Page 56 of Wretched Thorns

“Tell me to stop,” he said.

She didn’t.

She said, “Make me.”

***

Dex kissed her hard enough to shut the rest of the world off for a second.

Tara grabbed the front of his shirt in both fists and kissed him back like she’d been angry about wanting to do it all day.

His mouth was hot. His hand came off the cypress and into her hair. The other was already inside her shirt at the small of her back, palm flat against bare skin.

She bit his lower lip on purpose.

He made a sound in the back of his throat that wasn’t human at all.

He pulled his mouth off hers half an inch.

“Cottage.”

“What.”

“Past the herb garden. C’mon.”

She didn’t answer with words.

They both moved at the same time.

***

The walk to the cottage wasn’t a walk. It was a series of stops they hadn’t agreed on making. Against a tree trunk. The side of a smokehouse. The herb garden gate, where he had her up against the iron with his teeth at her throat, grazing, and her hand inside the front of his jeans.

The cottage came up at the end of the path. Small. White-painted. A porch and a screen door.

Dex got the door open with one hand without taking his mouth off her neck.

They went in.

The inside smelled of cedar and old leather. A sagging couch under the window. A weight bench in the corner. A foosball table somebody had been winning at for thirty years. Paperbacks two-deep on a shelf. An armchair well broken in. A turntable with a decent stock of vinyl.

A boys' clubhouse aged into a man cave.

Dex had her up against the wall just inside the door before she’d finished taking it in.

Her shirt was up at her ribs. Both his hands hot on her skin. She bit the inside of his lip. He growled low. Hands at jeans buttons, both of them fumbling and laughing and breathing too fast for either.

She shoved his hand out of the way and did her own.

His palm came right back up the inside of her thigh.

She made a sound she’d been holding back since the gas station.

“Tell me what you want, Tara.”

“I want you to fuck me. Against this wall. Hard. Right now. Before either of us gets any smarter about this.”

“Whatever you say, chère.”