12. Finn
12
FINN
Heard a song on the radio that said “I love you, don’t act so surprised.”
Didn’t have to be a country song for that one to hit me right in the chest.
I’d always prided myself on the fact that I could stay cool and collected in any situation.
But collected was out of the question now.
I’d told Ori the deepest, rawest truth.
It had been just as terrifying as I’d imagined it might be, and way too fucking real.
And then he’d come to me— he approached me —and nothing could have meant more than that.
I leaned back now, looking him in the eye, hoping to god the tears biting at the back of my eyes wouldn’t come out.
“Please kiss me?” I asked, my voice a little raspy. “Because I swear I might pass out if I don’t distract myself right now, and also I just want to fucking kiss you—”
His lips were on mine a moment later, his hands coming down to wrap lower around my waist.
God. Yes. Stay with me.
I kissed him back so deeply it was as if my body was going to merge into him, my tongue sliding over his in a slow, teasing dance. I shifted my feet on the grass below, steadying myself against him.
I needed to keep this. I gave myself away to sensation, like I could will us to stay in this moment forever as long as I kept my mouth on him.
People had told me I was a good kisser before, but I was learning that Ori was better at it than anyone. I loved his lips, soft and pliant but always responsive to my touch, ready to deepen the kiss even more every time I wanted it.
Christ. I was in deep, but there sure as hell was no turning back now. I couldn’t live in a world where Ori thought he was just some “project” to me. It was so far from the truth that it had been a sucker punch to the gut to even hear him say it.
His teeth came down gently on my lower lip and the sensation went straight to my cock. My hands skated over every inch of him, traveling down his back and then to grip against his ass.
“God, I fucking missed this,” I said, pulling back and nuzzling my face into his hair.
“Missed what?” he murmured. “It’s not like we made out and grabbed each other’s asses when we were younger.”
I puffed out a laugh, breathing in the scent of his hair. “No. But we were really… together . You know?”
“Yeah,” he said, and I knew from his tone that he was picking up on exactly what I’d meant.
We’d had a fleeting moment of it the other night. But even when I’d sucked him off, some part of me had felt like I was on borrowed time, like we were breaking a rule.
This just felt like coming home.
“You need to know that I’m never going to make any decisions for you,” I told him. “The house or anything else. It was just something that I got carried away with, talking to the owner, and I shouldn’t have mentioned anything to Danielle.”
“Thank you for thinking of helping me at all,” Ori said. “I appreciate it more than you know. I just hate being in the dark.”
“I won’t leave you in the dark again,” I told him. “Don’t stop touching me?”
He hummed, pressing in further, squeezing his hands on the back of my waist. He pressed a small kiss against my collarbone, and I felt the wet warmth of his tongue a moment later as he drew a line along the side of my neck.
My cock throbbed. I arched my neck back, wanting more.
“Why does that feel so good?” I uttered. “It tickles. And I also really want you to do it again.”
He obliged, then bit down gently on my earlobe. I swore softly under my breath, my hips bucking forward against the front of his body.
God almighty.
“I like you like this,” he said near my ear.
“I want you so fucking badly.” I could hear the desperation in my own voice, ragged and almost like I was begging him for… something.
Everything was on the line.
Every inch of me wanted him, but what, exactly, was I wanting from him?
To feel closer.
For once, I’d managed to get Ori to be here with me, when usually I always felt like he was slipping away.
I would do anything with him right now.
I would let him do anything to me .
“Tell me,” Ori said, looking me in the eyes. His gaze was suddenly directly focused, doing that thing where I felt like he could see everything I was thinking.
And for fuck’s sake, he brought new meaning to the idea of bedroom eyes , because I swore he could get me on my knees just from that look alone.
“What do you mean?”
His palm found its way to the front of my chest, slowly dragging down until it landed at the base of my stomach.
All at once he shoved his open palm down the front of my shorts, landing on my cock and giving it a firm squeeze.
I moaned under his touch, leaning forward against him.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” he said. His eyes were still unrelenting, glinting under the string lights behind us in the yard.
I groaned as he slid his thumb over the precum on the tip of my cock, swirling it around under my shorts.
I swallowed past a tightness in my throat. “I want you.”
“How so?”
“All of it.”
“Use your words,” he said, his voice low and commanding in a way that turned me on so much it hurt.
“ Fuck .”
He closed the gap between us again, claiming my mouth in a hungry kiss. He gripped around my cock, putting me deeper into the trance I’d been in all night.
You really are my whole world, I thought, melting against him in a final surrender after so many fucking years of resistance.
“You can say what you need,” he murmured, pulling away for a moment only to lean back in and bite my lower lip.
“God,” I said. “I need to be close to you. I’d let you do anything.”
“Do you mean that?”
A spark flared through me. “I want you to fuck me.”
Something flared in his eyes.
“You sure about that?”
“Want to fucking bet, Ori?”
I met his eyes now, just as steadfastly as he’d been looking at me.
I had to show him that I wasn’t afraid. Inside I was like a goddamn fireworks show of nerves and anticipation and I don’t fucking know what—but I was daring myself to not let him slip away.
Not again. Not right now.
For once, I needed to keep him with me.
“I told you I want it,” I said. “And I meant when I said I’ll do anything with you. I know you like giving as much as you like receiving. Remember all those times you told me about it?”
My heart was pounding as I watched his eyes travel up and down my face. “Didn’t think you even liked hearing those stories.”
“I liked knowing you knew how to show someone a good time,” I said. “You always sounded like you were good at it.”
“I do okay,” he said, with the undertone of someone who definitely does a lot more than okay .
Ori probably didn’t remember, but over the years he’d told me at least a handful of stories about guys who said he was their best fuck ever. He wasn’t exactly a heartbreaker, because he never pretended to be committed to them, but he was a… sexual heartbreaker.
Guys would beg him for just one more fuck pretty frequently, from what it sounded like.
I sucked in a deep breath of evening air as a breeze blew past, goosebumps breaking out on my skin. “So, I want to know.”
“You sure about that?”
“What do I have to do, write up a contract saying I want to be fucked by Ori Adams and sign it in front of you?”
He chewed on his lower lip, his eyes flaring wide.
The truth was slightly more scattered. I wanted him tonight more than I’d really ever wanted anything in my life, but there was also the fear. Fear of the unknown, in a way I’d never thought about before.
But the thought of his cock inside me did something to me that was a lot closer to a craving than anything else.
“You are going to drive me fucking crazy,” Ori said, a look of slight disbelief still on his face.
“Hope so,” I said, breaking away from him in one quick movement. He hummed at the loss of touch and truthfully, I felt it just as much.
I turned and strode back toward the house, grabbing the forgotten grilled chicken along the way. I went inside and popped it into the fridge for later, heading straight to the shower and putting the water on hot. I was moving quickly so Ori didn’t have time to wonder if I was suddenly going to enter some state of shock, deciding I didn’t want to get fucked by another man.
I was so far past caring about any of that now. I needed him to see that I was all in.
I was stripping naked as Ori rounded the corner into my master bathroom, his eyes going right to my cock.
“Rinse off with me,” I said. “Don’t want your first time with me to be when I’m all sweaty and filthy from yard work, do you?”
He bit down on his lower lip. “I’d take you while you were dirty, Finn, trust me,” he murmured. “But I want to rinse off right now, too. One rule.”
“What is it?”
“You can’t touch me in the shower.”
“Give me a break.”
“Not because I don’t like it,” he said, giving me a teasing glance as he pulled off his shirt and tossed down his jeans. “I just want to see if you can do it.”
“Is this some test?” I asked, stepping in the shower after him. “Because you know I can do it. I’ve showered with you before.”
“I know,” he said, grabbing the body wash and starting to lather himself up. “So you can do it tonight, too.”
“You want to torture me,” I said.
“Didn’t seem like torture to you all those times we did it in the past.”
“That was different.”
Steam rose in the shower between us, floating away. He was giving me a pointed stare, and I watched the droplets of water fall down the front of his chest.
“Why is it different now, then?”
I realized immediately what this was.
He wanted to suss me out. Wanted to see if I was going to revert back to the way things had been in the past.
“I didn’t know how good you felt back then,” I said, opting for the truth.
“We fought,” he said, running his palms along the front of his body in a lather. “You knew how my body felt, in that way.”
“Yeah, and I fuckin’ liked it,” I tossed back at him. “You know we both liked it.”
“So what’s with your newfound curiosity about getting fucked?” he pressed. “And kissing me? And sucking my cock—”
“I don’t know, Ori,” I said, more forcefully than I’d meant to. I stood in the hot spray of the shower, thoughts swirling in my head at a million miles a minute. “I don’t know. But if you’re not going to believe me, I can’t force you to. I always wanted to be closer to you.”
The flare of anger even surprised me.
“How close was I supposed to have you?” he asked. “It was off the table, Finn. I didn’t want to risk losing you. You were all I had . My only fucking friend.”
“And that never would have changed,” I whispered.
“Are you going to make me say it?” he said, with venom in his voice. “I didn’t ever want there to be the possibility I’d fall for you. Distance was easier. In every sense of the term.”
It was like the ground had just shifted under my feet. Imperceptibly, but permanently.
Oh.
I was so goddamn naive.
Ori had been afraid that if he got too close to me, I’d reel in the other direction. That he’d freak me out because he was gay, and I wasn’t.
He was afraid his worst fears would be confirmed: that I’d react like his worst aggressors did, shoving him away for everything that was different about him.
I’d been so convinced—so sure of the fact that Ori just plain couldn’t ever be attracted to me, after all of the times he’d told me I wasn’t his type.
He’d been protecting himself without me knowing it.
And I’d kept that distance, too, trying to respect his boundaries.
I put a hand against the cold tile wall of the shower, stepping under the water again and washing away the lather, cataloging every stupid thing I’d thought over the last decade of my life.
I felt something blooming out from inside me, something reckless that I didn’t care to control.
“I love you,” I said.
Point blank.
Steam whirled its way between the two of us in the shower.
“Finn, you don’t need to—”
“I love you,” I repeated, looking at him as plainly as ever. “Always have. You could never have pushed me away.”
“ Fuck off,” he whispered, turning to wipe at his cheek with the heel of his palm.
“For Christ’s sake, Ori, come here,” I said, stepping toward him and crushing my body to his. I gripped him close, tightening around him as I pressed kisses to his wet hair, his temple, his cheeks. When I kissed his mouth I tried to show him how I felt with every fucking second I was on him.
I never, ever would have left your side .
The tiniest trace of salt from his tears landed on my lips, and my heart cracked into a million pieces and grew again, all at once.
“I am going to kick your ass for this,” he said against my lips as I held his head in my hands.
I puffed out a laugh, breathing deep, not knowing I’d been holding my breath.
“You can kick my ass,” I told him. “As long as you don’t fade away from me again.”
“I don’t want to fade away,” he said. “Still don’t even know why you like having me around.”
“It’s the little things,” I said. “I love your sketchbooks all over the house, the watercolors. You spit them out in fifteen minutes and they look like little masterpieces. I like seeing your dumb Beetle outside when I leave in the morning. Fuck, Ori, I even like having an excuse to pick up extra food, knowing you might want some, too.”
“You’ve been doing that on purpose?” he asked.
“Of course I have. I think of you automatically. Even when I’m not trying to.”
He melted against me, claiming my mouth in another slow kiss. “You are too good to me. I think that’s always been true.”
“No such thing,” I said. “Ori, you can move anywhere. You can end up on the other side of the planet, if that’s what you want, but you need to know I’ll always be here for you.”
I wanted to kick myself, truly, for being so blind.
What had held me back?
Why couldn’t I have let myself feel any of this— do any of this, when I was just a little bit younger? My life had been a series of rules I’d thought I had to follow.
Rules, rules, rules: rise above your past, and don’t crumble, even when your parents do. Excel in school. Excel in football. Excel socially, with anyone and everyone. Get a job, get a house.
Find a girlfriend, then a wife.
I’d been in survival mode for so long that I’d never stopped to let myself wonder if there was anything beneath those rules that I might want.
I had to lose Ori and find him again to know how deeply I needed him.
And when it came to Ori? Fuck the rules.
I would do anything for him.
“Promised you wouldn’t touch me,” he said now, even as he wrapped his arms up around my shoulders, nestling his head against the crook of my neck.
I hummed. “I’ll stop the moment you tell me to.”
I felt him breathe against me. “That’s not going to happen.”
If I thought I wanted Ori to fuck me earlier, it was magnified to a level I hadn’t even known was possible now.
The fear had evaporated.
I was his, in whatever way he wanted to have me.
I reached behind him to turn off the shower, pressing a gentle kiss on his lips before grabbing the towels outside. I handed him one and after we dried off, I pulled open a drawer in the vanity, bringing out condoms and a bottle of lube.
I looked Ori up and down, his skin glistening in the light.
“You going to make me beg?”