Page 72

It’s way too soon to picture a child that looks a little like him, and a lot like her.

His imagination did not get the memo.

On Christmas morning, Finn wakes me up like my name has ever been anywhere near the nice list.

With my pajamas shorts roughly pushed to one side and his head between my thighs, he drags me to a trembling, moaning consciousness and waits until my fingers find his short curls, until my heavy-lidded eyes find his blazing ones, before pushing me over the edge with that harsh, determined tongue.

Rasping satisfied noises, my back arches off the bed only for the weight of his body to push me back down as he licks and kisses his way up mine, pausing to tongue each of my piercings, to suck on my nipples until I’m halfway to another orgasm.

I’m wide awake when his mouth finally finds mine. When his body slots between my thighs, pressing hard against the aching apex of them. When he starts to grind against me so slowly, with such maddening control, as lazy as the way he kisses me. “Merry Christmas, baby.”

Wrapping my legs around his waist, I lock my ankles at the small of his back, digging in with all of my strength to make sure every hard inch of him is flush against the softest parts of me. “Is this my present?”

His laugh is smothered by a groan when I slip a hand between our bodies to palm the hard cock straining against navy sweats.

Forehead dropping to the crook of my neck, Finn makes a noise that’s awfully close to a whimper—that comes awfully close to setting me off again all on its own. “Feels more like my present.”

I nip the curve of his ear. “Good answer.”

He sinks his teeth into the meaty part of my shoulder in retaliation before sucking away the sting of the bite—sucking hard enough to leave a mark. Which, in my drowsy, sated state, I take way too long to find a problem with.

Groaning his name, I detangle myself from Finn, using both hands and a whole lot of self-control to push him away, planting a foot on his abdomen and using that too for good measure. “If I turn up to Christmas dinner with a hickey on my neck, my brother is gonna trap you in a stall with Ruin.”

Looming over me like a fucking god, Finn rakes his gaze over my body, scorching every inch of skin it touches.

He moans when it catches on my cunt, still bared by my skewed shorts, and again when my legs, of their own fucking volition, fall just a little further apart, provide just a little better of a view.

Tongue tracing his bottom lip, he wraps his fingers around the ankle of the foot pressed to his solar plexus before dragging them up my shin, down my thighs, nails scratching my skin as he fists the frilled hem of my shorts and yanks them back into place with a grunt.

With his other hand, he brackets the base of my throat, thumb stretching out to trace the tender skin his mouth reddened.

Voice low and lilting, he rasps, “Would be so fuckin’ worth it.”

Hot all over and squirming, I can’t help but agree. Briefly. Until I remember that a trampled boyfriend does not another orgasm provide.

Hooking a leg around his waist, I push until he lands on his back, shift until I’m straddling him. One tug of fabric leaves me bare from the waist up, has Finn’s breath catching, has the hands that instinctively finds my hips squeezing like they’re trying to embed their fingerprints in my skin.

“I said my neck ,” I croon as I lean forward to plant my palms on his chest, my tits pushing together and drawing every ounce of my his rapt attention. “I didn’t say anything about the rest of me.”

Boy, does he take that queue and fucking run with it.

Everywhere his mouth can reach, it finds.

Suckles and bites and marks. Drives me out of my damn mind.

Has me wondering if I’m actually as experienced as I thought I was, if I’ve ever actually known intimacy, because I’ve certainly never known anything like this.

Never felt anything like this. I’m only half-naked, he’s completely clothed, we’re barely doing anything yet it feels like everything to me.

There’s so much fabric between our grinding lower-halves yet I’m one errant touch away from coming.

I’m running so hot, I might burst into flames.

I’m so desperate for more, I might cry if he doesn’t give it to me.

“ God .” I pant as he blows hot air across my overstimulated nipples, a move I swear I feel directly on my clit. “I want you inside me so bad.”

Twining one, big hand in the hair at my nape, Finn yanks until my head drops back, grunting as he kisses his way up my exposed neck. “Not gonna last long enough to get inside you. You fucking wreck me, Charlotte.”

I shiver. Fuck me.

Fumbling with his waistband, I drag it down just enough to free his cock. I fist the swollen base and he grunts, bites, does very little to stop me as I squeeze. He flexes into my grip, encouraging me. Cries, “Baby.”

“I’m so empty.” I pump him once. Twice. Feel him leak all over my palm. Believe him when he says he won’t last. Don’t care. “I need you.”

“You need me,” he repeats roughly, pulsing in my hand. “Fuck. You need me. ”

I parrot the proclamation he chants like a prayer, the words he covets. “So much, Finn.”

A rasping, growling groan rumbles deep in his chest. And then one hand is yanking my shorts to the side again while the other curves over my ass cheek, dips between my thighs, and I cry out as two fingers fill my cunt from behind, not quite the stretch I wanted, but fuck, I’ll take it.

My eyes roll to the back of my head as I ride his hand.

His cock slides against my bare pussy, the tip nudging my clit, and I just about leave my fucking body.

He does it again, thrusting harder, adding a third finger to fuck me harder with too, and I crumple like a damn leaf as an all-consuming, head-emptying, vision-blurrying orgasm washes over me.

I scream his name, and he shouts mine. I soak our laps with a flood of wetness, and he paints my pussy white.

I slump forward, boneless and breathless, and he cradles me close.

I whimper as he slips out of me, and I whimper again as I watch him fucking play with the mess he made, dragging a finger through his cum before pushing that finger inside of me.

He retreats and brings three gleaming digits to his mouth, licking them clean, and I think I come again, just a little.

“Fuck me.”

“Can’t,” Finn jokes, croaks , his voice raw. “You broke me.”

Leaning back as much as my trembling body will allow, I crack a lazy grin. “Wow. I’m good .”

He smiles too. Not a grin. A smile. A real, soft smile. He hums as he brushes my hair away from my face, cupping the crown of my head tenderly. “I can’t believe you're real,” he says, and I feel like I leave my body again. I feel like I’m floating. “I can’t believe I feel like this.”

Emotion swells behind my ribcage, my eyes, deep in the cracked, healing recesses of my heart.

I don’t know what to say, I can’t think of anything good, so I kiss him and hope that’s enough.

And then, before I do something embarrassing like cry, I clamber off of him, feeling his eyes on me as I wobble on legs that won’t stop shaking towards the bathroom.

His bathroom. Because we slept in his bed, in his room. Together. Because we were watching a movie and he fell asleep, and I couldn’t bring myself to move, to take my eyes off of him, and I fell asleep too.

I make quick work of cleaning myself up, gazing longingly at the clawfoot tub I don’t have time to soak in because we’re likely already late—Alex was very insistent about what time the present-opening should begin.

As I’m brushing my teeth, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I wonder when, exactly, I started looking so… different.

You look like shit , Lux said to me that day in the hospital, and I thought it was a product of the accident, but now, I’m not so sure.

Now that there’s color in my cheeks that wasn't there before, now the winter sun has painted my skin a healthier shade, now new freckles have sprouted across my skin, now my bone structure isn’t quite so harshly cut, I realize how gaunt I was. Pallid.

Now, there’s life in my eyes. Light in my eyes. An upward curve to my mouth that I can’t seem to flatten no matter how hard I try—that creeps an inch higher when a man’s reflection appears beside mine.

Finn bumps me gently with his hip as he reaches for his own toothbrush. As bare-chested as I am, he scratches his lower stomach just as lazily as he assesses me in the mirror. When his gaze lands on the reddened skin a couple inches too many above my collarbone, mine does too.

Spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste, I sigh. “You are so dead.”

“Like I said.” Smirking around his toothbrush, Finn winks. “Worth it.”

My sister-in-law eyes me like she knows exactly what my turtleneck and loose hair are hiding. Bouncing Isaac on her knees, Luna snickers, but luckily, she doesn’t say anything.

Unluckily, she’s not the only one who notices.

Unluckily, Finn took that whole ‘rest of my body’ thing very literally, and when I, in all my infinite allure, somehow made the simple act of brushing my hair seductive, he just had to have me again.

Had to bend me over the sink and drop to his knees and eat me out until my knees buckled.

He had to sit me on the bathroom counter too and fucking gnaw on the skin above my hip bone, the skin above my tattoo, like a rabid animal and leave a purplish-red imprint of his affection that I accidentally flash while reaching for something on a top shelf in my sister’s kitchen.

Unluckily, Jackson is the one I flash. And as he decides whether or not to burst into tears or vomit, he grunts beneath his breath, “I’m building another fucking bunkhouse.”

“No, my love,” his wife croons, covering her son’s ears as she smirks. “You just need another bunkhouse. You already built one for fucking.”