Birding with Benefits

Chapter 15

Celeste was well aware that laughter was a totally inappropriate response to the perfectly nice man staring at her on the sidewalk. Especially after she’d kissed him and basically made a run for it.

Poor John. All he wanted to do was watch birds, and Celeste had burst into his life with her special brand of chaos, dragging him bowling and telling him about her divorce on her porch swing and kissing him in a bar full of people.

Her wrongness for someone as cool and calm as him was so obvious even his ex had felt the need to comment on it.

But that kiss? Nothing had felt wrong about that.

She wiped a hand across her face. “I’m sorry. I laugh when I’m uncomfortable.”

John gripped the back of his neck. The move pulled his shirt tight across his chest as it hugged the bulge of his bicep peeking past the hem of his sleeve. “I’m sorry if I took it too far in there, or if I—”

“No!” she shouted, then swore under her breath, searching for some inner calm. But that calm had been incinerated sometime between the thrill of victory and the scrape of John’s fingers along the base of her skull as they kissed. Then he’d had to follow her outside to make sure she was okay. He was so kind it was almost rude.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I initiated it. You were, um, great.” She winced again. “I mean, not great, but not bad, just…” Her arms flailed alongside her words. “I’m not doing this right.”

It was just a kiss. That’s what she’d told herself in the bathroom as she stared in the mirror, willing her heart to slow. People kissed each other all the time and went on with their lives. And they’d been in fake-couple mode anyway, flirting innocently all night. It didn’t mean anything.

But when she opened her mouth to brush the whole incident aside, she couldn’t do it. Not with John, who talked about birds like they were his friends, who’d trusted her know-how all night, who’d sat on her porch swing and called her brave.

She sighed. “Here’s the truth. I was excited and I guess really in character and I just did it. Kissed you. But once I… once we…” Heat flooded her face. She’d shown her daughter how condoms worked when Morgan turned twelve and somehow this was more embarrassing. “Once it, uh, got going, it was really nice.”

Nicewas a stroll in the park. Kissing John had been a revelation.

Talk about thorough. After so many hours of bird-watching with him, Celeste was well aware of the quiet attention John paid to the world around him, always showing care and taking a keen interest in his surroundings. And dammit, he kissed like that, too. Like she was the only thing in the world. Like he could hold her jaw in his hand and study her for hours with just the movement of his lips.

“It was… nice for me, too.” John’s voice was low and soft. He stepped closer even as his face seemed wary, brows pulled together. “The thing is, I don’t usually kiss people casually, but I also know that when we made our arrangement, neither of us was looking for a relationship, so I think we should just be clear that that was—”

“An anomaly,” she blurted. “Just a sudden, spontaneous, really good kiss. But it shouldn’t happen again.” Celeste stepped back, her ass bumping into the wall behind her. “We’re adults, right? So it’s not a big deal to admit there’s a certain… chemistry between us.” The words were thick and sticky in her throat.

As she struggled to swallow, John’s eyes narrowed on her neck before darting back to her face. “Right. That’s the mature way to handle it.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “But if what happened inside makes this uncomfortable for you, we could stop the contest anytime. It’s not a big deal.”

“No way!” She pushed off the wall, reaching out for his upper arm before she thought better of it, curling her hand just below his shoulder. “Now that we’ve aired this out, it will be fine. We’ve probably already worked it out of our systems. Right?”

“Right.” John’s voice was all gravel, rough and dusty.

“So I should probably go.”

“Okay.” His nod was almost imperceptible, especially when all her focus was on his mouth, where his tongue slid along his bottom lip.

This was when she should walk away.

But instead of letting go of his arm, her thumb was tracing rainbows across the firm cords of his deltoid. And instead of stepping away from her, John closed his hand over her elbow, his fingers spreading out like a star and closing again, over and over.

Her breathing shrank with each caress of his fingers, until her lungs were aching like the rest of her. John’s eyes swept over her face, then down, until his lashes lowered completely. With his eyes closed, his fingers kept their rhythm on Celeste’s elbow, stoking her to a place so high she knew she’d have to jump to reach the other side.

She sucked in a breath. “Or.”

John’s hand froze on her elbow as his eyes opened, pupils barely visible. “Or?”

She tugged on his arm hard, pulling him toward her as questioning eyes swept her face. “Or we make sure it’s all worked out, and kiss one more time.” She knew that if she didn’t kiss him again—alone, on the street, without an audience, on their own terms—she’d never close this short, complicated chapter between them. “Maybe it won’t even be good, and we can just relax.”

The smile that lifted his lips was new. She’d seen his quiet, thoughtful smiles as his mind worked, and his quirking grin as he took in her excitement about a bird. But this one—just the slightest twitch on one side—was knowing, wicked. “It’ll be good, Celeste.”

Hell, yes, it would be.

“So we confirm the theory and move on,” she said, her breathing shallow. “I don’t want to risk the contest with this stuff, especially when your future is riding on it and when we know this won’t go anywhere.”

After a quiet moment of deliberation, John spoke. “All right, if you think it’ll help.” His free hand hung suspended between them for the length of his exhale. “One more, then we put this behind us.”

A streetcar clanged past them as a stream of giggling women walked by. Everything was fuzzy around the edges, her only point of focus John’s thumb ghosting a spiral on her cheek.

“I’m going to kiss you now.” John moved in, so close she felt his hot breath on her cheek. “You’re sure this is okay?”

“Yeah,” she gasped. “Super okay.”

He smiled as his hand tightened on her jaw. He slid his lips across hers once, then twice, before teasing hers open with his tongue. They shared a moan, taking it and feeding it back to each other as she tilted her face to reach more of him, threading a hand in his hair.

His hand on her elbow glided up her arm, slipping under the strap of her bag and sending it tumbling to the ground. When his fingers slid over her shoulder and across her collarbone, her nipples pulled tight, aching for touch, but he just dragged his fingers across her throat, then back to her shoulder, leaving a trail of heat. As he sucked her lower lip into his mouth slowly, raking it with his teeth, his hand moved down the side of her body, brushing across her ribs, down her waist, over her hip. He never touched the places where she craved him the most, but his inventory felt filthy nonetheless. All the while, his mouth worked on hers, giving and taking.

And since this one kiss would have to be enough, she’d take all she could get. One hand in John’s hair, fingers kneading his scalp, and the other in his beard, then across the width of his neck, then spread on his chest, hard and heaving. She snaked her hand around his waist and pulled, wanting the whole weight of him pinning her, but his hand shot to the wall next to her head, locking him in place as he resisted her tug.

She whined into his mouth, earning a vibrating chuckle against her lips. John scraped his beard against her jaw as his mouth trailed across her cheek. His breath was hot and labored, snaking into her ear and squirming through her veins as his fingers tightened on her hip. “I think I should keep my distance right now.”

And holy fuck, that was the last thing she needed to hear. She clenched her hands, wanting to trace the evidence of his desire and feel its weightiness in her palm. Instead, she bit down on her lip until it stung.

His mouth returned to hers. Maybe that made this two kisses, but she didn’t care. Whatever it took to capture this need and burn it out, then stow away the ashes. The fingers on her hip dug in hard as his lips made demands of hers—open, wider, more.

This was supposed to close a chapter, but kissing John was raising more questions. Like how his beard would feel between her breasts, and what type of thorough attention he’d pay her with his fingers, and what it would take to unravel him all the way, to hold the power to make John Maguire lose control.

Jesus, if they were going to stop at all, they had to stop now.

Her fingers loosened, then lifted from his body even as they ached to map the entire thing. His kiss lightened but didn’t end. Instead he sipped gently at her lips, drawing his hand back up to her chin, swiping a thumb across her cheek. They shared heavy breaths, lips barely touching, before he pulled back.

His gaze held hers, hand still on her face, even as his feet stepped away from her. Finally, he blinked and dropped his hand, bringing it straight up to scrub at his beard. With a sigh, he swiveled and leaned against the wall next to her, slumping against the scattered colors of the mural.

A couple strolled past them on the sidewalk, hands tangled and arms swinging. Celeste flattened her palms against the wall, still warm from the evening sun.

She sought its solidity as the world moved around them, then finally dared to look at John. His eyes were closed, his head tipped back against the bright mural.

It would be so easy to rearrange herself for this man, for a chance to see how else he could make her body sing.

But it was always easy when it started. It was all that came after that posed a danger.

Celeste stepped away from the wall, dragging her attention from John as he opened his eyes. “So, I’ll see you Saturday?” She cleared her throat. “Did you, uh, get the email about the photo hunt?”

His answer was more of a grunt than a word. After another moment he tried again. “Um, yeah. The Instagram thing?”

He said “Instagram” like it was a bad word. The organizers had added a social media element to the contest, a list of items to be captured in pictures and posted online. Each item posted on Instagram earned the team that posted it an extra point. Social media obviously wasn’t John’s forte, but she had a crash course planned that would knock his socks off.

But not his actual socks. All his clothes would stay on, a fact she would both accept and embrace as soon as she got home and tucked away the memory of their time against the wall.

She scooped her bag off the ground. “I was thinking we could just do the photo hunt on Saturday when we were planning to be out anyway.”

“Sure.” He nodded, still avoiding eye contact.

Celeste pulled her keys out and tapped them against her thigh. “Well, thank you.” She blanched. “Not for…” She glanced at the wall. “I mean for, just, everything. All your contributions to, uh, the team.”

And a kiss that rocked my world and will never happen again.

Their eyes held until he cleared his throat. “You’re the one who won it for us, so I should be thanking you, right?”

A laugh squeezed out of her tight throat. “Wonderful point.” And that was the takeaway from the night—a trivia victory, more points for the contest. That was what she’d think about on her drive home, replaying it over and over.

Somehow her fumbling fingers found the button to unlock her car. “See you Saturday, okay?”

She ducked into the car and threw her bag into the backseat, then looked up to find John leaning in, one hand on her car door and the other on the roof. He was backlit by a streetlight, so she couldn’t see his face, just the slow expansion of his chest. They spent three of his breaths like this, slow like molasses, until she thought he might come closer and help them both do something very, very stupid.

But then he stepped back. “Drive safe.” The door closed, and John walked away, the outline of his body cutting across the colorful blur of the mural.

John Maguire was always in control. And she was counting on it.