21. Tess
Tess
B y the time we finish our drinks, Jacinthe and I only have half an hour before we need to leave for Shel’s school.
Hanging back at the table without Natalie and Brooke feels way too suspicious, so Jacinthe and I have no choice but to trudge after them to the parking lot.
It’s dark enough now that I have to squint to make sure I don’t trip over any roots on the path through the trees while I clutch a few of the lackluster pumpkins.
The other customers from the bar are long gone, the field empty except for Jacinthe’s truck and Natalie’s Toyota.
We pile the pumpkins into the trunk and then say our goodbyes.
Jacinthe urges Natalie to head out first since she still needs to pull up the directions to Shel’s school, but once we’ve climbed into the truck, she doesn’t reach for her phone.
Instead, we sit in silence until Natalie’s taillights have faded into the distance. I twist to check the back window and ensure we really are the only ones left in the lot before turning back to Jacinthe.
“Do you think they know?” I ask. “That we…?”
I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
“I don’t think so,” Jacinthe answers. “They just, uh, think I have a crush on you.”
She stares down at the steering wheel instead of meeting my eyes.
“We have to go soon, don’t we?” she asks before I have a chance to say anything else.
She hasn’t turned the truck on, so I can’t see the time on the dashboard, but I know we’re probably down to twenty minutes before we’ll be late getting Shel.
I nod.
Twenty minutes doesn’t feel like long enough to figure this out. An entire day doesn’t feel like it would be long enough, but we’re never going to get a day together. All we’ll have are these stolen snatches of time when no one else is looking for us.
“I’m sorry we missed our chance,” Jacinthe says. “I didn’t know how to get rid of them.”
I shake my head. “It’s not your fault. There wasn’t anything else to do. Besides, it was nice talking to them, even if it was bad timing.”
Bad timing.
I wonder how often we’re going to run into that.
I wonder if anything about this could ever be good.
An ache rocks through my chest, so sharp I have to press a hand to my heart.
“ Quoi ?” Jacinthe says, leaning over the console to peer at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I tell her, even though the pain is now gnawing at my sternum hard enough to have me rocking in my seat. “It’s fine.”
She leans even closer, her expression hardening.
“Tess.”
My name is a command, and I can’t resist any longer.
“It hurts,” I say, my voice choked. “It hurts to want you so much and not know if I can have you.”
She freezes, her expression going blank. She leans back into her seat, and for a moment, my pulse surges with the panicked thought that I’ve ruined everything.
All she does is unclip her seatbelt.
Then she’s leaning back in. Her hand comes to rest on top of mine where it’s still pressed to my chest.
Over my heart.
I shiver. I hear her breath catch, but I can’t look at her. I stare at the dashboard instead. Her fingers flex where they’re clasped around mine.
“I already told you, Tess.” Her voice is somehow soothing and electrifying all at once. “You can have me. You can have me whenever you want.”
For a moment, I just breathe. Our hands rise and fall to the rhythm of my lungs. I close my eyes.
I could have her.
Not in every way, but in this way, and maybe this way could be enough.
It’s more than I’ve let myself have for years.
I never thought I was missing anything. After I swore off dating, I never got close enough to anyone to feel like I was giving up something real, but this—her hands, her voice, her body, her hot breath in my ear—is so real it literally hurts me, and I want it.
I want. I want. I want.
I open my eyes.
I look at her.
Like a spring has broken lose inside me, I lunge for her, grabbing the back of her head and fisting a handful of her hair so I can crush her mouth to mine.
She yelps in surprise, but when I try to ease off, she lets out a low growl of warning that softens into a moan when I give her hair another tug.
I part her lips with my tongue. We’re both still clutching at my chest. I can feel the tips of her fingers digging in hard, and the more she pushes, the more the pain from a moment ago fades, replaced by a different kind of longing. This one isn’t just an empty hole of remorse.
This ache is hungry. It needs to be filled.
“Closer,” I mutter against Jacinthe’s mouth.
The stupid console might as well be a six-foot wall between us; it’s proving just as inconvenient as we twist and contort ourselves to try and scramble closer together.
I need more of her touching me.
We break the kiss and press our foreheads together, panting. Her brown eyes are all I can see, the pupils dilated to wide black orbs sparking with heat.
“Don’t move,” she orders.
I’m kiss-drunk enough that I don’t realize what’s happening until she’s flung herself out of the truck, slammed the door, and sprinted around the hood like she’s going in for an Olympic medal. She yanks the passenger side door open and gives me a wolfish grin.
“Take that off.” She nods her chin at my jacket while she starts stripping out of her own.
We toss the jackets into the backseat, and then she hoists herself up into the cab.
She straddles me.
All the breath whooshes out of my lungs. My awareness shrinks to just the places where her thighs and ass are pressing into my lap. She tucks the ends of her bob behind her ears, her expression turning sheepish as she tugs her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Uh, maybe we should shut the door,” she says.
All of a sudden, I remember we’re in the parking lot of a pumpkin patch. Even though we’re the only car in sight and the lot is shrouded in darkness, there’s nothing to stop the property owners from wandering out here and finding us dry humping in a truck.
I open my mouth to say something to that effect, but then Jacinthe shifts her weight and gives me a slight squeeze with her thighs.
All I can manage is a gasp.
Jacinthe flails for the door handle and shuts us inside.
We have a moment of awkward fumbling with the seat’s settings before we get it to slide back and recline.
Once we’ve got enough room to maneuver, she reaches for my shoulders while I grab onto her hips.
She flexes into me, arching her back and pressing our chests together.
I graze her bottom lip with my teeth, giving the kiss-swollen swell the slightest of scrapes. It’s still enough to make her dig her fingertips into my shoulder blades and buck her hips.
We find a rhythm, grinding against each other while we gasp for air between kisses and let our hands explore every place we can reach.
“This time,” I murmur against her neck while sliding my hands up under her flannel to the smooth expanse of her lower back, “it’s your turn.”
I try to focus on getting some buttons undone, but my mind catches on the words I just said.
This time.
“Shit!” I hiss, straightening up so fast I almost send Jacinthe sprawling onto the dashboard. “The time. What time is it? We can’t be late.”
The hazy look on her face sharpens into alarm.
“Ah, esti , you’re right. It’s, ah…”
She pats down her pockets before spotting our coats behind me. After snatching her phone out of her jacket and turning the screen on, her she lets out a relieved sigh.
“We have ten minutes.”
She tosses the phone onto the driver’s seat and turns back to me.
“Should we, um, stop?” I ask.
She taps her chin like she’s thinking about it, and then that same devilish grin from before spreads across her face.
“Depends what you can do in ten minutes.”
A fire sweeps through my body. I stare up at her with my jaw hanging slack. She shrugs and purses her lips, putting on a haughty expression like she’s calling my bluff.
She’s about to regret that.
I sit up enough to catch her by the jaw, giving her a squeeze that makes her gasp while my other hand threads into her hair.
“I can do a lot in ten minutes,” I pant. “Unbutton your shirt.”
She hesitates, a fuming look in her eyes like she’s about to back-talk me, but then she relaxes into my grip and does as I ask.
She’s wearing a plain navy sports bra under her flannel, and when I see the soft skin of her belly and the way it curves over the top of her jeans, all I want is to lay her out on a king size bed and spend an entire afternoon just learning the shape of her.
I want to undress her piece by piece until she’s bare for me, spread open, wet and wanting.
It’s a crime to only have her like this, but that isn’t going to stop me.
I grab the strap of her sports bra with my teeth and pull it back enough to land with a soft smack against her skin. She moans something in French I can’t make out and then pushes on my chest until I tip back onto the reclined seat.
She starts grinding on me in a frenzy. I slip a hand between us and fumble with her zipper before sliding my hands around to grab her ass under her jeans.
I pull her down hard against me, pressing my hips up into hers. The friction has us both grunting and gasping. It’s almost enough to make me lose my focus. I bury my face in her neck and fight to remember my goal.
My goal is making Jacinthe come so hard and fast she won’t even be able to see straight ten minutes from now.
I give her ass a final squeeze and then start shimmying her jeans down over her hips. She gets the idea, and after an awkward scramble and only nearly kneeing me in the stomach, she flings her jeans down onto the floor before leaning over me again.
She’s wearing a plain pair of black briefs that hit just below a freckle on one of her hip bones.
If we were somewhere else with way more time, I’d try and find every freckle on her body, but today, I just graze the one on her hip before hooking my thumb under the edge of her briefs.
“Can I touch you?” I ask.
Her mouth is hanging open, her arms quivering where she’s got them braced on the seat. She nods, her eyes fixed on my face in a half-lidded stare. I hold her gaze while I flip my hand around to cup her between her legs.
She hisses.
“You’re wet,” I tell her.
I can already feel she’s soaked through the fabric. My throat goes dry, and I wish there was a way to get her thighs wrapped around my head. All I want to do is bury my tongue inside her, but we’d probably break at least one of our necks trying to do that in here.
I settle for tugging her underwear to the side, just enough to trace a slick path with one of my fingers.
“More,” she groans. “Hurry.”
I don’t need to be told twice. She’s so wet I slide all the way up to my knuckle as soon as I press a finger inside her. She swears and lifts her hips so I can hit a deeper angle.
“ Comme ?a ,” she mutters. “Yes.”
I thrust a few times, as slow as I dare considering we’re probably down to just a few minutes, and then slide a second finger inside her.
A guttural sound rises from the back of her throat. I start fucking her in earnest, gripping one of her thighs hard with my other hand. She leans down and latches her mouth onto the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, sucking hard enough to make me cry out.
The sweet, stinging pain makes me fuck her even harder. I can feel her muscles squeezing around my fingers, begging for more. I curl them deeper inside her, and she lets out a muffled scream against my neck.
“That’s it,” I urge. “Take it for me.”
I let go of her thigh so I can use my thumb to press down on her clit. Her underwear is in the way, but it doesn’t seem to matter; as soon as I find the right spot, she squeals and bites me again.
“You like that?”
She nods, breathing hard now, her chest straining against her bra. I’d shove the bra out of the way like she did to mine that day at the barn, but I don’t want to break my rhythm for even a second.
I keep pumping in and out with my fingers while I rub small circles over her clit. I can feel her legs clench on either side of my lap.
“Your pussy feels so good,” I tell her. “I fucking love when you squeeze my fingers like that.”
She whimpers. Her hips begin jerking in erratic thrusts. She uses her body to nudge my thumb a little to the left and then sighs.
“Is that where you want it?” I ask. “Right there feels good?”
She nods again. Her voice comes out breathless.
“Right fucking there.”
I go back to circling at the new angle, and her hips jerk even faster. She takes short, sharp gasps for air. I can feel her arms tensing now too, more and more of her muscles going rigid.
“You’re going to come in this truck for me, aren’t you?” I ask. “Right here in the seat. You’re going to keep riding my fingers and come for me.”
She bobs her head in a few frantic nods. Her eyes are squeezed shut now, her head thrown back and her neck straining.
I lift my head enough to brush my lips across the column of her throat.
“I want to feel it,” I murmur. “I need to feel you come, Jacinthe.”
She lets out a plaintiff moan when I say her name, and then she stops breathing altogether.
Her face looks so fucking gorgeous, her features strained with a desperation that’s strikingly vulnerable.
I don’t ever get to see her look this vulnerable. I wonder if anyone does.
I wonder if this is just for me.
The next time I curl my fingers inside her, it’s like watching a silent explosion rip the earth apart. She shakes and shudders, writhing on top of me as her mouth forms a breathless scream.
All I can do is stare in awe as the release rocks through her for several long seconds before she drops her forehead to my shoulder and draws in a huge gulp of air.
She takes a few more shuddering breaths while I slide one of my hands around to trace circles on her back.
“Just breathe,” I murmur.
She shakes her head without lifting it.
“Time,” she pants. “What time?”
A wave of guilt rocks through me when I realize I forgot all about the damn time. I flail for her phone before clicking the screen on.
When I read the numbers, I can’t help but laugh.
“ Quoi ?” she demands, still lying limp on top of me as she recovers.
“Guess I answered your question,” I say. “I made you come in nine minutes.”