Chapter 19 #2
No shit, his reflexes were as sluggish as the sudden thick throb of blood through his veins.
Which was not helped by the way she was looking down her body at him, between her breasts, which were moving to the erratic rhythm of her chest as her breathing struggled to recover from her exercise.
The way she was holding the ball as it rested on the sand above her head emphasised the shape of those two luscious mounds.
‘You’re losing your touch,’ she taunted.
Oh dear god. Do not think about touching her right now. Play the game, get the ball, get the hell off her. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said, matching her tone. ‘We’ll see about that.’
In two swift movements, Fin crawled up her body until they were flush, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, chest to chest. Grinning, he reached above her to pluck the ball from her grasp, except she surprised him at the last second by bucking, twisting her body one way and her arms another, unbalancing him slightly—physically and mentally.
She laughed triumphantly. ‘What else you got?’
Fin couldn’t decide if the ache in his chest was the bittersweet throb of nostalgia, the game reminiscent of the roughhousing they’d done when they’d been kids.
Or indigestion from all that twisting around underneath him and the awareness of her hot and lush and the effect it was starting to have on his body.
‘You know I can just pluck that thing from your hand like a seagull stealing a chip?’
‘Oh yeah?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Big talk for someone who hasn’t been able to so far.’
Okay, enough. Time to end this and get their asses home with the one tried and true method he knew.
His eyes met hers, lively with laughter and challenge, and his resolve faltered a little.
The warm pant of her breath and the generous rise and fall of her cleavage in his peripheral vision was seriously distracting.
And there was her mouth. Up this close it was soft and parted and just the right amount of plump.
Just the right amount of plump? FFS. Get off her, moron!
‘You know I know how to get you to drop that ball.’
Fin congratulated himself on sounding normal instead of like part of his brain had just fallen out and, as Sweeney’s grin faded, for getting things back on track.
She bugged her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
He bugged his eyes also. ‘I would.’
‘You promised me on my fourteenth birthday you wouldn’t do that ever again.’
Fin shrugged. ‘You think you’re the only one who can play dirty?’
Sweeney opened her mouth as if to further argue her point but Fin just needed it over. He dug his fingers into her ribs and tickled.
‘Fin,’ she choked out on a strangled laugh as she squirmed and twisted to get away from his questing fingers. ‘Stop,’ she pleaded, her body shaking with laughter. ‘Stop!’
Grinning, Fin eased off for a beat. ‘Drop the ball and I will.’ The fact she was still holding it was impressive.
‘That’s not fair,’ she grumbled, a determined light blazing from her eyes. ‘You’re the only person besides my mother who knows how ticklish I am and you’re using it against me.’
‘Cry me a river,’ he said and set his fingers to work again.
‘No,’ she yelled in protest, laughing hysterically as he applied unrelenting pressure to her ribs. She squirmed and bucked to get away from his tickling fingers, but still refused to release the ball.
Fin slid a knee between her legs to keep her still while he administered her punishment and he laughed as she flailed around like a bug pinned to a cushioned display in a museum. ‘Stop, Fin,’ she begged. ‘Stop.’
‘You know the word,’ he grinned.
‘Fuck you,’ she said, her laughter loud in the approaching night as she let go of the ball with one hand and used it to try to pry his fingers from her ribs.
‘Nah, that’s not it,’ he teased as he resisted the best efforts of her interfering hand.
For someone who was supposed to be getting this over with, Fin was enjoying himself a little too much.
It had always been fun tickling her, but the way she moved and writhed beneath him, all soft and lush, calling out his name.
Begging. That brought a whole new element to the exercise that young Fin had never contemplated.
And, man, how inappropriate would it be to get a hard-on right now?
The thought was out before he could check it and that was that. He might as well have summonsed the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man for how quickly his dick did its thing.
Well … crap.
Could she feel it against her hip as she squirmed and caused a delicious kind of friction that only enlarged the problem? Was it wrong to like the rub of her body, to want to lean into it, to rub back?
Of course it was, idiot. This was Sweeney.
Much to his relief, she finally conceded. ‘Okay, okay,’ she called, gasping for breath between laughs. ‘Stop. You win. I can’t … give you the ball … when you’re tickling me.’
Thank fuck.
Still, that wasn’t the way they ended the tickle game and she not only knew it but it was on her because she’d started the whole catch me if you can thing and now he had an erection he didn’t want and a heat in his blood that had nothing to do with their chase and everything to do with their tussle.
‘Nuh uh,’ he said, dialling it back a notch, giving her space to breathe. ‘What’s the proper word?’
‘Mercy,’ she yelped, quickly. ‘For fuck’s sake, mercy.’
Grinning, Fin’s fingers stilled, although his hand remained. ‘Attagirl,’ he said.
She eyeballed him as she delivered a light punch to his shoulder, her other hand somehow still extended above her head, grasping the ball. ‘That was a terrible thing to do, Finley Murphy,’ she complained, trying to catch her breath from all the laughter. ‘What are you, like, seven?’
Fin smiled. ‘I’m not but you are.’
‘Am not.’
‘Are too.’
‘Am not.’
She opened her mouth to continue their age-old banter but shut it again, her eyes glittering with humour. Then they both burst out laughing. After a day of such heavy emotion, these last few minutes with his childhood bestie had been deeply healing.
As much as he wanted to bury his face in her neck and just laugh it out together, Fin was more than aware his dick was still in a state that was not fit for company. Not her company, anyway, so he rolled off her, his back meeting cool, damp sand, his gaze on the sky.
Their laughter slowly petered out until they were both just lying side by side, staring at the first stars popping overhead in the dwindling light.
‘God,’ she said, the hand not still in contact with the ball sliding to her chest, her voice husky in the quiet of early evening. ‘My heart is racing.’
‘Mine too,’ he admitted. Busily shunting blood straight to his dick.
Horribly inconvenient erection notwithstanding, Fin felt good. He felt alive. He felt a thousand per cent better than he had when he was standing in that garage with the tokens of his father’s life scattered all around him. And he had her to thank for that.
Rolling up onto his side, his bent elbow supporting his head, he looked down into her face and smiled at her as her gaze shifted from the sky to meet his. Ignoring the unhelpful distraction of her flattened palm pressed to her chest, he said, ‘Thank you. I seem to be saying that a lot today.’
‘You are,’ she said on a murmur, her tone teasing once again, ‘but can you ever really say it enough?’
Fin honked out a laugh and, just like when they’d been kids in one of their hysterical moods when any minuscule thing would trigger another fit of the giggles, they were laughing again.
‘Stop,’ she protested, the hand on her chest moving to her belly, the one on the ball finally letting go to clutch at his sleeve. ‘My stomach hurts.’
Given these episodes had usually ended in a belly ache, it was a familiar refrain. God, he’d missed this. Missed her. Why had it been so long between drinks for them?
It took another ten seconds or so for them to quieten, their gazes locked as they grabbed for breath, their chests rising and falling in a husky kind of simpatico.
The echo of their laughter swirled between them but, as their breathing slowed and their smiles faded, it morphed into a warm kind of buzz, which was less companionable, more … heady.
And much harder to write off as a moment of nostalgia between old friends.
Fin’s heart rate picked up again instead of settling, washing through his ears to a thick sludgy beat. He was aware of the steady drum of it through every pulse point, as aware of it as he was of her hand on his sleeve, of his body wash on her skin, of the heavy ache in his balls.
Her brow crinkled. ‘Fin?’
It was breathy. A whisper, really. And a question.
Like she could feel this disturbing shift between them and didn’t understand it either.
It could have been a warning, he supposed, but his ability to decipher nuance had departed south several minutes ago along with most of the blood from his brain.
There was still something working upstairs, however. Or maybe a wiser angel warning him to stop. Pull away. Pull away, Fin. Now. But there was another voice whispering the opposite, and pretty fucking loudly, too.
Get closer. Move in, Fin. Kiss her, Fin. Do it. Do it now.
You know you want to.
And he did want to, god help him, he did, the urge rising up inside him on a blinding rush of desire. Even though it didn’t make sense and it was probably a bad idea. None of that mattered right now. There was just Sweeney looking at him, her face flushed, her pupils dilated, her mouth parting.
God, that mouth …
In one quick swoop, he claimed it, pressing his lips to hers hard and sure as his pulse roared in his head and his heart rattled his ribs and he dragged air in and out of his lungs. It wasn’t like the spin-the-bottle kiss or the mistletoe kiss, both of which had been hesitant and performative.
They had no audience here by the lake. This kiss was just for them.
For long moments, Fin’s mouth held hers, time slowing as they lay stock still, their husky breathing the only active thing between them until she moved.
Just slightly. Shifting her head a little as if to adjust the angle, her mouth softening the merest fraction, but it was all Fin needed as signals from his lips to his brain blazed to life, flicking on one after the other, leaping like flame along a line of fuel until he was burning up.
On a groan, his lips moved too, opening over hers—not tentative or coaxing. Decisive. Leading. Marching to the heated drumbeat in his blood.
Sweeney, Sweeney. Sweeney. He was kissing Sweeney.
Fin had never in his life thought about how Sweeney’s mouth might taste. Not even when he’d leaned in to take it both times they’d already kissed. But if he’d been forced to guess, he would have said sweet and minty fresh.
Like toothpaste. And bubblegum.
But it wasn’t. The faint trace of beer still on her breath reminded him they weren’t twelve anymore. They were adults and she walked and talked and looked like one. She also smelled and tasted like one. Like creamy Guinness and dark chocolate.
All the things that, taken too often, would kill a person.
And he needed more. Of them. Of her. Hunting her mouth with every twist and turn of their heads, every demanding thump of his heart, his hand fisting in the silky strands of hair at her nape, using the hold to plunder her mouth deeper.
His groin throbbed and his balls ached and he was breathing so hard, his senses so full of her that he was fucking light-headed, but if he was going to pass out from anything, kissing Sweeney was a hell of a way to go.
Mindlessly needing to get closer, his top leg slid over hers, his knee parting her thighs, planting firmly between them on the sand. She cried out at the very intimate stimulus, her hand sliding to the wrist anchored near her ear and grabbing hold.
There was no tug or squeeze or anything that registered as resistance but it did register, slicing through his sexual fog with the blunt force of a rusty machete.
Breaking away, Fin blinked down at her, inspecting her face as his sluggish thoughts tried to assemble in some kind of order.
Her mouth was lush and wet, which didn’t make for very easy assembling, and she was breathing hard—as was he.
Their combined breathing fogged the air between them, thick and husky.
With that and the hard throb of his heartbeat, he could barely hear himself think.
Not that there wasn’t a whole world of communication passing between them as they stared at each other. Like, okay, that happened. And, wow, wasn’t expecting that. Also, what the fuck do we do now?
‘I’m …’ He stopped. He wasn’t sorry. He probably should be but he wasn’t. Not in this moment, anyway. Unless she was about to knee him in the balls for kissing her, in which case he’d no doubt be very sorry. ‘Are you okay?’