Chapter 11
11
Finn woke up, momentarily disoriented. Was he in the mountain house? In Ukraine?
He felt the weight of Elise in his arms and remembered. He was in Boston, in his brothers’ house.
He’d killed a man.
The room was dark, the house beyond his suite of rooms silent. Elise’s breath was soft and rhythmic, and he had a flash of the moments before they’d fallen asleep.
He’d lost his shit. That was the short version.
After holding it together for twenty-four hours, waiting for Ronan to get to the mountain house with Nick, silently helping his brothers bury the man named Eudorus in a deep grave in the woods, he’d finally lost his shit.
It had been Elise. The sympathy in her eyes.
The love.
He’d felt safe with her, and everything had come pouring out of him. All the horror he’d been holding inside since the moment Declan had told him Eudorus was dead, all the shame that the man had died by Finn’s hand, even the secret thrill of satisfaction he’d dared to tell no one about.
Satisfaction that Eudorus had died a slow and excruciating death, that the man who’d so cruelly taken Petro’s parents and mocked their dying moments had died alone in the middle of nowhere, that he was buried in an unmarked grave in a place where no one would ever find it.
Finn had searched Elise’s eyes for signs of disgust but hadn’t found any. There had been only sympathy there, his own agony reflected back at him, unconditional love.
He lifted his head and inhaled the scent of her hair, then kissed the top of her head.
She craned her neck to look up at him. “You okay?”
He nodded. “I’m okay.”
Was it true? Time would tell.
She rolled onto her stomach and stretched to kiss him. It ignited the kindling of his pain in a burst of lust that surprised him with its ferocity. It blossomed in his stomach, stretching its fingers to every corner of his body until he was desperate with need for her.
He pulled her on top of him and cradled her face in his hands. Her eyes glittered in the darkness as she looked down at him, and he wondered if this was inappropriate, if maybe Elise wasn’t in the mood after their heavy conversation.
She crushed his mouth under her own and drove her tongue between his lips. He met it eagerly with his own, groaning at the sweet warmth, the spark that sizzled along his nerve endings.
His cock was rock hard and nestled against her stomach, but he didn’t want to rush. She was a refuge against everything his mind wouldn’t let him forget, the only hope he had of living with what he’d done, who he’d become.
He reached for the hem of her T-shirt and she rose onto her knees, straddling his hips as she finished peeling off the garment. He reached up, covering her bare breasts, pale in the moonlight streaming in through the windows, with his hands.
She started to shimmy off his shirt, and he lifted his torso to help. She tossed it aside and ran her hands over his chest.
She lowered her head and left kisses, light as a feather, along his shoulders, down to his nipples. She took one in her mouth and sucked, and he growled, gripping her hips, grinding his cock against her core.
She took the other nipple between her fingers and pinched, and he sunk into the pleasure-pain of it as desire took possession his body.
Heat flared under her lips as she touched her mouth to his stomach. He touched her head as she moved lower, smoothing the silken strands of her hair, loose around her bare shoulders.
She slipped her fingers under the waistband of his sweats and tugged, sliding them off his hips, freeing his engorged cock.
She moved to the end of the bed and pulled off the fleece bottoms, then removed the boxer shorts she’d been wearing with the T-shirt. She either hadn’t been wearing underwear or she’d taken them off with the shorts, because a few seconds later she was naked.
She got back onto the bed and stopped between his thighs to run her tongue along his shaft.
Pleasure emerged from his mouth in a hiss as she took his head between her lips.
She sucked, stroking the base of his member in time to the sucking motion. He thought he knew what unbearable was until she dropped her mouth onto him in one smooth motion.
He groaned as he hit the back of her throat. His cock pulsed in her mouth as she slowly dragged her lips off him. He reached the end of his patience when she circled his sensitive crown with her tongue.
“Come here, El. I need you.”
She stretched out over him. The skin-on-skin contact sent a torrent of need to the tip of his cock, but he wasn’t ready to dive into her.
Not yet.
He rolled her under him and propped himself up so he could look at her. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Physically, yes. But more than that was the loveliness of her soul, the strength she didn’t know she had, the compassion she managed to show others even after all that had happened to her, the way she still believed life was worth fighting for when she had every reason to give up.
“You’re an angel,” he said, stroking her hair away from her forehead. “My angel.”
She stroked his back, her eyes burning into his. “Kiss me, Finn.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her with all the urgency flooding his veins, all the ferocity — ferocity that had made him kill a man but that also made him want to protect this woman with his own life.
Her knees came up around his hips and his swollen head brushed against the wet heat between her legs. He wanted to bury himself in her, drive into her over and over until there was nothing left in the world but her.
Except he wasn’t ready for it to end, wasn’t ready to return to any reality outside of this.
Outside of them. Outside of her.
He swept her tongue with his mouth and kissed his way down her neck, relishing the sound of her gasping breath, the writhing of her body under his. She made him forget, but he wanted to make her forget too, wanted to carry her to a place where there was only goodness, only light.
He lingered over her breasts, heaving with her shallow breathing, and touched his tongue to one perfectly pink nipple before closing his mouth around it.
She arched her back off the bed and slid her hands into his hair, closing her fingers around the strands, the tug of it riding the line between agony and ecstasy as he nipped at the tiny bud.
He gave the other nipple the same treatment before leaving kisses along her rib cage, over the softness of her stomach.
He got on his knees between her thighs and lifted one perfect leg to his shoulder. He ran his tongue along her slender calf, touching it to the sensitive skin at the back of her knee until she squirmed.
She laughed softly. “That tickles.”
He nibbled at the inside of her thigh just above her knee. “You’re laughing so I’ll take it as a win.”
It felt impossible. To feel pleasure. To laugh. To love in a world where he could do the things he’d done, where he’d become the man he was.
And yet here they were. Here she was, loving him still.
He loved her more than he’d ever believed possible.
He kissed his way up her inner thigh, the scent of her sex sending a heady surge of longing through his body. In all the weeks they’d been together, all the things they’d done in bed, she’d never let him taste her.
He understood, knew what had happened to her had left scars that ran deep.
But damn, he wanted to bury his face in her, make her come like she’d never come before.
He stopped at the top of her thigh, moving carefully to the other one, savoring the silky skin there, letting it be enough.
“I want you,” she said. “I want your mouth on me, Finn.”
He looked up at her, trying to hide his surprise, not wanting to make her uncomfortable by making a big deal out of it. “You don’t have to do this,” he said softly. “What we have is enough. More than enough.”
“I want to.” Her voice was firm, her eyes glittering with resolve. “I want you to, Finn. Please.”
It was this last word that did him in, the pleading for him to do the thing he’d been desperate to do.
As if he might say no.
He pressed another kiss to her thigh and settled himself between her legs.
He lowered his mouth to her sex.