"That's it?"
"You told me to try not to be as much trouble as Knox." His fingers tighten around mine. "You smiled when you said it. Like I was in on the joke."
I remember. Sarah's kitchen, flour on the counter, Knox hovering in the doorway with his arms crossed. I'd been teasing him. I hadn't known it mattered.
"Everyone else sees the VP. Or Knox's brother. Or the playboy." His voice rough now, scraped down to the bone. "You saw me."
My throat closes.
"And then I watched you for months being brilliant and tough and so goddamn beautiful it hurt. Every woman since has been me trying to forget." A pause. "Didn't work. You're under my skin, Jess. In my bones. I'm yours whether you want me or not."
Tears slide down my cheeks. I'm not sure when they started, I can't stop them, and for once I don't try.
"I want you." My voice cracks on it, splits open, and the admission costs me more than any wound I've ever stitched. "I've always wanted you but I was scared."
"Of what?"
"That it's real. That you mean it."The words feel like glass."Everything I've ever held onto gets taken. My unit. My sense of safety. Every relationship I've tried. I don't know how to want something permanent, Finn. I don't know how to trust that it stays."
"You could never be another anything." His free hand finds my jaw, his palm spanning my cheek, his thumb catching the tears. "I'm not going anywhere, Jess. Not tomorrow. Not ever.You're my everything."
I kiss him.
Not the desperate, furious collision of mouths and bodies driven by eight months of denial. This one starts slow, my mouth finding his, my hands framing his face.
He shudders when I trace the tusk with my fingertips. A deep, involuntary rumble builds in his chest, vibrating against my palms where they press flat against his chest.
"Let me show you I believe you," I whisper against his mouth.
I push him back onto the cot and he goes without resistance, his hands settling on my hips, letting me lead.The canvas sags under his weight, the frame bowing inward,but neither of us cares. My knees bracket his hips and my fingers map what my eyes can't see—the scars on his knuckles, each one a story I want to hear. The corded muscle of his forearms. The dip at the base of his skull where his hair meets his neck, and when my fingers brush the sensitive skin there, he shivers hard enough to shake the cot frame.
"Jess—" His voice breaks.
I lean down and press my lips to his tusk. Trace the rough, jagged edge with my mouth, the ridge where it split years ago. He groans, raw and gut-deep, and his hips buck beneath me. His fingers dig into my waist, and the rumble in his chest drops lower, a sub-vocal growl, a sound that rolls through my ribcage and settles between my hips.
"Do that again," he rasps, "and I'm not going to be gentle."
I run my tongue along the broken edge.
He flips us. My back hits the cot and his body covers mine, lips on my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat. He strips my top and my bra in the same motion, and then his teeth graze my nipple and I bite down on my lip to keep from waking every patient in the building.
Without light, everything sharpens. Every touch hits harder: the drag of his calloused palms down my ribs, the heat of his lips trailing lower, the rasp of his stubble against the soft skin below my navel.
He drops between my thighs and my spine arches off the canvas. His tongue strokes through my folds, slow and deliberate, and the sound he makes against me, a low, broken groan of satisfaction, vibrates through my core. My fingers tangle in his hair and grip, and he growls against my clit, the vibration rolling through me until my thighs shake against his shoulders.
"Fuck, you taste good." The words rumble against my skin. His tongue circles my clit while two thick fingers slide inside me, curling deep, and my inner walls clench around him, slick, aching and desperate for more. I rock my hips against his face, shameless, chasing the pressure, and his free hand pins my hip to the canvas while his fingers pump deeper, stretching me, crooking against the spot that makes my entire body seize.
"I love you," I gasp. The words tear out of me between breaths, unplanned, unguarded, the truest thing I've said in years. "I love you, Finn Stone."
He stills. His forehead presses against my inner thigh, and I feel the tremble run through his entire body. Then his mouth is back on me with a ferocity that takes my breath, his fingers pumping deep and relentless, his tongue flat against my clit in steady, devastating strokes that build the pressure so fast my thighs lock around his head.
I come against his mouth with his name bitten into my palm, my back bowed off the canvas, my inner walls clenching tight around his fingers in wet, pulsing waves that drag a groan out of him I feel against my skin.
He crawls up my body and I reach for him in the dark, my hands finding his belt, his zipper, shoving his jeans down his hips. His cock presses against my inner thigh, hard, thick and radiating heat, and when I wrap my hand around him, his whole body jerks.
"Fuck, Jess." The growl scrapes out of him. His hips roll into my grip, his cock sliding through my fist, slick with pre-cum, thick enough that my fingers don't meet around him. I stroke him slow, base to tip, and he drops his forehead to my collarbone, his breath coming in ragged bursts against my skin.
I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him forward. The head of his cock notches against my entrance, and the ache from his fingers gives way to a deeper need that clenches low in my belly.
