He took both of my arms and raised them above my head, pinning them to the headboard. With his other hand, he grazed my stomach, pulling my shirt off next. I shivered at his touch, both gentle against my belly and demanding against my wrists.
Finn brought his forehead to rest against mine. We stared into each other’s eyes, our noses barely brushing, and I listened to his heavy breathing. I was completely trapped in every way—in this position, in this moment, in his magnetic gaze. His muscular body covered me completely, pinning me like he had so many years ago.
Maybe it was something in my eyes. They could have told a thousand stories, but right then, they were only speaking of one.
Raw desire.
Finn dipped his lips to mine, tentatively at first, but it didn’t take long. His kisses became more urgent and my tongue wanted to taste him. He moaned when I bit his lip, and he pushed me roughly against the headboard. I could tell it was taking everything in his self-control not to throw me to the bed and fuck me.
Why not, though? At this point, it was all I wanted, too. I tried reminding myself that he didn’t do relationships. He never had, and I couldn’t see why he ever would. It was the whole reason I had to pretend to be his girlfriend. No, he did hookers and blow according to the tabloids, his father, and his sister.
But it was hard when his hands were so deliciously heavy on my wrists, holding me in place. I loved the feeling of his control as much as I hated admitting it. I struggled against his grip, bucking my hips toward him.
He let one of my hands go and I slipped it inside his boxer briefs. The tip was already pouring out, and he was as thick and hard as my wildest, faceless dreams, which of course made me immediately clam up. What if I really was defective? What if it was over and I could never climax again?
Finn sensed something had changed. He let go of my other wrist and stopped kissing me so passionately.
“What’s wrong, Poppy? Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I was quiet, caught up in my embarrassment.
“Poppy, I can’t read your mind, but I can read your body and I know you want this. So tell me—what’s holding you back?”
“I can’t—I can’t—argh!” I threw off his hands and huddled my knees under my chin. “It’s too awkward.”
Finn sat next to me without touching me. He gave me space but stayed close enough that his presence was comforting.
“Do you want me to book another room? Just tell me and I’ll do it.”
I buried my head further between my knees. This was pretty much a worst-case scenario. I murmured into my knees, “I can’t climax.”
I felt Finn’s head bend down closer. “Sorry, what was that? You’re whispering.”
“I can’t…you know.”
“Poppy, you’re going to have to be straight with me. I have no idea what’s going through that beautiful mind, but I can see it’s hurting you.”
I lifted my head and squeezed my eyes, embarrassment coursing through my veins and almost replacing the golden thrum Finn induced.
“I can’t climax!” I yelled. “I’m broken! Defective! Damaged goods! Saving Clarion Abbey is all I have left in life!”
Finn was silent. I finally looked over, and he blinked at me a few times. “Wow. That’s quite the declaration, especially since you did at dinner—or was that just very good acting?”
I bit my lip. He had a point. “I didn’t go to California to become an actress, shockingly enough.”
“Then why would you think you can’t again?” he asked honestly, cocking his head.
I threw up my hands. “Because that was a freak accident! You caught me off guard, or maybe I can only get off in public, or…I don’t know!”
I scowled and went to find my pants, but Finn held me back by an arm. “Wait, Poppy. I’m not finished. You had your moment, now listen to mine.” He put a finger to my panties. “Look how fucking wet you are. That is not a defective woman. That is a passionate one who never had a proper man fucking her before.”
I crossed my arms and hmphed. “And you’re proper?”
He gave me a savage smile. “I promise to be the opposite of proper for the rest of tonight.”
With one arm, he hugged me close and flung me to the bed, peeling my panties off the rest of the way and burying his face in my pussy. My legs jerked as his hot tongue invaded my lips, nibbling and swirling, and I was positive they could hear my moans all the way to Clarion.
The heat and weight of his body over mine while he pleasured me felt better than any sexual encounter I’d had up to this point—including the one and only time with a teenage Finn himself.
He came up for air and smiled wickedly at me. As he stared quietly, prolonging the moment of intimacy between us, he pressed a finger against my lips. I took it and sucked so he could plunge it into me. I writhed against his hand, one finger inside while his thumb circled my clit.
“Come for me now and I promise to give you many more. Let me hear you scream.”
His eyes were begging me to come all over his fingers, and he couldn’t restrain his erection anymore. The smooth head of his cock poked out from his boxer briefs. My God, he wanted me.
Me.
All me.
I let myself melt into his fingers as he kept up the pressure and altered his rhythm.
He rumbled in my ear. “You’re making me so fucking hard. Fuck, you’re so sexy when you make those noises.”
I gulped. I hadn’t even realized I was making any. He made me feel things I’d never imagined.
“Don’t stop, Poppy. Come all over my fingers so I can fuck you to the moon. I need you.”
The way he stared at me did it more than anything. Finn was healing me one finger at a time. I rode the heights of my orgasm, everything tightening in hot anticipation before rolling down the other side of the mountain in one earth-shattering moment.
I screamed and let out gasping breaths, reaching for anything around me to hang on to. Finn slowly pulled his fingers out and licked them slowly, savoring me. I giggled and threw a pillow at his head. Finn caught it in midair and threw it to the floor.
In the second I turned my head to follow it, Finn was on me, pinning my shoulders to the bed and latching onto my nipples.
I gasped for air at the cool sensation and wrapped my legs around his back. His cock brushed the sensitive bud of nerves that was already on fire. It was agony, wanting to feel him, so I took his swollen dick, measuring his thickness with my fist and grinning at my impending pleasure.
How was this possible?
I teased him at my entrance, pumping his shaft up and down as I moved and circled his tip around my clit. The pressure was almost too much to bear. I twisted in agony against the sheets and brought him closer to my entrance.
“We need protection,” he said with difficulty, barely getting the words out.
“You’re probably right.”
With exquisite anguish, Finn pulled himself off of me and grabbed a foil wrapper. I kissed and licked the tip of his cock his tip before slipping the condom over his velvety head.
I teased him again with no mercy, right at the tip. My back arched in pleasure upon feeling his softness at my core. Letting go—it was the hardest and best thing I’d done yet.
Finally, Finn refused to take it anymore. He lifted me up onto his waist and slid me onto him. I stretched to accommodate him, moaning the farther inside of me he pushed.
It was all too much to hold onto. In the moment of another climax, I felt equal parts powerful and vulnerable—the same vulnerability I hadn’t felt since that May Day ten years ago, like my entire being was completely exposed.
It wasn’t as terrifying as it had been then, when I was an insecure, sixteen-year-old girl, not yet a woman.
Sex with Finn was deep, rough, powerful. It was more intense than any past relationship and maybe even profound. Sex was important, and I finally understood. Sex was so important to me, and that was why I hadn’t been able to have an orgasm. The per
son had to mean something.
Even if I didn’t know what that something meant.
I had to keep reminding myself after this was over, he’d go back to tracing his fingers along another woman’s spine, tangling them in her hair, loving her. As long as I remembered that, everything else would be fine. As long as I remembered that, I could enjoy this.
Somehow, I would have to hold these two truths close to my heart. Finn meant something. Finn would leave.
Chapter Nineteen
Finn
Poppy slept next to me, curled in a ball around my torso. Awake and waiting was torture. If I moved lightly, it might be enough to wake her, so I could bury myself inside of her again and again. But that would be wrong, I admonished myself.
I held still as Poppy murmured something in her sleep. Her fingers kneaded my chest, making my cock jump with every sleepy caress.
Finally.
I burrowed my face between her breasts as Poppy woke slowly. She stretched her arms around my neck, bringing her body closer to mine. I inhaled her citrusy sweetness and took a perfect nipple between my teeth.
“Oh!” she gasped.
“Good morning, milady.”
“Finn…” She was breathless.
“Did you enjoy your orgasms last night?” I asked indelicately.
She made a bursting fireworks movement with her hands and blushed red.
It mattered so very much to me what she was thinking, but I said nothing, afraid to spook her. I contented myself with hearing her pleasure pour from her lips and watching her eyes hotly trace the image of me licking and nipping her breasts.
I pulled down her panties, noting how wet they were already. Defective? I think not. She was hot and ready, that whimper driving me wild, wanting me like I’d always wanted her from that first moment she’d knocked me off the Norman wall and proclaimed herself queen of the old world and the new.
I crushed her against the bedpost, keeping her eyes locked on mine as I slid deeply inside of her.
We rocked together, the headboard shaking as her eyes rolled upward and her lips parted in pleasure while I thrust, shuddering at her tightness.
“Hurry,” she moaned. “I’ll lose it, I just need…”
I slammed once more, enjoying the tight feeling, then slowed. I gripped her chin between my fingers roughly. “Stop worrying and let yourself go. Trust me. This will be the third of many. Give me your legs.”
Her eyes were wide and trusting as she wrapped her legs around my neck and let me lick her clean. Her hands explored my body while I watched her intently. She was afraid of losing it, even after the previous night.
I curled two of fingers inside of her, finding the ridged nub and stroking it. Poppy’s back jumped off the bed.
“Jesus!”
If there was something I was actually good at, it was making a woman come. I removed my fingers and slid back into her warmth, groaning at the sensation. It was almost enough to make me shoot my load right then, so I raised her up and pulled her onto my lap to get a different angle. She shivered and suddenly took control.
With a dark look of desire, she wrapped her arms around my neck, letting me bury my face between her breasts and bouncing up and down on my cock. She tossed her head back, forcing my face to her nipple.
“Suck them,” she commanded, her voice huskier than a two-pack-a-day habit.
With a grin, I licked and nipped as I felt her walls clench around me. Warm pleasure flooded through us, connecting us in the hot hums of an impending orgasm. I was lost in this world that contained only the two of us. I fucked her harder, and she climaxed around me, moaning my name, which was officially the most beautiful sound in existence.
I held her tight against me as we came down, relishing finally holding her in my arms and doing it properly this time. She hung on to me, limp and wrung out, sighing in complete contentment.
In all my life, I’d never wished to stay in this position, letting the tremors subside inside of her, more than I did now. I could have become a poet. I could have become a concert pianist like that. I could have become a cartographer and mapped her curves and valleys.
Maybe I should. I would forgo the whole duke thing and map Poppy’s body for the rest of our days.
I turned her over and laid her on the bed, kissing every delicate inch. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I’d never looked at another woman like I did Poppy. Before her, women had simply used me for my fame or money. I’d used them in return for sex.
Now, this beauty stared back up at me, so trusting and innocent, so perfect. It was better than I could have fantasized.
This woman was everything. Beautiful was an understatement. She had courage, humor, and heart. Her joie de vivre could have inflated an entire British village compared to the women here. The force of my feelings overwhelmed me, and I needed to take a minute. I went to the bathroom and stared into the mirror, my palms on the cool porcelain sink.
There was no question I had fallen for this woman years ago. The only question was whether she felt the same for me now.
Poppy gave me a kiss on the tip of my nose. “Thank you for coming and calming me down. I know you’re probably busy and that you’re only doing this for our deal, but calming freak-outs wasn’t part of the agreement.”
I bristled a little at the insinuation that I was only doing this because of the agreement. It hadn’t been about the agreement for a long time, if it ever had been. If it were, I would have picked Simone. Instead, I wanted to be here with Poppy.
Before I could correct her, she jumped up and grinned. “Okay, now let me catch my breath and try to scrub the smell of wild sex out of my pores—if that’s even possible at this point.”
She sashayed away, completely naked.
I propped my head up with a hand to get a better viewing angle as she slid into the shower. Too soon, heat steamed up the glass doors, leaving me to stare wistfully at the outline of her hourglass form. While I waited for her to reemerge, dripping wet like a mermaid or some sea goddess, I decided it’d been long enough without checking the dailies. I needed to make sure I hadn’t made any more covers.
I’d paid a few enough to keep the RAF news quiet until I could handle it, but while my money hushed, others might have swooped in while I was occupied and talked—loudly.
I flicked through my tablet, reading up on a few oil heirs’ jaunt to Ibiza that ended in hookers and coke, although don’t they all when it comes to Ibiza? I even saw a few references to my sister moving back to the country for the summer. She must have broken up with her London wanker.
The pages reloaded as I was about to shut down and surprise Poppy in the shower.
“Shit.”
I quickly scrolled through a few other sites. All of them had it. Fucking Evelyn couldn’t help herself.
Worse, she’d dragged Poppy into it and handed the story off to a bunch of other bloggers, not content with fucking me over once.
This was a proper disaster. Instead of the bloggers showing Poppy hard at work, they juxtaposed us at Clarion Abbey side by side next to my mugshot and images of my RAF debacle.
Fuck.
The shower turned off and Poppy stepped out, reaching for a towel. I could have tried to hide it, but that would have only prolonged my misery.
Fuck.
Poppy got dressed, grinning at me as she stepped into her shorts and ruffled her hair with the towel. She twisted it up to let it dry, and still I said nothing.
Finally, I showed her my phone.
Her smile drooped with every passing second. She handed it back to me, not saying a word.
I ran my hands over my face, wishing I had a bristle pad to scrape my skin raw.
“Poppy, I’m sorry.”
“God, what an idiot I am, always trusting you!”
“Don’t say that. I was going to tell you.”
“When? You know what? Don’t answer that. I doubt I’d believe it.” Poppy shoved her clothes and planner into her bag, smashing
it down with an elbow to try to squeeze it shut. “Take me home. No beach, no ocean, no waves. I just want Clarion.”
“That’s fine, but can we at least discuss this?”
Poppy threw a pack of condoms at my head and stormed out of the cottage. I’d take that as a no.
For the entire ride home, I tried to apologize, but Poppy refused to engage.
I didn’t want to lose her. I couldn’t—not again. Poppy was so fucking real compared to all the society twits and wankers I’d grown up around. She’d escaped, buoyed through trauma by her own vibrant personality. To be perfectly honest, she was the most interesting person I’d interacted with in years, probably since I’d seen her last. She was always the most interesting person in the room.
Even worse, I didn’t want this—whatever the fuck it was—to end. Fuck my father. In any other era, this match would have been more than suitable. It would have been the envy of the town.
“Poppy, can we talk about this?”
She stopped taking notes on her iPhone. “What, Finn? I have a million things to do and not enough time to do it. Worse, now all the focus is going to be on you and your fuck-ups—like usual.” She flashed the now-infamous image of my joyride in a billion-dollar fighter jet with Simone. “Really? I mean, how childish.”
I thought the pecker looked quite artistic, but apparently not.
I opened my mouth and shut it. Who knows why you do things when you’re fucked up on coke? They just happen.
“Why, Finn? Why didn’t you tell me this story was going to break?”
My fingers tightened on the wheel. “Avoidance, milady.” We were quiet for a minute. I dreaded every second, but I had to address the worst of it. “She didn’t mean anything. She was a way to forget my life for a few minutes.”
“Great, Finn. Just what the new girl you’re fucking wants to hear. Is that what you’ll tell the next one about me after the six months is up? Oh, don’t worry—she didn’t mean anything. She was just a way to forget. It was all part of the contract.”
“God no, Poppy. You’re more than that. You must know that.”
A Manor of Faking It (The Clarion Abbey Series Book 1) Page 14
