Chapter 9
FINN
I’d expected many things after showing up at Sophie’s house.
One of which being some kissing and heavy petting.
One of the things I’d never expected was to come face to face with Daniel again.
The worst part was, if the tables had been turned, Daniel would have run screaming in the other direction.
He would have remembered how things ended between us, and he would have done everything in his power to keep me away from his future wife.
But Sophie had been the one at the paint store. Sophie had been the one on the other end of the phone call.
Though…
Daniel had been the one to open the door. Daniel had been the one to let me in.
He and I followed Sophie to the couch, ever obedient.
They had a sectional, a green velvet thing with flat arms and a flat back, broad cushions that looked soft and well-worn.
Sophie tucked herself into the corner, holding her wine in those delicately manicured fingers of hers.
She had her ring on, still, again, and I cursed her for not having it on the day I’d met her.
Maybe I could have saved us all the trouble and known better.
But it had taken me far too long to learn my lesson with Neil and Annette.
Daniel, it seemed, and now his fiancé, would be just as hard of a lesson for me to learn now.
Regardless, I still didn’t know the order of things, so I waited for Daniel to sit down—beside Sophie—before I sank into the opposite corner of the couch.
Sophie had the sectional on her side, but I pressed my shoulders against the back of the couch just the same.
I rested the top of my hand against the arm of the couch, my drink nestled comfortably in my palm. Daniel had given me extra cherries, but I worried if I ate any of them, I’d be sick.
“On second thought,” Sophie said, untangling her legs from beneath her. She set her wine on a coaster on the table, then stood and drummed her nails against the back of the couch. “I think I’m going to check that work email after all.”
I snorted, giving her a look that let her know I was on to her.
She’d stayed close to make sure I wasn’t a threat to her relationship or her future husband.
Once she decided I was safe—or safe enough—she was clearly content to give Daniel and me enough space to finish the conversation neither of us had ever wanted to have.
It was unavoidable now.
We both waited until she’d gone, and then turned toward each other at the same time.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” he said softly.
“LA isn’t that big of a town.”
“You know what I meant.”
I sipped at the perfectly made drink and nodded. “I know. Daniel, I…”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I need to do a lot more than apologize.” I shifted around, set my drink on the table and then moved to face him again. My heart slammed violently against my ribs, but the only way out of this was through it.
I mean, I could have gotten up and left.
Could have walked out on them both and not looked back.
I didn’t deserve Daniel, I barely knew Sophie, and I didn’t need the complications that came with the two of them.
But I sat and I stayed, rapt at Daniel’s whiskey-colored eyes and the lush green walls I knew wrapped their bedroom.
My curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to survive it a second time.
“How would you make it up to me, then?” Daniel asked.
My mouth went dry, and I glanced instinctively over his shoulder toward the dim hallway Sophie had disappeared down.
“Don’t worry about her,” he said. “This isn’t between the three of us. This is you and me, yeah?”
My breath stuttered out of me, and all I could do was stare at him.
Daniel watched me passively, but the slight quiver of his chin was a tell.
He might try to exude a cool and collected demeanor, here in his living room where I was clearly at a disadvantage, but I remembered well enough what he looked like when he came, when he was close, when he wanted it.
Daniel’s face was a map with topography so obvious a second grader could read it.
“Yeah.”
Daniel shifted, laying his arm across the back of the couch, his knees bent and angled toward my body.
“You never told me their names.”
“I don’t want to tell you now. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter.”
“They did before.”
I raised a brow. “I thought we were starting over.”
“I thought we were tying up loose ends,” he countered.
“Their names aren’t important,” I said, not wanting to sully his and Sophie’s space with Neil and Annette’s mess.
It was bad enough I’d brought my disaster self into his old apartment.
I couldn’t… no, I wouldn’t do it again. “It was unfair of me to use you to distract myself from the hurt they caused me.” I wished I hadn’t moved my drink so far away, but the moment felt so tentative I worried if I moved, I would ruin it. “And I am sorry for it.”
Daniel’s tongue made a noise, stuck against the roof of his mouth as he swallowed. He looked at my throat when he said, “I already said you don’t owe me an apology.”
“I know.” I dared a glance at him. “But you did ask how I would make it up to you.”
There had always been a sharp edge to sex with Daniel, like he wanted to be in charge but wasn’t sure how to commit to the bit.
It hadn’t bothered me then, and it didn’t bother me now.
I’d never had an issue talking him through it or coaxing him to the point of comfortability.
But even with that taunt in the air between us, everything about his body language said he was unsure about how he really wanted me to react.
For the first time, I wondered about Daniel and Sophie’s sex life.
I let myself—briefly—entertain the idea of what it would be like if the three of us were together.
There was still no clarity around their asks of me or their expectations.
Did they want a truly balanced throuple?
Did Sophie want me for herself? Did Daniel?
Was I meant to pass between them, a side piece, never part of a whole?
All of that worry would have to wait because Daniel’s expression darkened, and I immediately understood exactly how he wanted me to make my indiscretions up to him.
He went for his belt before my knees hit the floor.
I shuffled to him, and Daniel had his hands in my hair and my head in his lap before I even realized I’d moved.
His cock wasn’t hard, but it was hot and already leaking, and when I took him into my mouth, I wanted to cry.
He wrapped himself around me, forearm pressed against the back of my head to hold me down.
His cock thickened against my tongue, pressed against the roof of my mouth.
He’d never been long enough to choke me, but he thrust into my throat anyway and tried.
I grabbed his thigh, mostly for balance, lashes fluttering at the wet and sloppy sounds coming out of my mouth.
Daniel lifted his hips and fucked my face until he was fully hard, dripping and throbbing behind my teeth.
“I missed your mouth,” he rasped before the first pulse of cum splashed against my tongue.
He folded himself over the top of me, burying my face into the still well maintained thatch of curls that framed his shaft, bursts of cum shooting straight into my throat with every ragged pump of his hips.
He kept me pinned down long after his balls had emptied, and I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his thigh until his cock softened and slipped out of my mouth.
He grabbed my chin, used his thumb to swipe the mess of him off my face, and I couldn’t bear to look at him.
“That can’t be enough to make it right,” I whispered, voice cracking from how well he’d pummeled my throat.
“It’s not for you to say.”
“Daniel.”
He pinched my cheeks together, puckering my mouth. He held me there for less than a second before his touch turned into a gentle caress across my cheek. I stared at his stomach, not willing to look up and find forgiveness in his eyes.
“Finn.”
I shook my head.
“Let me take you out,” he said softly. “A date.”
“I need to understand the rules.” I rocked back onto my heels and dropped my ass onto the floor.
I hit the coffee table with my shoulder blades and it skittered back across the floor a few inches.
I reached back, grateful for the reminder of my drink.
The cherries were bearable, and I ate all three of them.
“They’re whatever we want them to be.”
“That’s not…not enough.”
Daniel tucked his cock back into his pants, smoothed himself back together, then hauled me onto the couch. I ended up closer to him than before, our legs pressed together, our faces within kissing distance.
“I want to know what I missed out on last time,” he said.
“Not much.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did know what he meant, but it was impossible to stand beneath the weight of his attention without crumbling. A blow job would never make up for the way I’d treated Daniel before, for the way I’d used him to make myself feel better.
“Sophie likes you,” he said. “She knew I would like you, and I think you’ll like her.”
“I get the feeling it’s impossible to not like her.”
Daniel smiled, and I wanted to die.
“I’ve been gone for her from the first day we met,” he agreed. “So you’re not wrong there.”
“Tell me how it happened?” I asked.
“She tells it better.”
“I’ll have to ask her, then,” I managed to say.
Daniel nodded, mouth quirking into a smile. He was still so close, so warm, so real.
“I don’t know how this works,” he whispered. “With her living here now, with you…us. But I do know I want to kiss—”
It was enough.
I closed the space between us and slanted our mouths together before Daniel could change his mind.
He opened to me almost immediately, threading the fingers of one hand into the hair at the back of my neck and cradling my throat with the other.
Daniel held me where he wanted me and licked his way into my mouth, spearing his tongue deep enough that I had to open wider to give him the access he was after.
“I knew it,” he mumbled.
“Knew what?”
“You’d taste like whiskey.”
“You just made me a drink,” I reminded him, nipping at his lower lip.
Fuck, it felt good to be with him again. A reprieve from…no. Not that, not anymore. Neil and Annette were gone, and I was well on my way to being over them. Now, Daniel was himself, and I was as much me as I could be. The kiss was familiar, but it was new, and…
“I remembered before,” he said against my mouth. “How you’d always taste like whiskey when we kissed.”
“And you always taste like toothpaste,” I whispered back, dragging my mouth to his chin and kissing him there. “No matter what.”
I grabbed his face in my hands and kissed him again, whimpering when he pressed our bodies together and laid me out on the couch.
It was like no time had passed between us, and Daniel nudged his thigh between my legs, pressing up hard against my cock and balls.
I’d gotten painfully hard sucking him, and if he shifted his weight and moved an inch to the right, I would have come in my pants like a teenager.
“Wait,” I pleaded, reaching between us and shoving his leg back. “Not like this.”
Daniel tore himself away from my mouth and peppered kisses along my jaw and down the side of my neck. He reached my ear and sucked my lobe into his mouth, drawing an embarrassing moan out of me.
“Not like what?”
“Not with your future wife down the hall pretending to work so we can have time alone.”
“She would listen if you told her she could,” Daniel said with a low laugh.
He pressed himself against me one last time before drawing back into a sitting position.
He helped me up, and with an annoying heat to my cheeks, I adjusted my still needy cock so it didn’t look like I was trying to pitch a tent in the middle of their living room.
“But we haven’t set that boundary yet, so I’m confident she has the door closed and is actually working. She wouldn’t begrudge us this.”
“I know, I just…” God, Daniel wasn’t going to make this easy. “If I do this again, I have to do it the right way.”
“And do you want to?”
No.
Maybe.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I think I do.”