Perfectly Unmatched (18 page)

She’s wringing her hands and the tears are rolling down her face in fat, wet blobs. A girl’s tears usually make me panic, but I want to help her through this. I want to be in control so
badly, I just pick up the handkerchief and wipe her face dry.

“I know. I know, I know. But you have no idea how intimidating they can be. How crazy this all is. And, you know, I had this boyfriend?”

I wipe her nose gently. “Yes. I’ve heard.”

She smiles. “You sound just like Colonel Brandon talking about Willoughby.”

“Listen well, then. Brandon wound up being right. In every way, didn’t he?” I take her hands in mine.

“You’ve read
Sense and Sensibility
?” Her mouth hangs open slightly. She has an amazingly plump bottom lip.

“Yes.” I sigh. “And I enjoy calligraphy and don’t want to have meaningless sex with you. If they ever bothered to issue me a man card, I would surrender it to you right now.”

“I love all that about you,” she says, her entire face suddenly still and serious. “Not that you like those things in particular. Just that you like what you like. You are who you are. There’s no pretending with you. I feel like my entire existence is one big game of pretend.”

“Not at all.”
I rub my thumbs over her knuckles. “I am a socially awkward fool, and you are a gorgeous woman who understands that being a grownup means you sometimes have to put what you want aside.”

She licks her lips and presses them together hard. “What if I’m tired of always putting what I want aside? I did it for Damian. I tried so hard to be the girlfriend he’d want to marry. I
dated him for my family, because I thought he’d be a good fit for them. And I found him...six inches deep in his secretary.” One side of her mouth slides up.

“Six inches, eh?” I chuckle.

“More like five. Five and a half if I was being generous,” she giggles.

When she stops laughing, I take a deep breath and ask the question I’m scared out of my skull to bring up to her. “So, what is it you want,
Benelli?”

There’s an answer I want and don’t want.

One simple word that my brain will tell me to ignore, but my body, and my heart, will be unable to resist.

One word that will forever change this summer and all the summers after it, along with the springs and winters and autumns.

One word that will make it impossible for me to just walk away.

She opens her mouth and leans closer to me.

“You.”

Benelli
5

“Me?” He rubs one hand on the back of his neck, which warms to a bright red.

“Yes. You.” I tug on his hand and he walks to the bed, one cautious step at a time.

“You’re in a very vulnerable place,” he says, sitting on the mattress next to me.

I can smell the sharp cologne and ink scent of him. His fingertips are stained black, and there are callouses along his fingers that catch on my skin as I slide my hand under his.

“My father may be cheating on my mother.” The words fall out of the clear blue, and
Cormac keeps his face completely calm when he hears them.

“You found this out the other day?” he asks. I nod. “Their romance...”

“Is a sham. Maybe,” I say to fill the silence where he left off.

“No one knows what goes on inside a marriage except the people in it,
Benelli. I’d be careful who you trust.” Cormac uses the scratchy pad of his thumb to wipe back a tear I didn’t even realize was falling.

“The part of their story that I loved was that amazing love-at-first-sight romance.” I run my fingers over his bruised skin, bruised for me. “I love that they spontaneously saw each other and felt something and defied everything and everyone for it. I know it’s romantic and stupid, but I want a piece of that.” I lean in and kiss his lips, which are soft and uncertain.

He rubs his palms down his thighs and to his knees. “But Benelli, they got married. They followed that first crush through.”

“And maybe they cheated.” I kiss him again, and he groans. When I pull back, his eyes are half shut. I run my fingers close to his lashes, and they feather under my touch. “If you’re with me, and I marry someone else, I’ll always have this. This, what you and I have alone together...it will stay pure. And perfect. We’ll never have that whole screwed-up ending.”

“That’s a fly in amber, Benelli. That isn’t reality.” He whispers the words close to my ear, and, even though I don’t like his message, the tickle of his breath sends shivers up and down my neck.

“It’s our own reality,” I whisper back. “Please?”

How can I tell him that I want this gentle, sweet summer fling? That I want something rosy and soft to sink into when everything else in my planned life marches on the way it has to despite any objections I might have? I’m fine with giving almost everything up. I just want one tiny sliver for myself.

“I can’t say no to you.” He lets out a guttural grunt and we fall back onto the mattress. I’d been with Damian before...we’d just never had sex. So I’d never gotten that
fulfilment every romance novel always promised.

I’m so curious about it.
Curious about it and starving for it.

Cormac
tugs up on the light fabric of my layered tanks and sucks a breath in.

“No bra?” he grits out.

“I was getting ready for bed. I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I admit while he tugs the shirt completely off and leaves me exposed.

His eyes rake over my breasts and up to my face, and the twist of his lips bottoms my stomach out. “You could call anytime and I’d come running. There isn’t a chance in hell you’d need me, and I wouldn’t come to you.”

My breath is hitched in my throat and his mouth finds mine, quickly nipping and gently tracing the curves of my lips with his teeth and tongue. I mimic him, but there’s something frenzied and wild about his kisses tonight. He’s kissing like he doesn’t have a minute to waste, like I’ll evaporate under his hands if he doesn’t keep pace.

And I realize that he’s probably on the right speed.

This will all be shared and over in a blip, and it makes me sad before it even happens.

I put both my hands on either side of his face, sandpaper-rough with five o’clock shadow. “Slower.”

“I’ll try,” he says, brushing his nose against mine. “But I can’t promise anything, Benelli. This is...more than I can...more than I...”

He never finishes. He kisses me instead. I can feel from the tense brace of his shoulders that he’s making a Herculean attempt to slow down, and every single brush of his lips and slide of his tongue is like some kind of concentrated act of self-restraint.

And it’s driving me crazy.

I’ve had guys kiss my neck before, but I’ve never had my body seize and buck under the single stroke of a tongue against my throat. He licks and
pulls, kisses and breathes over the damp patches of skin, and my arms, shoulder to wrist, break into goosebumps.

“Are you
could?” His voice severs through the sinuous stream of me and him and us together in this bed, and I’m jarred into answering suddenly.

“No. No. I’m, um...
Cormac.” Once I answered ‘no’ the first time, his tongue went back to doing the lazy acrobatics over my skin that make my pulse thrum.

I run my hands up and down his back, feeling the tight, sinewy muscle under my fingernails. When I catch the hem of his shirt, I drag it up, my fingers coasting over his knobby spin, and yank it off his head, breaking the connection of his mouth and mine for a single second that has me instantly agitated and wanting to kiss him again immediately.

He’s long and lean and wiry, not like the bulked-up guys I’m used to dating. I squeeze at the resistant bulge of his bicep. “Do you workout?”

His smile answers my hokey pickup line. “I was on the rowing team, and I got used to the exercise. It helps me think. So I use the rowing machine at my school’s gym.
All the benefits of lean muscle, none of the drawbacks of a group of competitive pricks screaming in your ear to row faster.”

“Rowing, huh?” I drag my hands over the bulges and dips of his muscles, appreciating the length and strength of him.

“Not very sexy, is it? We can pretend I do kickboxing. Or mixed martial arts?” He’s joking, again, but I can tell from the way nothing is relaxed on his body that he’s embarrassed.

“I think rowing is sexy as hell.” I take one of his hands and link it with mine, palm to palm. “Is it the oars that make your hands so calloused?”

“Yes.” His voice is a little shaky as my hand moves down his pecs, rock hard and defined, over his long, lean abs, and to his waistband.

“I don’t want you kickboxing or doing mixed martial arts.” My fingers flick the button to his jeans open and his eyelids hood over his eyes. “I don’t want anyone smashing your face.”

“It is quite...pretty, isn’t it?” His attempt at humor gets interrupted by my hand, venturing lower, down past the waistband of his boxers. Suddenly the only sound from his mouth is his breathing, heavy and quick.

I’m not completely sure what I’m doing. Damian was always aggressive, pushy, telling me what to do and moving my hands around, pressing down hard until I was basically just a puppet he used to fulfill his sexual needs. I don’t know what to do now on my own, so I stop.

I expect his hand to come down and guide me, but his mouth goes back to its determined work, kissing and licking at my skin, brushing along my clavicle and down to the tops of my breasts, which pull tight under his touch. There’s a strange tingling rush that intensifies when he traces a smooth path of kisses down the curve and to my nipple, which he pulls in and sucks at.

This has all happened before. I’ve done this before. So why does it suddenly feel like this is the first time? It’s like the difference between watching my local dance studio perform
Swan Lake
and then going to see the Russian ballet dance it. Same music, same steps, same costuming...but the effortless art, the sense of perfection and focus that drove the people who’d given up their lives to just dance, every day, all the time, was spellbinding in a way that put it on an altogether different level than the amateurs.

If I’d had to choose based on the exterior alone and maybe also with some general hype peppered in, I would have imagined Damian to be the more experienced, satisfying lover.
Cormac seemed goofy, more romantic than sexual, and like he’d fumble and joke a lot.

And we are.
Joking. And going slow and speeding up. And he’s romantic in every unexpected way I never anticipated, a breathless, body-aching way. But the focus Cormac pays to my reactions when he kisses me, the half-starved, half-reverent look in his eyes whenever he pulls away and glances down, the scratch of the skin on his hands and fingers against the softest skin on my body, makes me feel like every force in the universe is concentrated on this bed and our bodies tonight. I’ve never had an experience like this, and I’m hungry for more even while I’m still in the middle of it.

His lips dip over my other nipple, and he sucks it in, his tongue sliding against the sensitive peak. I brace both hands on his back and pull up towards him, instinctively wanting deeper into his mouth, even though it makes him less able to concentrate on the rhythm of sucking and licking that was bringing my body to the brink. But he never gets rushed or upset or
frustrated. If I move and throw us off, he finds a new rhythm and leads us to an entirely different form of crazy hot passion.

He sucks hard on one breast and his hand palms the other, his fingers squeezing and kneading until my breath switches beats and trips out in rapid skips.

He unsucks his mouth and drags his cheek across the soft skin, burying his scratchy face between my breasts.

“Holy god, you have the most amazing breasts,
Benelli.” He keeps both hands on them, my nipples abraded by the rough scratch of his palms as his mouth dips lower, forging a trail down between my ribs, his tongue making lazy circles around my bellybutton. His arms are stretched over his head as his forehead leans on my belly and his mouth presses, hot and needy, against the thin cotton of my shorts.

There’s too much going on for my mind to focus on any one piece of this. My skin jumps under his hands, and I press into him, inviting him to hold more than his hands can manage, kiss more than his mouth can cover. Between my legs there’s a hot, slick need, and I’ve been right here so many times before, but there was never a smashing point. It was like building a wall of blocks that went sky high, and never being able to enjoy the pleasure of knocking it back down.

I want it all to explode. I want to feel it all. Every shred of it. Every messy, moaning, crazy piece of it.

Cormac
drags his ink-stained, rough fingers down the dips and curves of my body and snares them around the waistband of my shorts.

“Will your aunt hear us?” he asks, his pragmatic question breaking the crazy amazing bubble of pure heaven I’m floating in.

Take my pants off. Now!

“No. No one will hear.” I buck my hips and he pulls the waistband down an inch.