Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)(34)

By the time I heard the click, it’d already gone boom.

I go out on the porch, as if that will somehow bring her back to me. I’m clutching her camera like a child clutches a toy when I see the distinctive glint of sunlight on metal coming from the north.

My chest tightens; something inside it flips over and flips over hard.

Ireland.

The length of another breath brings a little Prius into view, bright blue and flecked with mud, and I know for sure it’s her. I know that somehow I’m being given another chance, and I decide I’m taking it no matter fucking what. I’ll beg her to listen, and I’ll never stop begging if that’s what it takes. I fucked up, but I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her, if only she’ll let me.

Oh God, please. Please let me, sweetheart.





“I’m just here for my camera,” she announces briskly as she climbs out of her car. She’s still in her distractingly sexy shorts and clingy tank top from earlier, and there’s still sheetrock dust in her hair, but she has a bandage on her leg now and a heat in her eyes that means she’s either furious or aroused. Or both.

Hot blood kicks to my groin, and I feel myself thicken against my zipper. Fuck, I want her. Even furious with me, I want her. I want her to scratch at me as she holds my face to her pussy. I want her to bite my neck and shoulder and chest as her heels dig into my back to drive me deeper inside her.

I hand over her camera without any additional urging from her. I’m not interested in holding it hostage or using something important to her as leverage. I’m only interested in her—her happiness and her safety and her pleasure.

She doesn’t meet my eyes as she takes the camera, and she turns back down the porch stairs after she takes it without another word.

“Ireland,” I say in a strangled voice. “I was wrong. I was cruel. I’m sorry for it, and it won’t ever happen again.”

My words halt her progress, and she slowly pivots back to face me. The hurt and anger in her expression would be enough to drive back armies.

“You’re goddamned right it’s never happening again,” she hisses. “Because I’m never coming back here. Ever. Ever.”

Her words tear at me, tear at the part of me that wants her to feel safe. I should let her leave, and at this point, saying anything else aside from my apology is dangerously close to manipulation or coaxing, and I don’t want that. I want her here because she wants to be here, not because she’s guilted into it or convinces herself to stay against her better instincts.

That’s what Caleb would do—clearly, that’s what he did—given he’s no longer here and Ireland is in possession of her car again. Ever the country gentleman, he escorted her to her car and honored her wishes the whole time.

I’m not Caleb.

I step down the stairs. “I don’t want you to leave,” I say in a low voice. She lifts her chin at me defiantly, refusing to step back as I approach.

“Then you shouldn’t have told me to leave,” she seethes.

“I shouldn’t have,” I agree.

“You treated me like shit for no reason,” she continues, color rising in her cheeks, her eyes bright. “You made me feel stupid and awkward and embarrassed—and I don’t deserve to feel any of those things!”

“Of course not,” I murmur soothingly, because she’s still letting me get closer and I don’t want to spook her.

“I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like that, and I’m not going to feel like that anymore!” she says, blinking fast. Each blink feels like a blister rupturing open for me, knowing I’m the source of those tears. Shame and anger at myself stab deep, but I don’t let it stop me from getting closer to her, close enough to reach out and stroke her cheek.

Her eyes flutter closed…and then snap back open. “Stop! You can’t handsome your way out of this! You were an asshole!”

“I was.”

“And you made me feel like I was the asshole!”

“I did.”

A tear escapes one of her sweet blue eyes, and I catch it with my thumb. She bows her head slightly, as if defeated by the strength of her own emotions. “I’m so angry,” she says to the ground. “I’m so furious with you. And I’m even more furious that I’m crying right now when all I want to do is yell at you.”

“You can yell at me as much as you’d like,” I tell her, sliding my hand to the nape of her neck while my thumb strokes along her cheek. “As long as you stay here to do it.”

Another tear spills out. “I want to. Don’t you see why it makes it extra awful? I want to stay here with you and Caleb so badly.”

I don’t miss how the present tense slips out in her words. A ray of hope shoots through me. “Stay, Ireland. Stay and let me make it up to you, make me suffer every minute you’re due after what I did, just please”—I bend my face down and brush my lips against hers—“don’t go.”

She shivers at the touch of my mouth on hers. Parts her lips just enough to invite the gentle stroke of my tongue. And then we are kissing in truth, with her gathered in my arms and our slow kisses turning hot and sultry. Before long, my cock is burning against her belly and she’s subtly rocking her hips against me.