Willow took her sweet time staring at him, her eyes taking a slow trail down his body as they catalogued every feature. And damn if he didn’t love that she liked what she saw. That much was clear in how she bit her lip, how she ghosted her fingers across her collarbone. How her nipples were hard enough to be seen through the layers of fabric she wore.
When she finally lifted her eyes to his, hers were so full of desire, he nearly fell to his knees right there. “Well, come on, then. What’re you waitin’ for?”
* * *
When Willow had wokenup that morning, she certainly hadn’t anticipated this was where her day would take her. She definitely hadn’t imagined she’d end it in Finn’s bed after he’d just guided her to her second orgasm of the night, the most recent time with his tongue. And Lord almighty, what a talented tongue it was.
Tension vibrated in every inch of his muscle-packed, inked body, and that only made her feel even more powerful. This man had been waiting for her go-ahead. Waiting for her approval before he did anything. The control was heady, and she couldn’t deny how much she loved it.
Now, though, she’d given him the green light, and he didn’t hesitate any longer as he shucked his pants, leaving on only his boxer briefs. Though, they did little to conceal the monster tucked beneath. While she’d anticipated his body would fill out in the time he’d been gone, grow another inch or two and develop bigger, thicker muscles, she hadn’t anticipated his cock doing the same. There was no denying it had, because Lord knew if she’d seen that beast at seventeen, she’d have run for the hills instead of letting him between her legs.
“You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, Willowtree. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you.” His voice pulled her from her thoughts, the look on his face nearly doing her in.
She wanted to brush his words aside, but she couldn’t. Not with the way he said them, like they were a prayer…the only truth he knew. And certainly not with how he looked at her, as if she were the only thing he ever wanted to see for the rest of his life.
It was too much and somehow not enough.
She needed to remind them both it was just about sex. She’d been down the heartache path with Finn before, and she had no plans of ever doing it again. “And yet I’m still dressed.”
His lips kicked up on the side, though he didn’t make any move to close the last step between them. “Gimme a minute, now. Been thinkin’ about this for a long time. I wanna enjoy myself.” He reached down and cupped himself through his boxers, the action shooting sparks straight to her clit. “You’ll let me have my fun, won’t you?”
He’d already given her two orgasms without even getting her naked. She’d let him have all the fun he wanted. And if he stood there and stared, that meant she got to do the same. She’d spent so much of her time since Finn had arrived in town fantasizing about what he looked like under his clothes, but those dreams had nothing on reality. His chest might as well have been carved from stone, and she wanted to run her tongue down the ridges of his abdomen. The only other place she’d seen such perfection had been when Mac texted her weekly Instagram models.
But Finn wasn’t a model. He wasn’t just a picture on her tiny phone screen. He was there in front of her in all his splendid, tattooed glory, and he was hard. For her. He’d covered his skin with several tattoos over the years—a compass low on his abdomen near his hip, part of it hidden beneath the band of his boxer briefs, a map covering from his shoulder down to his right pectoral, a series of numbers directly over his heart—and she found herself wanting to know the stories behind each of them. Wanting to know what he’d spent his time doing. A tiny ache settled in her stomach over the fact that there was a void of time where neither of them knew anything about the other.
And then there was her tree. Even though she’d spent more days than not hating his brand on her body, she couldn’t deny how much she loved seeing hers on him. Now that there was nothing blocking her view of it, now that she wasn’t incoherent like she’d been at Ty’s house, she was certain there hadn’t always been so many roots at the base of the tree. She’d drawn that willow tree for him, and she knew it like the back of her hand. He must’ve added to it in the time he’d been gone, but why?
“You’re lookin’ at me like I’m somethin’ to eat.” He pressed his knee onto the bed and crawled up her body until they were eye level.
“Sorry?”
He laughed, reaching up to brush aside a strand of hair. “I don’t think you’re sorry at all. Lord knows I’m not. You could look at me like that every day for the rest of my life, and I still wouldn’t be sick of it. Just gonna make my job a little more difficult, is all.”
“What job’s that?” she asked, though she already had a pretty good idea. What, since he’d dropped his hand to the hem of her shirt and ran his fingers along the bare skin of her abdomen. Lifting that material right along with his seeking fingers until she arched beneath him so he could pull it up and off.
“It’s a job I take very seriously, you know.” His breath puffed against the swells of her breasts before he inched down the cup of her bra with his nose. Flicked her hardened peak with his tongue. “Worship every bit of your body, making sure I don’t miss a single inch.”
She reached for the back of his head, holding him to her, sighing as he engulfed her nipple in his mouth. “That might take a while.”
He pulled back and blew against her wet skin as he lifted his eyes to hers, desire written plainly in their depths. “I’m countin’ on it.”
Taking his sweet old time, he unhooked her bra and tossed it to the side. Slid her skirt down over her hips until it joined the rest of her clothes pooled on his floor. And then she lay in front of him naked for the first time in so long. She thought she’d be self-conscious, being bare with him after so long. She wasn’t the skin and bones teenager she’d once been. But from the look on Finn’s face, he didn’t mind one bit.
He didn’t start at the bird on her hip, even though his eyes flicked there several times. Instead, he slid down the bed and lifted her foot, licking a circle around her anklebone before trailing his nose up the curve of her calf. He caressed every inch of her, like he could memorize her through touch alone. All the while, he whispered words into her skin—how beautiful she was, how much he’d missed her, how sweet she tasted. And others she couldn’t quite make out, but from the way he’d closed his eyes, his lips brushing her skin as he said them, it was maybe better she hadn’t been able to.
By the time he’d kissed every inch of her body except where her tattoo sat, she was a puddle of pure need. He ran his thumb over the mark, tracing the outline of it as he lay on his stomach between her legs.
“It probably makes me an asshole for sayin’ this, but I love that my bird’s still on you. Couldn’t bear the thought of you gettin’ rid of it. Not when I wear you on my skin too. Not when I look at it every day and see everything we had together.”
And, really, what could she say to that? Hadn’t she just thought the same exact thing about his tattoo? Before she could come up with a response, he plucked a condom from his night table and rolled it down his length as he settled between her legs.
“You don’t wanna know how much I’ve thought about this.”
Probably not. Especially when this was all starting to feel like a hell of a lot more than just sex. “Tell me.”
He glanced up at her as he gripped his cock, ran his head along her slit in a slow, torturous circuit that made her quake with need. “It won’t scare you off to know I’ve been thinkin’ of it every day I’ve been gone? Or that I think of you in the shower and my bed? Every time I gripped my cock and got myself off, it was to thoughts of you. Memories of what we did. Fantasies of what I wanted to do.”
Scare her off? Lord, no. It should have. It should’ve been a red flag that she was getting in over her head already, and they’d just gotten started. But though they’d merely begun, she was already in too deep.
