Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (11 page)

“I can’t promise hanging out with me will make it better, but I’ll try.” His heart seemed to tip, like his words came as such a shock it almost fell over. He tried to steady it. “I mean, I’m only passable company, but the weather’s lovely, and you’ve brought round the limousine.”

“Get in,” she said, and nudged his foot with hers. She was wearing the red trainers with the hole over the toe, God help him.

He slid into the front bench seat of the limousine. There was a cardboard scent tree and a rosary hanging from the review mirror. A small Virgin Mary was fixed somehow to the dash, near white from sun bleach. There was an engraved brass plate over the stereo console that read
PATSSRICK J. BURNSIDE LIC
#70813. A tatty Irish flag pennant waved from a cup holder.

He settled in and his hip crinkled something—a white paper bag—just as Des was sliding in. “That’s for you.”

“You got me a present?” Fuck. He patted his pocket as if it might hold a bouquet he had accidentally stuffed there.

“Look and see.”

He opened it up to find a stack of cream-filled pastries with chocolate icing on. He stared at them like they might start to talk to him. Tell him what to do with the perfect woman when you found one in the wrong place at the wrong time and were very likely
the wrong man. They did not say anything because donuts didn’t talk and he was going mad.

“Thank you, I—”

Des reached back behind the bench seat and brought over a paper hot cup with a tea tag dangling from the rim. “This too. I wasn’t sure how you took it, but given your eating habits I guessed and put in all the sugar and cream.”

She held it toward him, her eyes clear and expectant. She was so pretty, the cap almost obscenely adorable. He was dead. So, so, so dead. “That’s perfect.” He took the tea; of course, her fingers touched his. The answering wave of gooseflesh over his neck was predictable.

She started the limousine, and he reached back to put on his safety belt. It caught, and as he was fiddling with it, he felt her all along his side, warm and soap-smelling. She brushed his hand from the safety-belt pulley.

“Here, there’s this weird trick to it—you’ll never get it.” She had to lean in closer and her shoulder was against his chest, her upper arm against his cheek, and it should have been sort of awkward, except he never wanted her to move. “There.” She slid back, holding the buckle and pulled the belt across his chest and clicked it in place, her hand snugged tight against his hip. The blood bounced so hard and fast against the base of his cock he jumped when the buckle locked and she pulled her hand out.

“Thank you.” He put the pastry bag in his lap.

“You’re welcome. Southend fields, huh?” She took off the cap and smoothed her hair back. He already missed it. He would have chauffeur fantasies for the rest of his life. She reached over again, and he realized she was going to open the glove box. As she leaned over, he closed his eyes tight. The ends of her hair brushed his arm as she moved back into place and his blood rushed low again.

“Right. That’s okay, then?” His voice was about an octave lower than usual. He cleared his throat.

“Hire’s choice.” She smiled.

“Do you really drive this?” She pulled away, expertly checking her mirrors to navigate the large vehicle.

“Well, not for money. The business was my dad’s. This was our family car, though. Perfect for four kids. I learned to drive on this hoss. I think I could drive anything. Now, I drive it because I had to sell my car for rent money.” She looked over to
intercept his look of sympathy. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s actually a first-class pain in my ass, and I’m giving rides to the whole freaking neighborhood and my family besides, and the gas is ridiculous, but in this town, it’s better than the bus.”

“All your family is here?” He liked watching her drive. She was confident accelerating along the on-ramp, merging the limousine into traffic. Her gaze darted from the mirrors to the other cars. He drove, of course, but had never quite felt comfortable on the wrong side of the road, and had only ever really needed to drive in the States. She looked serene while driving, and wise.

“Yes. Two brothers and a sister. Sam’s the oldest, he’s a doctor. Then there’s Sarah.” She paused then, pressed her lips tight together. Took a breath that made Hefin think she needed it. “Then me, then my little brother PJ. They all live here in Lakefield. Actually, they all live in the same neighborhood we grew up in. We Burnsides are well rooted.”

“Your mum?”

“She died when I was almost eight. She’d had this horrible chest cold. It didn’t go away, then it got worse. I think with four kids, it’s hard to find time to get in to the doctor. Dad came in from a late job one night, some corporate party, and found her collapsed in the kitchen; we kids were already in bed. She died a little later in the hospital from a major complication of pneumonia.” Her voice stayed even while she shared this, but her hands got tight on the wheel.

“I’m sorry, Destiny, that’s hard.”

She glanced over at him, gave him this small smile that made her seem young. “You know, for some reason, it doesn’t bother me when you call me by my full name. I think it’s your accent.”

He coughed out a laugh. “Nothing wrong with your name.”

“A lot to live up to.”

“Maybe. More likely that destiny just is what it is. Nothing you have to do or live for.”

She laughed. “Very deep.” She signaled to exit. “You know, I kind of hate talking about my mom. I know I love her, but the older I get, the more the love feels like these really awful and sad memories but it’s just because I can’t remember things as well, and honestly, everything I remember is good things. And I hate it when I try to talk about her and find out from Sam or Sarah that I’ve got it wrong. That I remembered something
wrong, or wasn’t really there and I’m just remembering someone else’s story or a picture, or something. So then, I don’t want to talk about her at all. I don’t know how much of my mom I have.

“Ironically, the one thing I do have is her name. Her name was Marie, and I’m Destiny Marie, and Destiny was this name she loved and a total capitulation on my dad’s part because he thought it was hokey. He’s the one who started calling me Des. And now I think the full name is hokey because I lost my mom so young and heard Des a thousand times more than I ever heard myself called Destiny.”

As the limousine bumped along the access road to the field complex, Hefin took a long drink of tea, hoping the hot sugar and caffeine would go down and find some words for him to say. Because he wanted to say something.

What she shared, about her mum and dad, about what she had of her mum, well, that was a real thing. It had been so long since he had known some real thing about another person.

Before he could think too hard, he said, “Maybe I should call you Destiny, then. All the time.”

She slowed to a stop in front of the main building of the complex. Looked at him as he tried to breathe sense back into his body.
Jesus
. “All the time, huh?”

“Sure. I think it … Suits you.”

“How much time is all the time?”

Oh
. Here was why endless brooding and hardly talking to anyone was an advantage. Less chance of finding yourself square in a corner. “Just … Any of the times I would call you anything. Let’s say.”

She laughed. “Sure. Let’s say.”

He took a very long drink of tea, as much good as it was doing him.

She moved to a parking spot a long ways from the front so she could take two spaces. She still had a kind of wry smile on her face. He’d like to kiss it right off.

“So, Hefin, what next?” She unsnapped her safety belt and turned full toward him. Her hair moved around her shoulders, and her tee was a little tight. He could see the outline of her bra, small triangles and thin straps heading mysterious places. Her jeans were soft-looking and loose. Freckles everywhere. She should look girlish, but those angled brows over her smart gray eyes and her pretty mouth turned her slight figure and play clothes on their head and gave the impression of someone who knew herself as only
a woman could. She was stripped to elements—she wore what she could move her body in, she let her own features show her intelligence without distractions.

It was what had turned his head from the beginning.

Her posture, her artlessness.

Then, how she had tried not to let him see her cry but listened so carefully to him.

“Where’s A-bear-ah-ron?”
She had asked, her mouth as careful around the syllables as if he had handed her a priceless object to hold for him.

“Ab-ba-eh-ron,”
she had corrected herself, just by watching his mouth, listening.

And she would let him call her Destiny. Trusting him with a memory she could barely recall but grieved over.

What was it he was trusting her with?

To forget him when he left? To not be hurt when he took pleasure in her body and never asked after her heart?

This option, of course, gave him leave to touch her. Kiss her. Move his naked body over a naked Destiny and slide into her, and slide away, and again and again until that was everything that existed in the entire world, like the heat of that was the battery that powered the entire world.

He’d very much like to see her naked if that could be an option.

“What’s next, is that we go into the shop there, and buy a bucket of balls.”

“You said balls!” She nudged her knee against his. So he grabbed it. This afternoon, at least, he would not be brooding or maudlin or worry about memories. As soon as the cap of her knee fit into his palm she bent her leg up so his hand necessarily slid onto her thigh. He rubbed into the crease her calf made, pressed against the back of her leg. Moved the soft, thin denim over the tendons that framed the hollow at the back of her knee. Watching her melt with his touch was mesmerizing.

“What are we to be, Destiny?” His fingers found her skin through a small hole in her jeans. He could only fit a fingertip, and he could barely get the feel of the texture of her skin under his callus, but she reached over and put her hand over his, stroking his knuckles, the back of his hand. It was restless and soothing at the same time.

Nearly unbearable.

Groin-tightening.

“We’re friends.” Her voice was soft, distracted.

“Don’t want to kiss my friends.”

She looked up at that, touched his mouth, pushed her thumb into his upper lip, and he closed his eyes to keep from licking her thumb. Felt a shiver bloom out of the tightness, down low, with the effort his restraint took. “You’ve just never had kissing friends?” she whispered.

“You have a lot of those? Kissing friends?”

With her thumb against his lip, she had made talking, the necessary movement of his mouth, a sex act. His erection was heavy, the pulse of it thudding like a mallet strike from the inside out.

As an answer, he felt her breath over his mouth, her thumb still pressing.

She pressed a bit harder and it slipped, turning out his bottom lip as she dragged her thumb down to his chin. He kept his eyes closed, let her ease his mouth soft.

She moved closer, and he could feel the suggestion of the softness of her lips against his, but nothing more.

“Do you know that your top lip’s bigger than your bottom one?” Her breath was warm, and she had either drank her own tea, or snuck a bit of his—his spine softened in Pavlovian response to the bergamot.

“Yeah,” he whispered back, finding her waist by gliding slowly up her leg until the curve of it was in his hand. “When I was at university I was shy about it, so I grew a mustache, thinking to hide it.”

Her husky laugh so close, and with his eyes closed, made his arousal urgent. He moved his hand down and back up again, this time dipping underneath her tee to her skin.
Fuck
. She was perfectly soft.

He pressed in his fingers and she arched toward him, getting their bodies close, but she kept her head back so her lips were still teasing. “You must have figured out that the mustache only made it worse.”

“Not soon enough to avoid photographic evidence of its disaster.”

She laughed again, but this time it ended with their lips pressed together. He tipped his head and tasted her lower lip with his tongue; when she moaned, he shoved his whole arm up under her shirt so he could press his forearm along her spine. This left his other hand free to curve around her bottom, and it was the precise overflowing palmful he had been hoping for. He pulled her into him, and somehow, she got her legs about his waist, the soft bench seat perfect.

She kept her hips tipped back, and when he nudged his fly toward hers, he felt her
smile and tip away a bit more. He smiled back.

Their kiss got serious—her tongue met his and he slid his along hers, slowly still, soft still. She spent the longest, most awful moment sucking and kissing at his top lip. He could do nothing but submit as she explored it in every way possible, as if her hands weren’t moving all over him, up under his tee, over his ribs and sides and even, for one agonizing moment, into his armpits—raking into the hair and raking forward to scratch over his nipples.

He groaned, an involuntary noise forced from his throat by the unending ache of his cock.

He pulled her close again and this time she moaned right into his mouth, her lower back came uncurved, and she ground herself against him in circling, purposeful jerks.

He laid into the kiss, found the loose waistband of her jeans and dove his hand in, under her small panties, the elastic rolling against the back of his wrist as he squeezed her, eased his finger tips closer to the crease, want like a live thing all over him, hot and mad. She took her hands out of his shirt and grabbed his face for a kiss without any finesse whatsoever, just sliding and breathing, then paused, pushed her arse into his hand.

“Yeah,” she whispered, or breathed, or
thought
—he didn’t fucking know.

He slipped out of their kiss to get his mouth at her throat, to open his eyes and watch his hand working under her jeans. She shifted again and straddled him so she was on her knees, her hands back under his shirt, then she rucked it up, right under his armpits. He knew she wanted it off, but he wasn’t giving up his position. “Destiny,” he said, squeezing again, hard, gathering up more of her flesh, spreading her.