Between Here and the Horizon (31 page)

“Shit, shit, shit! Oh god.
Sully
!”

He leaned back, giving me a moment to regain myself. The arrogant wisecrack I was expecting never came. Neither did the smug celebratory pat on the back. I cracked open one eye, and Sully was staring down on me with a look of unmistakable awe on his face. He looked so serious that I felt a flush of heat blossom all over my skin.
 

“That was incredible,” he said, his voice a low whisper. “Fuck, Lang. You’re explosive. You’re motherfucking dynamite.” He was working his cock in his hand, moving swiftly, his grip tight. He wanted me. He wanted me so badly, I could see it plain as day in his eyes. The feeling was mutual. I let my knees drop to either side, and I slowly moved my hand in between my legs, lightly touching my fingertips over my pussy.
 

“Now,” I told him, refusing to break eye contact. “
Please
, Sully. Don’t make me wait any longer.”

I wasn’t ready for what happened next. He looked savage as he fell on me, one hand roughly groping at my breasts, the other supporting his weight as he angled himself between my legs. His hips were pressing against mine, our bodies in alignment, and then he was grinding them upward, thrusting inside me, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying out.
 

Sully immediately went very, very still. His eyes were wide, unblinking, as he hovered over me, his erection buried deep inside me. “Fuck,” he whispered. “You feel…” He trailed off, closing his eyes. “Oh my god, Lang.
Shit
.”

His reaction was electric. I was
electric
. I could feel it flowing through me and into him, a relay of intense energy that promised to consume and destroy. Unable to stop myself, I began to rock my hips underneath him, shivering with pleasure at the friction that built up between our bodies.
 

Sully growled again, snarling almost. He stopped kneading at my breast and moved his hand down between my legs again, rubbing at my clit while he slowly, carefully, began rocking in time with me.
 

We fit together perfectly. I felt myself melting into him as his movements grew faster, until we were both crazy with the need for each other, clinging onto each other, biting and kissing and digging our nails into each other’s skin.
 

It felt like we both sank beyond ourselves, like we lost track of where we were. The light swung across us again and again, washing over us, casting shadows and highlights across our bodies, but neither of us seemed to notice. The world had shrunk to the smallest of spaces; nothing existed outside of the small observatory where Sully held me against him and thrust himself into me, faster and faster until I was begging him for release.
 

It came unexpectedly, like a meteor strike, devastating and total. I screamed, clinging to him, head kicked back so far it felt like my neck would snap, and Sully came too, roaring, pressing his forehead against my collarbone, panting, warring for breath as his body shook.
 

The calm that settled over us after was like a blanket, shielding us, keeping us warm despite the snow and the ice outside. We lay together for a long time, Sully still on top of me, still inside of me, and I drew circles and lines into the hard muscles across his back, down his side, over his scar. We breathed as one, our bodies mirroring each other as we finally came back into ourselves.
 

“Well,” Sully said quietly, after a very long time had passed. “We’re well and truly screwed now.”

“Why?” I whispered back.
 

“Because. That was the best sex I’ve ever had. I’m definitely going to want to do that again, Miss Ophelia Lang from California. I’m going to want to do that again
a lot.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Capable

The rain woke me the next morning, globes of water pattering lightly against the glass dome of the observatory. Sully was still asleep. His feet were sticking out of the bottom of the sheets, still on the floor where we’d collapsed into unconsciousness. His bare ass was sticking out of the covers, too, and I couldn’t help myself. I sat up carefully and allowed myself a long moment to admire him in his sleep. He looked less restless than he did when awake, but his brow was still furrowed, as if he were still plagued with the weight of his burdens in his dreams. I lightly stroked my fingers over that creased area between his eyebrows, and they eased, all but disappearing.
 

“Damn you, Sully Fletcher,” I whispered. “Damn you all to hell.” Quickly I got up and got dressed, trying not to disturb him. I was fully clothed about to tiptoe my way down the spiral staircase when his voice stopped me.
 

“Lang, wait.”

Crap. I turned, and Sully was sitting up in the confusion of sheets, chest bare, light shining down on him through the huge windows overhead. He had a frown on his face, but his eyes were soft. Not angry. Just slightly disappointed, perhaps. “This isn’t going to work for me,” he said.

“What isn’t?”

“You sneaking off in the early hours of the morning, fully intending not to come back.
Right
?”

I looked down at my feet.
 

“Lang?” He sighed heavily, rubbing his face in his hands. When he looked up at me, I could see the hard set in his eyes. “I want to meet them,” he said.
 
I jerked, not sure I’d heard properly. Did he mean Connor and Amie? He couldn’t, surely. Not after being so violently apposed to the idea in the first place. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You don’t want to get too involved with me because of the children?” he continued.

“I don’t want to get too involved with you because I have to go soon, and I don’t want to be a shell of a person when I get back to L.A., Sully. I thought you wanted to keep this simple, too.”
 

He blew out a frustrated breath, bowing his head. “Maybe that’s what I wanted. At first. But now... I don’t know. Would it be the worst thing in the world if I wanted more?”

“I didn’t think you were capable. That’s what you said.”

“I don’t even know if I am. But I want to find out.”

I shook my head slowly. “Sully, I can’t risk hurting the children, confusing them, purely so we can figure out if we’re meant to be together or not. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“I don’t just want to meet them because of us,” he said quickly. “When I saw Connor up on that stage the other night…” He sighed, glancing down at his interlinked hands.
 
“I wanted to come and find you when it was all over then. It was like looking back in time, back to when Ronan and I were little. I couldn’t believe it. And Amie. She’s so small. So perfect. Seeing
her
actually terrified me. Neither Ronan nor I ever did anything to deserve such a perfect little girl. I felt so protective over both of them that it felt like I’d run head first into a brick wall. I couldn’t fucking handle it. But then over the days that followed…I don’t know. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So I made them the presents. I saw you guys all playing in the snow yesterday morning, and…” He shook his head, refusing to look at me. “I thought,
I’m meant to be a part of that
. I don’t know how I fit into it, but I know that I do somehow.” Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he looked like he was fighting for the right thing to say and coming up short. “So, it’s not just about you, Lang. It’s them, too. Do you understand? I’m not promising anything. I’m not saying I’m gonna take them or anything. I just…want to meet them.”

I was a lot of things all at once: Excited. Overjoyed. Anxious.
Protective
. Could the children take meeting Sully without being completely overwhelmed? It was a lot to take in. Ronan and Magda had never mentioned Sully to either of the children. They had no idea their father had a twin brother. The resemblance was going to freak them out, especially Connor.
 

But still. This was what Ronan had wanted. He had wanted Sully to be the children’s legal guardian eventually. He certainly would have wanted Connor and Amie to
meet
Sully in any case, despite the fact that
he
never got around to introducing them when he was alive. I squeezed my car keys in my pocket, making up my mind.
 

“Okay then.”

Sully looked up quickly. “
Okay
?”

“Yes. But they’re so young, Sully, and they’ve been through a lot. Don’t fuck them over. I swear to god, if you do, I’ll castrate you and hang your balls out to dry. Do you copy?”

He flashed his teeth, probably smirking at my use of one of his favorite phrases. “Copy. I promise I won’t fuck them over. And Lang? Just so you know, I don’t plan on fucking you over, either. I promise that, too.”

******

“So, he looks just like him then? He’s exactly the same?” Connor hadn’t glanced up from his book since I sat him and his sister down to talk about Sully, but he was clearly paying attention because he was asking a lot of questions. “How come we didn’t know about him?”

“Your dad and Sully had a really bad argument, and they weren’t friends for a very long time. Your dad came here to make friends with him again, though, and he really wanted you to get to meet Sully.”

“I heard Mommy say Sully in her sleep,” Amie announced. “She was sad. She was crying in her dreams.”

“No, she didn’t,” Connor snapped. “That never happened.”

“That’s okay.” I put a hand on Connor’s shoulder, trying to cut that line of conversation off before he could grow agitated. “All I want to know right now is if you would like to have Sully over to the house?”

Connor closed his book and put it down on the arm of the chair. “What if we don’t want him to?” he asked.
 

“Then that’s okay. He doesn’t have to come here at all. I think you would like him, though.”

“I want him to come,” Amie sang. “I want to say thank you for my dinosaur.” I’d confessed that Sully was the one who’d sent them the gifts at the beginning of the conversation, and Amie’s eyes had lit up. Likely she was planning how to obtain even more dinosaur skeletons from this stranger so she could start up a proper collection.
 

“What about you, Connor?” He was silent. “Connor?” I went and sat down next to him. “I mean it, you know. It really is okay if you don’t want to meet him. I get it.”

“Why hasn’t he come and seen us before now?” he asked.
 

“Well.” God, this was going to be difficult. “You remember how you felt when your dad died, don’t you? Sully felt the same way. He’s been very sad. It’s taken him a long time to feel better, but now that he does he would really like to see you.” It would have been far too complicated to explain it any other way. Connor nodded a little and sniffed.
 

“Okay. He can come over. But if I don’t like him, I’m not going to talk to him.”

“That’s all right, buddy. It’s totally okay if you change your mind.”

I could imagine it all too well: Sully showing up and not knowing what to say or how to act. Connor feeling uncomfortable and running for his bedroom. Odds were that was exactly what was going to happen, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than Connor never meeting Sully, and it was better than Sully always wondering.
 

There was only one way to find out.

******

“Are you ready?”
 

“Not really. This is more intimidating than going before a military court.”

“You went before a military court?”

“No. Kind of. Not really. Are you sure they’re not going to flip out?”
 
Sully clearly didn’t want to talk about the military court comment, however I was all too interested. Another time, though. I rubbed my hand across his chest, trying to reassure him.
 

“They might at first. But it’ll be fine, I promise. They’re good kids. You might just need to give them a moment to adjust is all.”

“
I’m
the one who needs time to adjust,” he said. “What if they call me Dad by mistake? I’ll lose my fucking shit, Lang. I’m not joking.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll remind them your name is Uncle Sully, and you’ll cut them some slack. This is just as hard for them as it is for you. Harder. You knew they existed, after all. You’re completely out of the blue to them.”

He looked unconvinced. I’d been so sure he was going to call and bail this morning, but when he’d actually shown up at ten o’clock sharp, wearing a smart, ironed shirt and a pair of clean black jeans I’d had to give him credit: he was a man of his word. A terrified man of his word, admittedly, but still.
 

“Come on,” I told him. “They’re waiting for you.” Leading him through to the kitchen, both Connor and Amie were sitting at the table, gluing down pictures I’d been cutting out of magazines for them all day onto huge pieces of craft paper. Amie was covered in glitter, her fingers absolutely plastered with glue to the point where she couldn’t spread them apart anymore. Connor had small, white fragments of paper down the front of his shirt and in his hair, which was curling like crazy all over the place.
 

When Sully and I walked into the room, the children fell silent, and Sully froze—a rabbit trapped in the headlights. The three of them looked at one another, staring and I began to wonder if this wasn’t just a huge mistake. Connor was the first to look away. Slowly, he picked up a cut-out picture of a soccer player and began to rub his glue stick over the back of it; the tips of his ears were practically glowing, but his cheeks were pale, pale, white, like he was in shock.
 

“Whoa,” Amie breathed. She looked at me, sweet little face full of confusion, as if checking in with me—
is this really happening?
“You look just like my daddy,” she whispered. I’d warned them both that Sully was more than just a little bit like Ronan, that he was
exactly
like Ronan, but Amie couldn’t be blamed for being surprised now. The resemblance was unnatural.
 

Sully shifted from one foot to another, clearing his throat. I’d never seen him so out of sorts. “Yeah, well. People say that a lot,” he replied. “It must be weird for you, huh?”