Behind the Pitch, a novella: Seeking Serenity 1.5 (6 page)

She interrupted me, grabbed my collar so I’d closed my mouth. “Shut up, Declan. I’m not mad. I’m just…I’m going to be sick.”

Things I have discovered about Autumn McShane:

One: complications do not fit into her neat little uptight world. Or so she thought. It’s too messy, it seems; the desperation of wanting someone. The need for love seems impossible for her to accept.

Two: She snores. Oh, calm your bollocks, I didn’t sort this out after a long night of naked wrestling. She was pie-eyed and needed tending to. I did that—without the sex. For a long time that night I watched her sleep. Not, you know, in a pervy Chester the Molester sort of way. It was all innocent really, as I had a need to make sure she didn’t spew sick all over herself. But I did watch her. She’s lovely when she sleeps. Well, she’s lovely most moments of the day, but Jaysus, is she lovely when she sleeps.

Fecking hell, I said “lovely” three times. You lot see what this girl does to me?

In any event, she snores. She also talks when she sleeps, mostly nonsense about flying broomsticks and King Arthur, but for the most part, she makes the softest bitty whistling noises when she snores.

Three: Autumn McShane is a nerd and doesn’t mind flaunting it. Point of fact: The woman loves Cosplay. I couldn’t fault her, I’m the bloke with more comics and Doctor Who vids than should be legal and I did let her best mate Sayo talk me into dressing up for Halloween like Wellington Books from the “Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.” We were steampunked and I had to admit liking the bowler hat and round eye glasses a bit more than I reckoned I would. And fuck me did Autumn’s Eliza Braun look criminal gorgeous in that corset. I went home that night with the memory of her lovely, (feck, again), tits pushed up like soft pillows in all that leather and metal boning. Took a long,
long
shower after that.

Four: She’s an honest to God athlete. I started training Autumn and her friends to help her win a stupid bet she made with that wanker Morrison. The bet is that she and her girlies would not just complete but win the Dirty Dash marathon. If she wins, Morrison has to give me back my normal wing spot on the squad, rather than the scrum half position he talked the coach into moving me to just out of spite. Arsehole. But if she loses, she and her friends will have to parade about in their knickers at some arcane, disgusting “charity” auction for a bunch of old bollocks. Couldn’t let that happen, now could I? So I began training the girls and quickly discovered Autumn is a fit athlete, with a keen desire to excel.

She also is not above cheating to win a bet. But then, neither am I. So I challenged her, raced her down the Falls where we were training. She tried distracting me at the start of our race, teasing me with those full, delectable lips of hers, but I caught up to her. I’m a clever lad, after all, and wasn’t above tugging her back at the end, winning our little race by a nose. She didn’t like that, but I don’t think she minded that I won the right to take her on a date. And get a snog.

Alright, well, I took that snog first chance I got. Backwards date, you see. Say goodnight, kiss her rotten and then the date reverts. I told you lot I was clever.

Right. That date then…we were down by the lake, catching fireflies just as the sun set. She was good at it, said she’d done this before and so I poked the competitor in her and challenged her to skip rocks. All part of my plan, you see. I’d do just about anything to get close to her. She always smelled grand, so delicious and I couldn’t help myself around her, couldn’t keep from touching her, guiding her wrist as she flicked rocks across the lake.

She flung a rock out into the water and just before it left her hand, I rested my hand on her waist, jarred her attention and the rock sank down into the water.

“You did that on purpose,” she said, a small frown wrinkling around her mouth.

Jaysus, she was beautiful. My eyes worked over her face, settled on the gleam of humor in her beautiful eyes. Right then, right there, I wanted to kiss her.

“Can you ever not cheat?” she asked, and I blinked away my study of her face, smiled wide.

“That’s not cheating, love. That’s distraction.”

She faced me. “What’s the difference?”

“Intention. Calculated intention.”

I would never admit it to her, not then, but most of what I did where McShane was concerned, was due to calculated intention. I loved how she smells fresh, clean, wholly female. I loved the billions of freckles covering her face, down her neck. I loved how fiercely independent she was, how she tried to let everyone know she didn’t need anyone’s help. Even if she really does. I loved that her friends are her family, and that even with the reappearance of her long lost father, her friends are still closer to her than blood.

I loved that she is dynamic, strong, a true fighter.

I couldn’t tell her these things, they’d likely have her running away from me. But when I looked at her, just as I was then, all the things I loved most about her circled around my head, clustered in my throat until I found speaking coherently ruddy impossible.

Then she teased me, pointed out that she thought I’d brought her there for activities unbecoming a proper gentleman. Bugger that, I’m no gentleman a’tall, but I did have plans.

“So this date will consist more of skipping rocks and catching fireflies—and you gawking at me like you want to devour me?”

What a rotten smartarse she was. “I’m sorry, McShane. You’re beautiful. I told you, I don’t hold back when I like something.” I promised her that on Halloween. Tried to make her understand I’m not one to keep my thoughts to myself; or to be in any way ashamed of what I like. And fuck me, did I like her. Loads. “But yes, I have other things planned.” She didn’t believe me and had, in fact, this doubtful frown on her face as though she fully expected me to snog her rotten right there on the lake. When I thought of that…well, no. Not yet. “None of which include laying you flat on your back. Unless of course—”

“There will be none of that, Mr. Fraser.”

“Ah well.” Just the idea had me hiding my unbidden thoughts with a distracted gesture, moving my fingers through my hair. I covered it further by offering her my hand. “Nearing the end of the date, a fella might treat his lady to an after dinner snack.”

“We haven’t eaten dinner though.”

Ding Dong, McShane. I tipped my finger to the side of my nose. “Exactly. Backwards date, remember?”

I breached the threshold, indeed I did. She invited me in, though, let’s be honest, it didn’t take much convincing on my part. I saw that look; one I’d been keen to see flash in her eyes. One that told me she wanted me, that she didn’t want me to walk away.

But then, she was out of sorts. We’d discussed her mother, how the loss of her has given McShane guilt. It’s natural, the whole guilt bit. She wanted to move forward from the affects of the accident, that much I could tell. She wanted to mourn and be done with it, but therein lay the guilt. She thought she was a rubbish daughter for wanting that small thing, to move on.

It’s a feeling I remember well.

Well. Not the daughter bit, me being a
manly
,
strapping
bloke and all.

“Forgetting her is okay? I don’t see how,” she said.

I couldn’t take the look in her eyes, or the wet mess she’d made on her face. What was it about this girl that had me brushing her face dry? Normally, that’s not me. Normally, I’d feel all awkward like and rush out of the room when I saw a woman cry. But McShane was different. I wanted to protect her, to make her smile.

“It doesn’t mean you don’t miss her or that you don’t still love her. It just means that you’re learning to live with the crushing agony of it all. It just means that the gaping hole in your chest is growing smaller.”

“But you haven’t forgotten your mom completely.”

“Course not,” I told her. How could I? My mum was the lingering memory of who I was; who she always meant for me to be. But I hadn’t managed the loss of her on my own. My step-da had been there, not always, mind, but for long enough that I thought I’d become the man Mum wanted me to be. So I told McShane, told her how brave I thought she is, how strong. I was a big lad, but if Joe had not been there, I didn’t know if I could have survived the loss.

McShane told me she hadn’t been alone, that her friends and President Winchell have become her family. She drew her strength from them and I respected that more than I was willing to admit.

And then, we were silent, staring over each other like two folks eager, hungry. I loved the way her lips pressed together when she was thinking. I loved the glint in her eyes as they moved to mine, as they searched my face. Then the room pulsed with something I’d never felt before I met McShane. The air was charged, heated, and I found myself stepping closer, smelling the sweet scent her hair gave off, that delicious aroma so unique to her that had my mouth watering, had my tongue twitching behind my lips.

“Can I ask you something?” I said to her. There was something I had to do, something I couldn’t see my way past avoiding. I needed to taste her. She smiled at me as though she could read my thoughts, as though my intent was leaking from my head right into her ears. “That part of the bet, the proper kiss at the end of the night?” I took yet another step, tried to calm the shake that had taken over her hands. “I’d like to amend that.”

“No—no take backs,” she whispered.

“Sorry?”

“It’s…just an expression.”

I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t fecking care what it meant. I just took her mouth, owned it and pulled into the kiss the collection of every emotion that pounded in my chest.

God, she tasted divine.

Her chest connected to my body as I tasted her and my mind flirted with images I likely shouldn’t have been entertaining. As I kissed her, I imagined her beneath me, wiggling and wild. As I pulled her closer, bringing her tight to me with my arms around her waist, I could almost see her naked, touching my back, sliding her soft hands over my shoulders, up my spine.

Our tongues connected and I instantly wanted more. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough with her. I had to move us to her sofa, had to pull her on top of me and just the brush of her tits against my chest and the sweet taste of her lips shot fire to my knob. I ached against my jeans, and I gripped her, pulled her closer so that she could feel how much I wanted her. How desperate I was for her.

I needed to taste more of her, all of her, so I worked my mouth down her neck, left a path of wetness on her skin. Her fingers were like fire and the low noises from her throat set my dick to pulsing harder and harder.

Her hair was soft, and I wanted to pull it, hard, just to see her reaction, to see if she would like my being rough, to see if she wanted me demanding, taking. But it was too soon, and, if I was being honest, I didn’t know that I could muster the bollocks to do that. Yet I had zero problems moving my mouth over her, up her neck, behind her ears, back down her throat.

Never mind me pulling on her hair, McShane did it to me instead and I couldn’t help but moan, loving her nimble fingers tugging on my hair, slipping deeper into the fog she created in my mind. My mouth moved faster, my tongue dipped further in and I fit my hands down her spine to rest and grip that lovely, round arse of hers. Jaysus, a bit more of that and I’d be spent; over before it really started.

Couldn’t have that. God, no.

I pulled her close and by the small look of shock on her face, I knew McShane felt how hard I was. She liked it. At least, I think that’s what that look meant. She needed something…more. Just like me. So I picked her up and took her with me, carried her down the hall to that bedroom we shared platonically that night after the club.

The room was girly enough—loads of candles and female bits and bobs I knew nothing about. But all I cared about was that large bed, and settling her down on that soft lavender blanket of hers.

Her hair fanned over the mattress like a wing and it took every bleeding inch of my resolve not to strip her down completely and ravish her.

So fecking gorgeous.