Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WILLOW
When I had woken up that morning, I certainly hadn’t anticipated this was where my day would take me. I definitely hadn’t imagined I’d end it in Finn’s bed after he’d just guided me to my second orgasm of the night, the most recent time with his tongue. And Lord almighty, what a talented tongue it was.
Tension vibrated in every inch of his inked, muscle-packed body, and that only made me feel even more powerful. This man had been waiting for my go-ahead. Waiting for my approval before he did anything. The control was heady, and I couldn’t deny how much I loved it.
Now, though, I’d given him the green light, and he didn’t hesitate any longer as he shucked his pants, leaving on only his boxer briefs. Though, they did little to conceal the monster tucked beneath. While I’d anticipated his body would fill out in the time he’d been gone, grow another inch or two and develop bigger, thicker muscles, I hadn’t anticipated his cock doing the same. There was no denying it had, because Lord knew if I’d seen that beast at seventeen, I’d have run for the hills instead of letting him between my legs.
“You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, Willowtree. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you.” His voice pulled me from my thoughts, the look on his face nearly doing me in.
I wanted to brush his words aside, but I couldn’t. Not with the way he said them, like they were a prayer…the only truth he knew. And certainly not with how he looked at me, as if I were the only thing he ever wanted to see for the rest of his life.
It was too much and somehow not enough.
I needed to remind us both it was just about sex. I’d been down the heartache path with Finn before, and I had no plans of ever doing it again. “And yet I’m still dressed.”
His lips kicked up on the side, though he didn’t make any move to close the last step between us. “Gimme a minute, now. Been thinkin’ about this for a long time. I wanna enjoy myself.” He reached down and cupped himself through his boxers, the action shooting sparks straight to my clit. “You’ll let me have my fun, won’t you?”
He’d already given me two orgasms without even getting me naked. I’d let him have all the fun he wanted. And if he stood there and stared, that meant I got to do the same.
I’d spent so much of my time since Finn had arrived in town fantasizing about what he looked like under his clothes, but those dreams had nothing on reality. His chest might as well have been carved from stone, and I wanted to run my tongue down the ridges of his abdomen. The only other place I’d seen such perfection had been when Mac texted me weekly thirst traps.
But Finn wasn’t a model. He wasn’t just a picture on my tiny phone screen. He was there in front of me in all his splendid, tattooed glory, and he was hard. For me.
He’d covered his skin with several tattoos over the years—a compass low on his abdomen near his hip, part of it hidden beneath the band of his boxer briefs, a map covering from his shoulder down to his right pectoral, a series of numbers directly over his heart—and I found myself wanting to know the stories behind each of them. Wanting to know what he’d spent his time doing. A tiny ache settled in my stomach over the fact that there was a void of time where neither of us knew anything about the other.
And then there was my tree. Even though I’d spent more days than not hating his brand on my body, I couldn’t deny how much I loved seeing mine on him. Now that there was nothing blocking my view of it, now that I wasn’t incoherent like I’d been at Ty’s house, I was certain there hadn’t always been so many roots at the base of the tree. I’d drawn that willow tree for him, and I knew it like the back of my hand. He must’ve added to it in the time he’d been gone, but why?
“You’re lookin’ at me like I’m somethin’ to eat.” He pressed his knee onto the bed and crawled up my body until we were eye level.
“Sorry?”
He laughed, reaching up to brush aside a strand of my hair. “I don’t think you’re sorry at all. Lord knows I’m not. You could look at me like that every day for the rest of my life, and I still wouldn’t be sick of it. Just gonna make my job a little more difficult, is all.”
“What job’s that?” I asked, though I already had a pretty good idea. What, since he’d dropped his hand to the hem of my shirt and ran his fingers along the bare skin of my abdomen. Lifting that material right along with his seeking fingers until I arched beneath him so he could pull it up and off.
“It’s a job I take very seriously, you know.” His breath puffed against the swells of my breasts before he inched down the cup of my bra with his nose. Flicked my hardened peak with his tongue. “Worship every bit of your body, making sure I don’t miss a single inch.”
I reached for the back of his head, holding him to me, sighing as he engulfed my nipple in his mouth. “That might take a while.”
He pulled back and blew against my wet skin as he lifted his eyes to mine, desire written plainly in their depths. “I’m countin’ on it.”
Taking his sweet old time, he unhooked my bra and tossed it to the side. Slid my skirt down over my hips until it joined the rest of my clothes pooled on his floor. And then I lay in front of him naked for the first time in so long. I thought I’d be self-conscious, being bare with him after so long. I wasn’t the skin and bones teenager I’d once been. But from the look on Finn’s face, he didn’t mind one bit.
He didn’t start at the bird on my hip, even though his eyes flicked there several times. Instead, he slid down the bed and lifted my foot, licking a circle around my anklebone before trailing his nose up the curve of my calf. He caressed every inch of me, like he could memorize me through touch alone. All the while, he whispered words into my skin—how beautiful I was, how much he’d missed me, how sweet I tasted. And others I couldn’t quite make out, but from the way he’d closed his eyes, his lips brushing my skin as he said them, it was maybe better I hadn’t been able to.
By the time he’d kissed every inch of my body except where my tattoo sat, I was a puddle of pure need. He ran his thumb over the mark, tracing the outline of it as he lay on his stomach between my legs.
“It probably makes me an asshole for sayin’ this, but I love that my bird’s still on you. Couldn’t bear the thought of you gettin’ rid of it. Not when I wear you on my skin too. Not when I look at it every day and see everything we had together.”
And, really, what could I say to that? Hadn’t I just thought the same exact thing about his tattoo? Before I could come up with a response, he plucked a condom from his night table and rolled it down his length as he settled between my legs.
“You don’t wanna know how much I’ve thought about this.”
Probably not. Especially when this was all starting to feel like a hell of a lot more than just sex. “Tell me.”
He glanced up at me as he gripped his cock, ran his head along my slit in a slow, torturous circuit that made me quake with need. “It won’t scare you off to know I’ve been thinkin’ of it every day I’ve been gone? Or that I think of you in the shower and my bed? Every time I gripped my cock and got myself off, it was to thoughts of you. Memories of what we did. Fantasies of what I wanted to do.”
Scare me off? Lord, no. It should have. It should’ve been a red flag that I was getting in over my head already, and we’d just gotten started. But though we’d merely begun, I was already in too deep.
“Show me.”
He covered my body with his, notching his cock into my entrance. “As many times as you’ll let me.”
And then he pushed inside, just a slow glide of his cock into me, my body stretching to accommodate his size. Our moans mingled together, the delicious fullness overwhelming me as he continued to thrust inside. Slowly, at first, until I was relaxed enough to take every bit of him. And then, once I started lifting my hips to take him farther inside, he went faster. Harder. Drove into me so deep, I swore I saw stars.
“Finn… Finn.” I couldn’t say anything but his name, over and over again. It was like every other word had been plucked from my head, evaporated along with every other thought except us, together.
He rested his lips against mine, his words getting lost in the breaths mingling between us. “You feel how good we fit, Willowtree? There’s nothing as perfect as this heaven, is there? Nothing .”
There wasn’t, and there was no more denying it. For years, I’d wondered if I’d built up the connection Finn and I had had. Built it up into something so overgrown and complex that it was impossible for anyone else to stack up against. The truth was, though, I hadn’t imagined a single bit of it. If anything, my memories had dulled what we felt together.
It was magic, pure and simple. The kind of chemistry I saw in movies, read about in books. But it wasn’t fiction. It wasn’t just something to wish upon.
It was real, and it was us, and it was right there in front of me.
He hooked my legs higher around his hips as his thrusts sped up, his breath growing more frantic against my lips until he groaned and took my mouth in a heated kiss. Sliding his tongue against mine, he slipped a hand between us and thumbed my clit as he pounded into me hard enough to shake his bed.
“Come on, sweetness. Gimme one more. Let me feel you come on my cock.” He nipped at my bottom lip then licked away the sting. “Let me feel what I do to you.”
I couldn’t deny him anymore. Was damn tired of denying myself. So I gave in. Fingernails digging into his shoulders, I allowed myself to be swept away by him, allowed him to push me up and over the peak, cresting even as he pumped inside me, groaning through his own release.
Minutes or hours later, I trailed my fingers up and down the expanse of his back as he continued to press kiss after kiss along any inch of skin he could reach. It was quiet between us—too quiet almost. As if we were both lost in our own thoughts. And my thoughts? Lord, they were a jumble. But the one thought that kept coming up over and over again was, what kind of a mess have you gotten yourself into ?
A fine mess, indeed.