Chapter 20
Twenty
Panting, Sweeney stared into the eyes of the man she had known the longest in her life. Even longer than her father. Fin. Who had just kissed her to within an inch of her life.
She was decidedly not okay.
This was crazy. Really freaking good but still crazy.
And, just … too much. The surge of heat, the visceral urge to grind that had swept from her centre to her toes and all the way back up again as his knee had brushed against her so intimately, had been too much.
She’d grabbed his wrist because she’d felt like she was falling—down the freaking rabbit hole probably—that’s how disorientating this all was.
Wanting to roll on top of her guy BFF and grind herself to climax. In public.
But, dear god, the way his facial hair had scraped against her skin and the faint taste of beer on his breath and the low timbre of his groans and, even now, the ragged chug of his breathing, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest as he looked at her in concern clearly wondering if he’d screwed up, his mouth wet and crushed from kissing.
From kissing her.
How could she resist the temptation of that mouth? She couldn’t. Without any kind of cogent analysis, she lifted her head off the ground, threaded her fingers through the thick fall of his hair and pulled him down.
He didn’t resist, his lips meeting hers with the same fervour and passion as before, his rough, low groan strumming along the muscles deep and low and curling her toes.
Yes. God yes.
Her pulse tripped and her belly squeezed as she wound both her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, needing to be as close as possible in this crazy crumbling world.
Revelling in the scratch of his whiskers and losing her breath to the deep, hot lash of his tongue, meeting each lash with a stroke of her own as his palm sat hot and heavy on the flare of her ribs just below her breast.
And that knee between her legs, driving her slowly mad.
Not moving, not a millimetre, but just there.
Heavy. Solid. Present. Building a buzz directly below, heat sparking and simmering, rippling out, quivering through nerve endings from her inner thighs to her belly and circling around the bottom of her spine.
It was good. So good she had to move if he didn’t, rolling her hips involuntarily to ease the heat but only cranking it further.
He groaned at the move and she lost her mind a little more and did it again, and god knew where it would have led had not a burst of nearby laughter popped their bubble, sending them both crashing to the ground.
Or sitting bolt upright anyway.
Disorientated, Sweeney blinked into the night.
When had it gone completely dark? Hyper-aware of Fin’s presence beside her, she looked around for the source of the interruption, trying to identify that as she also tried to identify basic data like where they were and what time it was. What day it was.
Hell, what her name was …
No, wait. The lake. They were at the lake. And she couldn’t see anybody. A car door slammed somewhere in the parking area then an engine started up.
‘I think it might have been those kids on the jetty.’
Fin’s voice was husky in the night as Sweeney’s gaze flicked to the wooden structure she’d jumped off about a thousand times.
A series of solar lights attached to the sidings—that hadn’t been there when they’d been kids—illuminated its length, casting a low glow across the boards and the surrounding water.
There were no teenagers there anymore so maybe Fin was right. Maybe the laughter had come from them.
‘Sweeney.’
She shut her eyes, not wanting to hear whatever Fin had to say next. She was still trying to compute what happened, still trying to figure out a way it made sense. And with her body still in a physical uproar, that wasn’t possible.
Opening her eyes again, they fell on a white, round object floating on the lake surface near the jetty. It took a beat for her to recognise what it was. Oh, crap. ‘Fin.’ She nudged his arm with her shoulder as she pointed. ‘The ball.’
The beach was on a very slight gradient. It must have rolled down after she’d taken her hands off it, made its way to the shoreline, and the ripple of water had picked it up.
Pushing to his feet in a way Sweeney wasn’t quite sure she could replicate just yet without falling over, he jogged to the water’s edge. Maybe he was keen to have something to do other than talk, too. Absently she watched as he kicked off his shoes. He was going in?
Yup. He was going in the lake.
He must really be desperate to avoid talking—it had to be freezing in there. The ball hadn’t drifted that far out and the lake was reasonably shallow for the first five metres or so before rapidly falling away, so he shouldn’t get too wet. But still …
She got to her feet as his jeans joined his shoes.
His long, lean Irish-winter legs were pale in the night and she copped a flash of his underwear-encased butt before his shirt fell to conceal it again.
He strode into the lake then and Sweeney had to tell herself it was a ball, not a drowning child because, frankly, she was a little turned on right now and it had nothing to do with what had just happened on the sand.
She sighed. Her hero.
*
Sweeney was the first to break the silence in the car after a few minutes of twirling the top of her ponytail around her index finger as she stared at the inky scenery whizzing past. ‘Are you freaking out?’ Now she could think properly and they were vertical and away from the scene of the crime—so to speak—her brain was rationalising.
Was that what he was doing too, or was he in blind panic mode? He was sitting so damn upright in the seat she suspected it was the latter.
At least he did her the courtesy of not pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘No. Yes. Maybe.’ Fin shot her a quick glance before returning his attention to the road. ‘Aren’t you?’
It was a fair question and the answer was definitely yes. But there’d been so many things to freak her out during this visit, the beach kiss was just one more.
She shrugged. ‘It was just a kiss.’
He snorted. ‘That was not just a kiss. The party kiss was just a kiss. On the beach, that was …’
Waves of tension rolled off him as his fingers wrapped and unwrapped from the steering wheel, like he knew what it was and didn’t want to say, or he was stopping himself from going there. Whatever the reason, Sweeney was glad he didn’t complete the sentence. It was probably best left unspoken.
‘It was to be expected.’ The thought landed suddenly and she jumped on it—what other explanation could there be? Fin had been through an emotionally harrowing experience, which had also cut a little too close to the bone for Sweeney.
‘After the garage and the emotional upheaval of the afternoon,’ she continued. ‘And this weird situation our mothers have put us in. It was only natural.’
So, really, it was their mothers’ fault. Something Sweeney was totally comfortable hanging on them right now. Not least because it gave her and her part in the kiss a convenient out.
The part where she’d teased and taunted.
The part where she’d lifted her shirt and flashed her bra.
But, come on, it was a bra. He could see more on a beach.
And it had seemed like a good idea at the time—not the flashing bit, the betcha-can’t-stop-me-getting-past bit—trying to mix things up and get him out of his head.
His grief had been so gut wrenching and she’d felt utterly useless in the face of it.
When he’d suggested the lake, she’d jumped at it.
She’d never been a fan of kicking a ball back and forth—probably why she’d only lasted a year in the Banshees—but she knew from old that it was Fin’s go-to activity when he had something on his mind so she’d agreed.
It hadn’t really been doing the job, though, his funk still a heavy cloud around him, and she’d been desperate to lift it any way she could. Appealing to his competitive side had always worked in the past.
Still, she didn’t know what had possessed her. It might have been a game they’d played as kids but there’d been nothing childlike about her behaviour. Her big boy and what else you got had been very adult. And then there was the bra flash.
She hadn’t put a lot of thought into it—obviously. It had been more a cheeky kind of impulse, but it had seemed the perfect way to take his mind off everything.
He was a guy, after all.
A boob guy at that. Something she’d always known about him because at one stage they’d shared everything, and even if he hadn’t shared that particular tit—ha ha—bit with her, she’d known all about his stash of Bras N Things catalogues under his mattress.
Even if she’d not quite fully understood what they’d been there for at the time.
But she hadn’t expected her teasing would end up the way it did. Her sole purpose had been to take his mind off his grief and, well … mission accomplished.
Good job, Sweeney.
It was okay, though, it didn’t have to be a thing. They’d shared two kisses in two weeks and the first one had pretty much been under duress so it surely didn’t count. And the one tonight—it had just been an odd moment in what had been a tumultuous day.
So as long as it didn’t happen again, they’d be fine.
‘You’re right,’ he agreed, nodding his head vigorously, picking up the lifeline she’d thrown down. ‘The garage thing was a lot. Emotions were running high and nostalgia got the better of us. Is it any wonder that two old friends sought a … moment of … comfort in each other’s arms?’
A moment of comfort. Yes, she liked that. Even if there’d been nothing remotely comforting about the riot of sensations and feelings it had stirred. In a lot of ways it had been the opposite. It had been discomforting. Disquieting. Discombobulating.
A maelstrom of what the fuck.