Chapter 13
The dam bursts. I can’t take it any longer. Can’t wait any longer.
Since that moment in the back of the car last night—hell, who am I kidding?—since I set eyes on her as I clutched my naked balls, I’ve needed to kiss her, to taste her, to be inside her for the first time. To have her be mine again.
I might have vowed to cleanse my relationship palate, but I hadn’t reckoned on Hannah Hepburn crossing my path again. The one woman I’ve never been able to resist, the one woman who could make any resolution crumble and bring me to my knees.
Her body, initially stiff with surprise, relaxes, and her lips press back against mine. Glory be.
But she gives in for only a second. Then her hands are flat against my chest, and she shoves me off with the force of a tsunami.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she asks, her still-tearful eyes wide and full of fire, as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Kissing you.” I’m breathless, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Now as much out of shock and disappointment as from the touch of her lips, the press of her body against mine. “I missed you, Hannah. All these years, I missed you.”
“You can’t not speak to someone for seventeen years and then just kiss them.” She flings her arms wide. “You can’t just tell them you miss them. And teach their kid guitar. And kiss them.”
My stomach churns at how very far we now are from our lips ever touching again. I have to claw this back. I have to. “Look, I know we’re only going to be in the same place for the next couple months. But I want you, Hannah. I want you just as much today as I did that night at Rachel’s party.”
That was the night we gave each other orgasms for the first time. And the last. A week before I left for London, Rachel’s parents went away for the weekend, so the obvious thing for any high schooler to do was to have a bunch of friends over and engage in some underage drinking.
I had a bit of a buzz after a couple beers. Hannah had downed only one. We sloped off to the guest room to make out and ended up jerking each other off. It was awkward and embarrassing—I’d never come over anyone’s hand but my own. But the image of Hannah’s face as she climaxed on my clumsy teenage fingers has lived in my mind ever since.
Not because it was the first time. But because she’s the only person who’s ever made me feel the way I do right this second. Like my brain and my body are firing on all cylinders. Like I need to live life on my toes, ready for anything. Like if I don’t have my hands and my mouth on her right this second the world will end. Like I’m alive.
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Hannah spits. “And it doesn’t matter what I want.”
“I get it.” I close the gap she put between us, reaching for her. But she might as well be a hundred miles away. “The only thing that matters is what’s best for Dylan. Totally on board with that. But what do you want, Hannah? You? The amazing singer, the best frontwoman any band could be lucky enough to have? What happened to that girl? What does she want?”
“That girl’s boyfriend moved to England. And she ended up with a total jerkface who promised her he loved her and, one night, convinced her to have unprotected sex. Then she had his baby. That’s what happened to that girl.”
The consequences of my actions smack me in the face like a cymbal crash. If only I’d known the mess I’d left behind. If only I’d been able to help her before now.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t turn back the clock. But I’m here now.” I place my hands on her shoulders, expecting her to pull away, but she doesn’t. “And you’re still you, Hannah. You still have your own wants and needs. What do you want, Hannah?” Her eyes search mine like she might find the answer in them. “Right this second, what do you want? What do you need?”
My dick is harder than that of a teenaged boy who’s just stumbled across his dad’s porn stash, eager to know the answer.
“I can’t have what I want.” Her fight is fading, the tension in her shoulders easing under my hands as I dig in my fingers and circle them slowly in a deep massage. “Not anymore.”
“But maybe you can. Tell me what it is. Maybe I can make it happen.”
She looks down between us, where she can’t possibly miss the bulge in my jeans, and shakes her head.
“Is it me, Hannah? Is it me you want? Do you want me as much as I want you? Because I think there’s a chance you might.”
I push her hair back behind her ear and tilt her face up till her eyes meet mine again. “Look at me and tell me you don’t want me.”
“I can’t.” There’s a tremble in her breathy voice.
My inward sigh of relief is almost audible. At least that’s something. I’m not imagining it. Our connection is still there. The spark is still there.
I pull her tight to my chest. She fits perfectly against me like she always did, slotting right under my chin. Like two jigsaw pieces that were separated by an ocean but have now floated back together.
“I didn’t come looking for this, you know.” I bury my face in the top of her head and inhale the sweet vanilla scent that’s mixed with a hint of last night’s bars and an odd chemically lemon scent. “I came here because I’m exhausted. Because my brain and body ache from everything I’ve had to deal with the last few months. I came here to rest and sleep in, eat Maggie’s cooking, play guitar for the first time in forever, see the guys, check out a few bands.” Hannah’s breath warms my chest through my shirt. “I did not intend to get involved with anyone. I didn’t want to get involved with anyone.”
I stroke the back of her silky head as she slides her hands down from my chest and around my waist, finally giving in. My insides soar as she melts into me.
“My heart was in a box, Han. Packed up. Sealed. Stored in the attic for another day, another year. I did not expect to stumble naked out of my door that first morning and have the box ripped open.”
“I never even managed to shove you in a box,” Hannah says into my chest. “Every time I tried, the lid wouldn’t stay shut and you popped out again.”
I chuckle into her hair. “I am your personal jack-in-the-box.”
“I can’t believe we’re standing here like this.” Her voice is muffled by my shirt. “I thought if I ever saw you again, I’d give you a cold, hard piece of my mind and stomp off.”
“Well, you kind of did.”
“Yeah, but look at me now.” She leans back just enough to gaze up at me. Her tear-stained eyes, rimmed with smudged mascara, have softened. “Apparently I’ve caved.”
“Excellent.”
I drop my mouth to hers. And, like magic, our lips find each other as if they’ve never been apart. They fit right back together, exactly as they always did. As if they’re home.
When her tongue flicks out and finds mine, fireworks erupt in my head and my pants. Nothing in the world compares to this, and nothing ever will. I pull her hips hard against my straining cock.
Torn between wanting to rip her clothes off right now and being terrified of scaring her away, I draw a line of kisses from the corner of her mouth to her earlobe. Goosebumps erupt under my lips as she groans and presses deeper into me.
“I want you so much, Hannah. I wanted you the moment I saw you on the landing.”
“It’s a good thing you have big hands to cover the evidence.” Her chuckle is part sigh.
I slide one of those hands down over her round ass and nudge her closer. “You have no idea.”
“Oh, I think I do.”
And from the way she grinds against my aching todger, she undoubtedly does. I drop my mouth to her sweet, sweet neck, unable to get enough of the taste of her, the scent of her, which is familiar in its sweetness yet new all at the same time. And all the while, her hands rove up and down my back.
“This is pointless, though,” she breathes.
“Does this feel pointless?” I nibble a line to her collarbone, and she wraps a foot around my ankle.
“God, no.” She tilts her head, surrendering as much of her neck to me as I want, as much as I need. “But we have such a short time and then it’ll be over again.”
I slide my hands up from her ass. As my thumbs graze the soft sides of her breasts, my dick twitches and pulses against the zipper. I grasp her face, my fingers around the back of her neck thrust into her hair.
Terrified I’m getting too carried away, I get a hold of myself for a moment and rest my thumbs gently on her cheeks. “I can’t ignore how I feel right now. Can you?”
Her blue eyes are soft and full of something I hope is longing. They look right into mine, and she shakes her head in my hands.
Fuck. She wants this to happen. This is actually going to happen.
A rush of excitement, of nerves, of pleasure, washes over me.
Wild, passionate feelings for someone were the last thing I wanted. The last thing my life needed. But Hannah’s the thing I want and need more than anything in the world.
“Who knows what will happen?” I ask the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. “But the worst-case scenario is we have an amazing few weeks. Would that be so bad?”
She digs her teeth into her kiss-swollen bottom lip before speaking. “You mean, like be each other’s Bridge People?”
I take that irresistible lip between mine. “Bridge People?”
She tugs my shirt out of the back of my jeans, then her hands are on my skin, sending crackles of electricity up my spine.
“Yeah,” she says as I kiss my way around the outline of her mouth. “We have a short, amazing time together. To bridge us from our last bad experiences to finding our forever people.”
Right this second, I can’t conceive that anyone but Hannah is my forever person. Yes, we’re different people now than before, but it’s unimaginable that I will ever feel anything for anyone else that even comes close to the craving that rages inside me. And I’m terrified I just might fall in love with her all over again.
But if she sees it as nothing more than a just-while-we’re-in-the-same-place thing, sure, I can run with that. For now.
“It would be an honor to be your Bridge Person,” I tell her.
Then I claim her mouth in a way I hope will spoil her for any other man—sucking her lips, gliding my tongue over hers, teasing her with my teeth.
She slides her hands down my back, leaving my skin aching for more of her touch. Her arms circle my neck, fingers sliding against my scalp and grabbing a fistful of hair.
I ease my hands over her ass and rub my aching cock against her as I reach lower, my fingers searching for the hot spot between her thighs.
A few cells at the back of my brain are somehow able to process information beyond what’s going on in my pants and register the squeak of the front door opening. Lacking the capacity to deal with such inconvenient information, the rest of my otherwise occupied mind kicks it out.
But the sound is immediately followed by Maggie’s voice. “This will do well in the morning light in the study.”
“Shit.” Hannah jumps off me like I’ve just emitted ten thousand volts.
“I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee,” Jim says as Maggie’s footsteps approach the other side of the door I’m now staring at like a mesmerized rabbit in the headlights of a fast approaching truck on a dark road.
It opens and Maggie appears, holding a plant with striped dark and light green leaves.
“Oh, hi,” she says, surprised to see me doing apparently nothing, alone, in the middle of the room.
I look around to find Hannah has moved at record-breaking speed to the far end by the bookshelves.
“Oh. And Hannah,” Maggie adds. Her eyes flash from the top of my head to my feet.
“Hi, Maggie.” Hannah glances at my aunt over her shoulder then turns back to the shelves, revealing the back of her hair to be a tangled mess. “I was just…” She runs her fingers along the books, examining them with the earnestness of a nearsighted professor who’s forgotten her glasses. “…wondering…about reorganizing the books…alphabetically…or…something.”
“And I was”—I snatch the guitar up off the sofa—“about to get in some practice.”
“Riiiight,” Maggie says. “You’re obviously both very busy.” A smile creeps across her face as she looks from me to Hannah and back again.
“Won’t disturb you,” she says, bustling toward the front window. “Picked up this lovely croton while Jim and I were in the village.” She places the plant on the sill. “Thought it would be perfect for here.” She turns it one way, then the other, and stands back to admire the angle. “There. Perfect.”
She heads back toward the door. “Okay, well I’ll leave you two to…” She looks at the guitar I’m still mindlessly holding in midair. “The practicing and the alphabetizing.” She waves at Hannah, who’s still facing away from us and panic-pulling random books from the shelves.
“Great,” I say at the same time Hannah chimes a cheery, “See you later.”
“Oh, and Tom…” Maggie’s halfway through the door, hand on the knob, closing it behind her. “…you might want to tuck your shirt in.”
The second the door clicks shut, I place the guitar back on the sofa and move toward Hannah, who now has her back to the bookcase and is sliding down, her eyes as wide as the magnifying glass on the shelf next to her.
“Christ,” I say, dropping to the floor beside her. “Why did we behave like that? We were worse than they were with the Overlord Hybrids tickets.”
“She knows, right?” Hannah asks with a grimace.
Obviously. But that might scare Hannah off. “Don’t think so. She was concentrating on the plant.”
But maybe Mags did me a favor. I want this to be perfect. To be everything Hannah could ever want it to be. And that means not rushing it, like I was absolutely on the verge of doing.
Turning to face her, I put my hand on her knee. “Look, I have to leave for New York in an hour or so. I’m going to stay with Walker for a couple nights. Tomorrow evening we’re getting together with the rest of the guys. But when I get back on Tuesday, can I take you out?”
She picks up the strand of hair that always falls across my face and twirls it in her fingers. My stomach flutters with relief—and also at how sexy it is to have Hannah twirling my hair.
Her perfect lips turn up at the corners as a flirtatious glint forms in her sparkling eyes. “You mean, like a date?”
I drag my hand up her thigh. “Exactly like a date.”
“What would we do?” she asks.
“Leave it to me.” I plant a soft kiss on her forehead and inhale her one more time.
She chuckles softly. “And end up going for dinner at a restaurant that isn’t built yet? Or show up in the wrong town?”
I pull back and give her a playful slap on the thigh. “I’ll do a good job. Just you wait and see.”
“Okay,” she says, running her fingers along my stubbled jawline. “In the meantime, I’d better go apologize to Dylan.” She flicks her eyes to the shelves above us. “After I’ve alphabetized these books.”
“And after I’ve done this.” I press my lips against hers.
It’s impossible to resist going deeper, rediscovering everything old and new all at once. As I scoop my arm around her waist and draw her closer, she wraps her legs around me and holds on to me as tight as I hold onto her.
Bridge Person?
Yeah. That could work.