Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
SEAMUS
Laughter rips out of me at the sight of Ingrid parked around the corner from Smith House.
“You just graduated to big thief,” I tell Emma, who’s grinning the same way Shadow seems to every time she cuts and runs from Smith House and comes back with a mouse.
“You said I could take her out whenever I want.” She shrugs mischievously. “I wanted.”
I taught Emma to drive stick shift earlier this month. My brother laughed when I told him, and admitted he’d done the same with Claire, with one significant difference—he’d needed to learn to do it before he could teach her.
I’d cussed him out for never asking me to go out with him, and he’d responded that he valued his life.
I valued her life, so we’d gone slow and started out small, same as Declan and Claire.
But I wasn’t at all surprised that my girl was an expert behind the wheel. She’s the only one I’d willingly give my keys to.
“So what’s next, boss?” I ask, kissing the side of her face.
“You’re going to need to be patient,” she says, turning to face me as she walks backward. I take her hand, because I’m not going to let her trip.
“I’m not very good at that.”
“I know,” she says with a sexy smirk. It’s a warm spring day, the flowers budding and blooming, and there’s a pleasant as hell breeze. The perfect day for a drive. Of course, I’d drive on a frigid day from hell if it meant going somewhere with Emma.
The last couple of months have been the best time of my life. I’m with my family and my woman, and I have a job I love. Are some of the customers impossible to please narcissists with nothing better to do than to call up the garage all day asking for updates? Absolutely. But the work makes up for it, mostly. And when I’m feeling pissed off, I take a Honey Do job and knock down a wall or a fence. Occasionally, I’ll help Declan out on one of his landscaping jobs.
I’m satisfied.
I’m content.
You’re in love.
Damn straight. I am, and it’s time for me to tell her, but part of me worries I’ll put her off. Or she’ll decide it’s a bad decision, after all, to be with a man whose history looks like it should be on a rap sheet.
When she reaches Ingrid’s hood, she leans back against it, and the sight is so delectable, my mouth waters. She’s wearing a flowing dress, bright blue, and I’d love nothing better than to push it up.
The look in her eyes says she knows it. Smiling slyly, she says, “Get in the car.”
I do, and she climbs in next to me, expertly getting Ingrid going.
“Are we going somewhere overnight?” I ask, trying to get a clue. “I’ll have to text Chuck instructions on what to do for Carrot.”
She shakes her head, smiling at my obvious attempt to get information. Then she pulls away from the curb and starts up the CD— Reputation by Taylor Swift. A grin stretches across my face.
“Thematic.”
“You bet.”
She evades my other questions as she steers Ingrid away from Smith House and onto smaller mountain roads, weaving upward.
“It’s getting dark,” I point out.
“Good,” she says, giving me another sidelong glance that has anticipation pumping through my veins.
She keeps driving, bringing us away from other cars. It feels like it’s just us and the car and the trees and the mountain, and damn it feels good.
She gives me another look after taking a hairpin turn. “Any guesses?”
“If you’re kidnapping me, I have no objection.”
Finally, she pulls over, driving down what’s little more than a dirt path, only a trace of gravel, before turning and parking. Ingrid’s passenger side faces the narrow opening in the trees and foliage that surround us on all sides.
“What is this?”
She shrugs. “Nicole told me about it. There used to be a hiking path here, but they never cleaned it up after a big storm that took down some trees. People don’t come here much anymore, and when they do, it’s usually for one thing.”
“To hide bodies?” I quip, but my blood is hot, because I have a feeling I know where this is going. Or maybe I just hope I know.
“I had something else in mind,” she says in a tone that’s all insinuation. Then she gets out of the car and opens the driver’s side passenger door. When I get out of the car and join her, she reaches under her dress and pulls off the skimpiest pair of lace panties she’s ever worn and throws them at me.
I do what any sane person would: I catch them.
“Emma,” I whisper under my breath.
She lies back on the seat, resting her head on a pillow she must have put back there for just this purpose. The degree of planning that went into this is a further turn-on.
I reach for the button on my pants, but she shakes her head, her lips lifting as she tugs up the hem of that flowy dress, giving me a show.
And that’s when I realize…
“You only get to watch,” she says, her voice low and husky, lighting my blood on fire.
“You’re doing this to me, really?” I ask, even though I kind of want her to. I also desperately want to fuck her out here in the backseat of my car, the way I’ve dreamed about.
Her answer is to reach down and touch herself, her fingers circling. Her hips buck up, and my mouth dries into a desert. Probably because every fluid in my body has evacuated to my dick. Ho-ly shit.
“Can I touch myself?”
“Yes,” she says. “ Yes . Give me something good to look at.” Her voice is heated as she slides one finger into the sweet wonderland between her legs, and thank God she said yes, because I’ve never been this turned on before in my life.
I unbutton and unzip my pants, shoving them down. I move my hand over my dick as I watch her. Her eyes are glazed and needy as she stares up at me, her mouth moving as she releases little sighs and gasps. My breathing is erratic just from looking at her, pulse pounding wildly, jaw tense. She adds another finger, tipping her head back against the pillow. I’m a desperate man, my hand moving feverishly. I need to kiss her throat and graze my teeth against it. I need to slide into her and drive in deep. My hand isn’t doing it when my dick knows well and good what it’s missing—the absolute feast laid out before it.
“You’re driving me nuts,” I say through puffs of air as she continues to thrust her fingers.
Emma takes it as an invitation to drive me crazier and reaches up with her other hand to squeeze the swell of her bra. Her back arcs up and another breathy little sound escapes her.
“Are you going to come, Em? Tell me what’s happening. Tell me what it feels like to fuck yourself in front of your boyfriend and drive him crazy with desire for you.”
She bucks her hips again as she moves her fingers. “It feels so good…knowing you’re watching.”
A car whistles past on the road, making the pine boughs rustle, and my dick gets even harder.
I take a half step closer, then stop, soaking her in—the blue dress, hiked up to her waist, her dark hair loose against the pillow. Her red-painted lips parted. I watch her fingers thrust in and out, mesmerized. They’re slick with her desire.
“It felt good to me, too, baby. But it feels even better when I’m inside you. Please. I’m begging you, Emma. I need you.”
That need is a near constant, but right now, it’s actually painful—so bad that I might die if I can’t be inside of her. She’s on birth control, so we don’t need condoms anymore. There’s nothing stopping me from sliding into her right here and now. Nothing so long as she tells me I can.
“You’re begging?” she asks, her tone slightly teasing. “I like the sound— ah —of that.”
“I’m begging .”
She pushes forward on the seat, putting a leg on either side of me. “Take me over the edge, Seamus. I want to go with you.”
I pull her legs toward me, and she wraps them around my waist as I push into her with one brutal thrust. She arcs her head back onto the seat, moaning. “Just like that.”
I thrust in a few times, lifting her by the legs to meet my dick, loving the sight of her splayed out in my favorite place in the world, her hair streaming out behind her. It feels like the ground is quaking beneath my feet, like everything around us couldn’t help but be affected by the heat we’re building between us. But I want more of her than I can reach like this, and I get in the car with her, my dick still buried inside of her.
She laughs into my mouth as I kiss her hard, thrusting in again, my body nearly falling off the seat. “There’s no room for you,” she says against my mouth. “You’re too big.”
“My legs can stay outside as long as the important part is in here.” My feet are against the dirt at the side of the car, and I use them for momentum as I thrust into her again, harder, and capture the sound she makes in my mouth.
Her hands find my hair and tug at it as she kisses me back frantically, lifting her hips to meet my thrusts. I can tell she’s close now that I’ve learned all the signs. I pull all the way out, her eyes getting wide and pissed off, and then plunge in deep, so damn deep. She squeezes around me like a vise, making sweet sounds, and I feel myself going over the edge with her. One more thrust and I’m there, my feet still on the dirt, my dick buried deep inside of her under the hem of that maddening dress. I hold my weight up with one arm on the floor of my car, lifting up enough that I can look at her. Not ready to pull out yet.
“I love you,” I say, the words no longer willing to be held at bay.
“Of course you say it while you’re inside of me,” she says, but her eyes are shining up at me, and I know she’s pleased. If she’s not ready to say it back, I can live with that. What she just did shows me how she feels.
“What better time?” I ask, leaning in to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I could have said it a million times by now, and I’ve wanted to. But somehow this felt right.”
I start to pull out, but she holds me still with one hand to my back. I peer into her eyes, and she says, “I love you too. More than I ever thought I could love someone.”
I tuck hair behind her ear and kiss the side of her face. “I told you we started out the new year right.”