AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then he scratched the side of his head and said, “You make me kind of nervous at times, do you know that?”
Was this an accusation or a compliment?
“I didn’t. No.” She thought he just went red-faced easily.
He started poking a hole in the table’s wood with his pencil, speaking directly to it. “I think I might be afraid to get to know you better. Because I say things to you, you know about my mam or right now, even this.” He laughed a little through his nose and looked at her once before returning his eyes to the hole in the table. “Things come out of my mouth like you cast a feathered hook down my throat, and it has some custom bait for secrets I don’t let anyone else have. And it’s not that I don’t want to tell people these things. My mouth just won’t let the words come out. Jesus, maybe that’s why it’s a bit lopsided . . . from holding things in it too long. Then with you, it’s like you know or even say the words I wanted to first. I feel really thankful when that happens because . . . because it makes things a bit easier for me.”
A shallow hole was dug into the table, its shavings all heaped around it.
“Is that what you’re trying to say now? Say, thank you?” She asked.
“I’m saying I really meant it when I said you were nice, Áine.”
Áine’s heart fluttered in tiny, successive beatsthat caused her neck to contract. It migrated down until a tingle pressed into her navel so warm she closed her eyes to savour it. When reopening them, Fionn was watching her out the corner of his eye.
She mirrored him, observing as he slowly reached over and placed his hand on her thigh, right on the spot below her skirt where it had risen from her knee. The weight of it was perfectly balanced, and Áine had never wished more in her life that she hadn’t put on tights that morning.
Please, she thought.Touch me higher.
“Is this nice?” he asked her.
She swallowed, hard. “Yes.”
Her answer seemed enough permission for Fionn to rub his thumb on the inlay of her thigh, raising higher and higher until his entire hand crept under her skirt.
No one had ever touched Áine like this before. Made her whole being feel suddenly desperate for something she wasn’t sure she even had the answer to.
A soft breath stifled from her mouth. She could feel the heat creep right up to the tips of her cheeks where they creased into the corner of her eyes.
Noticing her pleasure, Fionn’s hand squeezed her thigh like he could barely control himself.
Is this normal?She wondered. Was it normal for this all to feel so intense it made her body hum.
Quietly she said, “Please.” It sounded so desperate, but a gaping feeling was ripping a hole inside her, and the only way to fix it was for more of him—of Fionn.
She reached out to touch the noticeable bulge fighting the tight seam of his pants, but he retracted, shoving his hand into his pocket to pull them out of whatever trance they’d stumbledinto. “Sorry, I just—” He stood and swung his back over his shoulder. “Áine.”
She could tell by his tone it was a pleasantry. The same way he said goodbye every other day. “Fionn,” she replied with a swift nod.
He paced for the door, not waiting for her to say another word. Probably not wanting to get caught, too.
But Áine didn’t care about anything status-related right now, because all her confusion about whether she truly liked him was no longer a question she couldn’t answer. She hated not having that answer. She hated how it kept her up in the dead of night when her eyes ached for sleep.
Now she knew, knew it with her gut and heart and all the bits in between;
There was a chance Fionn O’ Rourke shared the feeling of affinity.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dublin 2016
Áine
If Áine had any upper hand on the man standing before her, grinning like his secrets were too big for his mouth, it was that she was more intelligent than him by a hair, or at least, she had been. She didn’t tuck this intelligence away to appease some guy’s ego anymore, or to ensure herself relatable. Now it was displayed how a medal would be; spit-shined and worn in an illustrious fashion. And with this intelligence, she’d cultured the ability to allure.
Still, it wasn’t something Áine did often as outgoings to the pub were rare, and decent humans who tickled her fancy were sparse. Her culchie mindset also meant the Dublin accent was an immediate turn-off, which had made her wonder why she had moved here if to be nothing but a cliché.
When she did meet someone on these nights out, it was wholly worth the venture to her love interests, when what Áine brought to the proverbial table was impressive.
