by Sara Whitney
He hiked his bag up his shoulder. “Okay then. Thank you for everything. The food, the shelter.” The forgiveness. “See you around maybe.”
Although it killed him to do it, he turned away from her and put his hand on the knob.
“Or you could stay.”
He pivoted slowly, certain his ears had tricked him. “What?”
She still hovered by the window, but she lifted her chin to meet his gaze with something like defiance. “Stay, Tom. You should stay.”
She wanted him. She was choosing this. The blood leaped in his veins, and he dropped his bag by the door and stalked across the room to cradle her face in his hands. “Christ, I’m glad you asked.”
He kissed her then, without finesse or even tenderness, just an onslaught of lips and tongue against hers, telling her without words that he wanted her, had wanted her forever, and he couldn’t wait another second to make her his.
She wrapped a hand around his neck and kissed him back, meeting his ferocity with her own. Her fingers clawed at his coat before working their way inside and over his shoulders to push it off his body. They left it in a puddle of puffy blue fabric at their feet, and he walked her backward toward her bedroom, never breaking their kiss.
At the foot of her bed, she pulled away to study him. Her accelerated breathing stretched the material of her shirt across her breasts, where he could see the points of her nipples. Everything in him screamed to touch, to taste, but he managed to leash his desire.
“Finn, we don’t have to do anything here. We can—”
“Don’t you dare. I want it all. Everything.” Her voice was savage, and blood surged to his cock at the sound of it.
Time to drop the leash.
“Shirt off,” he ordered, and she complied instantly. “Those too.” He pointed to her leggings.
She tugged them off along with her underwear and tossed them to the side. And then Finn Carey was standing in front of him, naked, nervous, and more beautiful than he could’ve imagined, and oh, had he imagined.
She blushed, and he realized he’d spoken his thoughts out loud. But if anything, it chased the nerves from her face, and despite the flame in her cheeks, she put a hand on her cocked hip.
“Now you. Off.”
She waved a finger from his head to his toes, like a queen commanding a servant, and he did as instructed, shedding all the material that was keeping them from being skin-to-skin. Her tongue poked over the edge of her top lip as her avid gaze followed the now-bare path she’d sketched with her finger. He felt the weight of her eyes on his skin like a physical touch, and he couldn’t help but grin.
“Looks like I’m not getting out of here with my virtue intact after all.” How he had the wherewithal to joke, he didn’t know, what with there being no blood left in his head.
He stepped closer and settled his hands around her waist, guiding her to sit on the side of the bed. Then he bent and kissed his way down her body, starting at her lips and moving down to her neck, then to each of her small, perfect breasts until she was gasping and tugging at his hair.
He knelt and looked up at her, this woman who’d been the central fantasy for the bulk of his fantasy-having life. Her black hair was a tangle down her back, her eyes were dreamy, and her mouth was soft and open. Because of him.
Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he stroked a thumb down the wet center of her. “What do you like?”
Nothing but a gasp spilled from her pink mouth, so he repeated the motion.
“Slow? Fast? Hard? Gentle? Tell me what you like, Finn.”
She released a shuddery breath. “You. I like you touching me, I don’t care how. Please—”
It was the permission he was looking for. He put a hand on her solar plexus and pushed her back on the bed, then settled between her legs. Every part of her was pretty, and as he put his mouth and then his tongue on her and then inside her, every part of him was grateful for it.
“Oh God, Tom.” She gasped when he added his fingers to the mix, and then her words dissolved into a chant of “yes” and “there” and “more” until she pulsed and cried out and arched off the bed.
He could still feel little aftershocks quivering across her skin when she propped herself up on one elbow and pointed to her bedside table. “Condom. Drawer. Now,” she panted.
He hadn’t expected to live a blessed enough life to hear Finn Carey issuing one-word commands for him to fuck her, and in the time it took him to yank the drawer open and sheath himself, she’d moved to the center of the bed. He joined her and fell into the cradle of her arms, the vee of her legs. She leaned up to kiss him, sinking her teeth into his lower lip when he didn’t push inside her fast enough.
“Fuck, Finn, so good. You feel so good,” he ground out, and as he started to move, she rolled her hips to meet him.
He hitched her leg around his hip and stroked into the heat of her, harder, faster, until she was shivering and panting and calling his name. She slipped a hand between their bodies, and he felt her shatter for the second time. His breathing stuttered into gasps, and he followed her over the edge, his face pressed to her neck, his lips seeking her sweet skin, feeling like they’d found their home.
Thirteen
Was she dead? Had Tom fucked her to paradise?
No. In paradise, your arm probably didn’t fall asleep when it ended up underneath your partner as he drifted off after making your whole body ring like a bell.
Pins and needles were worth it though. Tom’s hair was soft against her skin, and his heavy arm curled around her waist. She felt warm and content in a way she hadn’t… well, ever, maybe. Thank God she’d summoned every scrap of her courage and asked him to stay.
Tom chose that moment to open his eyes, but she wasn’t embarrassed to be caught studying his sleepy face, not when it caused him to unfurl that slow, sweet smile.
“Your dimples, Tom. How can anybody resist those dimples?” She brushed a fingertip gently across one, which deepened as his smile grew.
“I’m just glad they finally worked on you.”
Boy, had they. Every woman should experience the intensity of Tom Castle focusing on her and her only, applying his body solely for her pleasure. She shivered at the memory of his eyes locking on hers as he slid into her, filling her completely.
He rolled and sat up, and she watched transfixed as the muscles along his lean torso bunched and shifted.
“Yum.” She stroked a hand down his stomach and was delighted when his mouth fell open and his eyelids fluttered. “Can you serve me dinner on these abs tonight?”
“Perv.” He said it so affectionately that she laughed. Then he yawned, stretched, and reclined back on the bed. “Let’s spend the day like this. Monday too. Call in to work. Play hooky with me. I’ll read you the rest of The Color of Magic while we’re both naked.”
She didn’t have to give it a second thought. Grabbing her shirt from the floor, she darted to the kitchen where she’d left her phone and crawled back into bed. While she’d been gone, Tom had stretched himself out on his back, his arms behind his head in a classic satisfied-male pose.
She opened her email and tapped out a quick message to her boss: Not feeling so hot. Okay if I take a sick day tomorrow? When I’m back, we can go over the focus group questions I emailed last week.
“I’m ahead of my project deadline, so he won’t care if I use one of my sick days,” she said. “And Josie won’t be home until tomorrow night, so it’s only us for the next thirty hours.”
He ran his hot gaze down her body. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Not sure. Usually people come to me for market research and audience surveys. This is a new situation.” New, unexpected, and utterly thrilling.
He tilted his head. “Okay then. Show me how you survey an audience.”
Oooh, she loved that lazy tone of command. And if he wanted to play, she could play. She stretched to grab the Bullet Journal, a pen, and a hair elastic from her bedside table, then settled cro
ss-legged while Tom pulled himself into a sitting position, covered only by a sheet.
“All right, Mr. Castle.” She coiled her hair into a quick bun on top of her head and adopted the crisp focus group voice that she used to command the attention of the room. “I understand you want some market research conducted. As our sample size is quite small, you’ll forgive me if I focus my questions on you.”
“I’m all yours.”
The warmth in his voice momentarily threw her out of the role. He sounded so sincere that she felt for a second as if it were actually true, that he was pledging his devotion. Which was ridiculous; this was a crazy, one-off weekend that flew in the face of her orderly life. But while she was spending one more day terrifying herself with spontaneous decisions, she might as well run at them full speed. She continued in her crisp voice.
“First question: On a scale of one to ten, how satisfied are you by your recent experience with the product?”
“Is your pussy the product?”
His coarse words sent a wicked thrill through her, and she flushed. “Y-yes.”
“Ten,” he growled.
She jotted the number down, if only to escape the intensity of his gaze. “And how likely are you to use the product again? On a scale from one to ten.”
“Eleven.”
She pursed her lips to keep from laughing. “So I, ah, take it you don’t view this as a single-use product?”
He raised his brows. “Oh, I think there’s fun to be had with single-use too.”
Then, to her dismay and delight, he slipped his hand under the blanket and started to move it up and down his cock.
“N-no, sir, the question referred to—”
“I know what it referred to, Ms. Carey. Please ask the next question.”
His hand kept working under the sheet, and Finn felt an answering pulse between her legs.
She cleared her throat and clung to her journal. “Question four: How likely are you to recommend the product to others?”
“Someone else? One to ten?”
She nodded, and possessiveness flared in his eyes.
“Zero. Negative fifty. An irrational number’s worth of no.”
She had to swallow a few times before she found her voice. “Question five: Do you have suggestions for ways to improve the product that we can pass along to our designers?”
The muscles in his arms tensed as he worked himself, and when he spoke again, his voice held a similar note of tension. “Not sure. I might need another demonstration.”
“Oh fuck,” she groaned, heedlessly tossing her journal to the floor.
In one smooth movement, she peeled off her shirt and stretched to grab another condom from the drawer. Then she yanked the sheet back to reveal the whole, lovely length of him straining toward her.
He hissed as she rolled on the condom and straddled his lap, guiding his dick where she needed it most. She set the pace, a languid rocking motion that created friction in all the best places. He reached up to free her hair, and it slipped down to brush against his shoulders as she ground against him. He grabbed a fistful with one hand and gripped her hip with the other, positioning her where he wanted so he could reach her breasts with his mouth. Finn thought she might lose her mind as he took care to torture each nipple with licks and bites. Faster than she would’ve thought possible, she felt the pressure build in her again, and she increased her pace until she hovered on the brink.
“I’m going to… Oh Tom, God, I’m so close,” she gasped.
“Then come for me.” He sucked her nipple into his mouth and pressed his thumb to her clit, and she shattered. Moments later so did he, and together they answered question five: nothing could improve that user experience.
Fourteen
Had there been a time when Tom hadn’t liked doing the dishes?
Possibly. But that had been before he’d stood in Finn’s kitchen with the weak Monday morning sunshine hitting his shoulders as he kissed her senseless against the sink while the spray from the water misted over both of them.
“You should always wash dishes shirtless,” she murmured against his lips.
“And you shouldn’t be allowed to wear pants when you’re indoors.”
His hands moved down to cup her ass, which was bare but for the tiny scrap of lace and cotton she called panties. Her hair was mussed from his fingers and her lips plump from his kisses. He’d never seen her look so undone, and he wanted to lap up every bit of the dishevelment he’d caused by making love to her all day yesterday.
She hooked a heel around his calf, giving him better access to her sweet center. “Thank God for electricity and heat. I’ll never take my ability to go pantsless for granted again.”
He bent his head and kissed her. She was in his veins now. Her taste, her smell, her laugh. He’d imagined it for years, and the reality had been even more intoxicating.
He slid his fingers under the edge of the material keeping him from where he most wanted to be, and Finn’s breathing hitched. He was so focused on finding her wet heat that he didn’t hear the key rattling in the front door or the squeak of the hinges as it opened.
“Hi, babycakes, what’s shaking? I caught an earlier flight, so— Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Tom and Finn both froze as the redhead in the doorway shrieked and covered her eyes. “I didn’t know you had company!”
For a moment, the only sound in the apartment was the water splashing in the sink as Tom worked to catch up with what was happening. It appeared that Josie was home, and she’d caught him rounding third base with her roommate.
Correction: her mortified roommate. Finn jumped away from him, her face going eight shades of red as she tugged on the hem of her shirt.
“Josie! I didn’t expect you back so soon!”
“Obviously n— Tom?” Josie’s eyes narrowed as she got a good look at who her roommate had been kissing. The shock on her face turned to confusion. “I don’t understand. What’s he still doing here?”
Josie’s confusion confused Tom. “Finn, didn’t you tell her?”
“That she hooked up with the guy I brought home from the bar on Wednesday?” Josie gave a disbelieving laugh. “I’d definitely remember if she had.”
Finn gestured helplessly between her and Tom. “No, see, he’s just…”
Her voice trailed off, and the warm glow inside Tom started to fade.
“I’m just what?”
“Real classy, Finn.” Josie stomped through the kitchen toward her room, her suitcase clattering along behind her.
Finn shot him a stricken glance before hustling after her roommate. “There was nothing to tell! He’s just somebody I knew from high school, and he got stuck here during the blizzard when—”
Finn followed Josie into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Tom could hear the rise and fall of their voices, but he didn’t need to stick around for specifics. Finn had used the word just to describe him a few too many times, and even if she was trying to keep peace with her roommate, she’d had days and days to tell Josie that he was still in their apartment. She simply hadn’t bothered. The old would opened up in his chest as he realized that yet again, Beauty wasn’t choosing Brains; she’d only been slumming it for the weekend.
Most of his belongings were already tucked into the bag he’d dropped by the front door yesterday, so he ducked into Finn’s room to finish dressing. Seconds after he stepped into the hallway wearing his own clothes, Josie burst out of her bedroom and stopped short, a sneer spreading across her face.
“Well, this has been enlightening. I’m going to shower the airplane off me while you two carry on with your not-at-all-weird encounter.” She threw a glance at Finn, who’d followed her out of the bedroom. “But if I were you, I’d be damn careful about what I texted him. You never know when he might be tempted to share again.”
All the breath left Tom’s body as Josie pushed past him to the bathroom, and he spun around to face Finn, who sagged against the doorframe, her face ashen.
“I didn’t expect her back so soon,” she whispered. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain things with you still here.”
She’d expected him to leave. She’d wanted him gone. The realization shouldn’t have blindsided him, but it did. His hurt howled to be set free, and he bit out, “So sorry to have overstayed my welcome.”
“It’s not that!” she cried, all traces of that morning’s carefree joy drained and gone. “It’s a big adjustment, okay? To go from thinking of you as the guy who humiliated me in front of the whole class to”—she waved a hand in his direction—“this.”
“This” told him nothing. He had no idea what “this” meant to Finn. He waited for her to clarify, but she fixed her eyes on the ground, letting her hair obscure her features. And suddenly he was right back where he used to be: the guy pining for the girl who’d never be his. He thought they’d put the past to bed, literally, but he’d clearly been wrong. The optimism that had filled the indentation in his heart drained away, leaving it hollow and aching again.
He paced to the kitchen and wrapped his hands around the back of a chair, willing it to anchor him to the spot so he could say what he needed to say. “Your text message, when you told me you wanted somebody who sees you?” He met her eyes and willed himself not to soften at the tears he saw there. “That’s me, Finn. It’s always been me, and all I’ve ever wanted is the same thing in return. This weekend, I thought we were finally getting there, together. But I was wrong. You still don’t believe me.”
The painful truth of those last five words seared him, as did Finn’s rapid breathing. “I do. I was just trying to explain our history to Josie.”
“Our history.” He gave a snide laugh, reached into his pocket, and tossed his phone on the kitchen table, where it skidded to a stop in front of her. “There you go. Eight one six three nine three. Type it in and scroll through everything. Make sure I didn’t collect any personal information on you while I was here, given our history and all.”
