Perfectly Unmatched (21 page)

“I think you do know.” She startles up at me, her eyes wide with shock, and shakes her head. “You must.” I hold it up and we both look at how the gold glints in the light. “Why didn’t you throw this in his face when you broke up? Or toss it out on freeway when you drove away from him for good?”

Her laugh is sad, and she wipes a finger under her eyes, leaving a runny line of mascara trailed along her temple. “You know what? I guess I do know. My family has been tight with
Benelli’s family since before I was born. Our mothers were maids of honor at each other’s weddings. So, yeah, I guess I just figured Winch and I were, you know, fated? Destined? Like an arranged marriage, but sexier. Funner. And it
was
fun. We snuck around. Drank stolen sambuca under the stars. Made out in the backseat of his dad’s Mustang during every family get-together.”

“Sounds like romance.” I’m not even joking. They’re the kind of teenage dalliances I wish I had under my belt.

“It was.” Her smile trembles with pure sadness, an expression so alien to her usually cool-and-collected face, I don’t know if I could have imagined it before I saw it. “But I took him for granted. I guess he’d been around for so long, I stopped seeing him as his own person. I just felt like I owned him, the way his family did. And we grew apart. But I still always thought we’d be together forever. And then he met...her...this girl.” Her hazel eyes are suddenly more gray than any other color and she plucks the paper napkin under her coffeecup into furious shreds. “And he fell in love. Real love. Love so strong and amazing or whatever, he didn’t even think twice about me.”

“I’m sorry.” I know what it feels like to have your heart dug from your chest with a dull spoon. I know what it is to think you’re with a certain person, only to realize in a single blink that the person you were in love with may have never existed at all.

“Don’t be,” she snaps, sweeping the napkin bits off the table so they rain down on the stones like confetti at a parade. “Take the damn lighter though. It was martyrish of me to hang on to it for all this time, and if I’m acting like a martyr, that means I’m becoming my mother. And if that’s happening, just shoot me now before I slide into a miserably unsatisfying mid-life slump.”

She reaches for the cigarettes she threw out and begins a frantic search before I dare to mention, “Gone.
In a fit of chivalrous daring.”

Her laugh is defeated. “Oh, perfect.
So damn perfect.” She points an accusing finger at me. “You better make this happen. Now I need to get away from you, because I actually like you, and I’m about to go into heavy nicotine withdrawals already.” She cups her hand under my chin and kisses my forehead. “Wouldn’t want to scratch those pretty green eyes out. Her date drops her off at six-thirty. Go get her, hotshot.”

I listen to the retreating click of her heels and wonder how long it will be before she breaks down and finds a shop to buy a fresh pack in. When I glance up from my papers,
Benelli and her date are gone, and I attempt to keep my wild imagination in check. We never agreed on any firm boundaries for Benelli’s dates. How could we? I’m not her boyfriend. I’m sure she’s not sleeping with any of them, but is there anything else physical going on?

Most likely.

These dates are her way of determining who she’s going to spend the rest of her life with. Whether or not she has physical chemistry with the assholes she’s dating is a realistic part of the process.

I’m deep in thoughts that feature some random meathead getting touchy with my girl when the waiter storms over to my table, yelling in such quick and awful Hungarian, I’m not even sure it’s comprised of anything but swears. I look down at my hand, where I’ve bent my coffee spoon in half. I ignore his fury and toss the bent spoon and a few extra bills on the table before I grab my papers and stalk to
Benelli’s aunt’s house.

I skulk in the bushes like a criminal, waiting while the hulk agrees to a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I can see
Abony pouring him the brew at the same table I sat at with Benelli when she bandaged my hand. The guy stays a good half an hour, and I feel more and more like a fucking idiot every minute I hide out, gaping at him. The second he leaves, I see the flash of Benelli’s bright blue dress, and her bedroom light goes on, even if it isn’t remotely dark at just after seven.

The light is for me.

I know I could just walk through the back door. Benelli’s told me multiple times that Abony thinks she should run away with me. Or stop toying with me and send me in her aunt’s direction. Which definitely freaks me out slightly. But I don’t go in the back door because there’s a certain ridiculous kind of romance to scaling a wall and popping in through her window.

Usually she’s changed by the time I’ve come by, her tight clothes shed for comfortable ones, her styled hair brushed out,
her face makeup free. I like her natural looking, but, when I come through and see her this way, I wonder if she’d ever put the effort into dressing up for me.

“Hi.” She smiles and wraps her arm around my neck. “How was work?”

“Terrible.” I don’t mean to sound like such a short-tempered asshole, but I can’t seem to stop the words that fly out of my mouth like a runaway train on a path to sure destruction. “Since we’re not actually dating, do we have to go through the boring domestic routine?”

Some of the shine dissolves from her eyes. “Everyone asks each other how their day went,
Cormac.” She drops her hands from my neck, and I miss the sweet weight of them immediately. “The woman who did my nails asked me today. So did the manager at the restaurant I ate at.”

“Of course.
How was your
date
?”  I ask with elevated faux interest.

She crosses her arms tight, and I think she’d plop on her bed if that damn sexy dress would let her. As it is, I don’t think she could bend in it.

“My date was nice,” she answers, her voice guarded. “He’s...fine. I don’t really want to talk about him.”

“Me neither,” I agree with adamant emphasis on the words.

Two bright spots of red burn through the makeup on her face. “I know this is just sex, Cormac, but don’t you think a little talking first is nice?”

I stalk over to her so fast she retreats on her high shoes, her back against the wall. “This has never been
just sex
,” I say between gritted teeth.

“I know.” She puts her hands on my face and rubs her thumbs over my jaw. “
Damnit, Cormac, I think we made it worse. I can’t stop thinking about you, no matter where I go or who I’m with. I think about you all day, I can’t wait for night. And it’s not getting easier. I’m not getting to the point where I think I can say goodbye.”

“We could leave.” I cage my arms around her, one hand on either side of her head, and lean close to her. “We could buy train tickets. I can get a job, I can support us.”

She twists out of my arms. “Wow. No. That’s the last things I need.”

“Why?” I demand.

“I am perfectly capable of getting a job.” She enunciates every single word.

“I...know that.” I don’t. I know she has a BA, but she’s never told me what she’d like to do with her life, for herself. The only thing she ever talks about where her future is concerned is her family and their damn business. “So you could get a job. We could. And have an apartment somewhere. Your parents will only be upset for a little while.”

She lies back on her bed stiffly, all her carefully curled hair spread on the white sheets. “You have no idea what you’re asking me to do. You don’t get it. I won’t be okay living away from them. I can’t just leave them. It just doesn’t work that way.”

“So what’s the answer,
Benelli?” I ask, pulling her back up so we’re facing each other again. “Tell me, because I don’t know how many more dates I can watch you go on. I don’t know how many nights I can spend hiding in the bushes. I need more. I need more, and we’re heading towards nothing.”

“I don’t know.” She starts to lift her fingers up to her temples, and I intercept them and rub where she was going to. She sighs and leans into my hands. “If there was a way, I swear, I’d be with you,
Cormac. We’d be together. But, since we have this right now, can’t we just have this? Please?” Her voice is throaty.

“Whatever you want,” I say, because that’s the truth.
The solid truth.

She turns around in my arms and presses the curve of her ass against me. My dick jumps to instant, hard life.

She says the one word that undoes me. “You.”

She kneels on the bed and reaches one hand behind her, drawing up her skirt. Her underwear is a nothing but a few ribbon-like pieces of diaphanous scrap fabric. I step forward and splay my hands over the silky skin of her backside, then hook my fingers in the threads and pull them down her legs, over her ankles and toss them onto the floor.

“This way?” I make sure.

“I like it this way, too.” She got bored with missionary style quickly. The first night we were together, she demanded to be on top. I’m glad. I am. I’m honored that I get to be with her when she learns all this, experiments with all of this sweet, sexy craziness.

I just have to stop thinking about the fact that all I do with her will eventually be something she does with her husband.

I shove that thought out of my brain and focus on the incredibly gorgeous, sexy girl in front of me.

I slide one finger between her legs, and she’s already soaking wet.

“I was thinking about you.” She looks over her shoulder at me, and smiles. My vision blurs for a second. “I was thinking about having your cock in me.”

I grip her hips to keep myself upright. “Wow. Are you sure you were a virgin two weeks ago?” I ask.

“I learn quickly,
Cormac.” She wags her hips back and forth and I throw my shirt off, unzip my pants, and am already ridiculously hard.

I’m not even sure how to get her out of this stupid dress, so I just yank down on the thin straps until it finally releases her tits to my eager hands. I love the full swell of them when they hang forward like that. I kiss up and down along her neck, then coast over the skin covered by dress and kiss each perfect cheek of her ass.

She giggles. “You’re crazy.”

“You’re gorgeous.” I want to say a million other things, things that have nothing to do with sex and lust and now, but this is my only alternative. So I take it.

I dip low and lick at her, working over her soaking skin with my fingers and my tongue until she’s even slicker and pumping her hips frantically every time I so much as brush against her.

The three dozen condoms ran out two days before, so we’re officially on a second box, and I feel a mix of pride and shame over my corruption of
Benelli.

“Now,
Cormac. Now!” she demands.

I let my pants fall from my hips and roll the condom on. I slide against her and press, deep and hard, all the way into her, my thighs flush with the firm curve of her ass. She lets out a long moan and rears back against me. I grip onto her, pull out until I’m only barely in, then press deep, up to the hilt, again and again and she reaches her hand around to grab frantically at mine. Her back is arched and she’s clawing for me to be closer, for that closeness we’re always starved for.

I lean over her, ruining the rhythm slightly, but thrusting deeper into her. My chest is tight to her back and we’re locked together so tight it makes her squirm and gasp. I love running my hands over her skin, kissing the back of her ears, the stretch of her neck, her bare shoulders while I drive into her, waiting for the beginning pulses of heat and tightness that will let me know she’s ready to come. When her frustrated moans let me know she’s not quite where she wants to be, I reach forward and tease her clit with swift strokes of my finger until she starts to shake and jerk around me.

“Now.
Now. Now,” she pleads and the way she begs for me, for this, makes everything blur into a hot, sexy rush. “Cormac, I’m coming. Cormac.”

I close my eyes and feel the hot, tight suck of her around my dick, and my hands clamp hard on her hips while, for one perfect second, I don’t have to think about a single thing in the world other than my body and hers and how perfect they feel together.

I love this second. The point where she’s about to let go, where I know she’s had all the pleasure she can take, and I’m free, just for a second, to let go, too, and just be with her. I love when I can see her face. I love to watch her come, watch her lose control under me. Now I make do with rolling her over and holding her close immediately after.

My pants are down around my knees. Her dress is pushed up under her breasts. We turn to look at each other and the tension from before melts. We’re laughing, and I don’t know if she realizes how rare it is. To be able to go from irritated to passionate to laughing in the span of a half an hour.

I don’t know what she thinks about us, because whenever I press her to talk about it, she avoids the conversation at all costs.

“So, maybe next time we should take all our clothes off,” I suggest, taking the condom off.

“Always the romantic.” Benelli traces her fingertip down my nose. “I don’t think I have any dates lined up tomorrow.” She sighs. “Please don’t make that face, Cormac.”