Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
It was after eight o’clock before Sweeney opened the door to their room, Fin following close behind. The team and their entourage had stayed at the grounds to watch several more games that had stretched out over the afternoon before the adults had impulsively decided to take the kids to the beach.
Back home, the afternoon would already be too chilly for a jaunt to the seaside and the water far too cold.
Not to mention the two-hour car trip. But not here—the afternoon sun was delightfully warm, the water was tolerable and, within a blink, Mai had arranged several taxi mini-vans in that organised way of hers, getting them to Surfers Paradise in fifteen minutes.
And it had been fun watching the kids, high on life, running hither and thither like Mexican jumping beans, messing around in the sand and surf for a couple of hours before it got dark.
Then they’d all hit up an esplanade burger joint for dinner before bundling back into the vans, which had deposited them at the hotel, where everyone had immediately retired to their rooms, the kids still firing on all cylinders.
Where they got the energy, she did not know.
These two days had been physically and mentally draining, and Sweeney was wrung out from all the herding and clapping and cheering and wrangling.
Not to mention how much her quads were bitching at her from the constant up and down trying to get the perfect shot each and every time.
And that was just the physical stuff. There was the emotional stuff too. Winnie’s surprise exclamation. Michael’s birthday. Her confession. The goddamn snuggling.
The ever-present prospect of their king-sized bed.
It was the first thing her eyes fell on as the door clicked shut behind Fin. The room was in darkness apart from a muted bedside lamp, illuminating the bed in all its snowy white softness, looking pristine and goddamn freaking virgin-like and beckoning to be utterly debauched.
Not what she wanted to be thinking about right now.
But how could she not when her arm was still tingling from rubbing against Fin’s as they’d sat side by side on the bench seat of the van.
When her thigh was still strangely heavy from the intimacy of being pressed to his, the movement of the van setting up a heady kind of friction.
Not to mention how jittery she still felt in that moment when their eyes had locked as he’d held out his hand to help her down from the van.
But then, she’d been jittery with awareness of him all afternoon.
Given how in demand he’d been, they’d barely spoken, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been conscious of where he was every single second.
Conscious of how people clamoured for his attention as he moved around chatting to the kids and their parents, his laughter a soothing white noise amid the hubbub of multiple conversations.
As though he dealt with kids and their parents every day, not spreadsheets and formulas.
He’d been so animated and personable as he shot the breeze with the dozens of people who’d wanted to relive Winnie’s goal over and over.
They just adored him, these people. They were drawn to him and she totally understood why. She got it. She really freaking got it.
Because, even engaged in her own conversations, there’d been a frisson between them, a vibrating string of air connecting them, and every time he’d glanced her way and smiled, she’d felt it tug.
And she could have sworn, by the way she sometimes felt his gaze lingering on her, that he’d felt it too.
Like just now at the door, when her trembling fingers had fumbled the card in the lock three times and he’d eased it out of her hand, heat from his body warming her back as he slid it in slowly, the soft whirr as it had opened as loud as the thud of her heart.
And when neither of them had moved for a nanosecond and she’d had to shut her eyes to suppress the crazy need to lean back.
And now, here they were, alone once again with the internal tug of war between the friendship they’d always known and the enforced intimacy of their very new, very fake relationship.
And that great lunk of a bed. It was so intimidating, Sweeney’s step faltered.
She wasn’t sure she should get any closer to something that looked as if it had been made for orgies.
Not the way she was feeling now, with the time to her eventual departure date trickling like water through her fingers mixed with a restless, needy ache twisting through her belly and stiffening her nipples into tight points.
‘Sweeney?’
His voice was low, a rumble right behind her. He was obviously waiting for her to move forward so he could move forward, but she wasn’t sure it was wise to take one step closer to the temptation—the possibilities—of that bed.
In a panic, she turned. Maybe if she didn’t have to look at it, she wouldn’t think about all the things that could be done in it?
But now, of course, she was looking at him.
And he was close. So close. Every cell in her body burst to life, lighting up like a Christmas tree, humming like a substation.
‘You okay?’ he asked, still low and gravelly.
She shook her head. She could barely breathe, let alone think or articulate, as his warmth and his aroma and the sheer rangy masculinity of him constricted her lungs.
This was Fin and yet not Fin. Right now, he wasn’t the guy she’d known since birth.
He was a man and he was looking at her like she was a woman.
She didn’t know if she’d ever be okay again.
‘That bed,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘it’s …’
He smiled gently. ‘Yeah. It is.’
Lifting a hand, he pushed a stray chunk of hair off her face, and whatever air had been managing to get through to her lungs suddenly shut off altogether.
Her pulse at her temple fluttered madly as his fingers slid whisper light down her cheek.
Then it thrummed thick and slow through her belly as his thumb brushed against her mouth.
‘God, Sweeney,’ he muttered, staring at her lips as if they’d been dipped in cocaine and he was starving for a fix. ‘I don’t think I can pretend I don’t want to kiss you anymore.’
His admission was calamitous on one hand, and yet just right on the other. Tension oozed from every muscle. He sounded as conflicted and bewildered as she felt, and it should have been a warning, but it only drew her closer.
Whatever this was, they were both in it together.
Drawing in a shaky breath, she admitted the same. ‘I don’t think I can pretend that I don’t want you to kiss me, either.’
She smiled then at the hopelessness of their situation. Them both trying to cling to something they weren’t any longer because they didn’t know how to be the other thing, either.
‘If we let this thing happen,’ he murmured huskily, ‘we’ll never be able to go back.’
Sweeney nodded—she knew. But she also knew they’d already reached that point anyway. They’d been pretending they could return to what they had before, return to just friends, but their relationship had evolved to a point where she doubted that was possible.
‘Unless …’ His fingers thrust into her hair now as his palm cradled her jaw and he closed what little distance was between them, his eyes glittering with desire, his body bristling with a hungry kind of energy as it settled flush against hers.
‘What happens at the Gold Coast stays at the Gold Coast?’
A wild flutter behind her belly button hijacked any chance Sweeney had at rational thought.
It was a bullshit statement and she knew it.
She knew he knew it. But in the incredible anticipation of the moment, she let herself believe that maybe for the first time ever in the history of fake dating relationships, they could make it work.
‘Yes.’ She nodded as she lifted to her tiptoes. ‘Yes.’
Their mouths met in a whoosh of air and delightfully scratchy whiskers and a hungry clash of teeth and tongues because this time nobody was watching them—not the team, not the town, not their mothers—and that was exhilarating.
Two noisy sighs spilled into the charged air, two hands slid and clutched, two sets of feet—one moving forward, the other back—until Sweeney’s shoulder blades found the nearby wall with a thunk she barely registered.
All she was conscious of was Fin’s body hot and hard against her—his chest flattening her breasts, the bony prominences of his hips digging into the softer contours of hers, one thigh pressed between her legs, firm against the seam of her denim capris, proving to be both torture and bliss as her hips flexed, looking for relief from the relentless pressure.
And the noises. The hammer of her heart and the answering hammer of his, rattling through her rib cage. The roar of her breathing and the roar of his, swelling in her head. The combined aromas of their bodies—sea and sand and burger joint beer meeting the rich scent of burgeoning pheromones.
All of it filling her senses more headily than the bouquet of the finest wine.
Sensation after sensation after sensation bombarded her as his mouth slanted over hers, his tongue stroked over hers, his hands roved over her.
Roved over her breasts, the dip of her waist, the roundness of her ass, holding on there and kneading.
Sensations so relentless she was drowning in them, clinging to him as he plundered her mouth and raided her senses.
For the life of her, Sweeney couldn’t remember ever wanting a man like this. Ever needing his next touch, his next kiss, as desperately as she needed Fin’s.
Fin. Was it crazy that it was Fin all along?
‘Christ,’ he muttered, dragging his mouth from hers, leaving her gasping for air and hungering for more. His lips slid to her neck as he kissed from the angle of her jaw to the pulse bounding at the base of her throat, puffing trails of hot air in his wake. ‘I’ve never wanted anybody like this.’