I thrust once, deep and urgent, her body’s still pulsing around me. My forehead drops to hers. I need her breath in my mouth, her heartbeat against my skin.
Whatever leaves my chest isn’t human. It’s hoarse and helpless and full of her name. ‘Theo! Ah! Theo?—’
My release tears out of me with her name in my mouth and her cunt still gripping like she’ll never let me go. Her name is the only thing I remember how to say, and I say it over and over as I come so hard I forget who I was before her. I groan into her skin, into her hair, into the space between us that doesn’t exist anymore. My body goes weightless and heavy all at once.
Theo’s still holding me, watching me as if I’m not broken or too much. As if I’ve always been hers. She giggles against my temple, and her fingers stroke my neck, while I’m trying to return to Planet Earth.
‘What’s so funny, woman?’ I ask between breaths, grinning so wide my face hurts.
‘Nothing. It’s just…’ She nuzzles into my neck, voice drowsy with satisfaction. ‘You said you had more settings than my Rabbit. And if this was number one, I can’t wait for the other nine.’
Chapter 17
Theo
A purr loud enough to register on the Richter scale wakes me. For a dizzying second, I think it’s me.
Then I open my eyes.
There’s a rugby player’s arm pinning me to my sofa bed, and he has my cat’s arse in his face.
The grey Edinburgh morning filters through my curtains, highlighting the chaos we’ve made. Duvet, blankets, and sheets twisted around our legs. My hoodie crumpled on the floor beside his shirt, trousers, and bow tie.
Finn smells of my cherry soap, his own skin, and the musky scent of sleep after sex. Elvis is loafing on his chest like Finn’s a brand-new, premium-grade human mattress.
My body is a roadmap of last night. A dull, delicious ache is settled deep in my bones. I still feel his mouth on my nipples, the pressure of his hips, the scrape of his stubble against my neck. I’m warm from the inside out and sore in places that haven’t been sore in ages. And never like that.
I seriously fucked Finn Lennox.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to get anywhere near this real and physical and emotional.
My brain, a command centre of schedules and contingency plans, feels like it’s been put through a spin cycle. This whole arrangement was for headlines. For damage control. It was not for mind-melting orgasms and whispered confessions in the dark. Not for…whatever the hell this is.
A quiet, curious ache builds inside me. Last night wasn’t just sex. One thousand per cent not. But what else? And what now?
I need to get up. I need a bit of distance to clear my head.
With surgical level care, I try to ease myself from his embrace, lifting his massive arm by degrees. The movement is glacial. I’m afraid to wake him up before I’ve had the chance to collect myself.
Elvis slits open a single green eye, glares at me for disturbing his new favourite sleeping spot, and resumes his motorboat purr.
The wee turncoat.
Finn stirs and pulls me tighter against him. I go still, trapped in the circle of his arm. His chin tucks into the space above my head. The panic rabbiting through my chest softens. My cat, who hisses at the postie, jumps any boiler man, and bit Gil’s ankle twice, is using Finn Lennox as a heated luxury cat bed. And I…don’t hate it. Actually, I might be melting internally –into soup with heart-shaped noodles.
Wow, MacMickin. How the mighty have fallen.
Sure, I’m still afraid. But there’s something deeper under it now. A glow that spreads through me like butter on hot toast.
The Stirling Rebels’ wild child flanker made me hot chocolate last night. With marshmallows. After watching me snot-sob and crumble into a million pieces. He took care of me like no one ever has, and the least I can do is return the favour.
Second attempt at sneaking out from under this arm and I’m prying myself free with the stealth of a thief disarming a security system. One leg, then the other. His arm flops onto the empty space I’ve vacated, and he mumbles something before burying his face in my pillow.
He’s cute. I can’t believe that I think he’s cute. But he is.
I sit up in slow-motion, and grab my hoodie from the floor, where we dropped it last night. The memory sends a shiver across my skin that has nothing to do with the morning chill. I pull it over my head and let the cotton fleece fall to mid-thigh, enough coverage to preserve a last shred of dignity.
What dignity? The one you gave up on your back last night when you begged to be impaled by his huge rod?
