AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That’s the one thing better left unsaid.
That and the associated feelings that threatened to reprise out loud with it. Changing the past would only threaten the future.
He sucked in the cool air as they stepped outside to the point of hurting his lungs. It was clear now; her company was just to be enjoyed for tonight. Even if that meant standing in a back alley with the rain spitting on them, he was going to savour the moment.
Áine’s shoulders were hunched as she turned into the brick wall. It made her top part appear square, and her waist looked wider than usual—usual of what he’d seen of her tonight, that is. In school, she’d been so thin he had to make a point of being gentle when touching her.
“Cold?” he asked, fully prepared to offer over his hoodie he was already pulling at the cuff.
“Oh, just in my heart.” She waved him off, licking her lips to press the cigarette loosely between them.
He had noticed already most of her habits encircled her mouth, but this one was enough for warmth to gather in Fionn’s chest and travel south. A feeling that usually occurred for more aptly named ‘heated moments’. Moments when close to a person on the dancefloor, subdued to the music and touch of sweaty skin.
But a contactless observation like this . . . never. Never for watching someone did he think, if the heat travelled any further south, would he get hard.
She gestured to him the upside-down cigarette poking out of the box—the one meant for luck.
“You drift off sometimes. I remember that from school,” Áine said.
“As do you,” he reminded her when accepting her oddly familiar offering.
She tipped a tiny hat of agreement, coming almost as close as she had done in the kitchen. “It’s cathartic.”
He wasn’t sure he agreed, but he didn’t have the reserve of knowledge to protest her view. “Maybe—” A drop fell onto Fionn’s nose from gutter rain. He jerked back, dampening the undercurrent of sexual heat.
Áine countered its threat of lulling, lucidly brushing the drop away with her thumb.
Then the hotness suddenly gathered in a tighter circumference below his belly button, and with that tightness brought a rapturous intensity.
Fionn wished he could contain his tensing masseters, and the pulsing in his widening eyes. How easily she chose to touch him. Like that invisible wall most wouldn’t breach, meant little to her. No sooner he recalled his grabbing of her hands at the table and how purposeful that felt too.
Rigidity straightened him whole; had he crossed a boundary doing that?Was she being polite until he got back into his room? And here he was telling her about the hardest days of his life and thinking about all the other parts of her body he wanted to touch.
He slicked his fingers through his hair. The low humidity kept it behind his ears.
Had the table of their relationship potentially turned whole? Surely that couldn’t be a bad thing. If he considered himself a man who lived in the dominion of balance, then wasn’t that only fair?
“I suppose I didn’t want you getting wet after all my troubles to dry you when you walked in off the street,” she piped up, the cigarette bobbing up and down for emphasis to sound coherent.
Fionn wanted to remind her she hadn’t actually given him the towel earlier. He ran his knuckles over his mouth to stop himself. Saying as much might have embarrassed her, and he wasn’t letting that happen—everagain.
She flicked her thumb on the lighter’s flint to no joy, voiced by a rhythmic grunt.
“Here—” His body heaped over itself as he reached to take it. “Let me.”
It was her jerking back from touch now.
He froze at the unknown of his crime.
Thankfully, Áine didn’t hesitate to tell him, “Unless you’re a charmer of light or a member of the bloody Prodigy, statistically, you hold no greater chance of getting it alight. Like look!”—she stretched her open palms—“look at the dexterity on these gangly fuckers.”
He surrendered his hand of apparent lesser dexterity, all the while containing the grin wanting to stretch out for her subtle Keith Flint joke and dedication to bring up dimorphic anatomy.
“Okay. Okay. Fair point. How about this; I’ll use my shovels for hands to block the rain while you light. Teamwork, we’ll call it.” The offer sounded less patronising in his head. But he had to follow through since he’d said as much.
His hands hovered above hers, waiting.
Her scowl resolved into a devilish squint before agreeing.
