Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
The sudden storm made the short trip back to Eamonn’s garage feel like we were on the run from something, driving through rain that was so loud in the car we barely talked, coming down somehow even harder by the time we’d parked again.
“Give me a head start to get the key in the door,” Eamonn said. “I can have it open by the time you get there.”
But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like we weren’t both soaked already. We left everything in the car—the clock, the painting wrapped in his jacket, the remaining trash from some of the snacks we’d had on the road—as we made a mad dash for his front door.
It was to the side of the reception area for the shop, the glass where I’d peered in to see the chairs and the books. This door opened to a small corridor that almost immediately gave way to a flight of stairs leading to what I assumed was Eamonn’s apartment.
“So this is where—” I started to say, but he was spinning me back toward him, his hands on my face as he pulled me in for a kiss.
His mouth was hot and urgent on mine, and I could do nothing but open up to him, kiss him back with all my own pent-up desire. This was what I’d wanted ever since that fast, dirty hookup in the car, since we’d been dancing in the club, since he’d reached over me to roll down my window.
My cheeks were slick with rain, and he threaded his hands in my hair, as if needing something more to hold on to.
“Just tell me you feel it,” he said against my mouth, so low I almost couldn’t hear him. “Whatever this is…”
Of course I felt it. I might not know what to call it, but I knew what it felt like.
So expansive I felt like my chest might explode, so desperate I wanted to press myself close enough to practically be inside him, wanted him to be inside me.
I fumbled to pull my sweater over my head, not wanting to break too much contact or risk breaking the mood, but I didn’t need to worry about either because he was right there to help me pull it the rest of the way off.
My nipples were hard and wet and cold from the rain, tightened into painful little buds. When Eamonn slid his hand in the front of my dress, the friction of his palm abrading me was almost too much to bear.
“That all right?” he asked, and it was only then that I realized I was actually panting, like he was doing so much more than just covering my breast with his hand.
“Yes,” I said, arching my back to give him more, to beg for more. “God, yes.”
“You can’t be sorry about this,” he said, pulling my dress off one shoulder, his hand gliding over my collarbone, spread out over my sternum. When his fingers found my nipple again, I let out a hiss between my teeth. “Please, you gotta promise me, you won’t be sorry about this.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I’m not.”
He tugged at the bow around my waist, the entire string coming off in his hand before he dropped it to the floor. I would remember untying that bow.
My hands were on his head, fingers half buried in his short, soft hair, and I didn’t even know that I must’ve been subtly pushing him down until he was on his knees in front of me, pushing my dress up around my thighs, reaching up under it to hook his fingers in my underwear.
I felt him sliding them down my legs at the same time I pulled my dress and bra over my head in one motion, a split second where I couldn’t see anything and then suddenly there I was, completely naked in the small entryway to his apartment, him kneeling with his nose nuzzled against the sensitive skin of my lower belly.
“Jessica,” he said, half admonishment, half laughter, and it wasn’t until I looked down that I saw that he’d found my tattoo. A small four-leaf clover, right on the side of my pelvic bone, low enough that even most bikinis covered it up.
“Told you,” I said.
“I’m not embarrassed,” he said, pressing a kiss to the tattoo, then whispering my name again, like this time it was more for himself, because he liked the way it sounded. Jessica.
He gripped my hips, hooking one of my legs over his shoulder and pressing me back against the door until it bore some of my weight.
When I felt his tongue on me for the first time, I was grateful for that support, because my whole body shuddered and went limp for a second. He shifted my knee, opening me up more.
“Fuck, you taste good,” he said, sliding his tongue along my slit. And then he was pushing inside me, fucking me with his tongue, lapping me up like he couldn’t get enough. When he gently, very gently, grazed his teeth against my clit, I couldn’t help but let out a strangled cry.
“You like that?” he asked, looking up at me, his eyes a little glazed, his lips wet from me. “You have to tell me what you like.”
“Keep going,” I said. “Lick me, kiss me, bite me. I just want your mouth.”
He squeezed my calf that was slung over his shoulder, and pressed an openmouthed kiss right to the core of me.
I wanted to grip something, but his hair was too short, so my hands settled over his ears, giving them a tug as I tilted my pelvis closer to him.
He grunted, and I almost worried I’d hurt him until he left a soft kiss on my inner thigh, almost like he was saying thank you, almost like he was saying please, more.
I ran my fingers over the top ridges of his ears, pulling him toward me.
He ran his mouth back and forth right over my clit, the friction building until I couldn’t take it, thought I’d die when I felt the tip of his tongue pressing against my crest, thought I was dying when he gently nibbled at it again, the sudden sensations spasming through me as I came against his mouth.
My legs felt like jelly, and I almost couldn’t hold myself up, slumping back against the door, my leg sliding down from Eamonn’s shoulder.
But he’d already stood, grasping me behind the knee as he hitched my leg up again, pressing his body against me.
I thought of the fact that I’d met him just on the other side of this door only yesterday, that one of my first thoughts had been that he was taller than me, stronger than me, that maybe I should be afraid of him but I wasn’t.
“Fuck me, Eamonn,” I said into his ear, because I might not know this man’s middle name but I already knew that I could drive him absolutely wild by playing with his ears. “Please.”
He was rubbing my clit with his finger and the pressure building inside me was excruciating, that touch simultaneously too much and not enough. I reached down to rub the heel of my hand against the hard ridge of his erection through his pants, gratified when I heard his intake of breath.
I started fumbling with his belt, the button and zipper that stood in the way of what I wanted, and he reached down to help me.
“I won’t come inside you,” he said against my mouth, and then he was pushing into me, and in that moment I didn’t give a fuck what he did as long as he stayed right where he was.
It felt so good just to be filled with him, to be stretched around him, to know that we couldn’t get any closer than we were now.
But then he gripped my leg, his fingers digging into my thigh, hitching me up to settle me even deeper on him, and I let out a moan.
“Hold on to me,” he said, just like he had at the beach.
I linked my hands around his neck, bunching my fingers in his T-shirt, vaguely marveling that I hadn’t even made him take it off, that’s how fast things were moving.
Meanwhile I could feel the door against my back, and it hurt a little as he pressed me against it, but in a good way, in a way where I wanted him to do it harder.
I whispered the word in his ear, my nails digging into his shoulders as he thrust into me deeper, harder, faster, until I came again with a low, ragged cry.
“That’s it,” he said, almost soothingly. “That’s it.”
The orgasm had made me weightless, sinking even more against him, and he squeezed my ass as he repositioned me, giving a groan of his own at the friction where our bodies were still joined.
He pinned me against the door as he thrust into me again and again, until he slid out of me with a bitten-off curse and came on the soft skin of my inner thigh.
I watched him do it, his cock hard and pulsing, wet from being inside of me.
When it was all over, suddenly everything hit me in a flash.
The sound of rain, still drumming down on the other side of the door.
The echoes of our gasps and moans, the rattle of the doorknob as he’d fucked me harder.
The fact that I was completely naked and he was still fully clothed, already putting himself back together.
The way we’d lost that last bit of light through the window above the door, and it was now dark enough that when he looked at me his eyes were a glittering gray, no hint of their usual vibrant blue.
He leaned his forehead against mine. Both my feet were on the ground again, but he had his arm wrapped around my waist, partially supporting my weight.
“You promised,” he said.
I smiled when I remembered what he was referring to, my assurance that I wouldn’t feel sorry about this time the way I had after we’d hooked up in his car. “And I meant it.”
“Believe it or not,” he said. “I really was just trying to kiss you.”
“Sure you were,” I said. “That was a hell of a kiss.”
“All right,” he said, reaching up to squeeze my breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers until I felt another pulse to my clit, an aftershock from everything we’d done or the spark of something new. “I was hoping to feel you up a little, too. I’ll admit it.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t even get your shirt off.”
He grabbed the back of his collar, pulling his shirt over his head. He used it to wipe at the sticky wetness on my thigh, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“Bad habit,” I said, but I was grateful as he cleaned me up.
I was also fascinated by all this sudden expanse of skin, the way I could touch his bare chest and shoulders and arms, the flex of the muscles in his back as he leaned over me, the ridged scar he had on one side.
When he was done he pulled me in for one more kiss, and somehow I knew he mostly did it to feel my breasts flattened against his chest, because that’s what I wanted, too.
Eamonn reached around me to flick a light switch, then huffed a laugh against my cheek when nothing happened. “All this, and I forgot the electricity’s still out.”
That might explain why, now that I didn’t have the heat of the moment to warm me up, I realized it was a little chilly. I picked up Eamonn’s sweater off the floor and pulled it on over myself.
“I take it that’s not as easy to fix as a bad wire to a thermostat?”
“I exhausted the extent of my troubleshooting abilities,” he said. “Checked the breaker, checked to make sure I’d paid the bill. I was going to call an electrician to come take a look, but—”
He didn’t finish that sentence, but he didn’t have to. I could tell just from the expression on his face that at least part of that was because of me, that he probably would’ve done it yesterday afternoon except we’d been walking around Dublin together.
“They wouldn’t have come on a weekend anyway,” he said, as if he saw that I was feeling guilty and didn’t want me to. He took his phone out of his pocket to turn on the flashlight, then reached back for my hand, leading me up the stairs. “Let me show you my place.”