He wrenched at her thighs, opening them wide, and licked hard and long along the length of her. Delicious, fucking delicious. He licked harder, and harder, and when her hands gripped his hair and pulled it the way he’d done to hers, he licked harder still. He wished he could suck the essence right out of her, drink everything inside her, gulp it down.
He tore his mouth away, looked up into her shocked face. “Listen to me,” he said, and the urgency in his voice must have communicated his desperation because she nodded once, twice, eager and resolute. “Brace your shoulders against the wall—I’m going to make you come fast.”
“Oh God,” she said, as her legs trembled in his hands.
He hoisted one of her thighs over his shoulder, giving himself better access. “I want my mouth buried in you so I’m drowning in the taste of your cum,” he said. “Understand?”
“Yes.”
His response was to lap at her. “Ahhh,” he breathed against her sex. “Yes” kiss “good” lick “perfect.” He slid his tongue inside her, using it like a small cock. In, out, in out, as her hips twitched in time.
“Keep going,” she said, but as though to torment her he pulled out, and when she kicked her heel onto his back in protest he laughed softly and sucked her clit into his mouth while simultaneously tongue-tipping it so hard her protest ended in a gasping scream.
He started to lick seriously then, up and down, side to side, occasionally plunging his tongue into her. He kept her guessing, using tongue and lips, a graze of teeth, but always returning to her clit, growling low in his throat as he suckled it, lusting so badly for its tiny hardness he couldn’t be quiet, then using his lips to squeeze around it, then going back to licking over it sure and strong, until she was a moaning mess, jerking against his mouth.
“I’m coming,” she gasped. “I’m coming, Matt!” She tensed all over, her gasps becoming breathless huffing sounds, which built and built, her head thrashing from side to side against the wall as she shoved herself onto his mouth. “I’m cooooooomiiing-oooohhh. Oh God, Matt, God, GOOOOOOOOD.”
He kept tonguing her, then suckling her, then licking, licking, licking, until her legs went limp, and the thigh on his shoulder loosened. Matt felt her weight give, as though she were about to collapse, and before she could slump to the floor he was up, spinning her to the wall.
“Hands on the wall,” he commanded.
With a whimper, she obeyed.
“Now tell me what you want,” he said, but he was already insinuating himself between her thighs from behind.
“You, I want you.”
“Be specific. Where do you want me?”
“Inside me.”
“Be specific, Romy.”
“I want your cock in me.”
“How?”
“Hard. Rough. Now. Fuck me.”
But he didn’t plunge straight in. Instead his arms came around her and he rubbed himself against her back. “Let’s get you back up there first,” he said, plunging his cock between her legs and rubbing it back and forth against her clit.
“Do you like that, Romy?”
“Yes, yes, you know I do.”
“Then show me—squeeze me tight.”
And so she arched her back, tightening her thighs around him, thrusting her pelvis back and forth so that he slid along the length of her.
“What else do you want?”
“I want your hands on my breasts.”
His hands came around her, cupped her breasts. “Like this?”
“Squeeze them.”
“Like this?”
“Harder. I want you to do it hard.”
As he squeezed, he kicked her legs wider, bent his knees slightly to give himself extra thrusting power, then slowly straightened as he guided himself into her. “Tight and hot and very wet,” he said in her ear, and bit her neck. “Just the way I like it. Now hang the fuck on.”
And with that, he pulled all the way out of her, then slammed straight back in so that she banged forward, flattened against the wall. Merciless, he yanked her back. “Take it, take me,” he said harshly, and then he took her hips in his hands hard enough to bruise, anchoring her. “Ready?”
“Yes, yes, ready, do it.”
And he let fly—shoving into her hard, pulling all the way out, then slamming into her again. “Fuck me back, Romy, fuck me back.”
She leaned forward and backward, hands pushing at the wall to give her extra leverage while she shoved her bottom at him, grunting as he smacked into her. But the pace was too frantic, too forceful, and she ended up flat against the wall again with Matt against her back, shoving into her for all he was worth. Soon that wasn’t enough for him, he wanted his fingers on her, too, so he spun them again and his back was now to the wall. He jerked her back against him, buried his cock in her again, thrusting rhythmically as his hands left her hips to go between her legs. One hand held her labia open, the other fingered her wildly, fast, furious, out of control. “I want to make you come so hard you’ll never forget it, Romy.”
“You, too,” she said, and squeezed her internal muscles, as though she’d milk him of everything he had. “I want you to come like that for me. Unforgettable.”
And then there was nothing but groans and gasps and grunts and hoarsely whispered words of encouragement, sex words, fuck words, as they sped up, racing, reaching, needing. A keening cry from Romy, a guttural curse from Matt, as the peak rushed and roared at them.
Oh God, God, no sperm, he reminded himself, as Romy’s internal muscles convulsed and she started to come. He stayed, stayed, staaaayed until the very last second, and then pulled out of her, jerking once before spilling against her back.
Her head lolled against his shoulder. She was exhausted; he knew it. And so was he. Tired...and unutterably depressed. That damn stinging was behind his nose again. What a way to leave things. Rough sex, his semen on her back, used up.
No. No. He needed something else. He couldn’t find the will to deny himself one last thing, something he wanted more than sex, something he needed. Closeness and comfort.
“Romy, darling?” he said, and kissed her temple.
“Hmmm?” Languid, drowsy.
“Come and let me wash you and then...then I want to sleep with you. Just...sleep. With you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHEN ROMY WOKE the next morning, she knew instantly and instinctively that Matt was not only absent from her bed, but that he’d left the flat altogether—and the grief of it almost suffocated her, so that it took a long, long time for her to force her legs over the side of the bed.
When she finally did, the first thing her eyes alighted on was the platinum signet ring on the bedside table. No note, but why would he need to leave a note? The message was obvious: Teague was the man she deserved, and Matt was handing her over to him, as he’d handed her over all those years ago.
She slid the ring back onto her pinky finger, seeing very clearly why Matt was right to say it wasn’t jealousy, what he felt about her and Teague. It was more heroic than jealousy. There was something almost ceremonial in his giving her up because he didn’t want to defile her.
How hard it must have been for Matt to come to terms with the fact that although he didn’t want anyone else to have her, he did want someone else to have her. That he not only wanted her, he loved her.
Not that he’d ever tell her that.
That night in San Francisco, he’d said there were better words than love for what they had, words that couldn’t be desecrated. And yes, maybe he’d heard I love you so many times it really was meaningless, but she would have given anything to hear those words from him, because they had to be very special for him to be so careful with them.
Well, she couldn’t reproach herself with not having thrown herself into the moat and swum like crazy to reach the tower—that was something.
But she also knew ten years was long enough to wait for a man who wouldn’t let himself have you. A man who pushed and pulled you and tied you up in knots, who made you yearn for impossibilities and then gave them to you only to snatch them away.
But how much easier it would be to let him go if he’d left things at sex against the wall last night. If he hadn’t taken her into the shower and washed himself off her like he was a stain. If he hadn’t towel-dried her like she was made of delicate glass. If he hadn’t gathered her into his arms in bed, and held her close and stroked her hair and kissed her in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with deep and lonely love.
She took a painful breath...held it...blew it slowly out.
Okay, enough wallowing. Just...enough.
It was Sunday and she had a typical English roast dinner to prepare for Teague if he could be persuaded to join her, because she not only owed him for the steak and ale pie but she needed a friend now more than she’d ever needed one in her life. A friend who could never, ever be more, not because of who he was but because of who he wasn’t.
But first, she would clear Matt out of the nursery—a symbolic fresh start.
She strode purposefully to the spare room, but as she grabbed the pillow off the bed to remove the pillowcase for washing, Matt’s scent—the scent under the soap—flooded her, and she stumbled. She couldn’t take off the pillowcase. The sheets, either. Because that would mean he was really gone. That what was between them was really over. Not just five weeks of insane passion, but ten years of irreplaceable love.
She looked at the crib, with its misshapen stars and paint drips, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d crawled into Matt’s discarded bed, drawn up the covers, buried her face in his pillow, and she was crying like a troll.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MATT WAS ON the deck, hungover, drinking beer and not enjoying the view of San Francisco Bay.
It had been two weeks since he’d left London and his need to know if Romy was pregnant was eating him alive.
His heart felt like it had been scrubbed up and down a stone wall until its entire outer layer had been scraped off and it hurt like hell. His head hurt, too, from thinking about her so relentlessly. The only part of him that didn’t hurt was his dick, which seemed to have dropped dead. He guessed that was something to be thankful for; his current broken state shouldn’t be inflicted upon any woman. But he wished it would give an intermittent pulse so he knew resuscitation wasn’t completely out of the question at some future date. Light at the end of the tunnel. Evidence he wasn’t going to feel this awful forever.
Okay, he needed more beer.
He wandered into the house he’d decided he hated on the basis that it was too Teague-like, and made for the kitchen—which he hated on principle because Romy had never seen it.
He’d just grabbed a bottle from the fridge when the doorbell rang, and he experienced the first surge of energy he’d had for two weeks. For a moment, he didn’t recognize it—and then he was racing for the door, yanking it open, his heart surging...then tumbling.
Not Romy.
The disappointment was bitter.
“What the fuck do you want?” he asked his father.
“Is that the best greeting you can manage?”
“For you, yes.”
His father laughed. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”
Matt didn’t move so much as an inch.
“You’ll be interested in what I have to tell you,” his father wheedled.
Matt turned sharply on his heel—not inviting him in but not barring the entrance—and headed back to the deck.
“I’ll take a beer if you’re offering,” Chet/Kevin said to his back, which was when Matt realized he’d been so eager to answer the door he’d taken his beer with him.
“I’m not offering,” he said, without turning around.
Matt took his regular seat, stretching out his legs, leaning back in his chair. Being near his father always made Matt want to occupy more space than usual. “What do you want, Kevin?” he asked.
His father grimaced—he hated being called Kevin but knew better than to ask Matt to call him anything else. “To impart some news.”
“So impart it.”
“Your mother and I are getting divorced.”
Matt waited for surprise to hit, for sorrow, regret, something. But he felt nothing.
“She’s met someone,” his father continued. And then, when Matt still said nothing, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
“How do you feel about it? About her loving someone else?” Matt finally asked.
His father shrugged. “I doubt it’s love that’s motivating her. More likely to be because he’s ten years younger and hung like a horse. I know—I hired him for a film.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s time for greener pastures for both of us.”
Matt sat up straighter. “You two have been frolicking in greener pastures your whole fucking lives.”
“Thirty years is a long time to stay with the one partner.”
Matt thought of Romy’s parents, about to renew their vows. “No, it’s not,” he said. “That’s why you get married. To stay with someone.”
“Yeah, well, I daresay it won’t last. I mean, a ten-year age gap? He can do better.”
“You’re a prick.”
“I don’t know why you always have to be so hostile.”
“Sure you do.”
“If you’re still bitter about Gail—”
“Don’t say her name!”
“—that happened a long time ago. It’s not as though you were ever going to marry her.”
“A pathetic prick.”
“Sex is just sex. That shouldn’t have come between us.”
“Seems like Mom found out sex isn’t just sex.”
“Matthew, I’ll have a replacement for your mother within a week. In my bed, and for the channel. And a fuck really is just a fuck at the end of the day.”
A fuck’s a fuck.
Matt recalled all the things he’d said to Romy about fucking and he seriously thought he might throw up. He stared at his father as though he’d never seen him before, the truth coming at him like some sign from the fucking universe.
Was it really as simple as it suddenly seemed? A matter of asking himself what he wanted his life to be? Because if so, he’d known the answer all along: he wanted his life to belong to Romy.
He wanted today what he’d wanted from the night he’d met her: everything, forever. Her thoughts, her laugh, her touch. He wanted the way she looked and the way she spoke, the way she smelled. He wanted her baby to be his. He wanted sex with her, and friendship, and everything between those things. He wanted every word either of them could think of for two people who belonged together, and if they discovered new words, then he wanted them, too.
And of course he knew the only word for all those things he wanted. The best word. The only word. The word was love.
“I’m nothing like you,” he said wonderingly to his father. “I’m really, truly nothing like you, and I have no idea why I always thought I was.”
His father let out a bark of laughter. “Funny you should say that, because we weren’t so sure ourselves. But we had you tested and you’re mine all right.”
“No, I’m not,” Matt said. “I’m not yours and I’m not hers, either. I would never test my child’s DNA because all I want it to be is ours. You see, Kevin, I’ve come to the conclusion that a family isn’t about blood, it’s about love. I don’t want to be the bystander in a sexual menagerie, I want to be part of a real family. Because I’m not a sex addict even though you tried to make me one, and I know that sex isn’t just sex, that it’s a big deal, and it’s an even bigge
r deal when you’re in love.”
Love—the word burst inside him and he fucking loved it. Loved her, with her steadiness and her paperwork and that tiny streak of wild that meant she could try to bite him through the skin but do a piss-poor job of it just because she didn’t want to hurt him. He loved her so much he could have died on the spot with the realization of it and died happy.
But his father was laughing dismissively. “Love is a bourgeois emotion.”
Matt got to his feet. “Then call me bourgeois, because I feel it and I want it and I’m going to go and get it. So see yourself out, Kevin—I have to pack.”
* * *
Talk about déjà vu! Throwing clothes in his duffel, grabbing his passport, heading out the door and—
“Shit!” as he whacked straight into someone. He stepped back. “What the fuck, Teague.”
“Those were going to be my words to you. What the fuck have you done to her?”
“I don’t have time to talk. I have to fly to London,” he said, and made to barge past.
Teague grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?”
“Whatever damage I’ve done, I’m going to undo it. Now let go.”
“You won’t undo it in London, because she’s not there.”
Matt fixed him with a gimlet eye. “Where is she? And don’t say at your apartment in Manhattan if you value your life.”
“I’m not in Manhattan, dodo.”
“You know what I mean. At your apartment, when she should be here.”
“As it turns out, she is here in San Francisco—albeit not with you.”
Matt dropped his duffel bag and stood rooted to the spot, staring at Teague but comprehending nothing.
“Now,” Teague said calmly. “Can we go inside and discuss what happens next?”
“You go inside and do whatever you like—but first, tell me exactly where she is.”
“She’s here for Lennie. I’m sorry but she doesn’t want to see you. That’s why she sent me.”
Getting Lucky Page 17
