“To Ripley and her excellent eye,” James says, wiping champagne off his brow and raising his mug.
Flushed with joy and embarrassment, Ripley counters, “To Clever Girl,” but it’s lost in the howl of “Ripley” from the crew. The twins crank up the music, and everyone whoop-screams to Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”
They need this. They need the release of a party, the luxury of a guilt-free-hangover day.
They need to hold this moment in their hands and drink it down together.
After two glasses’ worth of champagne toasts, Ripley dedicates herself to trying every single flavor of the old-fashioned soft drinks Geraldine brought. She’s finished off a stubby bottle of cherry soda and half a lime cordial when she catches James’s eye across the clearing.
He’s pink-cheeked with champagne, trying not to show how much he likes it when Cara and Griff subject him to American-style shoulder punches and hair tousling. It’s terribly cute in a way that simultaneously warms her heart and lances it with something thin and splintered. She winks at him to hide her stinging eyes and decides it’s time for another one of the rainbow-hued bottles of pop.
Ripley’s selected a pretty pink cream soda when an arm slides around her waist. James grins lopsidedly down at her, his glasses more askew than usual. He’s going to have to get those fixed.
“Oh, look who’s tipsy,” she says.
“Notsotipsy,” he protests, looking at her like she’s the rising sun. “Just happy.”
“You should be,” she replies. “And you should have given yourself credit for Beast too.”
He gives her a strange look. “It was your find, Ripley. I don’t deserve acknowledgment simply because I was standing in the right place at the right time. If someone ever accepted recognition for your work under those circumstances, he’s an arsehole.”
An odd feeling washes through her, like summer rain wearing away the last vestiges of something tight and sticky that’s clung to her for a long time.
“How tipsy are you, exactly?” she asks.
“We shouldn’t leave the party, Ripley. People will notice.” He says this, but his hand drifts to her braid.
“Who’s going to notice?” She waves her hand at the dance floor. Geraldine’s long gone. Finn, Fiona, and Jordin are dancing like twenty-somethings who don’t yet know they’ve passed the last stage of exhaustion into rebound jitteriness. A few yards away, Matteo is vibing by himself, eyes closed, his homing beacon no doubt about to go off. Sometime when Ripley was hunting through the sodas, Griff and Cara must have sneaked away.
“I think I’ll take a shower,” she says, watching his eyes, thinking about tree lines and broken pencils.
His expression goes tight. His darkening eyes fall to her collarbones, then lift back up to her face with what looks like great effort. “Ripley,” he grits out warningly.
Ripley, Showering,she mouths, and she knows she’s got him.
They don’t go back to the cabin for shampoo or soap or even a towel. She’s hardly got her clothes off and the water on before he has her pressed against the wall, her butt perched on the shallow, inadequate toiletry shelf. The cool shock of the night air against her heated skin is almost as electric as the quick touch of his teeth around her nipples.
“I’ll fall,” she whispers, gasping when his mouth drops to the wet, wanting place between her legs.
“I won’t let you,” he says, a shoulder under each thigh, a hand spanning each cheek. The water doesn’t give them much cover, sound-wise; when Ripley comes, she dimly hopes her muffled cries will be mistaken for a cougar’s.
“Let me down,” she mumbles. On still-shaking legs, she turns to face the wood-planked wall. She leans forward, breathing in steam and cedar and James, then looks over her shoulder at his harsh sound.
He’s slumped against the opposite wall, a hand gripping hiswet, shining length, his face wrenched between desire and restraint. “How much have you had to drink?” he says, his teeth clenched.
“Two small glasses of Veuve Clicquot, two hours ago.” She drops a hand between her legs, letting him see what she’s doing. He groans like she’s killing him. “We can skip the condom, James. Unless there’s something you need to protect me from.”
“No,” he whispers, and then he’s pressed against her, his fingers wrapped around the crests of her hip bones, his head bowed so his temple rests against hers. “No, there’s nothing I would ever do to hurt you. This way, or any way.”
The angle changes everything. The stretch and slide of him, the touch of his knees against the backs of her thighs—it’s so good she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s jumping out of her skin with it; she has to move, she has to push back, she needs everything.
“Patience, Ripley,” he says, his voice laced with a lethal dose of agony and bliss. “Did I mention I’ve never gone without before? Oh, Christ, be still, I’m too—” He gives up on words, threading one iron arm around her hips and the other across her chest and up to her throat, pinning her between himself and the wall. Something in her recognizes him and goes motionless, like she’s waiting for the touch of his teeth at her neck, for whatever life comes after this one.
He releases a string of muffled profanity against her cheek. “Fuck if that’s not worse. God, I’ve never, never,never…”
He pulls back, then pushes in again, slowly, trembling, and she feels herself spasm around him. He barks out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “You are—Christ, you test me, Ripley. Hold on, my darling. Let’s see if we can give you one more before you wreck me forever.”
He adjusts the angle of her body until his slow, ever-deepening thrusts hit something that makes her clench and see stars. At her choked cry, he gives a low sound of satisfaction and hits it again.
