21. Chapter Twenty-One #2
“I’m not teasing.”
“You’re absolutely teasing.”
I push two fingers inside her, and she moans against my shoulder.
Her hand tightens on my cock and we’re both working each other on a workbench in a workshop lit by a single bulb, and it’s not pretty and it’s not romantic, and I don’t care.
Her thumb slides over the head again, and I swear against her throat.
“Okay.” She pulls back. Breathless. “Okay, I need you. Now.”
“Condom.”
“Wallet?”
“Yeah.”
She reaches behind me, grabs my jeans off the floor, finds the wallet, pulls the condom out. She tears it open with her teeth and rolls it on herself, her fingers sure on me, and the contact makes me press my forehead against hers and breathe through my nose.
“You good?” she asks. Her hand on my jaw.
“No.” I pull her underwear down her thighs, and she kicks them off. “Are you?”
“No.” She pulls me in by the hips. Her legs wrap around me. “Don’t stop.”
I push into her and we both stop breathing.
Her forehead drops against my shoulder. My hand grips the edge of the workbench, my knuckles go white, and for three seconds neither of us moves.
Just the feel of her around me, tight and warm and real.
Ten years collapsed into one point of contact, and I can’t think, and I can’t speak, and I don’t try.
She moves first. Her hips roll and I meet her, and we find a rhythm that isn’t gentle and isn’t slow. It’s angry and hungry and searching, like we’re both trying to find the thing the other one took, and every sound she makes goes through me like a current.
“Fuck,” I say against her throat. “Fuck, Regan.”
“Don’t stop.”
“I’m not stopping.”
“Harder.”
My hands grip her thighs. I pull her to the edge of the bench and change the angle, and she gasps and grabs the back of my neck.
Her nails bite into my skin. I thrust harder, and she says my name like a swear word, broken in the middle, and her other hand slaps flat on the bench behind her for balance.
“Right there.” She’s panting. “God. Right there. Don’t move.”
I don’t move. I do exactly what she told me, the same angle, the same depth, and I watch her face because this is the part I’m going to remember. Not the anger. Not the history. Her face, right now, with her lips open and her eyes half-closed and the flush spreading down her chest.
“I’m close,” she says. Her voice is barely there. “Caleb. I’m close.”
I drop my hand between us. My thumb finds her clit and I press, firm, small circles, matching the rhythm, and her whole body goes taut.
“Come for me,” I say against her ear, and I don’t know where the words come from because I don’t say things like that, except apparently I do, with her, and she makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob and comes apart around me.
Her whole body locks tight. Her face buries in my neck and she shakes and clenches, and I feel it everywhere, my spine, my hands, the back of my skull. I hold her through it. Both arms. My face pressed into her hair.
She’s still shaking when she says, “Your turn.”
Her legs tighten around me. Her hips roll, slower now, deliberate. Her teeth find my shoulder, and she bites down. Her hand slides into my hair and pulls, and that’s what does it. The pull. The bite. The sound she makes against my skin like she’s claiming me.
I come so hard my knees nearly buckle. One hand braced on the bench, the other gripping her hip, my face buried in the curve of her neck, and the sound that comes out of me is from somewhere I keep locked. Somewhere I forgot existed. She holds me through it the way I held her. Both arms. No space.
Then quiet.
Our breathing. The insects outside. Bear’s slow exhale from the Airstream.
I press my forehead against hers. Her fingers are still in my hair. Her legs still wrapped around me. The workbench is cutting into my palms. Wrenches on the floor. A broken beer bottle somewhere. The overhead light humming.
She tips her face up. Looks at me. Her eyes are dark and open and too honest, and I can see the question forming, and I watch her decide not to ask it.
“I should go,” she says.
“Yeah.”
She doesn’t move. Neither do I. For a long time we stay exactly where we are, breathing the same air, her fingers tracing a slow line down the back of my neck.
Then she pulls back. Gets dressed. Quiet, efficient. She picks her T-shirt off the floor, pulls it over her head, hooks her bra through the sleeve without removing the shirt, the way women do. She finds her jeans, pulls them on, then hides a yawn behind her hand.
“Check Bear’s gums in the morning,” she says. “Stress can cause inflammation.”
She heads out to the truck and I hear the engine splutter. I know that sound. Regan Marsh is not going anywhere tonight. I pull my jeans on and cross the clearing barefoot.
“It will take some time to fix that,” I say as she keeps turning the key in the ignition and the engine stays stubbornly silent. “I’ll look at it first thing.”
“Can you drive me home?”
I’m glad of the darkness as I feel my face heating. “I’ve had too much to drink. I don’t usually… I’m not…”
“I’m not judging you,” she says.
“There’s no room in the Airstream unless you want to share the floor with me and Bear, but I can make you up a bed in the workshop.”
“Thanks.”
The workshop is quiet as I try to make the battered old sofa in there as comfortable as I can. There’s a broken bottle at my feet and wrenches scattered across the floor. The smell of her is still on my skin and the taste of her still in my mouth.
I grab an old blanket and cushion, and when she walks in and sees where she’ll be sleeping, she raises her eyebrows then shrugs.
“Thanks,” she says.
“No problem. I’ll be in the Airstream if you need me.”
Should I kiss her goodnight? She makes the decision for me, side-stepping me as she crosses the workshop and lies down on the sofa.
“Night, Caleb.”
“Night, Regan.”
As I lie down beside Bear in the Airstream, my heart is still going faster than I’d like.
The anger hasn’t gone anywhere. The photo is still on my phone.
The ten years are still ten years. I just had sex with the woman who destroyed me on a workbench next to a torque wrench, and nothing is resolved.
Nothing is answered. But everything is a lot more fucking complicated.