Charmer (Havenbrook #1)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WILLOW

Finn’s words shattered my trance, reminding me exactly why I shouldn’t be in such close proximity to him. I crossed my arms over my chest, desperate to hide my reaction. The last thing I needed was for him to think I was still attracted to him.

Even if it was the painfully obvious truth.

“Funny, I didn’t think you were a tattoo artist,” I said. “Though, to be fair, I guess I really have no idea what you’ve been doin’ with your life since I haven’t heard from you in a decade .”

He reached up and rubbed his fingers over his jaw, studying me. “I didn’t want to have to bring out the big guns for this.”

I set my shoulders, narrowing my eyes at him. “Oh yeah? What’re those?”

He leaned even closer, his breath a whisper of air against my mouth. “Either go back there and listen to what I have to say, or I’m gonna tell Mac and Ty the sound you make when you?—”

I yelped and didn’t even think about it as I slapped my hand over his mouth, my eyes wide in horror, darting over to where my sister and Ty sat, oblivious to what was going on between the two of us.

“You wouldn’t,” I hissed.

Along with a raise of an eyebrow and a nip to my fingers currently pressed against those perfectly shaped lips of his, everything about his body language said, try me . I studied him, wondering if he was bluffing. The sure and steady way he stared back at me indicated he absolutely wasn’t. Not even a little.

I shoved my hand harder against his mouth, pushing him toward the hallway off to the left. “I hate you.”

He stepped back with a smile and led us down the hall and into an unoccupied bedroom. “Knew you’d see it my way.”

“Not like you gave me a hell of a lot of choice.”

“Aw, I think you and I both know you just needed an excuse to come back here.”

“You are such an arrogant jack?—”

The word cut off on my tongue as he reached out, his fingers hooking around my hip, his thumb pressed to the space where the black bird was permanently marked on my skin. After all this time, how did he remember the exact location? His touch burned through the thin layer of my shorts as he rubbed the area in tiny circles, my nipples hardening almost painfully at the intimate touch.

“Why’re you thinkin’ of getting this removed, Willowtree?”

I swallowed and tried to think about anything other than what it felt like to have his hands on me. I failed.

After ten years, it’d been easy to brush off the connection I’d remembered between us. To wave it off as childish infatuation. Pretend I’d built it up in my mind and it hadn’t been as electric as I’d once thought. But now? Now that he was eliciting reactions in me with a single thumb that other men hadn’t been able to garner with their whole bodies and hours of time, it was clear I’d only been fooling myself. The two of us together were a perfect storm.

“Because I don’t want to see it anymore,” I said, forcing myself to speak through a throat clogged with desire.

“Is that right? Seems to me you might need a little reminder to fly.”

Oh, that was rich coming from him. My days of flying were long gone.

“Yeah, well, there was a flaw in your plan. Because when I see this bird now? All I think is how you flew, Finn. So forgive me if I don’t want that reminder on my skin every day for the rest of my life.”

His grip on my hip tightened as he tugged me until our fronts pressed together. And—whoa, momma—I wasn’t the only one heating up at our nearness if the hard ridge pressing against my stomach was any indication.

“You think I don’t have the same damn reminder? That you were here the whole time without me? These are your roots on me, Willowtree,” he said, pulling up his shirt and giving me a glimpse of the tattoo on the side of his rib cage he’d gotten the same day as mine. The one I’d drawn for him so long ago.

The top was obscured by his shirt, but I knew what’d be there—the wispy leaves of a willow tree. The trunk twisted and contorted until it widened at the base, the roots spreading like outstretched fingers near his hip. Had there always been so many? I couldn’t remember.

Finn reached down and grabbed my hand, pressing my fingers to his skin. His muscles rippled under my touch. “These are your roots on me, and no matter what’s happened between us, I’d never want anything to erase what we had. Because what we had was real , Willow, and you know it. Don’t forget that. Don’t discount it.”

I opened my lips to tell him all we’d experienced was puppy love, but the words wouldn’t come. They were frozen in my throat because they’d be the single greatest lie I’d ever told in my entire life.

Without any conscious thought, my fingers started tracing the lines of ink on Finn’s skin, and all I could do was watch. He was so solid and warm under my fingertips, his puffs of air growing faster and faster against my neck, then my cheek, then my lips.

And even though it’d been a long time, I knew what was coming a split second before he pressed his mouth against mine. My sound of protest was lost in the space between our mouths as he swiped his tongue against my lips. And then there was nothing but Finn and his sinful mouth and his body flush against mine. He swept his tongue inside my mouth, and Lord , had he always tasted this good? Had he always kissed this good?

Never breaking away from my mouth, he walked us until my back was pressed against the wall, and then he just sort of…settled in. His hips held mine against the wall, the length of his erection pressing into me, proving this wasn’t at all one-sided as his hand continued its maddening path along my hip.

But then—Lord, then he slipped his thumb under the waistband of my shorts until there was nothing between his rough fingertip and the part of my body forever marked as his. If it were possible, the soft caresses had me melting even further into him.

He kissed me like he was a starving man feasting on his first meal in a month. I’d forgotten how he’d always put his whole body into it, the heat and solidness of him pressing against me, making me feel safe and secure. He groaned into my mouth as he deepened the kiss even more, and all I could do was clutch him, one hand fisting the front of his shirt and the other pressed against his side where my tree was eternally imprinted.

“You feel so damn good,” he said against my lips.

I murmured my agreement into his mouth because there was no denying it. My body was on fire, my nipples hard points pressing against his chest, my skin lit up from the inside out.

And then his thumb, rubbing maddeningly against my tattoo, slipped to the right until he was as close to the Promised Land as he’d been in a long time. He didn’t try to push it any further, just ran his thumb back and forth right above where I was wet and ready for him until I thought I’d die.

After a blink and an eternity, his heated mouth slowed until he pulled away, kissing along my jaw, flicking his tongue against that spot behind my ear that’d always made my knees weak. Then he brushed his lips against the shell of my ear, his words just a breath. “You feel that?”

I didn’t think he actually expected an answer—which was a good thing, since all of my brainpower was being used to keep myself upright.

“I know you do,” he said. “I know you’ve felt it every day since I came back. Think about this before you do anything, all right? Think about us , Willowtree. That’s all I’m askin’.” He scraped his teeth along my earlobe, and then…then he removed his thumb from my shorts, removed every inch of his body from mine, and stepped back.

His face was flushed, his eyes molten as he stared at me. His chest heaved with breath, and I didn’t have to look down to know the evidence of his arousal would be apparent in his jeans, but I wanted to. Lord, I wanted to more than anything. Wanted to pull him back to me, wanted to strip him of his clothes and see what other changes had been made to the body I’d once known so well. And that thought scared the ever-loving hell out of me.

With his hands clenched into fists, as if he were physically restraining himself from coming toward me again, he gave my hip one last look, and then he left.

As I stared at the door he’d walked through, my fingers pressing to the lips he’d so thoroughly kissed, I wanted to call out a thousand things at his retreating form. Most of them pertaining to the fact that he had no right to ask that of me when he clearly hadn’t thought of the two of us when he’d left.

But then I remembered his willow tree tattoo, prominent and untouched, when the rest of him had been inked up over the years—tattoos I hadn’t given myself permission to catalog, but ones I would’ve had to be blind to miss—and the ache in my heart grew. Which only worried me more, causing the ache to turn into panic. Finn wasn’t supposed to elicit those kinds of reactions from me. Not anymore.

When I had my bearings enough that I trusted myself around mixed company, I walked out to the living room to find Mac and Ty still playing the Xbox. They both looked up at my entrance, and Mac’s eyes flitted to the front door, where I assumed Finn had fled through only moments before.

“What’ll it be, Will?” Ty asked.

So much for having a plan when I left here tonight, because now my brain was all jumbled, and even if I could’ve made a decision, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to trust myself.

“I’m gonna think it over, and I’ll let you know,” I said, my voice shaking only a little. “Mac, you ready?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” She got up from the couch, tossing the controller to Ty. “Thanks for the game.”

“Anytime. See ya, Haven girls.”

Mac headed out onto the porch, but before I stepped over the threshold, I turned around to address Ty. “Don’t mention my decision to Finn, all right?”

“What decision?” he replied with a wink.

“Exactly,” I mumbled, then stepped out, shutting the door behind me as I sagged against it.

“Girl, what the hell happened in that back room? Finn looked like he was ready to combust when he came out.”

That made two of us.

I shook my head as we walked to the car. “I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out myself.”