Chapter 30 Sam
SAM
Talking to Rosie is easy. She’s inquisitive about my story but doesn’t push me to elaborate when I give surface answers. She talks easily about her life back in Canada, and I try not to push when she’s vague.
Eric’s name comes up now and then, and I’m pleased to discover that I don’t feel uncomfortable about it. Instead, I ask questions about him, wanting to know who was lucky enough to build a life with her.
“We met over here at a hockey game, if you can believe it. I was there with my sister, whose boyfriend was playing in the UK league. Anyway, he and I were standing next to one another waiting for drinks, and we got talking. He was easy to talk to, funny, smart, and ridiculously charming.” She scoffs, rolling her eyes.
“They’d run out of trays, and I had three drinks to carry back, so he offered to help since he only had the one.
” I study her as we walk, taking in how she blushes and smiles as she recalls the memory.
“He ended up sitting with us for the rest of the game, asking me questions about hockey and about me. By the end of the night I’d said yes to meeting up the next evening. ”
We reach a particularly craggy part in the path, and I step up, offering my hand. She keeps hers firmly in mine after that.
“I planned on spending a couple weeks with my sister and then travelling around Europe. In the end the only travelling I did was on the tube between my sister’s flat and his.
He moved to Canada at the end of the year after he found a job.
It was always a thrill to tell people my boyfriend worked on Bay Street.
I didn’t mention he was doing an entry-level data entry job and commuted three hours a day from an apartment we shared with three others. ”
“The only things from home he kept were his accent and love of rugby. His number one complaint about life in Canada wasn’t about the snow, it was that there wasn’t enough rugby.”
“I’d have to agree with that,” I add. “Not that I was upset about having to move over here to play.” There was really only one time that being far from home was hard, and that was during my father’s illness.
She peers up at me through her eyelashes and shakes her head.
“What?” I probe.
“He tried so hard to get me to care about rugby. Even told me once he wouldn’t mind if I only watched for the fit lads,” she says with a solid Scottish accent. “And here I am hooking up with a rugby player.”
“Retired rugby player,” I correct her, soaking in the smile she offers.
“You still look like you had it on the makeshift pitch the other day,” she teases.
“Well, against newbies I still look like an in-demand premier player. If I stepped on an actual pitch today”—I wince imagining it—“I’d have to be carted off on a stretcher a minute in.”
We reach an area that offers the perfect spot to stop and have a picnic, and I pull her to a stop while I slip off my backpack with a grunt I don’t even try to hide.
“I told you I could have carried it,” she scolds.
“I’m aware you could have,” I murmur, pulling her closer and kissing her quickly before bending to unzip my pack and pulling out a blanket. Rosie takes one end, and we lay it down as flat as we can. “I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”
She plops down, sitting with her legs crossed and back straight, looking as if she’s waiting for the teacher to call on her.
“That is true. You do always make sure I come first.” She beams up at me, and I stop what I’m doing to stare at her.
“What? That’s incredibly gentlemanly behaviour in my book. ”
Asking her if Eric was a gentleman under that standard is right at the tip of my tongue, but I hold back from asking her. That question surely wouldn’t be considered gentlemanly.
“I’ll try to maintain that title for the remainder of the week,” I affirm, setting out the wax paper-wrapped sandwiches that remind me of my mom.
When I worked at the bookstore on the weekend, she’d send me off with sandwiches wrapped in wax paper for my dad and me along with an apple and whatever cookie she baked that week, usually oatmeal raisin.
“You okay?” Rosie’s voice filters through my memory, and I look up from the sandwich I’ve been holding.
“Yeah, just hit with a memory,” I admit.
“Wax paper wrapped sandwiches?” she asks.
“Exactly.” I smirk, holding one out to her.
“My nan always wrapped sandwiches this way.” She turns the square over in her hand, running her fingers over the waxy coating. “Who would have thought the way food was wrapped would evoke such intense memories?”
Like with breakfast, we eat quietly, only sharing the odd observation of our surroundings. I admit that the cheese and pickle sandwich is hitting the spot, and she insists I add chips to it. She’s right about that too. The crunch from the chips is what the sandwich needed.
“Do you have any kinks?” Her question makes me inhale so quickly that I think I’m about to die from a cheese and pickle sandwich. And right when we were starting to get along.
I pound on my chest, looking up when I’m sure I can breathe.
“Sorry,” she mouths. “I should have waited until there was no food near your mouth. Unless this is your way of telling me you’re into autoerotic asphyxiation.”
“Auto what?” I ask, my composure returning.
“Choking to enhance sexual gratification,” she says nonchalantly, and I want to ask how the hell she knows about that. My face must speak for me because she laughs. “I read a lot, and not all of it is Jane Austen.” She grins, and my mouth goes dry.
“Is…is that one of your kinks?” My voice sounds like it’s being dragged across gravel.
Her grin grows, and she shakes her head. “No, I like breathing too much.”
Good, I think, choking someone seems too complicated. Too dangerous, or maybe I’m too vanilla to see the appeal.
“So what is one of yours then?” I ball the wax paper up, the texture reminding me of how this meal started so innocently. My mom used to wrap sandwiches in wax paper. Speaking of wrapping, some people like things wrapped around their windpipes.
Rosie looks off into the distance as she chews, and I wonder if maybe she’s not going to answer the question.
And to be fair, she did ask me first. I should probably be the one answering.
I definitely have something, but it’s like when someone asks what your favourite movie is and you panic and wonder if you’ve actually ever seen a movie.
Asking what one of my kinks is has me wondering if I’ve ever even had sex.
“I’ve never done it,” she states seriously, looking back at me. “I hadn’t really been exposed to it until recently, but as with so many other things, I read about it.”
My imagination kicks into high gear. Ropes?
I had a teammate once who was into that.
I could sort of see the appeal, but then again, it seemed like a lot of work.
Maybe my kink is laziness. Handcuffs? Less work than ropes, similar outcome.
But what if you lose the key? Blindfolded?
An ex did do that to me once, and I definitely didn’t hate it.
“Primal play,” she says, and I must look lost because she continues. “Like being chased, not being the chaser. Consensually, of course. I don’t want some random to chase me, catch me, and have their way with me.”
The way my dick reacts makes it very clear to me that laziness likely isn’t my kink because my body seems to be very into this idea.
“Like,” I lick my lips and look to my left, where boulders dot the landscape, rough terrain that would be hard to run through but with lots of hiding spots.
“If you took off running through there,” I nod out at the hills.
“And I gave you, let's say… a twenty-second head start before I went after you…” Her lips part, and I watch as her breathing changes while I describe the scenario. “You’d be turned on?”
“Yeah… I think so.” Then she shrugs. “Or I’d make it ten seconds before I fell down cackling like a mad woman.”
Either sounds like a win to me. Catching her and fucking her right out there in the open—incredible. Finding her sprawled on the ground, her honey laugh surrounding me before sinking to my knees and tasting her until that laugh transforms into that silky moan I’m already addicted to.
I’m barely aware of something crinkling before a weight settles across my legs, and I blink to find Rosie leaning into me, her hands balancing on my thighs.
“Hey, Sammy,” she whispers, moving closer until I can practically count her eyelashes.
“Yeah, Rosie?”
“Would you catch me if I ran away?” She still sounds like she’s sharing a secret.
“Yeah, Rosie, I’d definitely catch you,” I confirm, and she pushes back, making me suddenly nervous that she’s just given me a heads up. “But please don’t take off yet,” I plead. “Branston and I have only gotten back on speaking terms.”
Her sandwich wrapper hits me right between my eyes, and I breathe out a sigh of relief, popping the wrapper back into my bag before standing and holding my hand out to her.
We pack away our things, being careful to leave no trace of our lunch and continue our hike until we reach the edge of a small loch.
“I know we have lakes at home, but these ones all feel so different.” She sighs, wrapping her arms around herself.
“They all have secrets here.”
She looks up at me. “What secrets?”
“I have no idea.” I lean into her and whisper, “They’re secrets.”
She laughs and nudges me before turning and continuing along the bank. I stay where I am for a couple more minutes, enjoying the peace of this place.
The water is so calm it looks like glass but so dark it’s hard to convince myself that there isn’t something lurking below the surface.
It’s easy to see why stories of mythical creatures are so prominent in this part of the world.
Everything here feels different. It’s unnerving and soothing all at once, a feeling that is nearly impossible to describe to someone who has never visited.
“You coming?” Rosie calls, and I take one last deep breath and turn to someone I’ve only been promised a near future with.
“I doubt that I could ever get sick of ruins,” Rosie says, spinning in the centre of a once grand castle. “The history these stones have seen,” she marvels, finally coming to a stop and facing me.
I walk toward her, and she backs away, a mischievous glint in her eye, and I wonder if this is where she’s going to take off on me. But she keeps a steady pace as she nears the corner of what was apparently a grand dining room. When her back hits the wall, she leans against it and waits for me.
“I’ve never had sex in a castle before,” she says, looking down at her hand to where she’s tracing the edge of a stone with her fingertips.
“No? Have you ever”—I lean in, dropping my lips to the shell of her ear—“had someone kneel for you in a castle?” Her breath catches, and her cheek brushes mine as she shakes her head.
Well, my dear, I’m about to change that, I think as I fall to my knees at her feet.
“Sam?” she questions, eyes wide as she stares down at me.
I’m going to finish what we started in the woods. I tuck my fingers into the waistband of her tights and begin to slide them down.
“Keep those eyes peeled, babe,” I instruct as I slip her left foot out of her tights, lift it, and hook her knee over my shoulder.
“As if I can keep my ey—oh god,” she whimpers as I pull her panties to the side and taste her. One of her hands rakes through my hair, and she angles her pelvis, giving me better access.
I may not be the smartest guy around, but I am a fast learner, and I have been studying Rosie like I’m working toward a degree.
I know she’ll quake when I apply more pressure to the left side of her clit.
If I do that to the right, she’ll giggle.
I know if I slip one finger into her, she’s going to immediately demand more.
So I’m already pushing a second in when the m of more starts to form on her gorgeous lips—the rest of the word lost in a gasp.
I can tell she’s close when her hips roll and her fingers twitch against my scalp, and I’m about to finish her off when the high-pitched shout of a child splits the air.
Rosie panics and, in the process of reaching for her tights, punches me in the nose, then promptly knees me in the jaw.
“Fuck!” I reach to cover my face as my eyes water and blood fills my mouth from where I bit my tongue.
Hands cup my cheeks as Rosie drops to her knees in front of me. “Oh my god,” she hisses. “Oh my god. Sam, I’m so sorry.”
“S’okay,” I grit out. “Thought I was done getting punched in the face,” I tease, dropping my hands while I scrunch and unscrunch my face, then spit to the side.
When I open my eyes, I’m met by Rosie’s horror-stricken face.
“Do I look that bad?” I ask.
She shakes her head, but her expression doesn’t change. “I’ve never punched anyone before.”