your ego called; he’d like a night off tonight.”

  “You’re cute. He never gets a night off.” Quinn chuckles as he lifts his free hand and gently raps on my parents’ front door.

  “…and the time Birdie dared her to go one full day at school, talking to all her teachers at the top of her lungs, pretending a firecracker had gone off too close to her ear the night before and she couldn’t hear.”

  “Or the time Tess dared her to have an argument with a wa
ll in the middle of a blind date in college. Oh! Remember when she was in Chicago at that dance competition, and Valerie Geer dared her to sit down at someone else’s table at a restaurant and start eating their food?”

  “In my defense,” I finally cut in after my parents have spent the last twenty minutes regaling Quinn with every dare—that they know about—I’ve completed. “Those people were super nice when I asked them if the bread was any good, and they invited me to sit down and try a piece.”

  “Right, but you also sampled their salad, their calamari, and one of their spaghetti meatballs,” my dad so helpfully reminds me.

  He’s a man of few words, my father, but when it comes to embarrassing any of his children, he goes all in. My parents’ relationship is pretty much exactly like that old black-and-white TV sitcom, The Honeymooners, except the roles are reversed. My mom is the one who stomps around, yelling until she gets her way, and my dad is the one who calmly rolls his eyes and humors her just to get her to stop talking. I pretty much deal with my mom the same way my dad does, just to get some peace and quiet.

  “They were damn delicious meatballs.” I sigh, remembering that night in a tiny little hole-in-the-wall Italian place off the beaten path of the bustling city. It was my first time leaving Virginia, and my first taste of freedom. It all tasted perfect. “And the dare specifically said I had to eat something from the main course and not just the free bread.”

  “So you thought all the courses would cover your bases. Got it.” Quinn snorts, making me playfully reach over and smack his arm.

  After we walked into my parents’ home and dealt with a solid fifteen minutes of them fawning all over Quinn, and my dad asking him to sign every piece of Sharks memorabilia he owns, they finally calmed down, and we were able to enjoy a nice meal. Where Quinn did indeed impress them with his sparkling personality.

  He drove me absolutely insane doing that damn hair-twirl thing in between courses, but he also impressed me right along with my parents. He was so laid back and at ease, being completely open with them, talking about everything from what it’s like to be a professional football player to what he was like as a child. Even though that kiss knocked me for a loop, it really did make me feel more comfortable with this stupid ruse and make this all seem so natural. Quinn makes me forget this isn’t real. That it’s just pretend. And now that I’ve gotten a taste of what it would be like to actually date this man, I don’t know if I’ll ever recover.

  “Well, we’re just happy Emily is finally home, where she belongs, doing what she should be doing,” my mom says with a smile.

  Ever since we finished dinner of roasted chicken with mashed potatoes—and my grandmother’s gravy that is absolutely not horse shit and really should be considered its own food group—we’ve all been sitting out on my parents’ back deck. It’s right on the beach, where we can enjoy the sound of the waves crashing to the shore from the inky blackness a hundred yards away, in the matching Adirondack chairs, where Quinn has been holding my hand.

  Our fingers are laced together, and he’s pulled my chair right up against his, so we can tangle our arms together on the chair arms. Because of this, Quinn immediately feels the tightening in my body and the sweatiness of my palm when my mom talks about this being where I belong, doing what I should be doing.

  “Yep, home on the sidelines, where a cheerleader belongs,” I finally reply, chuckling softly and poking fun at myself to make everyone feel better, like I always do.

  “Bullshit,” Quinn whispers just so I can hear him, leaning his head closer to mine and looking seriously into my eyes. “You don’t belong on the sidelines. You deserve to fucking shine.”

  My throat immediately clogs with emotion, and I have to blink away tears as he pulls his head back and gives my hand a gentle squeeze that he’s still gripping. While my mother continues, oblivious to what’s happening in the dark, quiet corner of the deck on the opposite side of the softly flickering flames from the small fire pit that separates us.

  And what’s happening is, I am quickly losing this game. And my heart.

  “Did you know her great-grandfather—”

  “Built all the cottages with his own two hands, with barely two nickels to rub together?” I finish for my mom, entirely too familiar with this same, guilt-ridden story. “Remind me again. Was it during a hurricane, or a rare blizzard? It changes every time you tell it.”

  And it seriously does. Every time I try to talk to her about possibly doing something else with my life, she tells me the story of Great-Grandpa Flanagan. And every time she tells the story, it gets more and more depressing, with harder and harder things my grandfather suddenly had to endure, which sure as hell weren’t in the story the last seventy-five times she told it, just to dig the guilt in even deeper. They’ve always just expected me to toe the line and support them in their dream of successfully running the family business, do my part, and be thankful. When they’ve never once supported me or my dreams. And I’ve always accepted it, and I’ve been as okay with it as I can be, because they’re my parents. But after the last four years of seeing what’s out there and what I’m capable of, it’s getting harder and harder to toe the line and keep a smile on my face.

  “Oh, hush now!” my mom scolds with a wave of her hand as my dad tosses another piece of wood on the fire. “He put his blood, sweat, and tears into that business. Not many people have something like this to fall back on when their hobby can’t pay the bills. Something that will give them security and a home forever.”

  I always find it funny that this is my dad’s family business, and my mom defends it as if she built it with her own blood, sweat, tears, blizzard, and alligator attack, which sometimes changes to a shark, depending on how much wine she’s had and if she forgets that sharks can’t fly.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Flanagan,” Quinn suddenly says, sitting up taller in his seat as he gives my hand another reassuring squeeze. “But you have a very talented daughter, and calling what she’s done a hobby is just—I’m sorry again; I mean no disrespect—but it’s insulting. The things she’s been fighting for and all the hard work she’s put in… it’s nothing short of amazing. And it’s impressive. I’m just lucky she lets me be in the same room with her. I’m so in awe of her every goddamn day.” Quinn pauses to look back at me, while still addressing my parents. “I wish we would have met sooner while she was living in California. She could have brought a lot more fun and happiness to my life that was sorely missing.”

  Tears flood my eyes again as I stare at Quinn’s profile when he turns back to look at my parents, firmly gripping my hand while he continues to defend my honor. And makes me lose even more of my sanity and my heart to him.

  “She’s brilliant, and she’s a rock star, and she can do whatever she sets her mind to. And I’m not the only one who thinks this and believes there’s so much more she could be doing with all of her talent,” Quinn explains, now making me sit up straighter in my chair, while my parents remain mute on the other side of the fire. “My boss, the owner of the Sharks, who absolutely no one impresses, was so blown away by your daughter that she called me earlier today and personally invited her to a charity event in two weeks. She wants to pick Emily’s brain and ask Emily to help her with the contracts for the Sharks Cheerleaders for the upcoming season.”

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.” Quinn nods, leaning closer to me and lowering his voice. “I wasn’t going to tell you, because you wanted to break up with me after tonight. The nerve!” He gasps playfully with wide, shocked eyes, and I can’t help but laugh.

  “Emily, that’s wonderful,” my father finally says, while my mother puts a diplomatic smile on her face for Quinn’s benefit and nods right along with my dad.

  I know she wants nothing more than to remind everyone that cheerleading doesn’t pay the bills, which does indeed make it a hobby in her eyes. Something she liked to remind me every time we spoke over the last four years, afte
r I made the mistake of telling her I had to pick up extra shifts at the restaurant in order to be able to afford groceries.

  Sensing my need to get the hell out of here, before my mother decides she no longer wants to be a pleasant host, Quinn pushes up from his chair, pulling me right along with him as he goes. Releasing my hand once we’re standing, he wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me securely against his side, giving the top of my head a kiss and making me shiver, even though we’re practically standing right on top of the fire.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Flanagan, thank you so much for dinner. I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds,” Quinn addresses them again, putting his own diplomatic smile on his face, even though there’s still tension radiating off him every time he looks at them. I can feel it in the stiffness of his arm around me and in the tightness of his body I’m pressed up against. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to need to call it a night. I’ve got an early workout in the morning, and your daughter and I have a lot to discuss about this charity event and just how much she’s going to blow everyone away.”

  Goodbye, heart. You’re lost to me forever now.

  CHAPTER 14

  Quinn

  “Eye on the prize, man.”

  Emily: I’m sorry again I can’t be there to check you in at the cottage today.

  Quinn: I still feel like you’re lying.

  Emily: Why would I lie about needing to take Owen to one of his games on the mainland, because Wren and Shepherd had to go out of town for a night at the last minute?

  Quinn: Because you still don’t want me to stay here, and you’re probably afraid if you’re alone with me, you might not be able to keep your hands off me. Totally understandable.

  Emily: I’ve accepted the fact that you aren’t going to listen to me. And you’re right. I probably wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. I’ve always wondered if I could successfully choke a man out.