by Emily Bishop
Randy shot Fiona an exaggerated look that I couldn’t make sense of, gave her a big hug, and saw us out.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked, when we were finally in the clear.
“Oh, it was nothing. Just my dad being his usual protective self.”
I doubted that very much. “He seemed very curious about my childhood and my father.”
Fiona waved it off, sliding her hand into mine again as we headed back in the direction of her house. “Really, it was nothing. He’s just not used to me bringing home boys who aren’t Drew.”
Her eyes pleaded with me to let it go, though. So I did, trusting that she would tell me what I needed to know when I needed to know it.
Chapter Eleven
Fiona
Shane and I walked back to my house in silence. The stars peered down at us from a cloudless sky, twinkling through gaps in the tree tops. I kept my gaze down, where my steps crunched over fallen pine needles in the gravel road. I quietly fumed at my father.
He had done exactly what he promised me he wouldn’t do. I didn’t know why I was so vehemently opposed to him letting Shane know that we knew who he was. I just was.
Shane didn’t seem bothered by my father’s behavior. He walked beside me, his head held high and a slight smile on his face. I think Shane was more concerned with my reaction to things than the way my father acted.
Despite the fact that Shane had lied to me, the chemistry between us was too intense for me to ignore. I had unwittingly gotten caught up in Shane’s lie, and I didn’t want to risk him finding out the truth just yet. I was too much in lust to let that happen, even if I knew that sleeping with him was probably a terrible idea.
Shane let me walk without speaking all the way home. He stayed physically close to me but gave me room to think. He stayed quiet after his initial questioning about what had happened.
“Do you want to come in for a drink?” I asked.
We stood outside my door, exactly where we had been when we’d kissed. My body flushed at the memory.
“Sure, I’d love to.” Those gorgeous green eyes drank me in for a second longer before he released me to open the door.
I led him into my house and tried to picture what he was thinking, seeing it for the first time. It was small but light, thanks to its open plan design. It was decorated in light colors to maximize the space, with plenty of photographs of my mom, dad, and Drew everywhere. There were also random snaps of Mystic from a phase I’d gone through, experimenting with photography.
It was my safe zone. A friendly, comfortable space that I was proud to be able to say was mine. I couldn’t help but wonder what a man who must be used to luxury and mansions thought about it.
He scanned it briefly but his attention was focused mainly on me as I moved through it.
“Beer?” I offered.
He nodded, still watching me closely. The way he was openly staring at me made me feel beautiful and wanted. I had noticed that he had a way of doing that, although it also could have been the sexual tension buzzing between us.
But as much as I wanted it, I hadn’t invited him in for sex. I had invited him in to unwind after that interrogation by my father, for closure on the day.
I felt him move closer to me, standing right behind me as I grabbed two beers from the fridge. When I spun around to hand him his, we were only inches apart.
“I was going to save this,” he said, digging into his pocket and pulling out a smooth pebble. Red lines swirled over its milky surface in a spiral pattern. “I picked it up when you caught that fish. As a memento of the first time we spent time together outside of your job.”
Shane took the beer from my hand and placed the rock in my palm. He folded my fingers over the polished surface, making it mine.
I sucked in a deep breath. That was the sweetest damn thing I’d ever heard. “What were you saving it for?”
“I don’t know, later, I guess.” He shrugged but his eyes blazed into mine.
“So, why are you giving it to me now?” I palmed the pebble he’d placed in my hand, gripping it firmly. It was warm from being in his pocket, but it felt like more than that as the warmth spread through me.
“Because I doubt that there’s going to be another date now, and I wanted you to have something to remember me by.” He walked me backward until I was up against the kitchen counter.
My breath caught. My eyes darted between his eyes and his mouth. The tip of his tongue darted over his lower lip, leaving it slightly shiny. I couldn’t help but stare. God, I wanted those lips on mine again.
“Why won’t there be another date?” My voice was barely louder than a whisper but as close as he was standing to me, I knew that he could hear every word.
“Let’s face it. Your father fucking hates me. You’re close to him. I get it. But I didn’t want you to forget what little time we’ve had together.” He reached up and stroked my cheek, a gentle but fleeting touch that made me crave more.
He was probably right, I realized. There were already too many secrets and obstacles between us for anything to really come of our relationship, if that was even what we had.
If I was ever going to have a chance to make love to him, this was it. My one and only chance, and I was going to take it.
I wanted to feel his skin on mine, his mouth on mine, his dick inside of me just once. There was more to it than just my being horny, which admittedly, I was.
A burning desire had been consuming me since the moment I’d met him. If I didn’t give in to that desire tonight, I was convinced that I might burst.
Shane seemed to read my mind. He bent his head at the same time that I tilted my chin up and offered my lips to him.
He claimed them hungrily, even more passionately than before, now that we were behind closed doors. His tongue swept past my lips to stroke, explore, and savor. I pressed against him as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me closer. The way that we fit together was electrifying, igniting a fire in my veins.
Shane tasted better than I remembered, more like him and less like the mint he’d popped into his mouth before we’d left the pub that fateful night of our first kiss.
He brought the hand that wasn’t on my waist to my hair, tunneling into the loose strands and gripping tight. It was just enough to awaken me, to make the kiss hotter and more intense.
I wound my arms around his neck, desperate to get closer. To take my one chance to not only taste him but to experience him. To feel all that masculine power flowing just beneath the surface, focused entirely on me.
His mouth was just as needy as mine. His kiss just as passionate. One moment, he was sucking gently on my lower lip, and the next, his tongue was sliding along mine. Gentle caresses followed by desperate plunges, like he was trying to fit as much as he could into every kiss.
The man kissed me with a single-minded focus that made everything else pale in comparison. He made the world fall away.
My fingers dug into the hard muscles of his shoulders. His hands moved to my ass, lifting me against his hard stomach. He groaned when I brushed his erection.
“Fuck, Fiona, I need to be inside you.”
Not want. Need. He needed to be inside me. A low moan escaped from the back of my throat at the knowledge. It made my thighs clench and my stomach burn, sending bolts of pure pleasure and dizzying lust through me.
I whimpered when our mouths met again. Then, I broke the kiss to whisper against his lips. “I need you to be. Now.”
“Where’s your bedroom?” he rasped out, his eyes darkened pools of green fire.
I inclined my head toward the door on the other side of my kitchen, infinitely grateful in that moment that my place was so small.
I was still in his arms, where he’d lifted me against him and wrapped my legs around his hips. I was unwilling to let him go, even for the time it took to get to my bedroom. He got my unspoken message and tightened his hold on me as he walked us toward the open door.
H
e kissed me deeply. My hands ran up and down the strong muscles in his back before I was on my bed on mine. He took a step back to rake his eyes over every inch of me.
“Take off your dress.” His voice was a low command.
I complied. He sucked in a breath when the material hit the floor. I was almost completely bared to him, more so since the dress didn’t require that I wear a bra.
The tiny scrap of material that was my thong was the only thing keeping me from being fully exposed but he was still completely dressed.
A fact that he changed within seconds. He grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled it off in one smooth motion. His jeans joined the growing pile of clothes on the floor, a very noticeable bulge in his black boxer briefs.
My eyes drank him in. He stood before me in the dim light, all hard lines and bunched muscles. Just the sight of him had me aching to touch him.
The next thing I knew, he crawled onto the bed with me, covering my body with his. We melted into each other, skin on skin for the very first time. He was solid and warm. He felt so alive against me, and I wanted to feel every inch of him with every inch of me.
“You’re so fucking sexy, Fiona. You drive me out of my damned mind.”
Then his lips crashed into mine again, wiping every thought from my head. I arched my back and pressed my chest closer to him. He rolled his hips against mine. I moaned at the delicious friction that was gone too soon.
He reached for my thong and just about ripped it off in his haste. Then, he leaned back on his heels to allow me roll his briefs from his hips.
Finally, he was gloriously, fully naked, and he was so perfect that I actually groaned out loud just at the sight of him. At the thought that, for just one night, he was mine.
“Condom?” he asked, his voice hoarse and his breathing almost as rapid as mine.
I shook my head. My eyes widened when I realized that we might not actually be able to have sex because of a stupid lack of planning.
“I got it.” He smirked, reaching for his jeans.
I gasped. “You planned this?”
Mischief glinted in his hooded eyes. “A man can dream.”
I sucked in a breath. “You dreamed about this?”
“I fantasized about this,” he assured me, causing my heart to gallop. He sheathed himself so fast that he could compete in Condom Application at an Olympic level.
Then he sank into me, inch by inch. He stretched me and filled me, and I felt him in places I’d never felt anyone reach before. It was incredible. Consuming. Intoxicating.
I wanted him to live there, inside of me forever. But I also wanted him to move. I bucked my hips, and he grinned against my mouth.
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Just giving you time to adjust. You’re so fucking tight, baby.”
“I’ve adjusted,” I complained.
Then he started moving as if his hips had a mind of their own and their single purpose was to bring me pleasure.
“Fuck, yes, Shane,” I whimpered.
His answer was a low groan, and he increased his speed. His pelvis hit my clit exactly the way that I needed him to.
I hooked my ankles around his hips and rocked with him. My fingernails dug into his back and shoulders.
We were frantic, chasing our pleasure with primal shouts and nips of teeth at each other’s skin. I loved that Shane was verbal and loud, that he whispered against my ears, and that he groaned nearly as noisily as I did.
He rolled so that I straddled him, riding him. He reached up to tease one of my nipples with his fingers while taking the other into his hot, wet mouth.
He brought the thumb of his free hand to my clit, drawing small circles around it. Pleasure spread through me, and I cried out.
“Shane, Shane, Shane.” I repeated his name like it was a mantra. He pistoned his hips, driving into me fast and hard, and in perfect rhythm as his thumb pressed down on me.
I flew over the edge as my orgasm hit. More intense than it had ever been before.
“That’s right, baby, come for me,” he gritted out, muscles tense from restraint.
He kept riding me through my orgasm. His words blurred into incomprehensible sounds when he started getting close.
“Fuck, Fiona,” he growled, flipping us again so that my back was pressing into the mattress, and he hovered above me. Then, he plunged into me, pumping faster than before. He brought his lips to mine as a deep grumbling sound of pleasure was ripped from his chest.
His cock twitched deep inside of me as he came, with my name on his lips.
We were both breathing hard when we came back to our senses. Shane nuzzled my neck and pressed kisses to my jaw, my ear, and, finally, my mouth.
“That was fucking intense,” he murmured against my lips.
I nodded, feeling boneless and sated. “Yeah, I thought so.”
He rolled off me and pulled me with him, so that I was half draped over him with my head resting on his chest. His heart was still racing.
Shane stroked my hair absentmindedly until his heart rate finally returned to a more normal rhythm.
“You want me to go?” he asked, peering down at me.
We hadn’t bothered turning on the lights in the bedroom, but I could see him clearly between the moonlight filtering in through my window and the ambient lighting from my living room area.
“No. Stay.”
He relaxed against me, whispering sweet nothings as I drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Twelve
Shane
Fiona looked fucking beautiful in her sleep. Especially since she was still naked and almost on top of me. Our legs twined together, and one slender arm draped over my stomach.
I woke up lazily, not wanting to move so much as a muscle. I lay there, watching her sleep for a long time. I didn’t want to wake her.
Watching her wake eventually was even better than watching her sleep, though. She was so fucking cute, blinking open those huge eyes that still reminded me of the ocean. She looked confused for just a second.
Her cheeks became pink when she saw me watching her. “Hey, how long have you been awake?”
“A while,” I answered, wrapping an arm around her and drawing her closer still. Now that she was awake, it was only a matter of time before I would never hold her like this again. I didn’t intend on wasting a second.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “You should have woken me. Do you have anything that you have to get done today?”
“Yup, I have to spend some more time with this insanely sexy girl I know.” I smirked, dragging my fingers over an exposed nipple.
Fiona shuddered, then drew the sheets up to cover herself. “If you mean me, I think the correct words are insanely sleep-deprived girl. You’re an animal, Perkins.”
I was actually kind of proud of that. “You loved it.”
She laughed, wrapping the sheet around her. To my great disappointment, she rose and headed for the bathroom. “Careful, Shane, your cockiness is showing.”
“I think you mean my cock. It’s not my fault you took the sheet. If you come back to bed, I’ll cover it. And you.”
Her tinkling laugh sounded from the bathroom. “If I come back to bed, neither of us are getting anything done today.”
It was true, but there was also nothing that I had to do that was more pressing than her. The sounds of her brushing her teeth and cranking the shower made me realize that she wasn’t changing her mind.
I dressed quickly, then scavenged for a spare toothbrush. I found one in her cabinet and tried to ignore the fact that she was naked just a few feet away from me, though I couldn’t see anything, since the shower was all fogged up.
She padded into her kitchen minutes later, drying her hair with a towel. She wore another sundress that I would’ve ripped off her at a moment’s notice, if she so much as hinted that it was what she wanted.
Sadly, she didn’t. Instead, she flipped the switch on her coffee machine and readied two cups.
“It feels kind of weird
asking you this after everything we did last night but do you take any sugar?” she asked, fixing me with her piercing gaze. With an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she turned her attention back to the mugs as she waited for my answer.
What was that all about?
“One sugar, please,” I told her, then moved to her fridge to grab some milk.
I lifted it in her direction and she nodded. “Yes, please.”
“I can think of way more interesting situations to get you to say that.” I laughed.
She smiled but wagged a finger at me. “Nope, I need my caffeine fix before we even think about it. You kept me up half the night.”
“Okay, what do you want to do until then?” I thought that the night before had been a one-time thing but I didn’t want it to be.
For once, I was the one who wanted a repeat performance. And another one after that. Fiona had taken a wrecking ball to my obvious misconception that having her once would get her out of my system.
“Talk, I guess?” She gestured to her sofa and placed my steaming mug of coffee on a coaster on her coffee table.
“Fine, what do you want to talk about?” I would tell her anything, except that I’d lied to her. I didn’t think that would go over well after the night we’d shared. If ever, for that matter. Fuck.
“You know so much about my life, tell me about yours.” She insisted on prying at the one subject that was tender around her.
Still, I could give her what she wanted without too many specifics.
“Like, my day-to-day?” I asked, buying some time to gather my thoughts.
“Day-to-day, childhood. Whatever you feel like telling me. I feel like I know so little about you.” She sat down and folded her legs underneath her, curiosity burning in her eyes.
“Okay, right now, my day-to-day involves fishing with a particularly stubborn—”
She chucked a throw pillow at me, giggling.
“Your real life, silly.”
