Under a Rogue Moon

Chapter 16

Chapter 16There were two snooker tables at The Green. Years earlier, Neil’s nephew had fallen in love with the game and thrown himself headfirst into the atmosphere, learning how to play, following around the big-name players as they competed around the country. Neil had the first table put in to help his nephew practice when he was home, figuring it couldn’t hurt having diversion for his patrons, either. The second came when said nephew started bringing around the occasional celebrity for a game. Though the attention was good for business, Neil didn’t like the idea of someone not having privacy if they wanted it and converted one of the special engagement rooms into a snooker room instead.

That was where Flanna took Jason. The room was rarely open to the public without a cost involved, but Neil had always made special accommodations for her, as a favor to her father, she’d always thought. The reason didn’t matter; now, she was glad that she and Jason could have someplace private to hang out while the nighttime crowd thinned. The room was probably too big for just the two of them, but maybe a little distance could be a good thing. It would help to keep her head clear.

Jason was circling the six by twelve table, tilting his head as he looked down the long expanse of green. “Why is it,” he said, his tone speculative, “that in a country where space is a premium and the national goal is to see just how tiny you can make something and still keep it useful, your pool tables are absolutely enormous?”

She smiled. “It’s not a pool table. It’s a snooker table. And we like to keep the rest of the world on its toes by being contrary. You’d almost think we were American in that regard.”

Her gibe was answered with a devilish grin. “Is that what this is, then?” Jason picked up one of the red balls and sent it rolling down the table. “A battle of nationality? American prowess versus British experience?”

“Hardly.” Turning her back to him, Flanna crossed to the wall where the cue rack was mounted, pulling down two sticks. “Everybody knows the Americans are absolute rubbish when it comes to snooker. The best players are always British.”

“Them sounds like fighting words to me.”

She handed him one of the sticks, then laid hers down across the table so that she could slip out of her coat. “Would you care to make a little wager, then?” she said lightly. “You can prove your superiority and win some spare dosh at the same time.”

Jason shook his head, though his grin remained wide as ever. “There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start,” he said. He proceeded to tick his list off on his fingers. “I don’t know how to play the game, I’m not even that good at real pool, and the English Inquisition out there already warned me that you were a shark. You must think I’m really stupid to fall for a little bit of goading.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid at all.” Picking up her cue, she deliberately crossed in front of him to get to the end of the table, her bottom brushing across his crotch. Placing the white ball on the table, Flanna leaned forward to line up her shot, very well aware that the angle gave anyone in Jason’s position the perfect view down the front of her blouse. “I think you’re highly competitive,” she went on. “And I think you’d jump at the chance to beat me at anything.”

The sharp crack of the cue split the room, and Flanna straightened to watch the white ball roll down the table, barely touch one of the outlying reds, and then come back to a dead stop on the cushion nearest her, the green ball effectively standing in its path.

Jason frowned, looking over the table. Beyond three red balls moving just scant inches, the tableau was completely unchanged. “You didn’t sink anything,” he said.

“I know.” It was hard not to sound smug. “Your turn.”

He came up to her side, but the vertical angle of his stick betrayed his hesitancy. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he admitted.

“And you have no idea how much I love being the one in the know for a change.” Setting down her cue, Flanna came up to stand directly behind Jason. She was having far too much fun with this, but it was impossible not to be floating on a high. This was the first time since his arrival that she was completely in command, and to top it all off, her fears that her feelings would be unreciprocated were finally eroding under his constant attentions and declarations. How could she not revel in the moment?

“There’s a specific order to the game,” Flanna said, leaning in so that she could murmur the words directly into his ear. It made her breasts brush against his back, and she felt his muscles twitch at the contact, but Jason didn’t break the spell by turning around. He just stood there while she reached around and helped him position his cue.

“First you pot a red, and then a color,” she continued. The heat of his body was distracting her, the thin fabric of their shirts barely enough to keep it contained. “And you keep that up until all the reds are gone.”

“But you didn’t sink anything.”

Her fingers curled around his on the stick, matching the smooth motion of his arm as she helped him with the follow-through for contact. “Snooker’s a game of strategy. It’s very difficult to pot anything on the opening break, so the smart move is to do what you need to put your opponent in the most untenable position possible.” When she straightened and pulled away, she let her fingers trail across his lower back before dropping her hand to the table. “It’s very difficult to line a shot up when the ball is hugging the cushion, so your best plan is to keep it as far away from the reds and as close to the cushion as you possibly can.”

She’d helped him get around the green, using the side cushions to send the cue ball down toward the pack of reds. It broke them apart, but then didn’t come back, eliciting a frown from Jason as he surveyed the table.

“You’re setting me up, aren’t you?” he asked warily.

“I’m showing you how to play the game.”

She barely looked as she sank the first red, and she didn’t even need to move to then pot the black. It was hard not to laugh at the look on Jason’s face when she stepped back to scrutinize the positioning.

“Maybe it’s best if you just watch me,” Flanna said. “That way, you can get the flow of it and we can worry about how to score later.”

Without waiting for a response, she went to work, assessing the various balls before choosing which red to aim for, moving with a quick grace around the table that left her body humming. Jason’s eyes followed her every step, heavy and potent as it lingered on more than the angle of her cue. She deliberately started choosing balls that would put her opposite him, force him to look at her face, to see the full thrust of her breasts at the open neck of her blouse. He never said a word. His eyes just got darker and darker, while her body got warmer and warmer, until the slightest brush of her breasts against the table when she leaned over had her stifling groans of pleasure.

There was a slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead when she sank the last red, and Flanna had to fight the impulse to wipe it away when she straightened to smile at Jason. “Are you learning anything?” she asked, more than aware of the double meaning of her query.

“Yeah,” came the husky reply.

She was riveted to her spot as he rounded the table, unwilling to back away though she had a very good idea what sort of thoughts were going through his head. There was no mistaking the hunger in his eyes as they met hers, or the compulsive sweep of his tongue along the edge of his teeth. She risked a glance downwards as he neared. The bulge in the front of his jeans was impossible to deny as well.

He didn’t say another word, just scooped his hands around the sides of her face before taking her mouth in a ravenous kiss. It wasn’t a request, and it wasn’t a command. It was an incontestable need, his body straining to get closer to hers, his fingers trembling where they held her firmly in place. Every sweep of his tongue past her parted lips sucked another ounce of air from her lungs, leaving her lightheaded and breathless when he finally pulled away.

“You didn’t learn that from watching me,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “I learned a hell of a lot more.”

The table pressed into the back of her thighs as Flanna braced against his second approach. Determination made his touch more firm, left trails of fire where his hands skimmed down her arms. He wasn’t wasting time by dallying with foreplay. As his mouth plundered hers again, Jason gripped the fabric of her blouse at her waist and tugged, pulling it free from her skirt. A blast of cooler air hit her sides, but it quickly vanished when he slid his hands up beneath her shirt, wrapping around her back to pull her flush against his hard chest.

She moaned into the kiss, lifting her arms to cling to him as the world tilted around her. This wasn’t the reaction she’d intended. Though she’d wanted to tease, it had never occurred to her that he would act on his desire in such a public place. Outside was one thing; the back room at the pub was another.

“The door,” she panted, breaking away from his mouth.

“It’s locked.” He growled in frustration at her turned head, and one of his hands left the smooth skin of her back to grab her chin and force her to look at him again. Something impudent twinkled in the dark blue depths of his eyes. “No screaming for you tonight unless you want everyone in Birley to know just what I’m doing to you in here,” he warned.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “And what is it you’re going to be doing?”

This time, he smiled, a wicked smirk made more dangerous by the knowing touch of his hand. “A snooker lesson, of course. Now turn around.”

His hands fell to his sides as he took a step away, giving her ample room to do as he’d instructed. The cue stick rolled off the side of the table as Flanna turned to face it, and she frowned when Jason bent to pick it up. “What’re you doing?” she asked, starting to twist back.

She was stopped by his strong hand in the small of her back. “You’re going to play,” Jason murmured, leaning against her while he set the stick down on the table. His arousal pressed firmly into her ass, making her squirm. “And I’m going to continue my lesson.”

By that point, she was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about snooker any more.

Still, Flanna picked up the stick, doing her best to ignore the heat raging through her body. The control she’d been enjoying had been ripped from her hands with his first kiss, and now she could only wait while her pulse raced in anticipation of what he was going to do with the gauntlet he’d picked up.

She was aiming for the black when she felt the tickle at her knees. “Don’t you dare stop,” Jason said. His voice was no longer at her ear. Instead, it was coming from near the floor, directly behind her. “You have no idea how luscious you look from this angle.”

The tickle grew into a firmer stroke, and the folds of her skirt lifted away from her legs. Tamping down the desire to give up on the game, Flanna hit the cue ball as she’d planned, and then gasped when she felt Jason’s mouth begin a path up the back of her thigh.

“What’re you doing?” she breathed.

His voice was muffled when he replied, dampened by the denim. “You’re not the only one who can tease and teach at the same time.”

She squeaked when he bit at the back of her leg, but the firm grasp of his hands on her hips kept her from moving. “I can’t play from here anymore,” Flanna said. “The cue ball’s on the other side of the table.”

“Then I guess it’s my turn.”

The bite turned into a series of nibbles, strong but tiny reminders of his presence as he continued up and up her leg. Slumping forward against the cloth, Flanna pressed her cheek to the rough surface, grateful for the texture to distract her from the growing sensations down below. The contact, however, crushed her breasts to the table, coaxed her already sensitive n*****s into hardening further. She couldn’t stifle the moan that escaped her throat.

“I can smell you, you know,” Jason murmured. His hands were cupping the lower curve of her ass, his breath hot even through the cotton of her underpants. “Last night, out under the moon…you were everywhere. Even when we were done, and we were walking back to the house, all I could see and smell and feel was you.”

She shivered when the fabric covering her legs disappeared, pooling at her waist as Jason shoved her skirt up and out of his way. His mouth was back on her skin, sucking and licking along her upper thigh, and his hands slid beneath the elastic of her panties to skate along the outer edges of her p***y. Without warning, he pushed at her knees, forcing her to spread her legs farther apart, and she began to grind back against his mouth, wondering how far he was going to take this.

“The thing is,” there was a sudden rip, and she felt her underwear flutter down her legs to land in shreds on the floor, “…you taste as good as you smell. I dreamed about it this morning, waiting for your old man to leave so that I could go upstairs and join you. I couldn’t get it out of my head. But holding you while you slept was better than all of that. I’d trade just about anything to get that to happen again.”

Her legs were quivering. It wasn’t just his touch, though that was more than enough to be the root of the pleasure washing through her. It was his words as well, the solemn sincerity in his tone as he spoke to her that weakened every foundation she’d laid in defense. Biting her lip, Flanna took a deep breath before saying in a tiny voice, “You have to be around for that, Jason.”

His hands stilled. “Is that what you’re so afraid of? Is that why you don’t believe me?”

She hated not being able to see him, but when she started to twist, Jason bolted to his feet and pressed into her back, pinning her to the table. Without her skirt as a barrier, she could feel the definite bulge in his jeans, the coarse edge of the denim as it raked along between the cheeks of her ass. She couldn’t help but whimper when he began to slowly grind against her bottom.

“Tell me how I could possibly walk away from you,” Jason murmured. “Tell me how it’s possible for me to pretend that meeting you wasn’t the luckiest thing to ever happen to me.” His mouth descended to kiss the back of her neck, nuzzling past her hair so that his breath warmed her ear. “Christ, Flanna, the last thing I want is to leave. The only way I can see that happening is if you ask me to.”

Before he’d finished speaking, his hands had started moving again, this time slithering up her sides, around her front, pulling her up just enough so that he could cup the soft fullness of her breasts through her lacy bra. Flanna propped herself up on her elbows to allow him the room he needed, groaning when his fingers found the hard tips of her n*****s.

“If it takes my last breath,” he said against her skin, “I’m going to convince you that I mean this. Show you just what a spectacular woman you really are. I know you think I joke too much, that I don’t take life or any of this seriously enough. But when I tell you that you’re beautiful, that I love how passionate you are, I mean every single word. And I’m going to do my damnedest to prove that to you.”

By the time he finished, she was trembling in his arms like the last leaf left on an autumn tree. She didn’t know how he did it. He looked at her, and he saw through all the walls and all the pretenses, and he pushed them aside like a flimsy net that was barely worth his bother. He said what she needed to hear and even when she knew she shouldn’t believe him, that she didn’t know him well enough to put such trust in what he had to offer, she also knew there was no way she could deny the sincerity in every word. What was worse, she wanted to take what he said and hold it so close that nobody could rip it away from her. She was just afraid of taking the risk.

One of his hands disappeared from her breast, and the press of his pelvis eased against her ass. The sound of a zipper filled the room, and then she felt the hard slap of his c**k as it sprang free from its confinements.

“Are you wet for me?” he asked, his voice a silken whisper. Fingers skated along the inside of her thigh to dip between the outer lips of her p***y. A rumble of satisfaction emanated from Jason when he felt how slick she already was, sliding two and then three fingers into her depths. “You have no idea how hard it is for me not to drop to my knees and just eat you out,” he continued. “Knowing you’re this wet…remembering how you tasted. I can’t decide which I want more.” He paused, though his hand never stopped moving. “So you choose. Tell me how you want to come, Flanna.”

Though the memory of his tongue on her clit, the way he nibbled and sucked at her p***y, was vivid and fresh, the feel of his heavy c**k against her ass was more so, taunting her with the promise of filling her up if she only said the word. “f**k me,” she breathed. She twisted enough to look at him over her shoulder as she said it and saw the dark hunger sparking in his eyes. “Show me that you mean it.”

There was no need for elaboration. Understanding of what she wanted flickered in his face, and his fingers stilled in their thrusting. Taking a small step backward, Jason reached for her hand, helped her straighten, turn around. Her skirt fell back into place around her legs, but it was there only briefly before he gathered the denim up in his hand. He held it out of the way while she hopped back up onto the edge of the snooker table.

Their eyes remained locked as Flanna reached down and grasped his c**k, hard and throbbing against the palm of her hand. For a moment, Jason’s lashes fluttered at the sensations she knew were overwhelming him, but when his gaze returned to hers, it was even more ravenous, the overhead lights making his eyes seem to gleam silver. Gently, she pulled him forward, guiding the tip of his c**k to her wet slit before finally letting her grip drop away.

“Is this the point when I’m supposed to tell you how much I love you?” Jason said, settling his hands lightly on her hips.

She shook her head. “This is when you show me.”

His mouth was on hers almost before the words were out. Before she could get lost in the powerful kiss, Flanna wrapped her legs around Jason’s slim hips and helped coax him forward, moaning with satisfaction as his hard c**k slid into her tight channel. He didn’t stop, or slow, or tease. He merely followed through on her guidance, pressing deeper and deeper into her p***y until she felt the heavy swing of his balls against her ass. Then he held himself there and abandoned his hold on her hips to pull her so tightly against his chest that Flanna had to break away from the kiss, gasping for breath.

“I can still tell you, too, though, right?” he asked.

The corner of her mouth lifted. “Didn’t you say I need a lot of convincing?”

He started then, setting the rhythm of his words to that of his c**k sliding in and out of her wet heat. Some of it was lost when his mouth returned to hers, sentiment strangled away by their overwhelming need to taste and devour the other. Some of it was drowned out by the roar of her blood when he began to speed up his strokes, the angle of their hips making contact with her clit a fiery reality with every thrust. But most of it, she heard. Most of it found its way through her defenses, left her just as breathless as his endless kisses.

And when she came, when the sensations of the rough cloth beneath her bottom and the heat pouring off Jason’s body and the infinite force of every slam of his c**k got to be too much, it was his name that he had to smother with another kiss, swallowing down her scream so that she could have what remained of her dignity when they walked out of the room afterward.

He didn’t slow after her orgasm, though. When she broke away, still clinging to his shoulders, panting as the world began to settle again around her, there was still hunger darkening his eyes. Flanna ran her tongue along a path to his ear, the tang of his sweat prickling her taste buds. “Come for me,” she whispered. She tightened her legs around his hips, reveling in each hard thrust of his c**k. “Let it go. I can take it.” Her nails raked along his back, sending shudders of pleasure along his flesh. “I want it, Jason. I want you.”

His body tensed at the last, a final slam into her p***y making his muscles go rigid, his head fall back. She squeezed tighter around his twitching c**k, sinking into their shared heat, and watched the pleasure wash over him, delighting in the fact that this was all because of her. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to believe. Trust. Love. Maybe she could give him what he really wanted after all.

It took only seconds for him to bundle her back against his chest, his face buried in her neck. “Don’t move,” she heard him murmur. “I just want to make this last a little bit longer.”

Flanna smiled as her fingers played with the damp hair at his nape. Moving was the last thing she had in mind. Nothing had ever felt so much like coming home.