I shiver, even as warmth floods down my spine. “There’s one in the bathroom.”
And he glances over my shoulder, staring at the darkened entryway to the bathroom, like I’ve told him to walk to Sarnia. He shakes his head once, closing the gap between us with one large step—a regular step for his long legs—before dropping to his knees. He grabs me by the ankles and pulls me, slowly, toward the edge of the bed, dropping kisses, mouth open, wet, at my ankle, my calf. He bites into the muscle just above my knee, glides his palm up my other leg. And now that he’s here, on his knees in the moonlight, his hair falling down his back in his reflection in the mirror, looking up at me, eyes light in the dark. Now, when he chases after my hand with his mouth as I run my fingers through his hair, his teeth making a playful snapping sound, the white flash of his grin. Now, suddenly, I want to talk, to tell him…I don’t really know what, exactly. Something personal, maybe?
Something we don’t tell each other.
“Finn,” I say. He turns his face into my hand, kisses my wrist. “Finn, I…”
“Shhh…” This time he’s far gentler in his shushing. “Nora.” He breathes my name against my inner thigh.
And I don’t have a tattoo, have never wanted a tattoo, but I can suddenly see the appeal. To be able to look down every day and see my syllables in his font.
“If we don’t hurry up,” he says, “one of us might turn into a pumpkin.” But other than sliding his palms up and down thebacks of my calves where they hang over the edge of the bed, he waits for me to make the call.
I scrunch the sheets and comforter in my hands. It’s nerve-wracking to sit like this, legs spread, pleasure cooled, to know I’m leaving things unsaid between us, and that he is letting me. “You don’t have to,” I say, though I really, really want him to.
He scoffs, leaning forward to kiss my thighs, to play with the waistband of my underwear. “And let you tell Bea I don’t eat pussy?”
“I wouldn’t tell her that,” I say softly.
“Best not to risk it though.” Finn’s hair gleams in the moonlight as he lowers his head, pressing his face to the apex of my thighs, then pulls away to look up at me. Another check-in. “Okay?”
Of course, it’s okay. Of course, except I’m thankful again for the way the moonlight washes all the color from the room, and I whisper even if there’s no one to hear us, “It can be hard for me sometimes.” I play with his hair instead of looking him in his eyes. “And I don’t want you to feel like you have to…um…you know…”
Turns out an unforeseen consequence of hooking up with your frenemy is having to admit to him that you suck at coming. That it wouldn’t have been dramatic to call what he did to me last year, in that short amount of time,standing up, miraculous. That all those times I’ve imagined tonight, with him, it’s taken time. Alongtime. That coming, for me, is sort of like everything else: It requires hard work, specificity; it’s serious. It’s difficult.
“I’m…difficult.”
Finn sighs. Sweet sigh. He tucks my hair behind my ear, and I do his.
“Nora.” He kisses my knee. “Baby.” My fingertip. “Respectfully.” He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my thong, the one I wore just for him, and waits. I lift my hips,relishing the drag of his fingers, the fabric, down my legs. “You’ve always been difficult.” He drops my panties on the floor and settles himself back between my legs. His hands warm my skin as he pushes my knees apart, as he takes my hand and puts it on the back of his head, our fingers entwined there, in his hair, for a moment.
He blows across my exposed skin, where I am wet but still cold, and I whimper. Like ananimal. “But if you think I am kneeling here just to make you come—if you thinkthatis my endgame—you are sadly mistaken.”
“Isn’t it though? Coming?” Maybe that’s why sex with Finn feels safe, because if it doesn’t go well, it doesn’t really matter. We can go back to being frenemies, nothing will have really changed.
Nothing, except I think if I heard one of his frustrated sighs from between my legs, my chest would cave in.
“Isn’t thatendgame?” I ask.
“With you?” He looks down at where his thumb makes gentle circles on my inner thigh. He shakes his head forcefully enough that he dislodges my hand. “I’ll kneel here until I need knee replacement surgery if it feels good to you, Nora. I don’t need you to come, I just need—I want—to make you feel good.”
“My pleasure is your pleasure?” I ask, a little teasing, except I don’t really know why. It’s not funny. It’s hot.
He shrugs, his focus shifting as he shoulders my thighs farther apart, his thumbs gliding closer and closer to where I am desperate for him. “Good enough way to end the year.”
I laugh as he dips his head. “Good way to start a new one.”
And the first time Finn Collins kisses me between my legs, with that wide, generous mouth, it’s with a smile.
The force of his eagerness almost pushes me back on the bed, if it weren’t for his hands pinning my thighs to the mattress. When I lean back on my hands and close my eyes, he grunts,taking my hand in his and bringing my palm back to—its apparent home—on the back of his head.
He was right about the mirror. It’s…unreal. To see him laid out like this, a map for me to travel, his wide, sloping shoulders, the valley of his spine and the taper of his waist. His dark head moving between my legs.
He sucks on my clit, on the delicate skin of my inner thighs. He pulls back to paint me with my own wetness, down my thighs, into the curve of my ass, and when he slides his fingers into me, it’s not that I’m surprised, that it’s not expected. It’s not that my legs aren’t spread wide for him, my eyes large with anticipation. But I cry out, a sound I quickly muffle against my palm, because somehow, it’s fuller but not enough. I’m wetter but want to soak his hand. Somehow, it’s better than I remember, than I could have possibly imagined.
“Good?” he asks, his eyes on my pussy, on the place where two of his fingers disappear up to his knuckles.
“Yes.” And gasp as he pumps inside me, dips his head for another taste.
