Chapter 24
Tucker
That little sound, like she’s helpless to resist. It breaks me. I meet her halfway, opening to her. I draw her close and lick into her, meeting her tongue stroke for stroke, both of us moaning into the hot slickness of the kiss.
Autumn presses herself as close as she can with both sleeping bags between us, presses close enough that I’m sure she can feel how hard I am.
I was already hard when I climbed into my sleeping bag because the tent smelled like her, like flowers and mint and whatever is just her.
Hard because I could feel the heat of her body and because I’d loved sitting with her next to the fire and watching the delight on her face while she drew stories out of Gabe and Lucy.
She can feel it, and I know because she whimpers into my mouth and presses herself even closer, tipping her pubic bone against me.
And fucking fuck, I need more, and as soon as I’ve had the thought, she grabs my shoulder and urges me over on top of her.
I grind against her and we both moan, long and needy, and then we both shush each other at the same time, laughing, and then we’re serious again, mouths busy, hungry and desperate.
I haven’t felt like this in so long, maybe ever, but definitely not since—
Since—
I freeze. My mouth stills on hers. I pull away, rolling back to my side of the tent.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have.”
There’s a long dark silence. Then she says, “Don’t apologize.”
“I—”
“That’s the worst, you know? They should issue a handbook. If it’s consensual, don’t apologize, because it’s the most humiliating—”
“I don’t mean I didn’t want it. I wanted it. I want it.”
She makes a startled noise. “Then…what?”
“I’m your—bodyguard.”
“I’m not paying you. My dad hired you. If anything, it’s a mutually beneficial situation. You’re not abandoning me and leaving me unprotected. Nothing’s going to happen to me while we’re together. Kissing. Fucking.”
I groan involuntarily. It’s the sound of the word fuck in her mouth.
She gives me an eyebrow raise, like See? “You want it. I want it. It’s consensual. Casual sex, number two on my list of favorite things.”
“I mean, the choices were limited, and you put rom-coms first.”
She snorts. “True.”
There’s a moment of stillness in the dark when neither of us says anything, and then I open my mouth and it comes out: “I let someone get hurt.”
It’s like ripping off the Band-Aid, how fast I say it. If I had let myself think about it, the words would’ve died on my tongue.
Autumn is holding her breath.
“Not just hurt,” I say.
She makes a small noise. Pained.
“She died.”
“Oh, Tucker.” She rolls toward me, frustration forgotten. Wraps her arms around me. “I’m so sorry. And I’m glad you told me.”
Her embrace feels so good. She’s warm and strong but also soft. A long exhalation slides out of me. Was I holding my breath? “I don’t, ever. Tell people.”
She bites her lip. I think she knows what it means, that I told her. That she’s not people. She’s not everyone. She’s her.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I don’t know the answer. Do I? I want her to know. I just don’t want the words to have to come out of my mouth. I know they’ll hurt coming out. But it’s the only way to let her see me, and fuck, I want her to see me.
“I’d been guarding her for more than a year,” I explain. “We were friends. Good friends. And then…she told me she had feelings for me. She wanted us to—she wanted us to be together. It was…complicated, so I took myself off the detail. But the guy who replaced me—”
This is the hardest part.
“I didn’t think he was the right guy for the job, but I—I wanted to be free to pursue things with her—Elizabeth—so I didn’t raise a red flag,” I say.
“She was a workaholic. She was on the brink of this huge scientific breakthrough. You know, the kind of thing that was going to save millions of lives. She had competitors. Enemies. That’s why she needed security.
But she liked to sneak out to her lab at night when she was supposed to be sleeping, get in a few extra hours of work.
” I swallow heavily. “He slept through her leaving. And—the lab blew up. With her in it.”
“Tucker.”
“It was my fault.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“How can it possibly not be my fault? I wasn’t there, and I should have been.” I close my eyes. “I abandoned her because it was complicated. Like a high school boy, not a trained professional. If I hadn’t let my emotions get in the way…”
“You’re human. Emotions get in the way all the time. Bad things happen. Those two things aren’t connected. You made what you thought was the right decision—to let someone else step in. And a bad thing still happened. It’s not your fault.”
Autumn is stroking my hair. My face. Something wet smooths over my skin—her fingers, my tears. I haven’t cried about Elizabeth until now.
“I know you said you haven’t told anyone. Not even a therapist?”
“I don’t talk,” I say.
She laughs at that. “You kind of do. Once you get started.”
“Only to you.”
The words fall like snow in the quiet tent.
“Tucker.” It’s just a whisper. And a question, I think.
And then we’re kissing again, greedy, desperate.
Her hands in my hair, on my face, my back.
“This fucking sleeping bag,” she says, tugging at it, and her frustration, her desperation gets to me.
I help her peel away both bags and bring our bodies together.
She feels good. Soft. Strong. She writhes against me, like she’s trying to get even closer.
“Tucker,” she begs, and it fires through me, the need to give her what she wants.
I kiss and kiss her, loving the way her breathing amps up and the way she clutches at my clothes, like her hands are helpless to stay still.
I love the noises she makes, too, little breathy sighs, whimpers, the occasional moan that seems to break from somewhere deeper inside her.
That’s where I want to be—where that moan comes from.
I keep kissing her, brushing her hair back from her face, holding her head still so I can explore and lick and taste every inch of her silky wet mouth, fantasizing as I do about where else she’d be silky and wet and how much I want to lick her there.
I’ve been thinking about it nonstop since I turned that card face up on the table at Shane and Ivy’s house.
Autumn doesn’t hold still while I steal what I need from her.
She arches and bucks, and I let my hands wander so I can feel all the heat and energy in her lithe body, so I can feel her bare skin, goose-bumped on her arms, soft as satin on her thighs.
Her skin is a luxury I don’t deserve but can’t—won’t—give up.
I want to bare more of it so I can touch it all, so I can glide my mouth over every inch of it, stroke her with tongue and fingers, feel the give of her under my teeth.
I urge her leg over mine, pull her so she’s straddling me, so we’re kissing as she rubs the seam of her tiny PJ shorts over the bulge in my sweats.
She won’t stop kissing me. She’s gloriously greedy—the sounds she makes, the way she grabs my hair and shoulders and arms. I lift her hips and bring her down against me, the friction just right for me, and she groans to let me know it’s just right for her, too.
I do the work for both of us, lifting and urging her harder against me, pulling more moans out of her.
She sucks my tongue, whimpers, bites my bottom lip, and I pull back enough to murmur against her hair, against her ear, “I’ve been fantasizing about making you come since you looked at me in that mirror,” drawing another whimper from her.
It’s so much, too much, to suddenly have her in my arms, to be able to take whatever I want, to be able to give whatever I want, and I don’t know where or how to touch her first, but my hands seem to know, so I let them find her perfect tits, to explore their shape and softness, to thumb the nipples to peaks through her tank top.
I slide one hand down to the smooth flat of her belly.
“This okay?” I ask, and she nods vehemently against my neck, so I slip that hand under the soft knit of her tee.
When I touch her nipple, her body jumps, electrified, and I groan, because of course she’s like this.
Of course she’s eager and needy and sensitive for me.
My other hand joins that one, and I play with both nipples, urging them tauter and stiffer until I can’t be patient anymore and tug at the hem of her shirt. “Need my mouth on them—yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, the word drawn out to a moan as I lift her shirt and pull a nipple into my mouth. Then the other.
I look up from my work to find her watching me, eyes gleaming in the low light of the tent.
“Jesus, Autumn, you’re beautiful.”
Her eyes are dark and soft and awe filled.
She cups the back of my head, drawing me down.
When my tongue touches the bare tip of her breast again, she makes a wounded-animal sound and bucks, and I draw her down so I can suck her while she moves, switching back and forth between her breasts, my fingers working the one I can’t suck.
She shifts position, dropping a knee between mine so she can straddle one of my thighs, her hips wild.
It’s not even the friction that’s making me feel like a high school boy ready to come in his pants in the back seat of a car; it’s her eagerness.
Her franticness. The way she twists her body under my touch like it’s too much and not enough at the same time.
The way she pushes her breast into my mouth like she’s begging for more.
“Tucker.” It’s a plea.
“Yeah?” I ask. “You want to come? Is that it? You want to let me see you fall apart? I want to see, Autumn. Show me.”
With a long, rough grind of her body over mine, she does, eyes wide and mouth open, crying out and shaking, rubbing through the spasms taking her body, collapsing against my shoulder, panting, as I tell her, “That’s right. That’s what I wanted to see, pretty girl—you come for me.”
It takes Autumn a while to return to Earth.
I stroke her back while she does, lying with her cheek against my chest, her thighs still straddling one of mine.
The fabric there is damp from her arousal, and I can’t help myself.
I touch the spot and bring my fingers to my face to draw in the scent of her.
She sits up and presses a palm to the thickness of my erection, then slides her hand under the waistband of my pants. The sensation of her cool hand on my dick brings me abruptly back to myself, to the moment, and I grab her hand and push it away.
“Tucker,” she says. “Let me make you feel good.”
I shake my head.
Autumn looks down at me, a frown on her face. And I can tell she sees more than I want her to.
“You’re allowed to have good things,” she says quietly. And then, even softer, “Are there a lot of things you don’t let yourself have?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you throw out that chocolate croissant.”
Damn. And I thought I was being subtle. “I didn’t want it.”
“You didn’t want it? Or you didn’t want to want it?”
I think about the last two years. The parties I haven’t gone to, the people I haven’t let myself feel like I belong with. The foods I’ve stayed away from because I love them. My raggedy fucking apartment.
She might know what she’s talking about.
I hate that. And I—
I don’t know how to finish that sentence in a way that doesn’t feel like stepping off a cliff.
“I’m tired,” I say. “We should sleep.”
She stiffens on top of me. Rolls off. I can see the hurt and uncertainty in her face.
“Wait,” I say, because even though I don’t want to think about what she’s asking of me, I also don’t want there to be any misunderstanding between us about what just happened. “Come back. Please. I’m not—I’m not pushing you away. I want you here. I just—”
I can’t finish the sentence. I just can’t let myself have you the way I want to have you.
And I don’t understand why, but I think you do.
Her face softens. And I think maybe she knows. Maybe she can draw a line between all the dots and see the truth of me. And maybe I’m ready for that. Maybe I can be seen and not be afraid that what’s inside me is all cowardice and shame and death.
I wrap her up in my arms and pull the second sleeping bag on top of us. It takes her a little while to relax, but eventually she does, making a soft sound of satisfaction and pressing her face into my chest.
She’s asleep, breathing deeply, her weight soft and hot on me, when I whisper, “I wanted that croissant so fucking bad.”