Long Shot (19 page)

He stretched his arms over the back of the chair, pressed his head into the cushion, and stared up at the ceiling beams. “I wish you’d told me that back then. I wish you would’ve just said, ‘Leith, I have a shitty mom and a shitty home and I have to get as far away from that as possible.’”

“But it was still too close to me then. I didn’t want anyone in Gleann to find out. The whole point was to pretend I was someone else and then literally become another person. Someone stronger.”

He pulled his head off the cushion. “You are stronger. I can see it. So can everyone else.”

And he hated himself for being selfish, for wanting her to stay with him all those years ago when she otherwise would have missed the opportunity to become this incredible, giving, talented person. To evolve.

I really did love you
, he wanted to tell her.
And I can see myself doing it all over again.

“I really did love you.”

The words cut through the growing noise in the lounge. It took several shakes of his head for him to realize that it was Jen who’d said them. It was Jen who had somehow heard his thoughts and repeated them back, simply because he’d wanted her to.

She was smiling and moving to the very edge of her chair cushion. Knees pressed together, legs angled to the side, she leaned over the table, closer to him. There was such aching beauty to her. It made every place she was in feel smaller, with her perpetually in the center.

“In my young, inexperienced way,” she said, extremely matter-of-factly, “I loved you. You probably don’t want to hear that now, do you? You didn’t want to hear it back then, and I didn’t blame you.”

His turn to scoot to the edge of the chair, only his legs bracketed the small table as he pressed his elbows to his thighs and leaned in. Their whiskey glasses now stared up at them from where they touched on the table. Hers was empty; his was not.

“I do want to hear it,” he said. “Thank you.” He was very glad she didn’t say
you’re welcome.
That politeness might have undone him. There was a sharp-edged need for her corkscrewing its way through his body. Hearing those two courteous words, on top of knowing what she’d gone through and that her feelings for him had once been real, and layered over what had nearly happened the other night . . . he was like a grenade, all primed and ready to go and just waiting for someone to pull out his pin. Waiting for her.

It was more than desire, more than sex. He had to make that clear to her, because he didn’t think he could be with her naked if there wasn’t going to be more when they were clothed. She needed to know how he felt and what he wanted. And what he wanted exactly, he just now realized.

“After you left,” he said, touching his fingertips together, “I had a string of really awful relationships, most never longer than a few months.” Carefully he watched her face, the way her jaw tightened and her eyelashes twitched in a barely discernible blink. “At the time I didn’t realize what I was doing, but I’m pretty sure I was purposely choosing the wrong girls. Deep down I knew that those things would never last, because none of them would ever compare to you.”

The last time he’d said something similar, Jen had sprinted in the opposite direction. But that corkscrew was turning tighter and tighter, and the pressure inside him was ready to burst. He had to get this all out, had to ease the weight bearing down on him.

Her shoulders dropped, the deep V-neck of her dress tightening across her chest, making him hard. He ignored it. He needed more than that. He needed her.

“Now that I’ve seen you again, now that I know our chemistry wasn’t faked, I know we can be good together again, Jen. Hell, we could be fucking fantastic. I’m pretty sure, all those years ago when I was picking the wrong women, my mind was holding out hope that you’d come back. It knew something I didn’t. Go figure.”

“Leith—”

He didn’t want to hear any protests, didn’t want her going through any of those lists she loved so much in her mind. Not yet. “Just hear me out, okay?” She nodded, and he began to tick off reasons on his fingers. “We can laugh about anything without embarrassment. We respect each other. We know each other’s past. We talk incredibly easily. I want to tell you things, Jen. So, so many things. We are both smart and business-minded, and we each have drive and dreams.” Honesty ran through his blood and bones and muscles, the most powerful of which was his tongue and lips. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to.

“And look at you”—he waved a hand at her—“you drive me goddamn insane, you’re so beautiful. Ah, fuck it, Jen; I’m just going to say it. I want to be with you. I want to try to make it work again. You’re in New York. I’ll be in Connecticut. I want to try, Jen. I have to try. I have to have you.”

And there it was. He’d done it again. He may as well have slit open his chest, carved out his heart, and slapped it on the table between the whiskey glasses.

The longest pause in the world followed, and he had no idea how to fill it. When she slowly rose to her feet, the smooth fabric of her dress pulling snugly around her legs, he had an awful, sickly vision of her leaving again.

Then her eyes turned to green flame, like something magical, and the corners of her delicious mouth ticked up, and he did a mental fist pump.

“I know that look,” he murmured, catching her infectious smile and finally allowing himself to feel the pound of blood in his erection. Let himself ride the desire without reins.

“Oh, you do, do you?” The lounge had gotten loud, but somehow he still heard her.

He slid all the way back in the chair and lifted his face to hers. “I do. You’re going to kiss me.” He glanced down at his lap. “And you’re going to come over here to do it.”

Chapter

15

H
is statement pulled Jen toward him with a tender insistence. Her gaze dropped to his lap, where he was sporting a mighty proud hard-on. “I am?” she asked.

“Yes. You’re going to kiss the hell out of me, and I can’t fucking wait.”

He wore the barest hint of a smile, but it was full of cocky assurance. And his eyes . . . oh, man, his eyes. Sparkling circles the color of their drinks, hard and penetrating, bored into her. She hated being told what to do, but he knew—he
knew
—that for him she was putty.

Their gazes connected and held, tightening an invisible chain between them that not even his giant-ass truck could drive through. He licked his lips. Flashback to that tongue working her nipples and trailing down her belly. Flashback to the shivers he’d drawn on her skin before Olsen had shown up.

A hot burst of desire radiated out from between her legs, knocking her knees out, making her instantly wet. The delicate friction of her thong rubbed in such a powerful way that it seemed impossible to hide, like she was broadcasting her desire to everyone in the lounge. She let herself peek around. The two of them were tucked into an intimate corner. No one was watching. No one cared. Except Leith.

He settled deeper into the armchair, pressing his shoulders against the leather and widening his legs.

“Get on,” he said with a grin.

“You’re so crude.”

“No. I’m honest.”

She loved that honesty. Always had. As she stepped between his legs, she wanted to lick the knowing look off his face. Placing her hands on his armrests and letting her hair swing forward, just shy of brushing his cheeks, she slid one knee between his hip and the soft leather. Without breaking their mutual stare, his hand dropped off the armrest and his fingers curled around the back of her leg. The jersey of her favorite dress, the one that fit her just right, bunched in his palm. There was possession in that grip. Possession and need. Pressing one hand on his shoulder, his muscles tense and warm under his shirt, she slid her other knee around his opposite hip.

“Come ’ere,” he murmured, but she was already going. Already leaning down, her mouth covering his the same moment her ass dropped and she straddled him. Clung to him with every limb. The whiskey made their kiss spicy, their tongues entwining in slow surges.

This was Leith MacDougall she was kissing.
Leith.
Though the feel of him burned her everywhere, his presence undeniable, she still couldn’t believe that he’d been returned to her after how she’d treated him. She couldn’t believe that they were together at all. It defied logistics or chance.

This was Leith MacDougall she wanted now more than food or water, and the depth of that need scared her . . . and fueled her.

With a low groan that made his chest vibrate, his hands spread across her back and tugged her closer. She collapsed onto him, arms wrapped around his neck, the weight of her body sinking them deeper into the chair.

Leith. This was
Leith
. How did this happen?
Again?
The wonder of it all made her head so very light.

Then his hands were in her hair, tilting her head so he could kiss her in new ways, with new strokes. He demanded a deeper kiss, and there was absolutely no resistance left in her. Underneath, his thighs flexed, pushed up against her, shifting her. The wrap of her dress parted over her legs. With a sharp, surprising sensation, he settled her against his hardened cock, the bulge and rigid line of his zipper hitting her right where she wanted him most. This was borderline obsession. If she didn’t get him inside her
right fucking now
she’d die.

In the back of her mind she knew they were making out like drunken twenty-year-olds in a public place—a shadowy corner of a dim bar, but a public place nonetheless—but she just didn’t care. It was so very unlike her, and it was fantastically, deliriously freeing.

Close by, someone cleared his throat. The sound made her drag her mouth away from Leith’s—the sting of her lips and tongue aching with loss—and she looked up to see a group of men assuming the big chairs at the next table over. They weren’t looking directly at Jen and Leith, but their eyebrows were raised and they smirked at each other.

Public place. Right.

Embarrassed, Jen pushed off Leith and scrambled to her feet. He was looking up at her with a deeply furrowed brow, like her absence pained him. Like he didn’t know what to do with what raged inside him. His fingers dug into the armrests.

He was still the Leith she’d known since she was a kid, but the emotions shooting through her and driving her body to such extreme need were anything but childish.

The other night, back in Gleann, they’d been physically attached to the past: shooting darts in the pub they used to work in, strolling down the streets they’d walked hundreds of times, kicking through the grass of the central park they knew so well. That night, it had been nearly impossible to separate their past selves from all the stuff that had happened to them since. It had created this big jumble of memories and feelings, old images mixing together with the current, and she had had no idea how to parse them out. She had had no idea what to feel or how to react, and for someone who had so carefully planned her life, it had been more than disconcerting.

But here, in New York City, they were Leith and Jen. Two distinct people. Adults. Drowning in desire. She touched his lips, loving how she made them fall open, how she’d made them all wet.

Someone else cleared her throat and Jen turned slightly to see Shea setting their bill in an upright V on the table. The lounge owner didn’t look at them as she sauntered away to attend to the new gentlemen customers who grinned giddily up at her.

Leith scooted to the edge of his chair, the creak of the leather giving away his movements. Jen looked down to see his legs encasing hers. Her thighs quivered, her head swam. His hand came up to curve around her waist—a gentle pressure, the slightest of squeezes. The question implicit.

“Yes.” She nodded vehemently. “My place.”

That almost-pained look returned, deep grooves gouging into his forehead, only this time, he sighed in clear relief. As his chest pumped, he smiled up at her. She felt herself sway and she reached for his steadying shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked. “Something affecting you?”

She should have known the vulnerability wouldn’t last. At least his teasing broke the spell enough that she could open the bill and see she owed Shea close to ninety dollars. Leith didn’t touch Jen as she waited for the hostess to run her card through. He didn’t touch her as they exited the Amber and not as they stood on the curb, hailing a cab.

Only when they’d fallen into the white taxi that smelled faintly of patchouli did he reach across the seat for her. He touched her first on her knee, running his finger over the hem of her dress, nudging it higher with patient little jerks. Then, in one swift movement, he slid his hand under the jersey and up. All the way up.

Jen rolled her head toward him on the cracked vinyl headrest, but he was staring at where his fingers had found the slick, swollen place underneath her dress.

“What are you trying to do to me?” she whispered, attempting to weasel out of the touch, with the cabbie less than two feet away and all. And the fact that they were in the back of an NYC cab.

He held her tight as his eyes flipped up to hers. “Not ‘trying’ to do anything. I just do.” Then his mouth found her ear, his whisper filling her head. “And I’m going to do you.”

Maybe not the most romantic thing to say, but she didn’t care. Not now. Not when her entire existence had spiraled down to her clit and the emptiness she was dying for him to fill. The dirty, honest words made her eyes shut, and she was a little horrified by the sound of surrender that escaped her throat. So un-Jen-like.

There were four other people in the elevator on the ride up to the twenty-first floor of her building in the Village. Leith wedged himself into the back corner and pulled Jen into him. His huge forearms wrapped around her shoulders, cradling her gently. It was strangely intimate, there in a metal box being shot into the sky. Her head fit perfectly against the firmness of his chest. The top, inward curve of her ass pressed against the erection that hadn’t died, just felt even more imposing, if that was possible. The need to kiss him made her shake from withdrawal. Could this elevator go any slower?

The other people got off on the twelfth and twentieth floors. The second the last person stepped off, the intimate embrace ended. Leith flipped Jen around to get at her mouth, but she’d already tilted her face up and was going in. They kissed like they hadn’t kissed in ten years, sloppy and hard. They were still kissing as he walked her backward out of the elevator on the twenty-first floor. She lost her bearings, and when she hit the wall opposite the elevator, the force knocked some of the breath from her lungs.

When she ripped away and he began to lick up her neck, she found the ability to say, “We’re not doing this in the hallway.”

“No.” He raised his head to show her that wicked grin. “We’re doing it in your apartment. Which one is it?”

She fumbled for her keys and stumbled on legs drunk more on lust than whiskey down to the end of the hall. It took three tries to get the key into the two locks because Leith was covering her from behind, one hand skimming over her chest, the other painting a light line up and down the front of her thigh.

At last she got the door open and they fell inside, tripping over each other’s feet. He was trying to direct her deeper inside, but this was her place and she knew where she liked to have sex. She got him swung around, turning the tables, and pinned him between the small table where she usually dumped her keys and the beach prints she’d bought in Cabo San Lucas. His lips curved up in what she guessed to be surprise and amusement—and something else she couldn’t quite name . . . a dare, maybe?—and then he buried his hands in the hair behind her ears and pulled her into him. She was practically climbing him already, so when he grabbed her legs and hoisted her body higher onto his, she felt like she was flying.

He peeled away from the entrance and lumbered into the living room at a speed that spelled disaster. He didn’t know the layout of her apartment, couldn’t see where the furniture was in the dark.

“Watch out for the—” she began. Too late.

He hit the low couch that was set near the floor-to-ceiling windows, lost his balance, and dropped her onto the firm black leather. As she bounced, he tripped and fell on top of her. Not the most graceful of entrances into sex.

“Thanks for the warning.” He was laughing, but his hand found her face, searching.

He must have mistaken her squirming for discomfort, because he tried to shift his weight off her, but she wrapped one leg and one arm around him. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not.” He hooked his hands under her arms and pushed her farther up the couch, moving her as easily as a pillow. Pausing, testing the leather with his palms, he frowned at the long, low couch with no sides or back. “What is this thing?”

“I have no idea. A really big ottoman? Leith, I don’t care.”

He pushed up on his elbows and angled his head so he could look at the thing under the city lights streaming in. “No sides. Close to the floor. I could get you in just about any position on this thing. And you, me. Jesus, Jen, it’s a sex couch, is what it is.”

She laughed. “It is not!”

He fell back on top of her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth and setting her on fire. “It is now.”

“We’ve got all night to use it.”

At that, he rose above her, huge and glorious in the city glow, his hair mussed. He didn’t reach for her, just touched her with that eleven-ton stare.

“Yes,” he said. “We do.”

A few long, agonizing seconds later, he reached down and toyed with the hem of her dress, flipping back the flap to expose her parted thighs. He fingered the outer tie of the dress and set it free with a tug, then he released the inner clasp that held the whole thing together. With a gentle sweep, he opened the dress and bared her. She lay there, loving it.

He opened his mouth, took a short breath. Yeah, he wanted to say something, and it was troubling him, because his eyebrows pinched together and the finger running painfully slowly back and forth across the tendon in her upper thigh paused.

She refused to let him stop. She dug in her heels and arched her back, thrusting herself up into his touch. He caught his breath, shook his head as though coming back into himself.

His gaze wandered a path up her body. “God, you’re sexy.”

All she could think was:
God, I’ve missed you. I was such a fool to let you go.

Where had that come from? It wasn’t like she’d been sitting here in her apartment, pining for him these ten years and moaning,
If only, if only.
Except . . . she’d missed him. There’d been a hole in her life where he belonged, and she’d been stepping over and around it for so long that she’d completely forgotten how that negative space affected her life.

She needed to be naked. With him. She hooked thumbs under the straps of her thong and started to push it down, but his big hands clamped over hers, slowly plucking her fingers off.