Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2)

by Laurelin Paige

  I started this with you to find out what I’d be missing, and I did find out. It’s you. I’ll be missing you.

  I hope my saying that counts for something. Somehow. In the end.

 

  Chapter 33

  Zenny’s monastery is an old stone house, sprawled lion-lazy over the block and surrounded by trees. I’m surprised at how intimidating it looks to me right now—big and venerable and almost castle-like—and even the trees seem to guard the women inside, fretting at me with leaves like hands flapping in warning.

  I ignore them. If God Himself couldn’t stop me right now, then I’m certainly not going to let the trees do it.

  I’m only here to say goodbye to her, I tell the trees. Calm down.

  I glance down at my watch and then at the invitation I’ve got clutched in my hand. Elijah had wordlessly handed it to me during my mom’s funeral, and I don’t know what he wanted me to do with it—or if he simply wanted me to know that Zenny was still going to be a nun, despite le detour de Sean Bell. But I’d known what I needed to do the moment I saw it.

  The monastery door is open, and I step inside the wide foyer, following the muffled, hymning sonance down the hall to the small chapel, slowing my steps the closer I get. And the slower I walk, the faster my heart hammers.

  I tell my stupid heart to stop. That we’re only here to say goodbye. If Zenny can be brave enough to reveal how she feels in the face of this, then I can be too. I can set her free. And I’ll never recover, sure, because she’s it for me, she’s all a sinner like me gets—my one and only chance flashing like a firefly in the dark, too high up to catch. I’ll spend the rest of my life hurting with wanting her, missing her with swift and fierce aches. I’ll spend the rest of my life jealous of God, no matter what fledgling truces He and I have struck.

  But I don’t want that for her; I don’t want her to waste any of her precious heart on an old sinner like me. I want her to live free and happy and full.

  Without me.

  It’s been two days since Mom’s funeral, and it’s weird to be approaching the chapel now, since it’s my second time in a religious space in almost as many days. Or maybe it’s weird how not-weird it feels.

  Maybe I’m reformed.

  The chapel doors are closed, and I have an uncomfortable foreboding that I might be too late, a foreboding that turns into a metallic panic I can taste in my mouth.

  You can say goodbye just as easily after her vows as before, I remind myself, but it’s about more than that. I wanted her to feel free as she walked down the aisle to meet God, I wanted her to walk to God without any other claim on her heart. She deserved that at least, that final unmooring, that final atonement. She deserved that from me. And I’m too late to give it to her.

  But then I hear a small hiccup coming from somewhere in the hallway, followed by a nose being blown. Curious, I follow the sound to its source: a small room off the side of the hallway and around the corner from the chapel’s entrance.

  Inside, wearing the wedding gown she should have been wearing for me, is Zenny.

  Crying.

  Pacing.

  Fucking gorgeous.

  I had a thousand things I was going to say in this moment, a thousand smooth apologies and pretty speeches, but they all fly out the window the moment I see her crying. I can’t see it without wanting to make it better; I can’t bear the thought of anything making her sad, ever. It’s like physical pain.

  “Zenny-bug,” I whisper and she starts, turning around to face me.

  “Sean?” she asks…and then promptly bursts into a fresh round of tears.

  I don’t care that we’re in the monastery, I don’t care what’s happened before this moment, there’s only her and her tears and doing whatever I can to stop them. I stride forward and sweep her up into my arms, like she’s my bride in truth, and then I carry her to the bench on the side of the room, sitting down with her cradled in my arms.

  She buries her face in my chest, her slender body hitching with sob after sob, and there’s the silk and tulle of her bridal skirt everywhere around us, clouds of it. And I hold her close, crooning low and wordless at her ear as I rock her, as I stroke her hair away from her face and band her snugly against my torso and chest, holding her as I’ve wanted to hold her for the last week. Tight and close, with my face in her hair and her hands clutching at my chest.

  “What is it, Zenny-bug?” I murmur. “What makes you so sad?”

  She shakes her head against my chest, crying even harder, her hands now holding on to my T-shirt hard enough that the fabric is bunched in her palms, as if she is worried I’ll try to let her go.

  Silly Zenny. As if I’d ever let her go.

  I’ll hold her as long as she lets me. I’ll hold her for the rest of my life.

  “I can’t tell what I’m supposed to do anymore,” she says tearfully into my chest. “I can’t tell what I want and what God wants and whether the two are the same thing.”

  I don’t speak—I definitely have not built myself up to be the authority on what Zenny should do when it comes to taking her vows. So I just hold her and cradle her and kiss her head. I stroke her arm and make a deep, tuneless hum in my chest.

  Slowly, so slowly that I don’t even take note of it at first, her sobs turn into muffled tears and the muffled tears turn into tired sniffs, until she’s slumped against me, enervated and quiet.

  By degrees, I become aware of her body nestled against mine. The slender curve of her waist under my hand. The tickle of her curls against my throat. The firm curves of her ass cradled in my lap, the hook of her knees over my thigh.

  Heat—unwelcome but unstoppable all the same—floods me, inflames me. I shift, trying to keep her innocent of my hardening cock.

  “How long do you have?” I ask, wondering if I should make myself scarce before someone finds their newest novice in a man’s arms, in her Jesus wedding dress no less.

  I feel her head turn to glance at the clock. “Thirty minutes. They’re praying about accepting me into the order, and then the rite will begin.”

  I finger the beading on her wedding gown. It’s a few years out of fashion, and I have the feeling it was bought secondhand. Donated maybe. She still looks stunning, though, a vision right out of my reckless, unguarded dreams. The dress has straps draped across her shoulders, like Belle’s gown in Beauty and the Beast, a close-fitting silhouette of silk from her small, sweet breasts down to the tempered flare of her hips, and from there it spills into a kind of frothy madness that is very enchanting. I run my hand through the froth, closing my eyes and imagining—just for minute—that she really is my bride, that this is our wedding, that she’s in my arms because she wants to be there and not because I was an available chest to cry into.

  I imagine that I can kiss her.

  I imagine that I can love her.

  Her hands have loosened in my T-shirt, and a finger now scrolls idly over my chest, up around the collar of my shirt to the bare skin of my neck.

  “You shaved,” she murmurs.

  “For the funeral,” I explain. That morning I could practically hear my mom clucking about what a ruffian I looked like, so I finally took a razor to the beard. I’d barely recognized the man in the mirror when I was done—the week of hospital life had carved fresh hollows under my cheekbones and smudged grief under my eyes. (My hair hadn’t suffered though. I was spared that at least.)

  Zenny clears her throat and tilts her head up at me. “Why are you here, Sean?” she whispers. “Why today?”

  “I came to make things right,” I say honestly. “I messed up. And I didn’t want you dragging that down the aisle with you.”

  Her long eyelashes are still threaded with tears and they sparkle as she blinks. “You messed up,” she repeats carefully. “So you came here. Today. Right before I took my vows.”

  “I don’t want a single part of what you do today to be tainted with anger or bitterness.” I tuck a curl behind her ear, watch as it ignores
my fingers and springs back. “This is what you wanted. This is what you’ve worked so hard for. You deserve to have it be exactly what you dreamed.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you that showing up would make it all about you, again? That it would stir up bad feelings for me? That it might make things worse?”

  “Oh.” Fuck. I hadn’t.

  Shit.

  My head drops down as I loosen my arms around Zenny to let her go. All I’d wanted was to make things better—take a page from all the pirates and peers in the Wakefield books and make a grand gesture, but a grand gesture to support her, not to win her back. To show her that she and her life as she planned it meant miles and miles more than whatever my pulpy idiot heart still longed for.

  And once again, I’d fucked it up.

  Zenny moves, and I sure it’s to get off my lap, to get away from me, but hot relief and confusion flood through my veins when I realize she’s not climbing off of me, she’s rearranging herself. She’s straddling my lap so she can look me easily in the face, and as her knees nestle on either side of my hips, her dress surges up around us in white, silk waves.

  “Sean,” she says quietly, cupping my face. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “But—”

  She presses her fingertips to my lips. “I know what I said. It’s true. And I’m still glad you’re here.”

  A month ago, I wouldn’t have understood this, how something could have an and. How something could be flawed but still good, how something could be imperfect but still worth loving.

  I’m beginning to understand now.

  “I was crying because I missed you,” she says. “I was crying because I love you.”

  My heart is flinging itself madly around my chest now, pounding at its prison and choking me. “Zenny.”

  That’s all I can get out. It’s all I have.

  “You were right,” she says, looking away from me. “I’d begun to want this for all the wrong reasons. I was going to do this for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t about God any longer—it was about proving something to the people who doubted me. Everyone who thought my becoming a nun was ridiculous or wasteful, everyone who thought I wasn’t strong enough to give up money and sex.”

  “Oh,” I say again. My tone says it all—that one noise is filled with a foolish hope the kind I’ve never dared to feel.

  “Oh, Sean,” she says, and something like pity enters her voice.

  My heart freezes.

  “I still think I have to do this,” she whispers. “Just…for the right reasons now.”

  “Oh.” That word again, like it’s the only word I know anymore.

  “But you were the one who showed me that,” Zenny says gently—and dare I dream—sadly? Longingly? “I’ll always be thankful to you, not only for teaching me love, but for pointing me in the right direction. You’re right: I would have always regretted walking down that aisle and taking an oath with all the wrong intentions.”

  I suppose this isn’t any worse than I’d initially feared and planned on, but somehow it feels like it. I try to regain control of my heart and fail; it’s vanished once again inside that hole in my chest. “I’m glad. I want you to have the life you want; I want all your choices to be yours. Always.”

  “And you?” she asks, a little furrow appearing between her eyebrows. “What is the life you want? Are you going to be…”

  She can’t finish, and I don’t need her to. She wants reassurance that I’m going to be okay without her, and I can’t unequivocally give it. I’m not going to be okay. But I guess that’s what I’ve learned over the past month: my being okay is not the most important thing in the world.

  “God and I are on speaking terms now,” I offer, hoping to distract her from her question. “And for that, I have you to thank. You said belief was giving my heart and trusting that understanding would come later. And I realized at some point I’ve already given my heart without understanding—to you, Zenny. It wasn’t so hard to do it a second time with God.”

  Her eyes flash anew with tears and she pulls me close. “Sean,” she breathes against my neck, and her breasts are flat against my chest and her thighs are tight around my hips and her ass is—

  “Sweetheart,” I say, in a strained voice. “I need you to let go.”

  “No,” she says, squirming even closer, trapping my rigid length between her mound and my own stomach. “That was beautiful.”

  I endure this with as much forbearance as I can muster, although my voice is gravelled and harsh when I say, “Zenny, you have to stop moving around on my lap.”

  This does make her pull away, just enough to straighten up and look at me, but the act of straightening brings her cunt squarely against my erection and her eyes flare with understanding. She swallows at the same time, warmth coming to her face.

  “Oh,” she says. She’s been infected with that word too.

  “Yes, oh,” I tease, trying to make light of it, make light of a very sad and aching cock. A sad and aching heart. “It would be better if you moved, darling.”

  She doesn’t move. Instead she sits on my lap, regarding me, her breathing moving fast and hard and pushing her perfect tits against her Jesus wedding dress.

  My thighs are actually shaking with restraint now, my stomach is clenched with it. It is taking every shred of decency inside me not to reach under her skirt and pull myself free, not to find her slit and pierce her with my fingers and then with my cock. Not to piston into her with her wedding dress billowing around us all while I trap her to my chest and dig my teeth into her neck. I can actually feel my lust like a physical thing, a fire or a pool of molten metal creeping up my legs to my belly.

  “Baby,” I rasp. My hands are shaking as I put them to her waist to gently ease her off. “It’s—you’re—” I can’t make words.

  “I’m what?” she whispers.

  “I’ll always want to hold you, but I’m thinking about more than just holding you right now, which I know you don’t want.”

  She looks at me with an expression torn between curiosity and responsibility. Air quavers in and out of her lungs as she asks, “What if I do want it?”

  My head falls back against the wall. “Zenny,” I beg in a hoarse voice.

  “Maybe…we could…just one last time?”

  I have no response to this. None. Because if she’s asking if I want to fuck her one last time before she gives her life to God, then of course the answer is yes. Yes, and I’ll plunge inside of her this very second.

  But I don’t know that it’s a good idea. And I don’t know that I won’t go to hell for it.

  “It wouldn’t be smart,” I say, sliding my hands under her skirt and finding her thighs.

  “No,” she agrees.

  “And it would be crazy, here in this room, so close to the chapel.” I stand up, taking her with me.

  “Yes,” she says, her legs wrapping around my waist and her arms sliding around my neck. “Crazy.”

  I walk over to the door to the side room and close and lock it. I don’t know what I’m feeling—or I do, but it’s too much of everything to keep hold of at once. I should stop this, it’s going to hurt us both even more, I should be the older one and the wiser one and put her down.

  I don’t want to put her down.

  I don’t want to stop.

  If this is my last taste of her, I’ll take it, weeping all the while.

  “Does this little nun need to be fucked?” I growl into her ear as I pin her against the wall. “Is that pretty pussy feeling empty already?”

  Her head rolls back as I nip softly at her neck—careful not to leave marks she’d have to explain away later—but hard enough to make her gasp and shudder. Under the skirt of her wedding dress, my hand finds the crotch of her panties and moves it aside, plunging two fingers into her split. She’s wet, so fucking wet, and so fucking soft, and suddenly I have to eat her, I have to have her on my tongue.

  I let her legs slide away from my hips and I set her on t
he floor. Her whimper of dismay when my fingers leave her cunt is replaced by a jagged inhale as I reach for the hem of her skirt. With my other hand, I take her wrist and press her palm to her mouth, giving her a stern look. “Quiet, darling. You don’t want everyone to know that you’re in here getting fucked in your pretty dress, do you?”

  She shakes her head, eyes wide, hand clapped tight over her mouth.

  Which is a good thing, because the moment I get to my knees in front of her, a low belly moan of anticipation comes from around her hand. A moan I feel all the way to the tip of my cock.

  My tongue runs along the rim of my lower lip as I push up the skirt of her dress and ease off her plain white panties. I need to taste. Need to lick. Need to suck.

  Then she’s bared to me, that precious part of her. The neat nest of dark curls, the ripe bud of her clit peeping out from under the vulnerable hood. And when I open her up to me with my thumbs, I see the soft petals I love so much unfurling to reveal her slick, tight secrets.

  “You weren’t feeling good, were you?” I murmur, rubbing thoughtfully at her clit. “Put your leg over my shoulder, sweetheart. Sean’s going to make you feel all better now.”

  A noise comes out from under her palm—a noise that sounds a lot like oh God oh God—but she slides her leg over my shoulder anyway, allowing me access to the heart of her. I press my nose into her curls and breathe in deep, trying to memorize the sour-sweet-earth of her scent. I try to memorize everything—that first blooming taste of her on my tongue, her hips tilting and searching for my mouth, the jerk and quiver of her breathing as I begin eating her in earnest.