Chapter 11
ISLA
Finn kisses me like he’ll never get the chance to again.
Easing in and then taking, never breaking away.
I can hold my breath underwater for hours, yet somehow, this man gets me to start panting.
But a sudden realization has me pressing him away.
“No,” he growls, dark eyes tracking my mouth.
“That was a convincing animalistic noise. I’m impressed.”
“Isla.” His voice comes out with a deeper rasp the second time as his fingers dig into my waist.
“I needed my mouth free to talk to you about something important.”
When my pause stretches, he snaps forward, trying to capture me in another kiss. But I’m faster and a touch stronger than he is, holding him at bay.
“Eyes up, human. Focus on my face.”
Finn’s hungry gaze flits to my eyes and stays there, his dilated pupils showing just how aroused he is. Of course, I’m also sitting on a very prominent erection, so I’m not surprised.
“I’m focused,” he claims. “Extremely focused.”
“Good. I fell in love with you senior year, when you picked me first for your kickball team in gym class.”
For a full count of five, my human just stares at me. “But that was after you thought Owen was your mate.”
“I know. Which I told the gods was extremely inconvenient and cruel and that they should take the emotion away.”
“Did they?”
“I thought so.” Suddenly, I realize that I have permission to touch Finn, so I reach up and comb my fingers through his unruly mop of black hair. “Then, right before graduation, you ran back to my car to get my flip-flops after one of my heels broke. And I fell in love with you all over again.”
With each word I speak, a smile creeps wider over Finn’s face. “You’ve been in love with me since graduation?”
“Of course not!” I scoff. “I reminded the gods that they’d chosen Owen as my fated mate, so they really needed to get rid of the love I felt for you. And I’m positive they did.”
“Is that so?” From the lowering of Finn’s eyelids, I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
“Yes. But then it was raining. That time at the coffee shop three years ago. And you came inside, all wet, with your shirt clinging to your chest.” Now, I hook my fingers under his black T-shirt and tug the material off over his head to see the offending chest.
“You fell in love with me because I was wet?” His chuckle brushes against my neck as he leans in to press kisses to the sensitive area.
“That’s ridiculous.” I tilt my head to give him better access. “I fell in love with you again when you said you wished Folk Haven had a bookstore.”
Finn straightens. “And that made you love me because …”
I still remember him stepping up to me in line, his eyes wide and searching as he said hello.
Finn asked how long I was in town for, and I told him I was heading out again that afternoon.
In fact, I had to leave right after getting my coffee if I wanted time to go to the bookstore in Atlanta before catching my flight.
And he said, with so much regret that it infused every inch of his body, that he wished Folk Haven had a bookstore.
“Because I think we were envisioning the same thing. The two of us getting coffee and then walking over to the imaginary bookstore, talking as we went, rediscovering each other. Then maybe making out between the shelves. And the fact that you wanted exactly what I wanted did it for me.”
“Did you ask the gods to take the feeling away again?”
“Yes.”
“Did they?”
“I pretended they had.”
“Until when?”
“Until I saw your delicious butt sticking through that inner tube.”
Finn barks out a laugh as his arms tighten around me. But I don’t let him close off too much space, my hands intent on sliding down his torso until I reach his fly. He stills under the caress.
“If it’s not clear, I’m trying to tell you that I love you.
” I undo the button on his shorts and slowly pull down the zipper.
“I have for years even if I tried to ignore the feelings.” I slip my hands into his pants and find the flap of his briefs.
“And I never plan on asking the gods for it to go away again.” I free his dick, the hard length standing warm and straight in my grip. “Because I need to love you.”
Finn’s forehead falls forward to rest against mine, heavy breaths bellowing as I stroke him.
“I love you too. Think I have from the day I met you.”
Shifting forward on my knees, I position Finn’s cockhead right at my entrance. In preparation for something like this outcome, I decided to come over here in a dress without any panties. No point in overdressing for the occasion.
“Finn.”
At the sound of his name, he lifts his gaze to mine.
“I take my birth control pill promptly at eleven a.m. every day and have done so for the past three years. And it is widely speculated among our kind that mythics cannot contract venereal disease. Also, my gynecologist gave me a clean bill of health two months ago. What’s your status?”
“I—oh hell—you mean, you want to …” He’s some kind of flustered, hands fisting in my skirt, eyes tracing over my face and then fixating on our laps.
“Finn. Status. Now. Or I’m climbing off you to find a condom.”
“No STDs!” the man practically shouts. “I’m good. So good. Sit down. Please.”
I do appreciate being asked nicely. With a measure of control, I lower myself, focusing on the press, the push, the widening of myself to fit around the hard length of my human.
When I’ve gone so far that my thighs rest on his, I realize a sheen of sweat covers my chest. My heart races. I feel everything.
“You’re inside me,” I tell Finn, untangling his hand from my dress so I can draw his palm up and press it flat against my chest. Directly over my heart.
“Hell, Isla. I never want to leave.” He stares at our hands on my body the same way he used to stare at me from across the room. Like there’s only one thing in the world he can see.
All he sees is me.
All I need is him.
Searching for more—the pinnacle I promised myself I’d reach to claim my mate—I begin to rock my hips. Slow at first, but then he groans, and the power of that sound infuses me, driving me on faster, harder, with unending love and absolutely no mercy.
“I wanted to take my time with you,” he gasps out before both his teeth and eyes snap shut.
“I plan to take my whole life with you,” I inform him while guiding his hand under the fabric pooling around my waist.
Realizing what I want, Finn takes over, his strong fingers finding and stroking my clit as I clench down on him with my inner muscles.
Curses and praises spill from his mouth, but his touch doesn’t let up, and soon, I’m curling into him, my body shivering with a release even better than the ones he helped me with last night. Because this time, the word love floats in the air around us.
“Isla,” he moans my name, his voice torn with it.
I plan to hear myself referred to in this manner many more times over the course of my life.
We have years to make up for, the ones when I naively believed I knew the will of the gods.
My mate and I sit, curled around each other, bodies heaving with gulping breaths that soon turn into giddy laughs.
“Your knees are going to give us away.” Finn points out as he glances down to where I brace them in the dead leaves, no doubt smashing dirt into my skin even now.
“My skirt is long enough to hide them. But you’ll have to hide your butt. Your shorts are a mess. I rode you hard.”
He skips a breath at that and then smashes his mouth into mine, plundering a deep kiss I’m happy to have stolen.
Eventually, we convince each other that this is not the last, but instead a continuation of many intimate times together. Only then do we rise off the ground, doing our best to wipe away debris before walking hand in hand back to the house.
Where we discover an interesting scene.
“I need one that is mostly gray with just a small bit of blue in the corner,” my mother announces.
“Here. Try this one.” Mr. Hammond passes a puzzle piece across the table, where a partly finished picture of the Hoover Dam is spread.
“Mimosas are ready!” Finn’s grandmother strolls in from the kitchen, a pitcher in her hands.
“Fantastic.” My father stands from his chair, accepting a glass from her and holding it steady as she pours.
“I’ve never had a morning cocktail, come to think of it.
But I do like orange juice. And champagne.
” He takes a deep sip and then catches sight of us.
“Isla and Finn are back. Did you two have a productive talk?”
Words remain just out of my reach as I attempt to understand the sight before me, where my parents are easily mingling with humans. This is what I wanted, but I half-expected to return and find they’d retreated to my car and locked the doors to maintain a safe barrier.
“We did.” Finn raises my hand to his mouth to press a kiss to my knuckles.
“Oh good. It seems I was right.” My mother nods to herself, attention still on the Hoover Dam.
That truly throws me off-balance. “What do you mean by you were right? It’s not as if you knew I’d been in love with Finn for years. I barely ever admitted it to myself.” In fact, I’m perturbed at her tone after tying myself in knots about how to convey this to them.
“You drew a heart around his picture in your yearbook. All four years.” My mother could not sound less surprised with this situation as she examines pieces of the puzzle.
“You did?” Finn gives me a smirky grin I will likely have to kiss off his face.
“That’s not proof of anything. I also circled Owen’s picture.”
“Only in the last two yearbooks,” my father offers after another sip of his drink. “And you drew a square around him. In black marker.”
“We thought you might be intending to harm him in some way. A blacklist maybe,” Mama adds.
I find myself extremely miffed with this turn of events.
“I did that because I thought Owen and I were meant to be together,” I growl, knowing this is not a battle I have any reason to be fighting.
“And because our families are similar,” I say carefully, aware that Finn’s grandparents are still in the dark about the magical creatures that live in Folk Haven.
Both my parents glance at me then, matching scowls on their faces.
“You and Owen MacNamara? Oh no. That would never do,” my mother chides.
“He’s too wild. Only follows the rules he likes. No. We prefer Finn.” My dad raises his glass to my human, who seems to be fighting off a terrible coughing fit.
But then I see the grin grow wider and realize Finn is struggling not to laugh.
“Since when?” I press, unable to move past my parents’ sudden acceptance of humans.
My father hums a happy note as he sips more of the drink. A noise he usually saves for only the most perfectly brewed cup of tea.
Mama takes up the explanation. “A few years ago, some men came to fish on the lake. They used nets.” She grits out the word as if it were a curse, and to my family, it is.
“The police were called, and they were escorted from town.” Her fingers shake as she sorts through puzzle pieces. “But they left the nets in the water.”
Anger rises in a slow tide through my body. How dare they!
“Finn dived for an entire week, searching every last one out.” My mother grants her attention to the human at my side, fixing her eyes on him. “We never properly thanked you for that.”
“They were dangerous,” my mate mutters, his fingers fisting in the back of my dress.
Both my parents nod, almost in unison.
Mama takes that moment to remember there’s a pair of not-in-the-know humans in the room.
She offers Finn’s grandparents a tight smile.
“I used to swim every day when I was a young woman. In the ocean near my home. When I was pregnant with Isla, I would still swim. One evening, I was caught up in a discarded fishing net. I almost drowned.”
Mrs. Hammond gasps, and her husband wraps a comforting arm around her shoulders.
My mother nods. “I might have died if Patrick had not cut me free.”
“You are a good man,” my father says to Finn. “A protector of the lake and everyone living here. We would be happy to have you as part of our family.”
The proclamation shoves through me, as if The Finned One speaks in my father’s voice.
“Fine!” I announce loudly to the room, breaking the emotionally heavy moment I’m not sure how to handle. “You approve of the man I love. Fantastic. I will just shred all my well-planned arguments I had for convincing you that we’re perfect together.”
“You had written arguments?” Finn asks as he relaxes his grip to slip an arm around my waist.
His easy touching elicits only positive responses from my body, as if my skin recognized him merely as an extension of myself.
“Not yet. I was drafting them in my head. I planned to type them up tonight after this went badly. But now, everything is going perfectly smoothly, and I didn’t plan for that. What do I do now?”
Finn cups my cheek with his hand, guiding my eyes to his. “Start typing up plans for our future.”