Fox had always prided himself on not taking anything seriously.
The memory of his failed reinvention burned in the center of his chest like a cattle brand, so he’d spent years doubling down, leaning into an identity that perhaps burned him even worse, but at least he could be good at it. It was what everyone expected, and there wouldn’t be any more painful surprises.
And now he was going to open up wide, expose himself to all manner of outcomes he couldn’t control. Because he was in love with Hannah. Stupid, hot-under-the-collar, pulse-tripping love that crowded his chest and throbbed in his fingertips. Might as well face it, he’d started stumbling last summer, and now? Now he was flat on his ass with canaries taking laps around his head.
He loved her humor, her tenacity and bravery, the way she defended the people she loved like a soldier in battle. He loved the fact that she didn’t shy away from the tough subjects, even though they scared him in the moment. Her iron will, the way she closed her eyes and mouthed song lyrics like they were baptizing her. Her face, her body, her scent. She’d infiltrated him, become a part of him before he’d realized what was happening, and now . . .
He didn’t want her out. He wanted to stay locked in her goodness.
And Jesus Christ, he might as well be walking on a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. In his experience, the only thing that came from reaching past his capabilities was failure. Getting slapped down and sent back to the beginning. But as they’d sat in the recording studio, Hannah leaning into his side, as if she belonged to him—it had felt so damn good—he’d started to wonder again . . . what if. What if.
She was set to return to LA soon, so he needed to answer that question. Or he was going to wake up one morning and put her on a bus out of his life, and the very idea of that covered his skin in ice.
Driving up to the security gate and handing a twenty-dollar bill to the guard, he still didn’t have an ending to the what-if question. But he did have absolute faith in Hannah’s ability to draw it out of him, if he let her. If he truly dropped the last of his defenses, she’d guide him there. Because she was the most extraordinary, loving, intelligent being on earth, and he cared about her so much it sometimes stole his ability to think straight.
“Where are you taking me?” She split a look between him and the windshield, the greenery rolling past on either side, draped in twilight. “I love surprises. Piper threw me a surprise party when I turned twenty-one and I had to lock myself in the bathroom because my nonstop tears of joy were embarrassing everyone.”
Fox, having an easy time picturing that, smiled. “What is it that you love so much about them?”
She tugged the hem of her dress down, drawing his eye. “The fact that someone thought about me, I guess. Wanted me to feel special.” She bit her lip and glanced over at him from the corner of her eye. “I bet you hate them, don’t you?”
“No.” Normally he might have left it at that, but he wasn’t being charming or elusive or easy tonight. He was taking the words in the back of his mind and letting them out of his mouth. Starting now. And every time he balked, he’d think of putting Hannah on a bus. He might not have a solution in mind, since keeping her in Westport—just for him?—seemed like a stretch, but when he let Hannah know his thoughts, he always felt closer to her afterward, always felt better, so he couldn’t go wrong with that. “You’re a surprise, Hannah. How could I hate them?” He cleared his throat hard. “Even familiar . . . you’re a constant surprise.”
Silence ticked by slowly. “That’s a beautiful thing to say.”
More words were pressing up against the inside of his throat, wanting to get out, but the actual surprise was coming into view up ahead and he wanted to see her reaction. “Anyway. We’ll see if we can keep the crying to a minimum tonight.” He put the car into park several yards from the art installation, circling around the back bumper to open her door, offering his hand. “Come on, Freckles.”
Her smooth fingers slipped into his, a furrow forming between her brows as she took in the giant steel towers, Lake Washington spread out behind them. At this time of day, they were the only ones there, giving the attraction kind of a lonely, abandoned feeling. Ironic since he’d never felt less lonely in his life. Least of all while holding her hand. “What is this place?”
“It’s the Sound Garden,” said Fox, guiding her toward the water. “The towers were designed so that when the wind hits them, they play music.”
Fox studied Hannah’s face, watched it transform with wonder when she heard the first howling note travel through the towers, the haunting melody that somehow softened the air, thickening it like they were inside a snow globe, their surroundings moving slowly. The whitecaps, the clouds, even the shift of her hair all seemed to travel at a different, more languid pace.
Unlike Fox’s heart, which was beating out of his chest.
“Oh my God.” A fine sheen formed in her eyes. “I can’t believe this is just . . . here. And I knew nothing about it? Fox, it’s . . . incredible.” A loud whistle of sound whipped in the air, and she closed her eyes, laughing. “Thank you. Wow.”
He stared down at their linked fingers, and it gave him the strength he needed to leap. “I wanted to bring you here last summer. That weekend we went to the record convention. But I was afraid to suggest it.”
She opened her eyes and studied him. “Afraid? Why?”
Fox shrugged a shoulder. “You’d come to Westport for your sister. Such a selfless thing to do, working on the bar and living in that dusty little apartment and . . . you deserved a day just for you. I’d already spent so much time searching for that convention, finding something you might enjoy, though. I got worried that showing you the Sound Garden on top of the expo might make how I felt obvious. Might tip my hand.”
There was never a sight more beautiful than Hannah standing on the shore with the sunset making her glow, the wind teasing strands of hair across her mouth. “‘Tip your hand,’” she repeated with a blink.
Keep going. Confess every last word.
Think of Hannah getting on a bus back to LA.
“I had it bad for you. If the convention didn’t make it obvious, I thought for sure the Fleetwood Mac album would do it.” His voice stumbled. “I’ve got it so bad for you, Hannah. Really”—he blew out a breath—“really bad. I tried to keep you out of here.” He knocked his free fist against his chest. “But you won’t go. You’re never going to go. You just won’t.”
“Fox . . .” she murmured haltingly, her tone weaving in seamlessly with the howling of the towers. “Why is it bad?”
“God, Hannah. What if I’m not what you need? What if everyone knows it but you? What if you realize it’s true and I have you . . . then lose you? That would fucking kill me. I don’t know what to do—”
“I’ve got it really, really bad for you, too.”
The oxygen in his lungs evacuated in a rush, leaving his thundering heart in its wake. “If you’d gone out with Sergei, I would have fucking lost it, Freckles. You know that? I’d have begged you on my hands and knees not to go anywhere with him. I’ve been going crazy waiting for you to call my bluff—”
“I wouldn’t have gone.” Her hold tightened on his hand. “It was only a meaningless crush, but even that . . . even that went away. And I just hung on to the idea of it, so I wouldn’t have to admit that I knew. I knew exactly why you left that album for me.”
His body almost buckled under the relief, but he clung to his caution. “And what it meant scared you. It should. I should scare you, Hannah. I don’t know how to do this.” He dug through the cobwebs in his chest to find the truth for her. “I’ve gotten used to the way everyone thinks of me as this . . . this fucking reprobate. Someone who lives to get their rocks off. A good time and nothing more. But if . . . Hannah, I swear to God, I can’t handle them doubting my character when it comes to you. It would break me. Do you understand? To have people waiting and wondering when I’m going to screw it all up. That I couldn’t handle. To have your name spoken with sympathy because you’re with me. I can already hear them. She’s out of her mind. He’ll never settle down. He’s not a one-woman man. I’ll want to die hearing them say that shit. It’s the one form of ridicule I can’t take. When it’s attached to you.”
Her chest rose and fell like she’d just swum eight miles. “Fox, if we were together, my trust would be the only trust that matters. And you would have it. I know who you are. If other people haven’t looked closely enough, that’s their flaw. Their dilemma. Not ours.”
He swallowed a fist-sized obstruction. “You’d trust me?”
“Yes.”
The fact that she looked pissed at him for even asking made his throat close up, flooded him with so much adoration, he almost choked on it. “I don’t know what trying looks like for us. I just know that I want to.”
“Oh, Fox,” she whispered, bringing them chest to chest and pressing close, laying a cool palm against his cheek. “We’ve been trying this whole time.”
There was no way to keep himself from kissing her after that.
With his heart rupturing and repairing on repeat in his rib cage, Fox dropped his mouth down on top of hers and begged her with his tongue and lips to save him from the middle of the ocean where he’d been existing without her for so long.
* * *
Fox came on like a storm.
Hannah still hadn’t quite managed to catch her breath after all that was said, and she definitely wasn’t going to get the chance now. His lid was off, there was nothing left between them, and, God, she was so glad she’d forced herself to wait until the right time to let the dam break.
Their kiss was honest and raw and unquenchable, as real as the rain starting to fall around them, soaking into the earth, wind howling through the garden structures, trapping them in the center of a force field.
Fox’s hands were in her hair, tunneling through, as if desperate to touch every single strand while his mouth quite simply fucked hers. He’d been holding himself at bay or maybe presenting his playboy facade to seem unaffected. But that was gone now, dropped like a veil, and his hunger was brutally naked. And she matched him, clinging to his dampening, sinewy shoulders, plying herself on strokes of his tongue. His hands raked down her spine, where they gathered the hem of her dress, exposing her in degrees.
The kiss slowed momentarily, his eyes communicating the question.
Can I?
Hannah was already nodding, skin enflamed, positive if he didn’t touch her, all of her, that very second, she was going to melt into the ground along with the rain. But Fox didn’t give that a chance to happen, his big, capable hands plunging down the rear of her panties, taking hold of her bottom, claiming ownership with a rough squeeze. “Been dying to do this for months,” he ground out against her lips, molding her buns in his hands. “Been wanting it in my hands, bent over in my lap . . .”
“Now seems like the ideal time,” she gasped.
“Nah . . .” He proceeded to walk her backward, toward the car, his voice seductive, hypnotic. “Want to look at your beautiful face the first time I take you.” He caught her mouth in a hard, wet kiss. “Am I going to take you now, Hannah?” Her back met the side of the car, and she moaned at the rough press of his muscular body, the drag of his hand around the curve of her hip where it wedged between their bodies, his fingertips on the verge of sinking down the front of her underwear now. “Are you going to let me touch it this time or tell me no again?” Those fingers pressed down on the swell of her mons. “If you want to say no, we’ll stop. I’ve gotten pretty fucking good at waiting for you.” His open mouth dipped to her throat, exhaling heat into the hollow. “Waiting for you is the best I’ve ever had.”
“I don’t want to wait. N-no. No waiting.”
He chuckled, licked a path up to her ear, and bit down, almost buckling her knees. Were those her teeth chattering? She didn’t have the chance to find out or be embarrassed, because Fox’s mouth trapped her once again in a cyclone of sensation, those long, knowing fingers slowly, slowly traveling downward on her sex. Stopping right when they reached the good part and teasing with light side-to-side brushes that sent heat flaring down to her toes. When she was right on the verge of begging him to touch lower, Fox eased back from the kiss to watch her face, his middle finger parting her flesh, gently petting her clitoris. “Ah, babe.” He dragged his bottom lip through his teeth. “This sweet little thing wet for me?”
“Yes,” she managed, mentally coining a new phrase.
Death by Fox.
Hannah would never define him by his innate sexuality, but pretending he wasn’t insanely skilled would be futile. Because God almighty. He wielded his abilities like a sword. He knew where to touch her, how to speak, understood the virtues of pacing, and her body appreciated that like nobody’s business. Her intimate flesh grew damp so rapidly, she was actually shaking between Fox and the car. And he knew it. The knowledge was there in the total and utter confidence of the finger rubbing her clit, a second one joining it and pressing just that much harder, causing her head to fall back, a whimper racking her entire frame. “Oh . . . my God,” she hiccupped.
He looked her square in the eye and ripped off her panties in one twist. “Haven’t even started, Hannah.” His knees landed on the soft earth in front of her, rain dripping off the ends of his dark-blond hair, moisture trickling down his cheeks. And he seemed to sense that she was about to float away on a cloud of never-before-encountered lust, because he barred his forearm across her hips, pinning her roughly to the car, and buried his mouth between her thighs, sinking, pushing, pulling his tongue through the split of her femininity.
Watching her the whole time. Observing her reaction to that first perfect, deliberate drag of friction. Fox groaned, his pupils dilating, forearm flexing against her belly.
That absolute, unabashed carnality gave her permission to palm her breasts through the bodice of the dress, chafing the heels of her hands over stiff nipples, enjoying the way he watched her through darkening eyes. She arched her back, allowing him to settle the instep of her foot on his shoulder and go deeper with every stroke of his eager tongue, his lips closing around her sensitive bud, sucking lightly, rhythmically until her muscles began to quicken, pulsing, her vision turning hazy, her head thrashing side to side on the car. “Oh my God. I’m already . . .” She panted, the sound ending on a moan, her fingers twisting in his wet hair. “It’s already . . . I’m going to. It’s coming. I’m coming.”
As if he wasn’t already doing enough, doing the most, he chose the moment of her confession to press his middle and index fingers inside her. Deep. Until he executed that move, she’d loved the light finesse of his touch, but unbeknownst to her, she’d been starving for that rough push. But Fox knew. He knew everything about everything, and God, oh God, he delivered it, standing halfway through her orgasm to thrust his fingers into her clenching heat. In and out, fast. No gentleness in sight. Just his open mouth groaning on top of hers, her moisture spreading down his thick fingers, the sky weeping around them.
“Fox,” she gasped, holding on to his shoulders, almost alarmed by the intensity with which her legs trembled, her flesh constricting, releasing, his fingers entering and leaving her slowly, slowly with the ebbing of her orgasm.
And it wasn’t enough, somehow. The best climax of her existence wasn’t enough. Nothing physical would ever be enough without him—all of him—ever again. That unchangeable knowledge concreted itself inside her as their mouths connected, demolished, her fingers racing down his stomach to unfasten his belt.
“Need you. Need you.”
He caught Hannah’s wrist, dragging her palm up and down his erection, his teeth catching her bottom lip, pulling. “I’m ready for you. Been aching so long.” He yanked down his zipper and planted both hands on the top of the car. “Touch me. Please. Get a fist around it and stroke me hard. Fuck me up.”
How?
How was she continuing to get wet? She’d already hit the peak of all peaks.
The way he looked at her, that’s how. The bald honesty of his words, the crude thrust of his hips when she circled him with a hand and pumped. Firmly, like he’d asked. Her breath growing choppy when his arousal swelled and stiffened more, impossibly, giving her fist even more ground to cover. “Oh. Jesus . . .” she exhaled before she could stop herself.
A glimmer of familiar cockiness in his eyes made her heart spin crazily. “Ah, come on, babe.” He wet his lips, a groan building and breaking from his mouth, his attention fastened on the treatment of her hand, the way she choked him up and down, massaging him intimately. “You knew it had to be huge.”
She breathed a laugh, and he did, too, though the husky sound quickly turned into hot, panting breaths against her forehead, gasped instructions for her to go faster. Faster, faster . . . until his breath began to labor, and he reached for the door handle leading to the backseat.
“In,” he rasped, not waiting for her to comply, just ripping the door open, wrapping an arm around the small of Hannah’s back and dragging her inside, not stopping until her back was flat on the seat, the crown of her head almost reaching the opposite door.
His body came down on top of her, their mouths connecting frantically, her fingertips searching for the hem of his T-shirt, ripping it off so she could feel his chest, touch it, kiss his bare skin. Levering up so he could do the same to her dress, her bra, all their clothes save his pants ending up on the floor in a matter of seconds, his remaining jeans pushed down to his knees by two pairs of eager hands, their mouths ravenous.
“I have to get a condom on or we’re going to be in trouble,” he said in between kisses, his hips moving between her thighs, mouth traveling up and down her neck. “For the record, I didn’t plan on this happening in the backseat of my car.”
“Oh, you just thought you’d bring me to the most romantic place in the world to someone like me and I wouldn’t want to rip your clothes off?”
He panted a laugh and fumbled the wallet he’d just fished out of his jeans pocket. “I didn’t think past telling you how I feel and hoping like hell it would mean something to you.” He picked the wallet back up and ripped credit cards out one by one, his shaking hands dropping them everywhere. “Swear to God, the one time it counts and I can’t be smooth to save my life.”
Hannah had a playlist consisting of 308 love songs and not one of them could describe this moment accurately. Not even close. Realizing she loved this man while he ripped his wallet apart looking for protection, his hair falling into his eyes, muscles heaving under ink and a light layer of sweat. Sunset lit the car in a deep orange, and she felt that rich color spread inside her chest, too, where her heart battled to keep up with the love that bloomed freely and wildly, a lot like the spring storm creating warm, white noise around the car.
I love him. I love him.
But then. Fox ripped the condom wrapper open with his teeth and rolled it down his abundant length, forearms flexing in the golden glow of sunset, his jaw going slack while looking at the place between her legs with anticipation—and lust came roaring back to the forefront. As soon as he was covered, they dove for each other once more, not a hint of restraint in their kisses. They were skin to skin, weathered man of the sea pressing down on her softness, one hand separating them briefly to bring the thick head of his sex to the entrance of Hannah’s.
And then he pushed inside her in one slow, smooth motion, rocking home.
Hannah hissed out a breath and dug her fingernails into his hips, blindsided by the ripple of unequaled pleasure that sped through her and pulled taut.
“Yes,” she whimpered. “More.”
As if the feel of her was unexpected, Fox heaved a curse and slapped his hand down on the rapidly fogging window above her head. “Jesus Christ, so hot and tight.” He reared his hips back and punched forward, making a low sound of misery, a shudder passing through his frame. “No. Dammit.” His body flexed with tension on top of her. “Stay still. Stay still. Wasn’t kidding when I said I can’t be smooth with you. Then you have to go and feel so fucking perfect . . .”
“You feel pretty smooth to me,” she said on a jagged exhale, bearing down around him with her inner walls. Milking his thickness with her femininity. “Mmmm. Please. Fox.”
“Please stop, Hannah, stop . . .” As if he couldn’t control it, his lower body ebbed back and rolled forward sinuously, filling her slowly, touching all different spots along the way, and she cried out, drawing blood on his hips. “I’ve just needed you so fucking long,” he gritted out.
“You don’t think I love that?” She trailed her touch inward and gripped his flexed buttocks, slowly rocked him deeper, lifting her hips at the same time, earning a long, hoarse sound from his throat. “You don’t think I love feeling the proof of how bad you need me?”
“You want it, I’ll give it to you,” he rasped, rolling their foreheads together, kissing her roughly, tangling their tongues. “You want anything, I’ll give it to you.”
“Show me how badly I make you need to come.”
His nostrils flared, his eyes closing—and when he opened them back up, there was a trace of the devil in them. And she loved being trapped in the eye of that male determination. She loved the way his upper lip curled, his forearms crowding close on either side of her head, his mouth dropping to an inch above hers. “Knees up, Hannah.” He pulsed inside her, pupils blocking out the blue of his eyes. “Let’s see how deep I can get it before you scream.”
Spoiler: it didn’t take very long.
Dutifully, eagerly, she brought her knees up, grazing them along his rib cage and locking them high on his torso. His next thrust made her eyes roll back in her head, the second one making her squirm out of pure confusion. How and what was he reaching inside her that seemed to unlock some undiscovered force? Pressure rode low and threaded through her core, knitting her together so tightly, she couldn’t think or breathe, the roof of the car looking more and more like the gates to heaven. With his open, grunting mouth on her neck, he rode her roughly, yet somehow cherishingly at the same time, his tongue and lips continuously worshiping her throat, his mouth finding hers to swallow her screams. Yes, she was screaming his name, and he was, indeed, as deep as possible, scooping her hips off the seat with hard drives that quickened, roughened, going faster and faster. His body flattened her, using the flesh between her legs in the most deliciously frantic way, as if desperate for her to acknowledge his desire—and she did.
She had her proof. She had it and then some.
“Fox,” she wailed between her teeth.
“I know you’re close. I can feel it.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Loving that cock, aren’t you?” His teeth scraped her lobe and bit down. “Been craving it the way I’ve been craving this hot-ass pussy, day and night. On land and off. Now give it up, girl. Show me you love being on that back for me.”
Her orgasm wound tight, tighter, and she dug her heels into his bucking ass, her mouth wide and gasping against his shoulder, her sex squeezing in one never-ending pulsation. “Ohhh God. Oh God.”
He broke, moaning in fits and starts, the tempo of his drives stuttering, his mouth latching on to hers and holding, air rattling from his nose, his hands fisting in her hair. “Hannah.” A rough, desperate kiss, another one, robbing the soul straight out of her body. “Hannah. Hannah.”
The hard body that had just propelled her to a height of bliss she never knew existed collapsed on top of her, gathering her close and breathing heavily, his heart galloping against hers. Her legs were still locked around his waist, their bodies slick with sweat, and she didn’t see herself moving in the foreseeable future. Maybe ever. Apparently being boneless was a thing.
“You make me feel like I’m in the exact right place.” He exhaled into her neck, kissing it reverently. “Nothing to run or hide from. Nothing I want to avoid.”
She turned her head and their mouths melted together. “It’s okay to trust that feeling. I have it, too.”
Fox studied her face with such intensity in his blue eyes, she didn’t dare draw a breath. Then he swallowed heavily and turned them onto their sides, facing each other, his arm keeping her close. And they stayed there, breathing in the scent of each other’s skin, until the storm stopped.
