AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Despite her earlier belief that she had nothing to lose tonight, now Áine worried she was about to lose everything.
She recalled how Fionn looked like he might cry when she gave him his key card, and how it made her feel so nauseated she wanted to embody Mary Magdalene and dive over the desk to wipe his threatening tears with her hair. This might have been Áine’s purest thought of Catholicism, marked her as the ‘fallen women’ many would have branded her not thirty years ago.
She recognised her mistake then, for not telling him all of this.
Heavy footsteps creaked the ceiling above.
She propped, unfurling clenched fingers to grab her chest for the sheer speed of whoever was headed towards the stairs.
“Hello?” Surely not Fionn. Not a person praying to St. Anthony would find another chance like that. And not even a person praying to God would be foolish enough to think they were going to get what they wanted. What they craved.
Áine paced to the foot of the stairs, smoothing all her pleats to do something with her hands that might vex whoever was on their way to probably complain and make this night worse.
A quiet gasp came out of her as she froze at the stair’s foot.
Illuminated in specks of the chandelier above, it was as if Fionn had risen from the dead in messianic vein.
“Áine?” the familiar voice said in a cool breath that managed to seize her own.
So many words filled Áine’s mouth that she didn’t know which ones to start or end with. Seeing him and how blatant his ragged want was, softened the anxious residue chalking her skin. Even after rejection, he wanted her. Something Áine had always adored was determination. The kind where the person was intuitive enough to know what was in their heart.
Relief calmed her, stilling her stance. It was clear now; giving in to her desires for Fionn wasn’t a vice. It was a necessity.
Hewas a necessity.
“Fionn?”
“I know I’m leaving tomorrow, and the timing couldn’t be worse. but I can’t sit up in that room knowing you’re down here! That there is something between us. And I know you feel it too because it’s like—” he ran all his fingers through his hair she desperately wanted to clench with both hands.
Please say it. Say it for me.
“It’s like an affinity, Áine!”
She swore the peeling walls came away from their seams for his passion that managed to reverberate the room, and she loved it. Wanted to undress for it. Worship it.
“I shouldn’t have left you on the riverbank. And I’m sorry for that,” he told her.
Áine knew he was saying more than his words. His thoughts were communicating to her on some cosmic level only they had the secret key to. He was telling her he wanted her—desperately. With teeth and swollen veins.
She inclined her head to bask in this fantasy that had taken such a very long time to bloom from the tiny seed she’d planted in her teenage mind.
“I’m not making the same mistake twice. I won’t.”
There it was again; determination. And now she knew all the necessary words to make this night what she wanted it to be. “Well then I’m not going to stop you.”
Her honesty unleashed a brightening grin in him. Then he came to her, his focus on his feet, hers resolutely on him.
She desperately wanted to meet him halfway to abate the yearning, but the urge was fought with clenched toes, forcing her to step back and provide him space to come to her how he seemed to command with just his intention.
As his feet met the ground, no sooner did warmth find all her face with such a wilful touch she staggered against his forceful kiss that made her want to push her underwear aside to have him there and then.
Each gasp felt like the vestige of their youthful ghosts. Each time he pulled her closer and dipped his tongue further into her mouth, she prayed he might consume her whole, and she’d let him. Let him cease her existence for a while, so she might return anew.
Return free of her wickedness.
Her breath trickled into his mouth with each kiss as she pulled his neck forward for more and more and more. Áine adored his kindness, but this side of him was something else. Something that made her want to rescind her power and place him in charge of her body.
She’d comply with his every demand or request for the rest of the night. All he needed was to ask, and she would be his.
