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He pushed his finger inside me and I gave one final pump of my hand. Pleasure rushed up from the tips of my toes like wildfire. I bit down on his collarbone and muffled a scream as best as I could. I felt him pulsing under my touch. Heard the groan vibrate against my chest. He was stoic and steady because I was shaking so hard I thought I’d fly apart.

Ryan covered the heads of our cocks with his hand, catching both of our releases in his palm to keep us from dirtying our clothes, but droplets still fell on my thighs. He bent down, knees to the ground, and licked them off my skin, leaving kisses and bites that made me flinch with how oversensitive I was.

But I never wanted him to stop.

“Fuck, love,” he said again, resting his forehead against my hip as he caught his breath. “I think that was a successful shopping trip. Did you get exactly what you wanted?”

I could only moan my yes, the physical need finally sated.

But my heart was doing something I hadn’t felt in ages. It skipped a beat. It rattled against my ribs and made me gasp. It did that little “foot kick when being kissed, violins playing in the background and my eyes turning to hearts” thing, and I pressed my hand against my chest as if to stop it.

As if to say, no honey. We’re not doing this again. We’re not imagining forever happy endings with people who just want short-term ones. We’ll be reasonable. We’ll be cool like we promised ourselves. We’ll enjoy this while it lasts and then we’ll let go, cool as cucumbers.

Ryan turned his head and kissed my hip bone.

My heart skipped again.

Traitor, I told it quietly. But I wasn’t sure it heard me.

seven

Zoinks!

Ryan

He sent me to sleep in my own room.

I groaned and threw myself onto the bed, face-planting in the pillow and stabbing myself with the handle of the wooden spoon I’d bought for no fucking reason. Because he’d sent me to buy something to distract me. After all that, after fucking with my head all day and not even knowing he was doing it, he just pecked my lips and sent me to bed.

Like I was a child.

Like he hadn’t been fucking falling apart for me in public hours ago.

Granted, we had come back to the B&B to a raging argument between Harri and Larri about cat ashes of all things, and that took a good three hours to settle. Then Bronwyn hated the jam Owain picked. She raged and clanged with her pots until Popty set his microwave to “nuclear power plant” and threatened to just zap us all out of existence. By the time everyone had been sent to their corners to chill, Owain was barely awake and I was left to fend for myself.

I tried to do some research on my phone about the Last Resort only to switch to a mindless connect-three game my mum had begged me to download so I could send her coins when she ran out.

I got several notifications from one of the dating apps I had installed and I swiped through them, noticing with horror that I didn’t feel up to replying to any of them.

Ryan

All the men on the apps are shit

Noel

Since when do you have standards, mate?

Ryan

Fuck you too

I chucked my phone across the bed. I should have known he’d be literally no fucking help. Best friend my arse. I threw a mini tantrum, rolling around my bed in frustration and imagining excuses I could use to just slip into Owain’s room and wrap myself around him.

I fell asleep somewhere between a melodramatic groan and throwing a pillow across the room because it was too pillowy and it was pissing me off.

My dreams were immediately full of dark shapes and cold fingers reaching toward me. I saw burning white eyes in the darkness, heard a whistling screech as something beckoned me.

It felt…hungry.