Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (14 page)

Des got on her hands and knees and crawled toward him. She was gratified that he groped over her breasts as she pried open the kick plate under the back bench seat behind him. She rummaged around and hit pay dirt. Scooting backwards and landing inelegantly in his lap, she held up her prize.

“Is that?”

“A strip of rainbow-colored condoms? Yep.” She looked at them and blew off the dust to check the date. Very expired, but the date placed them into a rough timeline. “I’m guessing these were PJ’s? He wouldn’t be bothered at all by pointing a bright blue
thing
at someone.”

Hefin wrinkled his nose and squinted.

“Too much? You promised to stay.”

Hefin grabbed the strip from her and tossed it over his shoulder. Shoved her forward a bit so they were chest to chest in his lap. “So I’m not the first to sample your charms in the backseat of the family limousine? I’m hurt, certainly.”

Des looped her arms around his neck and deliberately made a dreamy face. “Matthew Taylor.”

“Never say.”

“Hmm-mm. He had moves.”

“Truly?”

“Oh yeah. I just know if any of his moves had involved any of my moves in any kind of synchronized way, there would be scorch marks burned into the upholstery.”

He laughed in that sweet and teenage way again. “I think I’m intimidated.”

She kissed him. He kissed back.

She broke their kiss and pulled off her shirt and the tangle that was left of her bra, and he got his arms all the way around her, used his forearms to get her against his chest.
The feel of that, of the hot skin of his chest against hers, his chest hair rough against her nipples, returned a pulse so thudding to her clit, to the insides of her thighs, that she wished she had given in and come all over his lap in the batting cage, just so she could enjoy the feel of this, right now, for even longer, draw it all out again.

But she didn’t think she could last long. Not when they had privacy, not when he’d brought her so close twice, not when being with Hefin was like getting rescued from a desert island with nothing but coconuts and raw fish to eat for months on end and it turns out the rescue boat is a cruise ship with hot showers and a prime rib buffet.

Or something.

It’s just that he tasted so good, he felt so good, his hands on her felt big and his neck smelled like cut-open wood even though he hadn’t been near any for hours, probably. He looked at her as if he looked at her too long, he would
die
.

He moved his tongue inside her mouth in these hungry slides and pulled her head away and squinted at her, like he couldn’t even believe he had the honor of getting his tongue inside her mouth; and then he’d look down at her teeny tiny boobs and close his eyes as if the lusciousness of them could not possibly be contemplated.

Next time he did that she was going to push his head down and make him lick them, eat them, because she would like to know exactly what it would feel like to die of lust.

“Destiny?” He was licking and dragging his teeth over a spot sort of close to her armpit, so she wasn’t totally sure he was saying her name or if what she heard was just her own whimpering echoing around the limo.

“Yeah?”

“I want to touch you.”

“Yes, please.”

He reached between them, between her legs, and cupped his hand over her pussy.

“Here, if you’d like, is what I mean.”

She opened her eyes and met his. “You want me to take off my jeans.” He closed his eyes in that way that made her feel like she was torturing him with her hotness.

He opened his eyes and gave her one of those big, open melting looks of his, and he held their gaze while unbuttoning her jeans and easing the zipper down and lifting her hips up and swinging her legs around so she was eventually leaning against the backwards-facing bench seat, cradled in his lap, wearing no pants.

And his fingers, so, so, so soft over her underwear, where it was folded into her labia and wet. He was still looking into her eyes, though. His look made what he was doing with his fingers feel almost unbearably good; she wanted him to look at her like that when she came because she suddenly liked the idea of coming harder than she ever had in her life and of having herself ruined for anything but orgasms in the arms of this man who looked at her as if she were spread out in the centerfold of a magazine, completely oiled with a fan blowing her hair into a gleaming halo.

He gathered up the slick scrap of her panty gusset and hooked it around his finger. Tugged.

“Fuck,”
she whispered. The bolt of pleasure made her hover her own hand near to his, in case she would have to take over and make it happen so her heart wouldn’t stop from the amazing pain of
almost
coming.

She bent her knees. She kind of didn’t want to look down and really look at what he was doing because the glimpse she stole, the way it felt, was so impossibly dirty she didn’t want to ruin it by second-guessing the moment.

Except that one side of his mouth sort of moved into this half smile she’d never seen him make before. And he licked his top lip and looked down himself.

Oh double fuck
.

Her panties had kind of disappeared between the folds of her swollen sex, which was all wet. His fingers looked so big, his thumb square to his wrist as he tugged her panties from side to side, everything so sloppy now, his fingers wet, even, and it felt amazing and looked worse. As dirty as she had thought.

Shameful, if shame were a convection of perfect heat draped over every square inch of skin at once.

He tugged and slipped around; and then she was right there.

Perfectly right there.

She tipped her legs over against his hips, balanced her butt in his lap, trapped his hand between her thighs, and buried her face into his neck, but he didn’t stop, just made his movements faster, more precise and explicit, and he kissed over her neck and he didn’t stop.

Not when she was bucking, not when she started humming insane noises against his throat, not when everything got to the very top, and she shoved her own hand down over his and they made a slippery tangle of their fingers that moved together until she
arched against him, against his hand and hers, against his body, and came in sweating, hot, slamming thuds.

She pulled her hand away and relaxed her legs. Kept her head in his neck because,
holy shit
, and
what the fuck?
She was already hot, her skin burning, but amazingly her heart was able to find a way to send a blush right up. Like a little flag from someplace she still had a little bit of shame camped out deep in her psyche. Perhaps from a part left over from her confirmation ceremony.

Hefin smoothed his hands slowly over her thighs in long strokes, and it felt so nice she let herself ease a little more. Then, as if to distract her, he kissed her hair while gently extricating her underwear and smoothing that, too, which made her shudder as her oversensitized tissue complained with tingling flutters, and she blushed again.

He kept up with the long strokes, all over, until his palms no longer skipped in drying patches of sweat and were, instead, gliding over goose bumps. She had hardly realized how much she relaxed, just focusing on those strokes, drifting on them, depending on the next one as it reliably came on the heels of the last.

Finally, she shivered, her body cooled from all pleasure and too loose to be more than naggingly embarrassed.

“Here,” he said, and adjusted them so she had to sit up, and he arranged her limbs until she realized he was fitting her into her T-shirt.

When he got it over her head, and gathered her hair very, very carefully out of the neckline, taking time to peel off the little chunks that were stuck with dried sweat around her temples, she had to huff in a sharp breath to stay the drips of tears that threatened.

“Could you …” She thought she was speaking, but what came out was a scratch, barely words. She looked into his face, which made her forget what she was going to ask. That seventeen-year-old was back, except this time, he was pleased and sly and knowing.

“Could I?” he asked. Then kissed her nose.

He was making it hard to be shy, by being Welsh and so cute.

“You’re very happy with yourself,” she said. He skimmed his fingers over her collarbones, over the back of her neck. It was so nice.

“Yes.”

She kissed deep into his cheek bristles, hard enough to make her almost want to sneeze when they poked her nose. “I am certain the very, very last little bit of my dignity is lying around here, somewhere. But it is such a small piece, I’ll never find it.”

“You’re gorgeous. That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, actually.”

She kissed his other cheek. “You may have some moves. Limo-worthy moves.”

“I think you could be right. I’ll have to ask Matthew Taylor.”

“Umm. So.”

“Yeah?” He was placing very small kisses over her jaw and neck. So small she could tell how his top lip was more generous and it felt like he was kissing her upside down.

“I didn’t really apply any of
my
moves, let’s say.”

“You’re worried I could be a bit uncomfortable.”

“Yes.”

“With a half-nude woman in my lap.”

“Yes.”

“Who just came all over me, like the world was ending.”

“I’m still not sure it didn’t, we haven’t rolled down the windows and looked. There might be nothing left but a smoking asteroid crater.”

“I’m good.”

He sounded ridiculous saying that, his o’s all long and the
d
divided into two syllables between a burr. Also, now he was the one flying a couple of pink flags in his cheeks.

The idea that he had come against her, while she was coming, just
because
she was coming?

She wanted to start all over again.

She wrapped her arms around his pretty shoulders and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. They kissed, nice and slow, their breath back in their chests and not so expansive.

The kissing was only difficult when she couldn’t stop smiling. And then he just kissed over her smiles. When he lost his rhythm, grinning, she kissed over his grin.

It went on that way for a while.

Smiles against kisses. Kisses against grins.

“You said you were an early riser.” Hefin tried not to pace between the sofa and the breakfast bar in the kitchen, but it was impossible. The moment she answered her phone with a sleepy “hello?” He couldn’t settle.

“I am.” He could hear the smile in her voice. He wondered if her hair tangled in her sleep or stuck to her cheeks and neck, or fuzzed about in clouds of static. He wondered if he would find out. He yanked open a drawer in the kitchen to get out a pad of paper and a pencil to focus the direction of his thoughts.

“You sound as though I woke you.”

“You did, but I’m glad. I overslept.”

He made himself sketch a buckeye tree and a farmhouse slated for a panel in the library. He had drawn Destiny enough, already. “Tired?”

Her laugh made his body feel so good all over it was almost frustrating. “No, not tired. Just a long day yesterday. After I dropped you off I went to see my sister.”

“Is she okay?” Almost better than kissing and touching her yesterday was the time they’d spent lying on the floor of the passenger bay, their legs on the back bench seat, looking up through the sunroof she’d opened at the clouds racing by.

“You didn’t manage to get up to bat, so you don’t have to tell me anything,” he had said.

The view, the leftover lushness over his skin like she’d rubbed it into him, made it easy to talk. It reminded him of the hours on his dad’s small sailboat, both of them so occupied with the business of chasing the wind and the lines around the windy bay that they revealed more than they ever would have looking into each other’s faces with all the time in the world to speak.

They had talked. And she’d told him about Sarah. He’d meant to tell her about Jessica, but had found himself telling her about Beijing, instead. In exchange for her sad story, and his longing one, they’d kissed, for a long time, and it had felt like a kiss good-bye.

Properly suffused with thanks and memory.

Afterward, they’d both sat up at the same time. She had trouble meeting his eyes, even as she still smiled. He hadn’t anticipated any awkwardness, not at all, and the fact that it had invaded made him angry, chased away his words.

She gave him her number and told him to call, if he wanted, after a quiet ride back to his condo. He wanted to ask her in. But it had felt too much like a rush he hadn’t felt since he invited himself up to a beautiful woman’s hotel room on her blustery vacation—out of time and too serious at once.

He hadn’t wanted to negotiate the good-bye in the morning. Or not saying good-bye, then making every minute an excuse to spend another minute together, until the entire time they spent in the other’s arms was an excuse to keep away from anything else beyond the borders of the bed.

Until leaving the bed was leaving.

But he’d asked if he could ring her in the morning.

He looked down at his drawing.

He’d gotten her smile just right.

“She was okay. Sleepy. But Sam got her to eat and rest, somehow, so she looked a lot better. I’d like her to stay with me tonight. Maybe convince her that we should be roommates for a while.”

“That would help her?”

“She’s not getting around very well, and Sam thinks she’ll need revision surgery soon. I could save expenses, she’d have someone to take on the stuff she couldn’t take care of during recovery.”

“That sounds reasonable.”
Good-bye
, he thought.

“What are you doing?” A yawn was mixed up in her question and he wondered if she’d stretched, too. If she was still under her duvet. What she slept in.

“Drawing.”

“What are you drawing?”

He blushed. Ever sixteen. “Ah. You, I suppose.”

“Me?”

“Seeing as you’re so keen on nude modeling.”

She laughed. “Are you drawing me naked?”

No, he wasn’t. He was drawing her smiling. He was drawing the two darker flecks of mica in her left eye that looked like an oak leaf. He was drawing her freckles,
from memory, and was near certain he wasn’t missing any. “No,” he said. Terrible to elaborate, in this case.