I’m not the kind of girl who gives a man free rein of her body in the middle of a club. Not the kind of girl who can get off in a dark corner when anyone might look over and guess what’s happening under the table. But tonight, I want to be. If the man is him, I want anything he can give me.
I reach for him and trail my hand along his powerful thigh, higher.
He nips at my earlobe. “Not yet,” he growls. He slides a second finger inside me, and my muscles clench tight around the welcome intrusion.
My mind flickers to the first time he touched me like this—at the creek on my parents’ property, the trees the brightest shade of green all around us, the smell of spring flowers in the air. I was clumsy—nervous and inexperienced—but so in love. It was new and exciting and as exhilarating as this moment.
This is so different . . . and yet, at the root of the arousal, at the root of the pleasure, it’s the same. It’s him. It’s the inevitable and the impossible.
“You feel so good against my hand,” he says. “You’re so fucking wet, I’m liable to make a fool of myself right here.”
My lips part, and I drag in a ragged breath as my whole body goes tighter.
“That’s it, baby,” he murmurs, giving me a fraction more pressure. “Let go. Let me feel you come.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. I don’t know what I’m objecting to—where we are, how crazy this is, or what I should be doing this weekend instead of being here with him.
“All you have to do is enjoy. I’m losing my mind thinking about tasting this sweetness I feel on my fingers. Are you going to let me do that? Can I strip you bare and kiss you here?”
I don’t know if it’s the words or if my body just can’t hang on anymore, but suddenly, I slip. Dive. Fall. Every muscle goes tight, clenching, then pleasure shoots down my spine so violently that my hips buck off the seat.
“Fuck, you’re so beautiful.” He kisses up and down my neck.
I survey the club. It’s dark, and no one’s looking our way. But still . . . “I can’t believe we just did that.” I bury my face in his neck and laugh. “Holy shit.”
He strokes me gently again, and I shudder with aftershocks of pleasure. “I’m ready to crawl under the table and get a taste of this.”
My cheeks blaze at the thought—not from embarrassment but from the shock of realizing I just might let him. “Are you this wild with all your girls?”
He stiffens then pulls back. “I’m not going to pretend I’ve been celibate all these years. Have you?”
I swallow hard. Thinking of the days after Marston left, of college, of boyfriends and disappointing one-night stands, of Julian. “No.”
He shakes his head as if he can see the shame on my face. “Don’t do that. We’ve had lives while we’ve been apart, and neither of us needs to feel guilty about that.” He kisses the corner of my mouth. “But no,” he whispers, skimming his mouth along my jaw to my ear. “To answer your question, I’ve never done anything this crazy. Never felt as wild for anyone as I feel for you.”
Swallowing, I cautiously step into the treacherous waters we’ve been dancing around all night. “I always wondered what it’d be like to see you again,” I say. “I thought you might come back one day.”
“I did. Once,” he says, and everything inside me freezes. “I’d finished my first year of college and I caught a Greyhound to Orchid Valley all the way from California. You were having some sort of party at your house. The back patio was full of people, and there you were in this pink sundress, your hair pulled up, holding someone’s baby.”
Holding someone’s baby. He saw me holding Cami. She was the first baby I’d ever held. The only one I held for years. In those first few weeks, my inexperience was terrifying, but by the time Marston would have seen me, holding Cami was second nature. “You were there?”
“Boys like that move from one girl to the next, Brinley,” Dad said. “He’s already forgotten about you. And even if he hadn’t, you think he’d want you now? This is the worst nightmare for a boy like that.”
I never fully believed those words, but they must’ve taken root on some level for this revelation to shock me so much.
“You looked absolutely stunning, and I was so distracted by the sight of you that I didn’t even notice your dad coming up beside me.” He draws in a long breath. “He told me if I cared about you at all, I would leave town and never come back. He said he’d lost a daughter already and he’d sooner cut you off than lose you to me.”