Page 18 of Hearts Adrift (A Texas Beach Town Romance #4)

Kissing Finn is what I wanted.

Exactly what I wanted.

At precisely the time I needed it.

And judging from the way Finn’s body reacts when my lips touch his, it’s exactly what he wanted, too.

His hands fly to my hips, taking hold and pulling our bodies close. If there was any doubt about our desire for each other, it’s gone the second he grabs me.

It’s indescribable, how perfect our lips feel against one another’s. He tastes exquisite. Even this fierce yet delicate way in which he kisses seems sweet. He will grab me if he wants, attack my face, but never dream of hurting me.

That assumption is challenged immediately as the kiss gains power, and I find myself backing up, Finn pressing against me with growing force, until I find myself crouched on the ground, then sitting, then falling onto my back as he crawls over me on the sand, consuming my lips.

I rake my fingers up the sides of his body, feeling him freely at last without the pretense of a massage.

He lets me, which seems like more than enough of an invitation to keep going.

My fingers tease their way under his shirt until soon it’s his soft, smooth skin I’m feeling beneath the material.

In response, his hips grind deeper into mine, signifying his approval, and I learn just how hard this attention has him.

Is this his way of … knocking on my door?

Should I knock on his, too, or let myself the fuck in?

I don’t know whether it’s by my effort or his own, but his shirt hikes up his body fast. I pull away from his lips, feeling explorative, and slip my head right under his shirt, bringing my face to his muscular chest. It was glorious the first time I laid eyes on it when the back door tore the shirt straight off his body, but this upclose with my face against it, his aesthetic physique is overwhelming.

My lips part and my wet mouth pours over his chest. His breaths come deep and fast as I suffocate with joy in the world underneath his shirt.

My fingertips dance down his lower back, exploring, as I open my mouth to one of his nipples.

And if his response to that doesn’t tell me everything.

How he issues the deepest moan that easily overpowers the crashing of waves.

How his dick responds potently by flexing against my own, thrusting deeper and deeper while I make love to his nipple, which is proving far more sensitive than expected.

And my fingertips crawl down and discover the round, impeccable hills of his supple ass where they make landing and curl greedily.

“Ughn … River …” I hear him outside the shirt.

It’s such a tight fit in here, I can barely move my face as I keep torturing his nipple, feeling it harden with every drag of my tongue over its sensitive surface. It’s like I’m willingly trapped here now, nowhere to go. Finn can’t get away from the overwhelming stimulation. I don’t let him.

“ P-Please …” he groans.

Is he begging me to stop? Or begging me not to?

I reach around and pull his shirt off over his head, both freeing myself and Finn from its confines, flinging it aside.

His hands weave through my hair and grab hold, keeping my face pinned to his nipple, now without the shirt.

Guess I gave him a taste and he wants more.

I continue to lap and tongue his nipple all over—a pet to a bowl of his favorite food, incapable of consuming enough.

The more I squeeze his ass, the deeper he presses into my lap, thrusting against me.

Both of us are so hard, it’s starting to ache.

He pulls on my hair—an unexpected act that tugs my head back—and his mouth dives onto mine again. The lack of speaking between us as we grapple with one another’s bodies tells me no words are needed. He wants everything I’m doing to him. I want everything he’s doing to me.

We trust each other. Something I haven’t been able to say so easily about anyone in years.

How amazing it feels, to realize how safe I am when I’m with Finn.

He stops mid-kiss, out of breath. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?” I gasp. “What for?”

“I’m … I’m losing myself with you. This isn’t … This isn’t professional. Or right.”

“Professional? Right?” I laugh. “Since when have we cared about professional or ‘right’?”

“Someone could still find us. This isn’t a private beach, technically, and—”

“I know, but …” I wonder if there’s another reason he stopped. Is he panicking? Is this too much too fast? “We … We can slow down, Finn. We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, I want to do things,” he says. “I want to do many things. To you. On you. With you.” He glances off up the coast at the trees and dirt path leading back, as if he sees something. “I’m just afraid if … if someone finds us …”

“I shouldn’t have sought you out at the Fair,” I blurt.

He looks at me. “What?”

“I’ve risked dragging you into this. So selfish of me, to do that to you and your family.”

“No, no,” he quickly says, hushing me. “Nothing has happened. No one knows. You’ve not done anything, don’t worry.

I’m more concerned about you, and …” He rethinks it.

“Well, I guess it maybe wouldn’t be good for either of us if someone saw me.

Everyone on the island knows me. Even several of our recurring visitors at the Fair.

Dots can be connected. Just one measly post online could lead to …

well … I guess we’re both kinda playing with fire here. ”

“We can stop if you want to.”

He gazes into my eyes.

I return his gaze, lost in the warmth of his face.

The next instant, he presses me back against the sand, and our lips crash together like they’d never separated. We forget the world and all the concerns we just dug up as our bodies entwine on this secluded, crime-scene beach.

We’re the crime.

He abruptly stops again and sits up, straddling my hips.

“And no, we do not have to slow down.” I wonder if he’s been thinking about it this whole time.

“All I’ve known is slow. For years and years.

So slow that I feel like I’ve been stopped.

Stuck. Trapped . I don’t want to know that feeling anymore.

” I just noticed that he’s undoing his shorts.

Wait, what? “If you want this as badly as I do—and I really hope you do, I hope I haven’t been misreading all of this—I am really, really ready to give it up to you right now, right here, right on this beach, you, me, the waves, and none of the noise of our lives. ”

None of the noise of our lives.

It only just now seems to fully set in that Finn is trying to get away from his own noise. His own life. Maybe even things I don’t know about, spinning out of his control.

We both escaped here to this beach.

He stops fumbling with his shorts. “Oh … I don’t have a condom. Or lube. Or literally anything.” He needs more than a condom and lube? “I’m so used to doing it with the same guy for so long, we never needed protection, and—”

There’s a noise from the woods—skittering, scurrying, crunching of branches.

Finn and I look, both having heard it. No one’s there.

But it always feels like someone is.

Then Finn flinches—from the vibration of his phone.

He pulls it out of the pocket of his shorts, still hanging loose and opened off his sexy hips, and peers at the screen.

“It’s my friend Chase. No one’s at the bungalow or near it.

Seems safe and, in his words … ‘totally lame and empty and creepy as always’. ” He looks at me. “We can go back.”

I hook my arms around the small of his back, with him still straddling my lap. “If I remember correctly, there was a box of ten-year-old condoms in the bathroom cabinet at the bungalow.”

He bites his lip.

I think that’s a yes.

We’re off the sand in the next instant and heading back through the trees when he looks at his phone again. “Oh, I missed something from twelve minutes ago. Must’ve been while I was driving or—”

He comes to a dead stop.

I turn back, noticing. “What is it?”

He says nothing. Only stares at his phone. Unblinking. Panic setting into his eyes.

“Finn?” He slowly lowers his phone, silent, lips parted, staring off blankly. “Finn?” I try again. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s …” He looks at his phone again, as if to be sure of something, then slaps it to his chest. “Fuck.”

“What’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”

He faces his screen to me.

My eyes drop down to it.

It’s three photos—shots of Finn leaving the bungalow this morning.

I recognize his disheveled outfit from last night, peering over his shoulder as he flees the front porch.

Obvious shots from someone who was likely lurking across the street, sent from a number with no ID, no name or info, bearing the simple message: “It looks like you had a late night, Finn.”