It's about all I can manage with Finn kissing me against my own front door, one hand in my hair and the other flat against the small of my back. The porch light glows over our heads like a spotlight, but I don't care. I can't. I am done—completely done—pretending I want anything more than this man and his incredible mouth on mine.
"Inside," I gasp against his lips.
His answer is a low, impatient growl.
I pivot around and fumble to get the key into the lock. Miraculously, I get the door open on the second try. Finn takes hold of me before we're even inside, and we go through the opened door attached at the lips, his jacket still draped around my shoulders, his hands moving against my back and in my loose hair.
I have exactly enough civic pride to kick the door shut behind us so we don't give the town anything more to talk about than we already have. My keys land in the entryway bowl by pure muscle memory. The lamp on my little hall table stays off. The streetlight through the front window is plenty.
He walks me backward as if he knows my place like its his own, still kissing me as if he no longer needs air to breathe. Not that I can complain. His hunger for me is the hottest thing I've ever known, and it ignites my need for him into a fire I can hardly contain.
His thigh slides between mine and I grind down on it without an iota of shame. He's hard against my hip, his erection thick and unmistakable through his jeans, and knowing it's for me sends heat rolling straight down through my belly. I pull his shirttail free. He drags his mouth down my throat.
"All week," he says against my hammering pulse. "I've wanted you like this all week. Longer."
I smile against his mouth. "Then stop wasting time."
I push his jacket off my shoulders and start on his shirt buttons, and he lets me, watching my face while I work, which is unfair, because his eyes in the half dark are enough to make my fingers clumsy. I get the shirt open and shove it off him, pausing to appreciate what I finally can see. I've felt this chest through fabric twice now. Bare is different.
Bare is a wall of warm muscle and that raised scar along his ribs that makes me wince in empathy even as it turns me on like it has no right to. I put my mouth on his collarbone, tasting his smooth skin, which carries a trace of clean salt for the way he's burning up for me.
The sound he makes goes straight between my legs.
"Damn, Darcy." His hands find the tie of my wrap dress. "I've been thinking about untying this knot since seven o'clock."
"It's one pull," I tell him, practically panting now.
It is not one pull. I knotted it twice because it was windy on the bay, and I didn't want to risk any wardrobe malfunctions. But now, Finn Bardot, who I have no doubt can rig a climbing anchor blindfolded on a cliff ledge, evidently cannot beat adouble knot in jersey fabric. He tugs, and tugs again, cursing under his breath.
I can't help the laugh that bubbles up inside me. I look down at where he's struggling, his long fingers confounded by the knot. His hands are shaking.
His hands are shaking because of me. Because of how much he wants me.
"I can do that for you."
"Don't even think about it," he mutters. "I've got this."
"You sure?" I'm grinning like an idiot. "Do you want a flashlight? Scissors? Should we phone a Boy Scout? I have the local troop leader in my contacts."
He gets it on the third try and the dress falls open, and whatever I was going to say next dies, because he reaches up to grab the back of my neck and kisses me senseless again. Then he draws back, going still as he looks at me. Both hands at my waist, all that motion in him stopped, and he gazes at me standing in my open dress and underwear.
"Even better than I imagined," he says, rough. "And I imagined plenty."
Then his hands slide inside the dress, palms hot on my bare waist, and his mouth comes down on mine again, and we stop being careful. The dress goes to the floor somewhere by the bookshelf. My bra follows it, and his mouth is on my breast before the air finishes touching me, his tongue rolling over my nipple, and the pull of it lands low in my belly and I hear myself moan—actually moan. It's a starving sound, as raw as my body is right now. Finn swallows it up with a kiss I can feel in every fiber of my desire-soaked body.
We don't make it to the bedroom. I'm not even sure we try to get that far. Locked together, we hit the couch. He lays me back against the cushions, and here is a fact I will only ever admit right now: it has been fourteen months since anyonetouched me, and even before the drought, it was never like this. I'd started to believe I'd remembered it wrong, how good hands could feel. But nothing I've known before has prepared me for the way Finn makes me feel.
He kneels on the floor, hooks his fingers in my underwear, and drags my panties down my legs, unhurried, watching me the whole way, and then he kisses the inside of my knee and works up my thigh and I stop breathing in any organized fashion.
"Finn."
"I know," he says, against my inner thigh, as if he can sense how much I crave him inside me. "First I need to taste you."
Then his mouth is on me. He kisses my pussy the way he kissed my mouth at the bottom of my stairs, patient and sure and paying attention, his tongue finding my clit and settling into a rhythm that empties my head out completely. My hips rise for his mouth. He wraps an arm over them and holds me still and does not stop, and then his fingers join his tongue—first one, and then two sliding into me easily, filling me, but not yet satisfying me. I want more. I need more.
I'm wet and aching, bucking against his mouth, and the sound I make would end my teaching career if the windows were open. He doesn't stop. The heat builds low and spreads down my thighs and up my spine. I've got one hand fisted in his hair and the other gripping the couch cushion like it might try to run away somewhere, and when I break, I break loud. His name, let loose in a hoarse shout I can feel vibrating through me. My whole body pulls tight. White stars burst behind my eyes, my thighs shaking against his shoulders, and he works me through every last wave of it until I'm boneless and spent.
I resurface in pieces. He's kissing my hip bone. He looks extremely pleased with himself, and even I have to admit that he's damn well earned it.
