My mouth waters. He hasn't touched me yet and I'm already slick and ready for him. I don't bother trying to hide what the sight of him does to me. I'm beyond pretending I can be anything but ravenous when it comes to him and his body.
We climb into the tub carefully, his strong hand at my elbow holding me steady. It's a tight fit for two, especially when one of us is six-foot-two and wrapped in muscle. He stands with the spray behind him, his eyes still smoldering and steady on mine. For the first minute the water running off us is the color of weak tea, which is what two days of honest mountain looks like going down a drain, and we stand in it grinning at each other like fools. Then he takes the shampoo out of my hand.
"Turn around."
I pivot incrementally, until my back is facing him with just enough space for him to work. I moan as he begins to wash my hair. Strong fingers working my scalp, tipping my head back into the spray, careful with my eyes. Nobody in my adult life has ever done this for me. The sweetness of it goes through me sharp enough to hurt. I keep it to myself. I stand there in his hands and let him take care of me.
With my hair washed and rinsed, next he reaches for the soap. The floral scent and the steam wring a sigh from me, but when his lathered hands begin to caress me as he cleanses me, I melt into his strong fingers and attentive touch.
He takes his time about it, massaging my shoulders, stroking my breasts. His hands move slowly, his thumbs dragging over my nipples until my head drops back against his chest. Then he moves to my belly. Lower now, one long pass between my legs that makes my whole body clench, and then his hand leaves, and the sound I make about that is not remotely dignified.
"Patience," he says, rough, at my ear.
"Patience. From you?" I'm smiling as I turn around and return fire. Soaped hands over his chest, down the muscled ladder of his stomach, and then both fists around his cock, slick and hot and iron-hard, and the groan that breaks out of him is worth every second of the drive home. I stroke him slow and feel his thighs go rigid, feel how much he wants this in the twitch and weight of him against my palms, and it isn't enough.
I lower myself to my knees in the tub and take him in my mouth.
Clean skin, hot water, the taste of him underneath it. He fills my mouth, heavy on my tongue, and I take him as deep as I can and hollow my cheeks, and above me Finn stops being a composed man. He gathers my wet hair out of my face with both hands, not steering, just holding on, and when I look up the line of him is all tension, head back, throat bare, stomach carvedtight. The water beats on my shoulders. I moan around him on purpose.
"Darcy." His hand shoots up and finds the curtain rail. "You have to... I can't—ah, fuck."
He lifts me up off my knees and kisses me deep enough that I taste us both, and then he's the one going down to his knees, folding all that height onto the floor of my tub. He hooks my knee over his shoulder, presses my hips back into his strong, steadying hands, and puts his mouth on me.
Oh.Oh, God.
His tongue moves over my clit, slow, flat, devastating, then quicker. Two fingers slide inside me and curl, and the hot pull of it starts low in my belly and spreads down the backs of my thighs.
"Finn..." His name is devoured by a low moan of pleasure.
I'm loud. I clap a hand over my own mouth, teacher's reflex, because ground floor beneath us is the bookshop, and the walls and floors are thin. Without stopping he reaches up and pulls my hand away and pins it gently to my hip. He wants the sound. He can have it. He can have anything.
The build is slow at first, but it doesn't stay there for long. My hips ride his mouth, my fingers find his wet hair, and everything in me pulls tight around the point where his tongue is working, tighter, until it lets go all at once. I come with a cry that fills the whole bathroom, my body shaking against his mouth, his hands holding me up through every last pulse of it.
He kisses the inside of my thigh and stands, still achingly hard, his cock flushed and heavy against his belly.
There is no version of tonight where I leave him like that. I soap my hands to make them slippery, then I take him in both of them, and this time he lets me have my way. I work him in long, slick strokes and watch the last of his control go. His forehead comes down to my temple. His breath saws. His grip onthe curtain rail goes white-knuckled, and he pushes into my fists—once, twice, gone—spilling hot over my fingers with a sound I have never heard from him, low and helpless and mine, the water carrying everything away while he shudders against me.
A curtain ring pops off the rail and pings into the tub.
We're both laughing before it stops rolling. Shaky, stupid, wonderful laughing, his face in my neck, my arms around as much of him as I can hold, and that is the exact moment my water heater, which is older than both of us, decides it's had enough and gives up.
The cold water hits with no warning at all. Finn yelps—an honest-to-God yelp—and we scramble out in a tangle of limbs and curtain and grab for towels. I'm laughing so hard I have to sit down on the tub edge to breathe.
Without explanation, I take his hand and lead him to my bed, and he stretches out across my quilt, damp and golden, watching me.
When I climb toward him, he gives me a rueful look. "The condoms are in the Jeep with my gear."
I grin, because I know something he doesn't. "I've got it handled."
Leaning over him, I open the nightstand drawer and drop an unopened box on his chest. It's the same brand, size, and count as the one he had in his nightstand.
He holds it up. Looks at it. Looks at me. "You bought condoms."
"Last week. After the guesthouse. What can I say? I'm a planner."
He's fighting a grin and losing. "Old Mr. Henderson still running the town pharmacy?"
"Yep. I thought his eyebrows were going to jump right off his forehead when I brought them up to the counter."
