by Amy Andrews
“Spread your legs.” Faith spread them as far as they could go. “Oh yes,” he hissed. “Are you wet?”
“God yes,” she panted.
His groan was deep and dark and tortured. “I wish I could taste you.”
“I wish I could taste you too,” she said, her eyes shut, her fingers circling and circling her clitoris.
“Tomorrow, when I get in, I’m going to drag you down to the basement, kneel at your feet, rip your jeans down and I’m going to make you come so hard with my tongue the whole damn pub will think you’re being murdered.”
Faith moaned at the intense imagery. “God…yes…”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Faith?”
“Yes…oh yes,” she said, letting her finger glide ever so lightly across the top of her clit now. It twinged deliciously at the extra stimulation. “Only if I can do you too.”
“You want to get on your knees for me in the basement?”
“Yes.” Another glide. Another twinge.
“Suck my dick?”
“Yes.” Glide, twinge. Glide twinge.
“Take all of me?”
Faith gasped at the picture in her head, pressing harder against her engorged clitoris. “Yes.”
“You ready to come, Faith?”
“Yes.” Her chest was heaving scorching air in out of her lungs so fast she was about to spontaneously combust. “So close,” she panted.
“Angle the camera so I can see your breasts and your face,” he said, his voice gravelly. “I like watching your face as you orgasm.”
With rapidly devolving coordination, Faith shifted the cell from between her legs back up her torso, holding it above her a little and praying her arm held out. “Is this okay?”
“Perfect.”
She supposed she should be saying something equally as politically correct about wanting to look at his face but Faith desperately wanted to see every movement of his pumping hand and she especially wanted to watch the moment he came.
His cell shifted view. It looked as if he was holding it right down near his balls in a more upright position now so he could give her what she wanted and still be able to see her on his screen. And she wasn’t complaining. It showed every magnificent inch of him to perfection and a great bird’s eye view of his hand working his shaft.
“Are you ready, Faith?”
“Yes.” She’d never been more ready for anything in her life.
“Go,” he commanded. “Go hard. Let’s come together.”
Faith didn’t need any more encouragement than his husky voice urging her towards climax but she got it on the screen anyway as Raf pumped his hand up and down like a man possessed, the veins thick and bulging through the tautness of his skin. It was brutal and beautiful and such a fucking turn on she could have taken her hand away and still come. She didn’t need any other stimulation than watching Raf.
“God…” he groaned, the rough rasp of his breathing through the speaker of her phone mingled with the rough rasp of hers as she rubbed hard at her impossibly engorged clit.
As hard as he was jerking himself.
Faith cried out as hot waves undulated to her ass and belly and all the muscles between. They burned and pulsed and devastated her with such intense pleasure she thought she was going to die. And then he bucked his hips to the undeniable demands of his own climax. The cell picture shook and wavered but she did not take her eyes off the screen as long streams of come splattered his ribs and his stomach and the dip of his belly button.
She saw every second – every last drop – riding her clitoris harder, chasing the tails of her orgasm, gasping at the hot savage bliss as he pumped his fist and chased his own, crying out her name.
*
Faith lay in the aftermath, her cell clutched in her hand lying boneless by her side, conscious of nothing but the sound of their combined breathing. At some stage his voice drifted into the air around her.
“I’m just going to go and clean up, back in a sec,” she said, but all she could do was nod and wait for her pulse to stop pounding in her ears like a drum under water.
“Faith?”
His voice drifted towards her again and she tried to coordinate her arm muscles to bend her elbow so she could bring the screen of her cell somewhere in the vicinity of her face but it seemed like a lot to ask a brain recovering from one of the best orgasms of its life.
“Are you there? All I can see is your ceiling?”
“I’m here,” she said, her breathing evening out. “I just can’t move at the moment. I think you just blew my mind.”
Sure, she’d been the one who’d gotten herself off. It had been her fingers that had done all the hard work. But Raf had been in her ear and her head and whoever said the biggest sexual organ was the brain certainly knew what the hell they were talking about.
She hoped whoever it was had been awarded a Nobel prize.
His chuckle brought a smile to her face. “I know exactly how you feel. I nearly keeled over when I stood up before.”
Faith allowed herself a moment of smugness. It was empowering to know that he’d been just as affected as she had. She finally found enough functioning brain cells to bend her elbow and come face to face with him. He looked sleepy and sexy and rumpled and she wished she was in Chicago so she could snuggle up with him and float through the lovely post-coital haze together.
“Hi there.” He smiled.
“Hi.”
“You were good at that. I didn’t know you were such a dirty girl.”
“You might be surprised.”
“Oh really? What else Ms Sullivan?”
Her mind automatically went to the drawings of him although she didn’t think of them as dirty. They were art and she’d just had Skype sex with the man, surely she could confess to her nude sketches of him? She wanted to. She wanted to see his face when he knew.
She took a deep breath. “I’ve-sketched-you-naked-about-one-hundred-times-since-I-met-you.”
Faith watched his face as her barely comprehensible confession tumbled out. He looked stunned for a moment or two then a slow, knowing smile broke over his face and lit up the screen. He rubbed at the stubble along his jawline and it made a delicious rasping noise.
“Have you now?” he murmured, obviously delighted by her confession. “Naked huh?”
“Well, not all of them have been naked. It was just your hands and arms at first.”
He frowned. “My hands? And arms?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “The vasculature at the back of your hands and up onto your forearms is totally hot. It’s like something you’d find on a Greek statue. Except you’re all warm flesh and blood instead of cold, white marble.”
“Really?”
He held up his hand in front of the screen, the blue veins a stark contrast to the blonde hairs of his forearm and the copper of his tan. Raf closed his palm, the veins bulging with the movement and it took her right back to the way he’d jerked himself off just now.
“Really,” she confirmed.
“But then you started drawing me naked.”
Faith fought against the heat she could feel rising in her cheeks. “Yes. After our first night together.”
“Ah. You had more…information to work with.”
Faith laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“I’m flattered to be your muse.”
Her muse? Yes. That’s what he was. More than that really in a lot of ways. Raf had come into her life at a time when she’d desperately needed a pick-me-up and done just that.
He’d been her freaking salvation.
“So…when can I see them?”
Faith paused. “You want to?”
“Hell yeah.”
His answer was unequivocal but her response was more guarded. She hadn’t shown her art to anyone in so long. But, deep down, some utterly voyeuristic part of her wanted Raf to see them. “Next time we’re alone together?”
“Like in the basement?” he teased.
She laughed. “No. Like at the Marriott in your giant bed.”
“Okay, that sounds like a date. How’s the other art project coming along? Or have you been too busy drawing my manly bits?” he teased.
There was no way Faith was going to tell him his manly bits had taken up too much of her artistic time. “I’ve given Mercy a few preliminary sketches for her to choose but I’m hoping the weather might improve over the next few weeks so I can get outside to actually paint it.”
“En plein air?”
Faith smiled her heart swelling a little at the fact he’d remembered her ramblings at the Met. “Yes.” She thought about sketching him reclining naked somewhere en plein air and her heart practically fibrillated.
He chuckled. “Don’t think because I’m all the way over in Chicago that I can’t tell what you’re thinking, Ms Sullivan. Don’t forget I know all your secrets now.”
There was no stopping the blush that flashed to her cheeks and she thanked God he didn’t know all her secrets.
Like how she could get used to this.
He laughed again amused at her obvious embarrassment, his head tipping back a little, the tiny white scar under his chin taunting her. “How did you get that scar?” she asked as she touched the screen and traced her finger along it. So many times she’d been about to ask then been distracted.
“This one?” he stuck out his chin and rubbed the pad of his finger along it. “I got it the first time I stepped on a surfboard. Lost my balance, fell forward, clunked my chin down on the board. Five stitches. Also put my top teeth through my bottom lip. Blood pissed out everywhere. My mother thought a great white had attacked me.”
Faith shuddered at the very thought. Sharks? A girl from Brooklyn never really had to worry about great whites. “And you went back?”
“Of course.”
“Ever think it might have been the universe’s way of warning you off?”
“Nah,” he said with a grin. “I was hooked.”
“Good decision as it turned out.”
“Yep. I’m pleased it happened, actually. Pleased I have this scar. It’s like a talisman. It reminds me that I can fall flat on my face and still get up and make a go of things.”
Faith admired the hell out of him for that. Just knowing Raf had inspired her to make a go of things.
She felt a yawn coming on and did her best to suppress it, covering her mouth. It had been a long day and lying here on her bed late at night talking intimately with the guy who had just made her come from Chicago, it was hard not to feel sleepy.
“I’ve worn you out.”
She smiled. “In the best possible way.”
“Okay, I’ll let you go but…before I do I have this thing next week I’d really like you to come to but I know it’s not easy for you to get away on weekend nights from the pub and it’s an industry thing and it’ll be a boring talk, talk, talk thing so I thought I wouldn’t even mention it but screw it, if anyone knows beer it’s you and you know my beer, hell you even like it so you can only be an asset, right? And even if you weren’t I’d still like you to come to the ball with me. I leave two days later so I’d like to wine and dine and dance with you then take you back to my giant bed and get naked with you.”
Faith blinked as Raf’s long and winding invitation came to an end. The fact that he was going to be gone soon was completely lost in the surge of excitement. A ball? He wanted her to go to a ball. With him.
She’d never been to a ball. Not a proper one.
“A ball?”
He nodded. “At the Waldorf no less.”
Faith’s head spun. Raf wanted her to accompany him to a ball at the freaking Waldorf Astoria.
She knew there were a lot of reasons why she should reject his invitation outright. For starters, she had nothing to wear to a ball at the Waldorf but her head spun with the possibilities anyway. And he’d be gone two days later…
“When is it?”
“The seventeenth.”
Crap. The seventeenth? The bitter sting of disappointment needled at her skin as she stared at his image on the screen. “That’s St. Patrick’s day.”
“Oh,” he said frowning. “So it is.”
“I can’t get away that day. It’s the busiest day of the year. Like…I can’t even begin to describe to you how crazy it is from ten in the morning til close. It’s like a goddamn carnival. With leprechauns. I hire extra staff from an agency just for that one day. Pop would have a stroke if I skipped out on him on the most significant date in Sully’s calendar. And it’s traditional. It’s a family thing.”
Damn it. She didn’t realize how much she wanted to go with Raf to the Waldorf until she knew it was impossible. She wanted to go like she’d never wanted anything else. And if it had been any day other than the seventeenth she’d have moved heaven and earth.
But it just wasn’t going to happen.
“It’s fine. Of course, I understand.”
“Do you?” There was bitterness in her voice and she hated herself for it. It wasn’t Raf’s fault.
“Faith…I would love you to come with me but I do watch the news. I’ve seen footage of St. Pat’s day in New York, I know it’s big and I know you need to be at Sully’s. I’m sorry, I just didn’t think about the date.”
Faith took a deep breath. His tone was considerate and his face was molded into a perfect expression of understanding. It was hard to believe he was hundreds of miles away. “I’m sorry too,” she said with a sigh. “I would have loved to have accompanied you.”
“How about we go out to dinner the next night? It’ll be nice just the two of us especially with me leaving the next day?”
The specter of his leaving rose between them bursting the happy little bubble they’d been cocooned in since he’d Skyped her. Her chest ached and she rubbed his tie between the fingers of her spare hand. “Yes. That sounds great.”
“The Marriott has a revolving restaurant. We could go there?”
“Perfect.” And it was. Who wouldn’t want to sit in a Manhattan restaurant with the sexiest man on the planet?
“And I’ll be back tomorrow. At midday. You should just be in the basement so we can cut to the chase.”
Faith laughed despite the cloud of gloom that was sitting on her chest like a freaking elephant. “Okay.”
“Oh, hang on,” he said, frowning, his finger touching the screen so close she could practically make out the whorls of his fingerprint. “I’m sorry. I’ve got a call coming in from Douggy, one of my guys in Sydney.”
Faith nodded. “Of course, take it. But you probably should put some clothes on first if it’s a Skype call.”
He laughed. “It’s okay, Douggy’s safe, it’s coming in on my cell.”
“Okay…night then.” She really didn’t want to hang up.
“Just one more look?” he asked. Faith rolled her eyes but lifted the phone up and out. “God,” he muttered, “sooo good.”
Faith smiled. “Take your call.” She tapped the end button and hugged the phone close to her heart wishing it was him instead.
Chapter Eleven
‡
By seven o’clock at the end of the following week, Faith could barely hear herself think over the merry St. Patrick’s Day crowd. Patrons pressed in several deep at the bar waiting to be served. Her feet ached, the floor was tacky with spilled beer and she smelled like a brewery. But it was hard not to be caught up in the atmosphere of the standing room only crowd especially with her brothers pulling beers alongside her.
There was green everywhere she looked. From the shamrocks that decorated all corners of the room to people dressed in green clothes and scarves and ridiculous leprechaun hats and beards and capes. Kiss Me I’m Irish t-shirts abounded.
And green beer, of course.
The jaunty sounds of fiddle music coming from the stage blended in with the mix. As with every St. Pat’s day, Ronan and Casey were set up entertaining the crowd with their particular brand of Celtic music.
Songs from yesteryear and present day were welcomed with equal enthusiasm.
It was one day Faith never tired of hearing O Danny Boy over and over.
Her father was also behind the bar, and in his absolute element. He rarely stayed all day at the pub these days but he always made an exception for St. Pat’s day and he was certainly firing on all cylinders. It had been a long time since she’d seen him so robust and lively. Since before her mom had died. He was grinning from ear to ear and showing no signs of exhaustion.
She’d tried to get him to sit down and take a rest several times but he kept waving away her objections with a patient smile and a, “St. Patrick didn’t rest the day he was banishing snakes from Ireland now did he, Faith?”
So she let him go and served side by side along with Finn and Ty who’d been there since opening. It had become somewhat of a tradition that all the Sullivan siblings pitched in on St. Pat’s Day – even Ronan and Casey rolled up their sleeves in between sets – and she knew it was a big reason for pop’s happiness.
It was crazy busy. Extra bar and kitchen staff helped service the cheery crowd. But still it wasn’t enough to keep Faith’s mind off the text Raf had sent her an hour ago.
I know it’s not possible but if you can get away tonight am leaving ticket at door for you.
Faith looked at the crowd pressing in on the bar. Yeh, right.
Just then she spotted Dawn and Zel pushing through the throngs followed closely by Mercy and Seb.
“I’ve reserved a table for you,” she shouted over the noise as she cocked her head to the right in the direction of the one empty table. A sign said reserved for the Sullivan family and given the crowd was mostly local, it had been respected.
“Thanks,” Dawn shouted, waving at Finn.
“I’ll bring some drinks over in a minute,” Faith said.
She served her current customer then quickly poured three pints of Guinness and Zel’s virgin Mojito. She shoved them on a tray and, ignoring the crush of people at the bar all wanting drinks, she walked to the end and let herself out with Finn and Ty following close behind.
