Chapter Seventeen #2
His lips crashed onto mine with none of the patience or restraint he’d shown at the parade.
Out here, we could be us, and right now, I didn’t want gentle either.
I wanted him to show me how much I meant to him without words.
His mouth moved against mine, stroking, lapping, enticing my lips to open for him, and when I did, a helpless-sounding growl escaped his throat.
His hands tangled in my hair, and then he turned me to face him.
His tongue stroked against mine and made me yearn for more.
As he palmed the back of my head, the soft sound of his growl rattled against my ears.
I relaxed my neck and let him have my lips.
Commanding and powerful, he drew more and more from me until I was left breathless and wanting.
His hand brushed my collarbone and trailed down to my waist, dragging fire as I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck. It still wasn’t enough.
How long we stayed there like that, wrapped up in each other, I couldn’t guess.
The sun was lower, and clouds had come in from the east, but that seemed less important than Caleb’s burning touch.
He pulled my shirt to the side and kissed the circular scars, and I couldn’t find it in me to care about the memories they caused.
Caleb was healing me with his touch. With his mouth urgent against my skin, I moaned and gripped his hair as he reached the base of my throat.
“Caleb,” I pleaded.
His arms tensed around me. “Did I hurt you?”
“I want more. I feel like I want—” God, what did I feel? Everything. Rightness. I wanted more of him, but what did that even mean? I tugged on his earlobe with gentle lips.
“Mira, I didn’t come out here to take advantage,” he rasped, his hands clenching my sides as I nestled even closer.
“Stop,” I implored. “Words like that taint what this is. I know what I want, Caleb.” As I straddled his lap, his breath hitched.
His hands ran up my back and gripped my shoulders, pulling me against him as I rocked gently.
“Shit,” he gritted out, as I rolled my hips again. “Mira, we’re not ready. This isn’t how I want it for our first time.”
My instinct was to feel the slap of rejection. I hadn’t ever been intimate with a boy besides him, and insecurity told me I was doing this wrong. But then again, I liked the way he’d said that. “Have you thought about us together before?”
I raked my fingers through his hair, and he leaned back against the tree with a sigh. “Of course, I’ve thought about it.” He grasped my hips in an almost painful grip. “I saw you without a shirt on, remember?”
Pleasure filled me at affecting him so deeply. I hadn’t had much time to worry over vanity since I had moved here, but his admission made me feel beautiful. “So, you don’t want our first time to be here?”
“It’s not my first time,” he said, the smile dropping from his face. “But it’s yours. I want it to be better.”
“You mean special?” My heart was expanding so fast, I’d burst.
“Yeah, Mira. You’re special. And our first time is going to be important. It feels like it, right?”
Unable to speak, I nodded.
“We’ll remember it for a long time, and I don’t want that part of our relationship to happen too early. And I definitely don’t want it to happen out in the woods on an old blanket.” Caleb lifted his hands to my neck and massaged it gently. “I want to take you out. Do this right.”
“Are you going to ask me on a date, Caleb McCreedy?”
“I am, but not right now.”
“Why not?” I rocked against the hard seam of his pants again, and his eyes rolled closed.
He stopped my motion by gripping my waist and leveled me with a serious look. “Because right now I’m tempted to ask you out tonight so I can take you back to my place as soon as possible. It kind of defeats what I’m trying to do for us.”
With an explosive sigh, I fell backward onto the blanket and stretched out, frowning at the leaves above. “Who’s driving who crazy now?”
****
Caleb
The drill was a noisy, filthy, unsafe, physically draining work place. I loved it. There was no other job I wanted to do than one out on a land rig. The metal screeched around me as heavy machinery was pulled to and from the rig floor. I trusted Brian not to hit us with anything.
“Evan, cut it out,” I warned as my brother sprayed Reyes with the hose like a child. There was no room for horseplay up here. A misstep didn’t mean you got written up by an annoyed employer. It meant you got seriously injured—or worse.
Evan flipped me off but put the spray back on the drill as it slowly retreated out of the earth. With a clang, it pulled free, and I turned off the mud pumps. Evan and Reyes hooked the slips around the joints of the pipe, and I hopped down off my platform to help pull the length of metal upward.
“You and me, we need to switch jobs for a day,” Reyes said through a muddy grin.
“I already put my time in as a floorhand. I’m good.”
Reyes was an old friend who had moved off after high school.
When his mother got sick about six months back, he came snooping around for a rig job, and I put in a good word.
He was a greenhorn and had a lot to learn, but he would be an asset—eventually.
I still watched him like a hawk, though.
Evan on the floor tended to bring out everyone’s worst behavior.
Which was probably why, after so much time, he was still in the exact position he’d been hired in and hadn’t ever seen an increase in pay.
I adjusted my hard hat and booted mud off the metal decking while I waited for Reyes to clamp on the tongs before we lifted.
“Caleb,” our supervisor called from above us. “Need to talk at you.”
I finished hauling the pipe and glared at Evan. “You think you can add more pipe without messing up?” The slow churning fury I kept inside threatened to escape when he saluted me. Evan had only become more obnoxious with age.
I took off my work gloves and scaled the metal stairs two at a time until I reached the platform Mr. Wilson waited on. “Yes, sir?”
“Got a call from the big rig. Said they need to know your answer today. They’re already working shorthanded.”
I rubbed my hand over the stubble on my face.
I wasn’t ready to make the decision. By all accounts, I should’ve been.
I’d known the position was mine if I wanted it since the night of the disastrous family dinner with Mira.
My father had enlightened me. This was my chance.
I should’ve jumped at it already, but I couldn’t quite escape the panic that hit me in the gut when I thought about moving three hours away from home. Away from her.
“Afraid I’m going to have to respectfully decline.”
Mr. Wilson stared at me like I had spoken to him in Gaelic.
“I don’t understand. Have you thought this through, son?
I mean, ignoring the significant pay raise, you’d be on the fast track.
You can’t work a rig forever, McCreedy. Your body will get older and refuse you.
With your knowhow, work ethic, and name?
You have a chance to get in on the business side of this eventually.
You won’t have to be an old timer doing this kind of labor. ”
“I like this kind of labor, sir. My answer is no.”