Oh no.
Oh no no no no. It’s still on the coffee table in the living room. Next to the remote. I shove my face in a pillow and quietly scream into it in frustration. Then I flip onto my back and stare at the ceiling like it holds the answers.
‘Make a pro and con list if you have to and let me know.’
I don’t need a list or bullet points. I know what I want. But I don’t know what wanting him means or what it’ll cost me. If I say yes to this, it’s not a shag or an itch. It’s opening a door I’ve kept bolted for ages and letting someone like Finn step through.
I bunch the duvet in my hand.
‘I’m game.’
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – I think I am, too.
Chapter 14
Finn
I’ve stopped fighting the hard-on. That’s life now, sharing space, leftover pizza, and daily life with Theodora MacMickin.
Have I fantasised about her lips like a teenage boy with broadband for the first time?
Aye.
Did I think kissing her would rewire my entire nervous system?
Fuck no.
But it did.
Four days after that night and she’s barely acknowledged me since, as if she’s afraid I’ll read her mind. Or worse, she’ll read mine.
I’m a desperate man. But at least I think I’m not alone in that. She’s taken the Rabbit back to the bedroom.
Christ, I’m fucking aching when I think about her hips grinding up, thighs braced wide, the Rabbit pinned between them. Head tipped back, lips trembling, coming hard with my name stuck halfway to a moan.
I’ve got a bowtie slowly strangling the last of my common sense, and still, all I can think about is her coming. What the hell is this with us? There’s only one thing I know for certain: it’s not fake anymore. If it ever was.
I’m sitting on the edge of her sofa in a rented tux, sweating through the shirt and praying she doesn’t walk out in something that’ll finish me off.
I’d fuck her through the wall if she’d let me. Hard and fast or slow and deep, over and over. But I also want her curled up against me after. My nose in her hair. Her breath on my neck. I want to spoon-feed her ice cream and lick it off her tits. I love how she takes a beamer each time she realises that I saw her hard nipples through the cotton of her sleeping shirt. Jesus, I want to spend the rest of my life on this sofa bed with her and Elvis and die a happy man.
It’s like my heart is having a boner. And that’s new.
It’s also stupid. Far out of my comfort zone – and way out of my league.
Theo’s the sort of woman who owns nice mugs and pays a mortgage. She’s got a brain as sharp as a scalpel and eyes that could slice through steel. She gets things. Not only facts, but people. She watches me as if she’s working out the angles and sees the cracks I’ve spent years trying to plaster over.
And I keep forgetting to be scared of all of that.
Because when she kissed me back, she didn’t hesitate.
I’ve never been kissed like that. Her lips… Lush and swollen. The first contact was all heat, a soft, slick drag that caught on the seam of my mouth. Her breath hitting the back of my throat just before her tongue flicked out. One slow glide, barely inside, to taste me and make me chase her for more. Her lip caught between my teeth. I didn’t bite, didn’t dare, but I thought about it. Thought about what she’d do if I did. My cock throbbed in time with the pull of her mouth, and I swear I forgot where we were. All I knew is that I was safe and powerful, full and hungry at the same time.
She made me feel this way.
I know, it’s all happening fast. But at the same time it feels as if it has already happened, has always been this way.
Now I’m supposed to get through an entire black-tie gala without thinking about that mouth. That kiss. That noise she made when she opened for me. Christ. That night… She listened. Didn’t jump or run. Just held me. For the first time in – I don’t even know – I didn’t feel like a fuck-up or a disappointment or a half-moulded version of a man. I felt wanted.
