The Cornerstone (7 page)

Her eyes darted back and forth over the reception area, and then she hit me with a condescending glare that could melt steel. “How’s what going to go?”

This woman did strange things to me. I wanted to argue with her, taunt her, hit every one of her triggers, and then I wanted to fuck her so hard I forgot a time when I wasn’t inside her.

It wasn’t affection or anything like that. Fuck no. Just another round of this goddamn post-deployment horny, and I needed to get it out of my system. Sweat it out like a fucking fever.

“Don’t weddings make chicks crazy horny?”

She rolled her eyes at the champagne bottle as she filled her glass. “Yeah, there’s nothing cliché about that,” she said. She turned a sympathetic smile toward me, her eyes crinkling. “Look at me, rambling on about wedding clichés. I’m sorry, honey. All this love and forever bullshit must make you realize you’re old and hopelessly alone. Have you thought about a companion cactus? Your gun collection can’t be keeping you very warm at night.”

Oh yeah. This bitch had balls.

“I don’t recall discussing firearms with you last night,” I said.

“You’re telling me you don’t have a gun collection, Mr. Semper Fi?”

“That’s the Marines, ma’am.” I gave her a tight nod, waiting for her to make the next move. I wanted to get her alone, but I didn’t want to look like a clingy bitch in the process.

“It bears noting that the point has been neither discredited nor refuted,” she murmured, gesturing to her imaginary judge and jury. Lo had mentioned she was an attorney—yes, I asked my sister about Shannon before the ceremony and I’m a big, squishy pussy who can’t have a one night stand without making it complicated—and it looked good on her. Even when the lawyering came at my expense. “Permission to treat the witness as unresponsive.”

“Your room or mine,” I said.

“How about you go to your room, and if I have any interest in seeing you again, I’ll find you.” She bent and grabbed two new champagne bottles. “Bye now.”

“Excuse me, beer wench?”

Shannon’s head snapped up, and that pop of contempt in her eyes was everything I needed. I didn’t see any reason to analyze my newfound fascination with insulting her and winding her up. “Where do you get off—”

“Your mouth would be my preference, but I’ll settle for your tits. Or your ass. Whichever.” I rubbed my chin, thinking. I really missed that beard. “No. Wait. Mouth. For sure.”

“You’re a disgusting”—she slammed one champagne bottle on the stone bartop—“misogynist”—and then the other—“meathead.”

“We’ve been over that one, Shortcake, and you already know I pray at the altar of pussy.” I smirked as her face heated, her anger rising by the second, and it was
game fucking on
. “But don’t worry: I won’t tell anyone how much you like being manhandled. You should know I’m good at keeping secrets.”

She folded her arms on the bar and gestured for me to lean forward. “Unfortunately for you,” she said, her index finger circling toward the tent, “I’ve already told everyone about your very small”—she glanced toward my crotch—“situation. You spend a lot of time in cold water, you know, being a commando and all. Shrinkage. It was bound to catch up with you.”

Shannon pressed her index finger to her innocently evil smile, and I was not capable of waiting much longer for those lips to cover my cock.

“Darlin’, you woke up everyone within a five-mile radius with your screaming and begging. Every living soul, and the whales and sharks, too. They know all about my
situation
and they know how good that situation was for you.”

“You’re sweet,” she cooed, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hickey on the upper curve of her breast. Add another one to my column. “But,
darlin’
, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to bullshit with the best of them. I knew your ego was fragile. I couldn’t risk damaging it.”

“Keep going,” I said with a shrug. “Yeah, this is great. All your bitching is giving me time to think about whether I want you tied down while I slap your ass.”

“Keep dreaming, commando,” she said. She plucked the champagne bottles from the bar, tucked them in the crook of her arm, and started down the path toward her cottage. She paused, surveying the empty reception area, and tossed a hot smile over her shoulder that I interpreted as ‘if you want me, come and claim me.’

Yeah, that wasn’t a difficult decision, and following meant I got to watch her hips swaying in the moonlight. It was just the crash of waves not more than fifty yards away, the hum of crickets, and the click of her heels, and even if I never touched her again after this night, I’d always remember the foggy glow that surrounded her, as if clouds knew better than to get in Shannon Walsh’s way. I was no romantic, but that was a gorgeous sight.

I let her get within a few yards of her cottage—the one filled with busted furniture—before catching her around the waist and hauling her toward the door.

“It’s open,” she murmured against my neck.

Her fingers were busy with my tie and I already had a hand in her panties, but those two words were a bucket of ice water on my balls. What the fuck was she doing leaving her door unlocked?

“Don’t do that,” I said, scanning the perimeter before turning the handle. “I don’t care how nice this place is, shit happens when you aren’t careful. Especially to little things like you.”

I put Shannon down—ignoring her antagonistic scowl as she uncorked one of the bottles and sucked the fizz from the rim—and motioned for her to stay put while I swept the cottage. She wasn’t even one hundred pounds soaking wet, and for as scrappy as she was, she was no match for someone who wanted to harm her. Fuck, an excited beagle could take her down.

When it was secure, I grabbed her elbow and towed her inside. “This is exactly why you need someone looking after you. You shouldn’t be leaving this place wide open,” I said, closing the door behind her. “And I won’t fuck you until you stop pouting about it.”

“The only people at this resort are wedding guests.” Shannon tipped back the champagne as she leaned against the wall. “I have two bottles of Dom Perignon all to myself. This place has HBO
and
Showtime. I don’t need you, or your mansplainy dick.”

I locked the door then grabbed the champagne from her hand and sipped, and a long, weird silence simmered between us. She was too busy wanting to be right to acknowledge that she was dead wrong. Eventually Shannon slipped out of her shoes and walked into the bedroom, and maybe I was the beagle who was going to take her down because I couldn’t help but follow.

She was reaching for the zipper at her lower back, and I pushed her hands away to draw it down myself. “You’re still here?” she said, a laugh in her voice. “Don’t you have beachfront crimes to prevent? Maybe chase off some deer? Some rifles to polish?”

“Shut up, Shortcake,” I said.

The dress fell to the ground, pooling around her bare feet, and she was left in nothing more than a tiny pair of purple panties. No bra was my favorite kind of bra. I shifted her hair over one shoulder, letting my fingers coast through the soft strands while I breathed her in. There was nothing like this in my world, nothing so pure and stunning and, for right now, mine. I pressed my mouth to her neck, licking and scraping and inhaling her while she melted into me.

I didn’t do any of this last night. I fucked her plenty, but I didn’t
savor
her. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew the desire to do just that had nothing to do with post-deployment horny.

With her hair loosely fisted in my hand, I brushed my lips over her ear and whispered, “Kneel.”

Shannon met my eyes over her shoulder and smiled. “Ask nicely.”

“Kneel
now
.”

She pivoted, and her face was the most perfect mix of sweet and defiant that I’d ever seen. Right then, one thing was abundantly clear: I loved this game of beast and shrew, or whatever the fuck it was, and so did she.

Shannon anchored her hands on my waist and dropped to her knees, and that simple act of surrender nearly had me coming before she parted her lips. I didn’t have a complex philosophy on women submitting to me; I just really fucking wanted it from
her
. I chalked it up to finally conquering some of her insufferable brattiness. Alternative explanations need not apply.

She was busy shoving my trousers and boxers past my knees and dragging her nails down my inner thighs, and my dick couldn’t have been happier when her tongue curled around me. For a brief moment, she was hesitant, her tongue teasing over my shaft and hand pumping, but then a hot, hungry gasp echoed between us and she arched her neck to look up at me.

A victorious gleam lit Shannon’s eyes, and I realized that gasp came from
me
.

“If you don’t stop staring at me like that, I’m going to come all over your face.”

She laughed. She actually
laughed
while on her knees with her little fingers wrapped around my dick, and I liked it. “And what’s the problem with that?”

Shannon lifted an eyebrow while her tongue flicked over the head of my cock, and I was embarrassingly close to blowing it all right now. I took a calming breath and raked my hand through her hair, wrapping it around my fist again. It was a measure of control, for sure, and I needed every inch I could get. “Start sucking, Shortcake.”

I thought this would be fast and aggressive, just like every minute of last night, but it wasn’t, and maybe that was what I was supposed to figure out about Shannon. This was no beautiful or delicate blowjob, but it was so fucking
attentive
I forgot there was a world beyond my cock and her mouth.

Most people didn’t understand the value of a thorough blowjob. Kids today—yeah, I said it—they saw it as less intimate than sex, less meaningful, and they were wrong. Oral sex was a generous gift, a form of worship, and when it was good…it was deliverance, too.

The finer points of Shannon’s technique were lost to me, but I knew this was so much better than my fantasies from the long, lonely nights on the other side of the globe. The best part was her hair. At times, those fiery strands were woven through my fingers, gliding against my skin like silk, and at others, I pulled hard, telling her exactly what I needed. And then there were moments when she nuzzled closer to me, her hair brushing my hip, and too many sensations were careening together at once.

I cupped her chin up, watching her take all of me because I couldn’t feel this much without looking in her eyes, and that was the end. Those eyes, that hair, the light press of her teeth…I came like a motherfucking C-4 detonation. “Oh fucking…oh fuck fuck fuck fuck,” I roared, my fingers tangled in her hair and rubbing her scalp. “You’re such a good little cocksucker.”

I kept babbling incoherent praise and obscenities but none of it was enough to communicate the soul-squeezing affection I was feeling for this woman. There was a wild spasm in my belly that I couldn’t even begin to explain and everything inside me demanded that I wrap myself around her immediately. Hold her and kiss her and fall asleep with her, even if it was only for this strange, unexpected weekend. I wanted it more than I could remember wanting anything else.

Her fingernails cruised over the backs of my thighs, stroking just enough to bring me back down to earth. With my chest heaving like I’d just finished a marathon in full combat gear, I traced her swollen lips with my thumb. “Oh, baby—”

“I’m not your
baby
,” she interrupted. “Let go of my hair.”

What the fuck just happened here?

I opened my fist and the strands fell free, and that quickly, the moment was lost. We were back to being the people who only enjoyed arguing with each other, and those people didn’t snuggle after emotionally exhausting blowjobs.

Shannon popped to her feet and darted into the bathroom. I flopped on the bed, too fried from that orgasm to do more than exist, and listened while she brushed her teeth. Swallowing was a bonus I hadn’t expected—again, my preconceived notions about Shannon pointed to her squealing in horror at all bodily fluids—but I couldn’t decide how I felt about her erasing the evidence of it now.

I wouldn’t be able to kiss her and taste myself on her tongue, and I wanted that.

Shit
. I needed to stop going on three-year deployments if I wanted to keep what was left of my sanity. Pet names? Cuddling? Post-head kissing? What the fuck was wrong with me?

“How do you not recognize the cues to leave?”

I leaned up on an elbow and found Shannon in a short blue bathrobe, one that was too thin and silky to hide the outline of her nipples. The makeup was scrubbed from her face and her eyes seemed impossibly large and bright against a riot of freckles. Her hair was up in a messy bun and her arms crossed over her chest, and my cock was more than a little interested in getting under that robe.

“Why can’t you chill the fuck out?” I asked, patting the mattress beside me. How could she not understand that I needed to touch her right now? How could she do that to me and then think I’d be able to leave? “Stop bitching about everything. Get over here and let me eat your cunt.”

Her eyes snapped shut and she jolted backward as if I’d slapped her. “Do
not
use that word.”

“You’re okay with ‘good little cocksucker’ but you draw the line at ‘cunt’?” I scratched my head, frowning, and gestured to the bed again. I was ready to beg for her skin against mine. “What if I do really nice things to your cunt?”

Shannon unfolded one arm and pointed to the door, and when she spoke, her voice was more precise and final than some orders of execution I’d heard from terrorist kingpins over the years. “Get the fuck out.”

The answer to the original question was
yes
. Yes, we were drawing the line at cunt.

“Hey, shh, it’s okay,” I said. I lumbered off the bed and dropped my hands on her shoulders. “Calm down. Shh. No reason to lose your shit, Irish Spring. It’s all good. Now get on the bed with me.”

She finally glanced up, and God, there was an entire fucking universe in her eyes. All the defiance I’d come to expect from her plus pain and fear, staring back at me. There was so much there, so much more than what she stowed just beneath the surface.