The word cut off on her tongue as he reached out, his fingers hooking around her hip, his thumb pressed to the space where the black bird was permanently marked on her skin. After all this time, how did he remember the exact location? His touch burned through the thin layer of her shorts as he rubbed the area in tiny circles, her nipples hardening almost painfully at the intimate touch.
“Why’re you thinkin’ of getting this removed, Willowtree?”
She swallowed and tried to think about anything other than what it felt like to have his hands on her. She failed. After ten years, it’d been easy to brush off the connection she’d remembered between them. To wave it off as childish infatuation. Pretend she’d built it up in her mind and it hadn’t been as electric as she’d once thought. But now? Now that he was eliciting reactions in her with a single thumb that other men hadn’t been able to garner with their whole bodies and hours of time, it was clear she’d only been fooling herself. The two of them together were a perfect storm.
“Because I don’t want to see it anymore,” she said, forcing herself to speak through a throat clogged with desire.
“Is that right? Seems to me you might need a little reminder to fly.”
Oh, that was rich coming from him. Her days of flying were long gone. “Yeah, well, there was a flaw in your plan. Because when I see this bird now? All I think is howyouflew, Finn. So forgive me if I don’t want that reminder on my skin every day for the rest of my life.”
His grip on her hip tightened as he tugged her until their fronts pressed together. And—whoa, momma—she wasn’t the only one heating up at their nearness if the hard ridge pressing against her stomach was any indication.
“You think I don’t have the same damn reminder? That you were here the whole time without me? These are your roots on me, Willowtree,” he said, pulling up his shirt and giving her a glimpse of the tattoo on the side of his rib cage he’d gotten the same day as hers. The one she’d drawn for him so long ago. The top was obscured by his shirt, but she knew what’d be there—the wispy leaves of a willow tree. The trunk twisted and contorted until it widened at the base, the roots spreading like outstretched fingers near his hip. Had there always been so many? She couldn’t remember.
Finn reached down and grabbed her hand, pressing her fingers to his skin. His muscles rippled under her touch. “These are your roots on me, and no matter what’s happened between us, I’d never want anything to erase what we had. Because what we had wasreal, Willow, and you know it. Don’t forget that. Don’t discount it.”
She opened her mouth to tell him all they’d experienced was puppy love, but the words wouldn’t come. They were frozen in her throat because they’d be the single greatest lie she’d ever told in her entire life. Without any conscious thought, her fingers started tracing the lines of ink on Finn’s skin, and all she could do was watch. He was so solid and warm under her fingertips, his puffs of air growing faster and faster against her neck, then her cheek, then her lips.
And even though it’d been a long time, she knew what was coming a split second before he pressed his mouth against hers. Her sound of protest was lost in the space between their mouths as he swiped his tongue against her lips. And then there was nothing but Finn and his sinful mouth and his body flush against hers. He swept his tongue inside her mouth, andLord, had he always tasted this good? Had he alwayskissedthis good?
Never breaking away from her mouth, he walked them until Willow’s back was pressed against the wall, and then he just sort of…settled in. His hips held hers against the wall, the length of his erection pressing into her, proving this wasn’t at all one-sided as his hand continued its maddening path along her hip. But then—Lord, then he slipped his thumb under the waistband of her shorts until there was nothing between his rough fingertip and the part of her body forever marked as his. If it were possible, the soft caresses had her melting even further into him.
He kissed her like he was a starving man feasting on his first meal in a month. She’d forgotten how he’d always put his whole body into it, the heat and solidness of him pressing against her, making her feel safe and secure. Finn groaned into her mouth as he deepened the kiss even more, and all she could do was clutch him, one hand fisting the front of his shirt and the other pressed against his side where her tree was eternally imprinted.
“You feel so damn good,” Finn said against her lips.
Willow murmured her agreement into his mouth because there was no denying it. Her body was on fire, her nipples hard points pressing against his chest, her skin lit up from the inside out. And then Finn’s thumb, rubbing maddeningly against her tattoo, slipped to the right until he was as close to the Promised Land as he’d been in a long time. He didn’t try to push it any further, just ran his thumb back and forth right above where she was wet and ready for him until she thought she’d die.
After a blink and an eternity, his heated mouth slowed until he pulled away, kissing along her jaw, flicking his tongue against that spot behind her ear that’d always made her knees weak. Then he brushed his lips against the shell of her ear, his words just a breath. “You feel that?”
She didn’t think he actually expected an answer—which was a good thing, since all of her brainpower was being used to keep herself upright.
“I know you do,” he said. “I know you’ve felt it every day since I came back. Think about this before you do anything, all right? Think aboutus, Willowtree. That’s all I’m askin’.” He scraped his teeth along her earlobe, and then…then he removed his thumb from her shorts, removed every inch of his body from hers, and stepped back.
His face was flushed, his eyes molten as he stared at her. His chest heaved with breath, and she didn’t have to look down to know the evidence of his arousal would be apparent in his jeans, but she wanted to. Lord, she wanted to more than anything. Wanted to pull him back to her, wanted to strip him of his clothes and see what other changes had been made to the body she’d once known so well. And that thought scared the ever-loving hell out of her.
With his hands clenched into fists, as if he were physically restraining himself from coming toward her again, he gave her hip one last look, and then he left.
As she stared at the door Finn had gone through, her fingers pressing to the lips he’d so thoroughly kissed, she wanted to call out a thousand things at his retreating form. Most of them pertained to the fact that he had no right to ask that of her when he clearly hadn’t thought of the two of them when he’d left.
But then she remembered his willow tree tattoo, prominent and untouched, when the rest of him had been inked up over the years—tattoos she hadn’t given herself permission to catalog, but ones she would’ve had to be blind to miss—and the ache in her heart grew. Which only worried her more, causing the ache to turn into panic. Finn wasn’t supposed to elicit those kinds of reactions from her. Not anymore.
When she had her bearings enough that she trusted herself around mixed company, she walked out to the living room to find Mac and Ty still playing the Xbox. They both looked up at her entrance, and Mac’s eyes flitted to the front door, where Willow assumed Finn had fled through only moments before.
“What’ll it be, Will?” Ty asked.
So much for having a plan when she left there tonight, because now her brain was all jumbled, and even if she could’ve made a decision, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to trust herself.
“I’m gonna think it over, and I’ll let you know,” she said, her voice shaking only a little. “Mac, you ready?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Mac got up from the couch, tossing the controller to Ty. “Thanks for the game.”
“Anytime. See ya, Haven girls.”
Mac headed out onto the porch, but before Willow stepped over the threshold, she turned around to address Ty. “Don’t mention my decision to Finn, all right?”
“What decision?” he replied with a wink.
