He smiled gently. ‘Yeah. It is.’
Lifting a hand, he pushed a stray chunk of hair off her face, and whatever air had been managing to get through to her lungs suddenly shut off altogether. Her pulse at her temple fluttered madly as his fingers slid whisper light down her cheek. Then it thrummed thick and slow through her belly as his thumb brushed against her mouth.
‘God, Sweeney,’ he muttered, staring at her lips as if they’d been dipped in cocaine and he was starving for a fix. ‘I don’t think I can pretend I don’t want to kiss you anymore.’
His admission was calamitous on one hand, and yet just right on the other. Tension oozed from every muscle. He sounded as conflicted and bewildered as she felt, and it should have been a warning, but it only drew her closer.
Whatever this was, they were both in it together.
Drawing in a shaky breath, she admitted the same. ‘I don’t think I can pretend that I don’t want you to kiss me, either.’
She smiled then at the hopelessness of their situation. Them both trying to cling to something theyweren’tany longer because they didn’t know how to be the other thing, either.
‘If we let this thing happen,’ he murmured huskily, ‘we’ll never be able to go back.’
Sweeney nodded—she knew. But she also knew they’d already reached that point anyway. They’d been pretending they could return to what they had before, return to just friends, but their relationship had evolved to a point where she doubted that was possible.
‘Unless…’ His fingers thrust into her hair now as his palm cradled her jaw and he closed what little distance was between them, his eyes glittering with desire, his body bristling with a hungry kind of energy as it settled flush against hers. ‘What happens at the Gold Coast stays at the Gold Coast?’
A wild flutter behind her belly button hijacked any chance Sweeney had at rational thought. It was a bullshit statement and she knew it. She knewheknew it. But in the incredible anticipation of the moment, she let herself believe that maybe for the first time ever in the history of fake dating relationships,theycould make it work.
‘Yes.’ She nodded as she lifted to her tiptoes. ‘Yes.’
Their mouths met in a whoosh of air and delightfully scratchy whiskers and a hungry clash of teeth and tongues because this timenobodywas watching them—not the team, not the town, not their mothers—and that was exhilarating. Two noisy sighs spilled into the charged air, two hands slid and clutched, two sets of feet—one moving forward, the other back—until Sweeney’s shoulder blades found the nearby wall with a thunk she barely registered.
All she was conscious of was Fin’s body hot and hard against her—his chest flattening her breasts, the bony prominences of his hips digging into the softer contours of hers, one thigh pressed between her legs, firm against the seam of her denim capris, proving to be both torture and bliss as her hips flexed, looking for relief from the relentless pressure.
And the noises. The hammer of her heart and the answering hammer of his, rattling through her rib cage. The roar of her breathing and the roar of his, swelling in her head. The combined aromas of their bodies—sea and sand and burger joint beer meeting the rich scent of burgeoning pheromones.
All of it filling her senses more headily than the bouquet of the finest wine.
Sensation after sensation after sensation bombarded her as his mouth slanted over hers, his tongue stroked over hers, his hands roved over her. Roved over her breasts, the dip of her waist, the roundness of her ass, holding on there and kneading. Sensations so relentless she was drowning in them, clinging to him as he plundered her mouth and raided her senses.
For the life of her, Sweeney couldn’t remember ever wanting a man like this. Ever needing his next touch, his next kiss, as desperately as she needed Fin’s.
Fin.Was it crazy that it was Fin all along?
‘Christ,’ he muttered, dragging his mouth from hers, leaving her gasping for air and hungering for more. His lips slid to her neck as he kissed from the angle of her jaw to the pulse bounding at the base of her throat, puffing trails of hot air in his wake. ‘I’ve never wanted anybody like this.’
Sweeney moaned as Fin repeated her thought as though he’d reached into her brain and plucked it out. As though he knew her thoughts as intimately as he knew what her body needed. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Sympatico. Too many first times were awkward and fumbling, trying to get it right and not look inept or desperate. But this? Being with Fin like this was like… finding the other half to the whole.
And now he was dragging the thoughts right out of her head and giving them voice. And it should be scary, but actually it was just freakinghotter.
His hand breached the hem of her Banshees jersey and travelled up, higher and higher, until he cupped a breast, his thumb rubbing across a nipple already tormented by the confines of lace and satin. A dart of one hundred proof pleasure shot straight to the hard knot of nerves pulsing between her legs and Sweeney gasped as it flared like a starburst through the muscles of her belly and thighs and ass.
Sweeney shoved her hand into the thick waves of his hair, gripping hard as she pulled his mouth away from her neck, satisfied to see a feral kind of lust glazing his eyes. ‘I’m going to die if you’re not inside me in the next few seconds,’ she panted.
Sweeney didn’t care how greedy she sounded. Howbossy. She was no more in control of this thing than Fin, by the look of him, and whatever higher power was at work, it would not be disobeyed. Thankfully, he was on the same page, not stopping to question or suggest they take it slow, just yanking her off the wall and dragging her by the hand, stumbling and tripping with her as they toed off their shoes and shucked their clothes on the way to their big, fucking beautiful bed.
His eyes were on her then and Sweeney would have thought in this moment, where she was stark naked in front of a guy who’d been her best friend forever, that she would feel shy and awkward and self-conscious about this body of hers she’d never felt a hundred per cent good about, but his tour was unhurried, reverential, appreciative, as was his slow, rough exhale.
‘Fuck,’he muttered.
Sweeney laughed, despite the insistent voice inside demanding she didn’t dally. ‘Back at ya,’ she murmured, taking in the firm, lean lines of his body and the hard, not-so-lean lines of what he was packing between his legs.
Although right now, it wasnotbetween his legs.No siree.That mighty specimen of male anatomy was standing to attention, long and proud and ready for action.
Mouth suddenly dry, she returned her attention to his face, their gazes locking. Like her, she could see no sense of shyness, no doubt, just a feverish glitter in his eyes and the uneven chug of his breathing satisfying her in ways she never knew existed. ‘Condom?’
