Chapter 32 An Experiment in Being Slowly Consumed, but Not in the Way You Want to Be
Tadhg got in, and we both immediately rolled to the middle against our will.
“This cannot be happening,” Tadhg said as he tried fruitlessly to wiggle his massive body closer to the edge.
Unfortunately, as he tossed his ton of muscle, the mattress acted like a trampoline, and I went bouncing back, landing nearly on top of him.
“Fuck this. I’m going to sleep in the fecking Jeep. ”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. He was just so angry.
With the long day and the argument and the tension, and with being absolutely frozen like a Popsicle, I couldn’t help it.
“You can’t sleep in the Jeep! You’re too big!
Have you ever seen that Simpsons character”—I gasped for breath—“the huge man in the tiny car. That’s going to be you in there, folded up like a pretzel, trying to sleep.
” I tried to choke down the giggles, but that only made them worse.
“You’re right. I won’t sleep, then. I’ll drive straight through the night to Lisdoonvarna, find my dad, and choke the ever-loving life out of him!”
He was just so furious. It was like something out of a movie. His face!
I laughed. He growled.
“This! This is the man you want me to forgive?”
I nodded, helpless with laughter. He grabbed the duvet and shook all the rose petals off with a vengeance, as if, magically, his dad might feel the violence of it from County Clare.
Then Finn jumped up and we all went bouncing together. I almost fell off the damn thing and flung myself back into the middle in an effort to stay on. My head knocked into Tadhg’s solid-stone shoulder. “Ow!”
Tadhg tried to steady us by grabbing me by the upper arms, but when he shifted his weight, we fell into each other again, bobbing around, no control. I rubbed my head. I was laughing so hard that I was making raspy wheezing noises.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said again.
Finn, deciding that it looked like we were having a fabulous time, barked, jumped, and then pounced on us.
“No! Fionnuala! Down! No!”
“Finn-oola? Is that her name?” I wheezed. Because everything was funny now.
She attacked, biting Tadhg’s hands, growling, wagging her tail.
“Bad girl, Fionnuala!”
This made me laugh again. “Finn-oola is a terrible name!”
“Rude! It’s a good Irish name.”
“It’s the worst. No one would name their baby Finn-oola!”
“It was my aunt’s name.”
“You named your dog after your aunt?” I couldn’t stop laughing.
“She was a grumpy, sour old thing, and Finn reminded me of her.”
“That’s horrible!” I laughed louder, and then Tadhg laughed, and I suddenly wished they’d left us a second bottle of bubbly.
“Right, girl. Come on down here.” He patted the bottom of the bed until Finn moved. “There. Good girl. Stay.” He covered her up with a blanket and tucked it around her.
This seemed to calm Finn down, then we calmed down. He lay back on his pillow and pulled the blankets up.
“Surely you’re not going to try to sleep like that. In jeans.”
His jaw clenched. “Well, I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
“Oh, come on. We’re uncomfortable enough as it is. You can’t add jeans to the mix as well. You’ll never get to sleep. And you’ll flip around and keep me up. Besides, you have to drive tomorrow, need I remind you.”
“That’s not. A good. Idea.” He said this very slowly, as if I needed it spelled out for me.
I laughed. “Don’t be such a prude. You can take them off. I won’t attack you, I promise.”
“What about your goddamn rules?” he ground out.
“They’re our rules. And if we’re going to be pedantic, we didn’t actually write a rule about you taking your pants off.”
“Well, we should have.” He let out a low rumble of annoyance. “Fine, goddammit. Fine. If it’ll shut you up. Why not? What could possibly go wrong?”
I laughed right in his angry face.
“Thank fuck you’ve got a three-inch-thick layer of ridiculous pajamas on, at least.” He flung the covers aside and tried to stand up, which we both discovered quickly—much to his infinite irritation and my utter delight—was not easy for him to do from an air mattress.
He cursed. Finn and I went bouncing and rolling over to his side.
Finally, he managed it. In a fury, he locked angry eyes with mine while he unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his fly, and then—God help me—took his jeans off.
I wasn’t laughing anymore. My mouth went entirely dry. Other parts did the opposite.
I had never actually seen this much of him before. Sure, we’d had sex, but his jeans had been hastily unzipped—by me, I remembered with a flush of longing—and we’d had sex with almost all of his clothes on, except for the long stretch of his hard-on that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
But now he was in black boxer briefs that were snug in all the best places.
I could see his legs. Thick muscles corded them, they were dusted with hair that looked soft enough for me to want to touch, and then he turned around and threw his jeans on top of his shoes in the corner, and sweet holy Moses, that ass.
I believed in heaven now. I sucked in a breath.
Those few steps back to the bed—the one bed that we were going to have to sleep in, together, with him looking like that—I was treated to a close-up, a reminder of what I’d seen only a few short, painful eternities ago.
He was right. This was a huge mistake.
“I hope you’re happy, you she-devil.”
I bit my lip and tried very hard not to say anything. “Maybe a little too happy.”
“Stop that! Do I need to put my jeans back on?”
I shook my head, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth and biting down on it. Then he got in the bed, and the whole ridiculous bouncing, rubbing space struggle started again, but this time without pants.
He was lying on his back, and try though I might, I couldn’t stop my body from touching his body. I did try. But trying to work my way up the slope away from him only made me wriggle around against him.
“You see? Is this what you wanted?”
I bit my grin and cocked an eyebrow with a shrug.
“Don’t you start!”
He flipped over in a huff, turning his vital bits away from me. But the movement rolled me closer, and now I was cupped against his ass, my breasts against his back.
Cold radiated up through the air mattress, and despite being under a duvet and two blankets and having a dog for a hot-water bottle, I was still absolutely fucking freezing.
Tadhg’s body was like a heater. I only wished he would take his T-shirt off so that I could get closer to his deliciously warm skin.
“You’re going to have to—This isn’t going to work.” He huffed. “Look, can you just flip over? Please?”
That started me giggling again. He sounded so annoyed. I was slaphappy, punch-drunk tired. I tried to flip, but he was heavier, and I rolled right back. This made me laugh all the harder. I did it again, just for kicks.
“Would you stop it? This isn’t funny, for Christ’s sake. And can you keep your hair to yourself? It’s all over me!”
“Does it . . . smell amazing?”
“Shut up.”
“Can you”—I was cracking up—“not handle the sexiness of my hair?” I couldn’t stop.
“Maya Davis. We made that list as a precaution. Not to use it against each other. You’re making things worse!”
Little squeaks of laughter came out and matched the rubbery squeak of the mattress as I flipped over in small increments, turning a few inches at a time against his wall of back, until I was facing the other direction.
“There. Is that better?”
Because of our height difference, we kinda fit together, my ass nestled in the curve of his lower back, his ass cupped under mine. It was hot. It shouldn’t have been, but it was.
He sighed. “Not really.”
I started laughing again.
“Behave yourself, you hyena. Jesus fucking Christ on a bicycle. I’m never going to get any sleep. Good night.” He said it like an insult and tried to turn a little bit farther, but it was no use.
He was right, for the most part. He tossed and turned, and of course, every time he so much as breathed too hard, the whole mattress moved.
Then Finn started having a dream and kicking us both.
Tadhg gave her a gentle nudge to wake her up, but she started scratching, and then we were on a vibrating bed at a cheap motel with no shortage of quarters.
And it was cold. It was still, so, fucking, cold.
At least I had a damn good excuse to press the entire length of my body down his.
I was sure that the mattress was losing air. As the night grew longer, it felt like we were pressed even closer together, the edges of the mattress curling up to cradle us or trap us, or maybe I was slowly losing my touch with reality.
Could I sleep? Hell no!
The mattress wrestling we’d been doing somehow turned my fevered imaginings to the mat training in Fourth Wing.
Only now it was Tadhg as the dark, broody Xaden, and in my sleep-deprived stupor, I couldn’t stop picturing Tadhg pinning me down against the mattress, flipping me to his will. Taking my daggers away.
One.
Blade.
At.
A.
Time.
Was he asleep? I wondered every second that melted past. Or was he awake, thinking of all the things we could be doing in this bed, just like I was?
He was so warm. His skin smelled so fucking delicious.
I couldn’t help wondering over and over and over again what would happen if I just let gravity and that shitty mattress do their thing, and rolled over on top of him, put a hand over his mouth, and rode him until we were both so destroyed that we had no choice but to fall asleep or die.
But no.
No.
Eventually, when I had begun to wonder how many hours or minutes we had until the sun would start glowing through the white fabric, Tadhg turned toward me, in his half sleep or in surrender, I didn’t know or ask.
He curled himself against me, put one massive arm around my ribs, and pulled me in close, pushing the back of my top leg with his, bending them together, my ass against him, his leg framing mine. He pulled me tighter.