Page 54

She looked down at the space he’d left between them, then back at him.

“See?”

“Liv.”

“Stop being careful.”

He put his hand on the back of her neck under the cap and his mouth on hers, and nothing in him was careful.

She came up into it like she’d been waiting a foot away for him to quit being a fool, both hands in the front of his coat, pulling, and he walked her back two steps into the tack room wall with the chain rattling on its nail beside her head and got his other hand under her jaw and kissed her the way he’d wanted to at the creek and every Tuesday since. Her cap came off. It went somewhere in the hay. Her mouth opened under his, and she made a sound in her throat that went down him like a hand.

“Coat,” she said, against his mouth.

“It’s cold.”

“I don’t care what it is.”

She had his coat open and her hands under his shirt, flat on his stomach, cold enough to make him hiss. She laughed into his mouth at the hiss, dragged her palms up his ribs, didn’t warm them anywhere first. He got her shirt open. Buttons, not fast, his hands weren’t steady enough for fast, and she stood against the boards with her back arched off the wall and let him, and watched him do it, and when he got the last one she said, “Well?” like she was waiting on a count.

“Give me a second.”

“You’ve had long enough.”

“Then give me one more.”

“You’re looking.”

“I’m looking.”

“Look, then. Quit standing there like you’ll get charged for it.”

He put his mouth on her. Her collarbone, the top of her breast above the cotton, and then he pulled the cup down with his thumb and took her nipple in his mouth and she said his name to the rafters, loud, no thought of who might be in the yard, and her hands went into his hair and held him there. He was hard against her hip. He didn’t move it off her. She pushed into it, pushed into him with her hip and pulled his head down harder against her breast and said, “Other one,” and he did the other one, and her breath came apart against the top of his head.

His belt. Her hands were at it. He caught them, put them on his chest, went for hers instead, the button and the zipper, and she said, “Owen,” in a voice with no air in it, and he got his hand inside her jeans, over the cotton, and she was wet through it.

“Liv.”

“Don’t you say one careful word to me.”

“I wasn’t going to.” He got his fingers under the cotton, into her, hot and slick and open, and her forehead came down on his shoulder. “I was going to say you’re soaked.”

“I’ve been soaked since Saturday, you⁠—”

She lost the end of it. He found her clit with his thumb, two fingers inside her, and she rode his hand against the wall with her face in his neck, her breath coming hot and fast against his skin, and he talked to her low, into her hair. “That’s it. Right there. You feel like nothing I’ve ever had my hands on.” She said yes. “Say my name again. Louder than the last time.” She said it, loud, and “There,” and “Owen, don’t stop, don’t you dare,” and he didn’t. Her legs started to go. He got his free arm around her back and held her up against the boards and kept his hand moving, and she fisted both hands in the front of his shirt and pulled his collar half off his neck and came against him with her mouth open on his throat and his name in it, all of it, her whole body going tight and then loose, her hands still fisted in his shirt like she’d fall if she let go.

He held her. Her breath came down slow against his neck. The chain had quit rattling.

Then her hands opened and went down him, down his chest, his stomach, to his belt, and got the tongue of it out of the keeper. He was so hard he hurt. He was shaking with it, and he took her wrists and stopped them.

She went still against him.

He held her wrists a second longer. Then he let them go, took his hand out of her jeans, stepped back, one step, into the hay.

She looked at him. She didn’t do her jeans up. She stood against the tack room wall with her shirt open, her mouth swollen, her hair coming down out of its pins, waiting, and he had nothing to give her. He’d known it going in. He’d gone in anyway. Now he stood in the barn with her taste on his fingers, his cousin’s word in his mouth, his blood on the wrong side of it, and he couldn’t say the one thing or the other.

He bent down and got her cap out of the hay. He knocked the chaff off it against his leg and held it out. She took it.

“It’s dark,” he said.