One Last Time (Loveless Brothers 5)

In my less lucid moments, I sometimes wonder if she’s a sorceress. A witch, maybe. Some sort of enchanting demon, because what besides black magic could explain her hold over me?

“You do this every year?” she finally asks.

“By this, you mean Fall Fest? Yes,” I say.

“You guys make good beer.”

“You mean Daniel makes good beer,” I tell her. “I make good business decisions.”

That gets a smile out of her, a quick laugh.

“Of course you do,” she says, teasing. “I’m sure you’ve got a complicated flow chart for every decision.”

“Who says they’re complicated?”

“So there are flow charts,” she says, laughing.

Her laugh makes me feel like silly putty, like she can mold me however she wants. It always has.

“I can’t make staffing and overhead decisions based on a whim and a prayer, can I?”

“You could,” she points out.

She looks at me, her eyes dancing, her smile in the fine creases around them. I’m light as a feather, needy as a black hole. Her car is on the other end of the parking lot, and it feels like miles away.

“Can I show you something?”

“What?”

I reach into her pocket and take her hand. It’s warm as the bonfire we just left, and her fingers wrap around mine just like I remember.

“A surprise,” I say, and steer toward the shadow behind the brewery, a spot where the lights from the parking lot don’t reach.

The surprise is that when we reach the dark I turn, pull her in, push her up against the wall. The surprise is that she’s already pulling me toward her as I do, head back, lips slightly parted.

The surprise is that when I unzip her jacket, her nipples are already hard.

“This the goodnight you were looking for?”

“Something like it.”

I push myself against her, already rock-hard. She makes a noise. I do it again.

“Good, I was afraid I might misinterpret,” I say. “Usually when you summon me you’re a little more direct.”

“Silas was there,” she says, releasing the zipper on my jacket, her hands sliding over my shirt. “Half your family was ten feet away, I couldn’t just walk up and say hey Seth, wanna fuck.”

I grab one leg, hike it over my hip. She gasps, one hand clenching my shirt, cool knuckles against my warm skin.

“You could say it now,” I tell her, stroking my thumb along the gusset of her jeans.

“Hey Seth,” she whispers, her lips so close they’re brushing mine. “Wanna fuck?”

At last, I crush my mouth against hers.Somehow, we make it to her car with our clothes on. She drives, and I don’t ask where we’re going. I just watch her, face lit by the dashboard lights. Lips dark, skin pale, chest still heaving.

She turns off the main road onto a gravel one that disappears into the forest, turns right. Before she shuts the headlights off I see the NO TRESPASSING sign, and then it’s dark as a tomb and I pull her onto me.

The first time is always rough, haphazard, frantic. We fuck like we’re time bombs. Usually it’s on the floor, sometimes a table. This time we spill into the back seat of her car, half-shedding our clothes as we go like we’re in high school again.

The only thing she says is are you still good? And I answer as long as you are and then I’m inside her, up against the back seat, and she’s bracing herself with one leg against the driver’s seat, the Jesus handle in one hand, her shirt and bra shoved up over her breasts as I wrap a seat belt around my fist and use it for leverage.

It doesn’t take long. The first round never does. When we both finish we’re a tangle of limbs and clothing and car parts, and I rest my forehead against hers and for a few moments, the world stops spinning and we float.

Then I clear my throat and ask if she keeps napkins in her car.Delilah is staying in her parents’ guest house, so I offer to take her back to my place. There’s no point pretending that we’re done, so I don’t.

Instead, she drives us to the Hillside Motor Hotel, right outside the national forest. She doesn’t say why she doesn’t want to go to my place, and I don’t bother asking. I’d rather fuck again than fight.

We take the second round slower, though not by much. Being with Delilah is otherworldly, elating and terrifying, addictive. I feel like some other version of myself, one unweighted by the outside world, pure and primal and on a plane beyond this one. I feel like the wrong parts of me are gone and whatever’s left is what’s right.

We’re still in bed when the sun comes up, pink rays nudging their way through the closed curtains. She half on top of me, fingers pushed through my chest hair, big toe wiggling slowly against my leg.