21. BAILEY #2
We walk to the porch in charged silence. The kind that fills every inch between our bodies until I can feel him without touching him. His shoulder near mine. His breath when we stop at the door. The warmth of him behind me while I fit my key into the lock.
It takes me two tries.
We step inside, and the door closes behind us with a soft, final sound. His gaze drops to my mouth, then he moves.
One hand at my hip, the other slides into my hair, and his mouth comes down on mine with none of the patience he held onto during the movie.
My back meets the wall beside the entryway. Finn’s body follows, firm and warm, pinning me there. I can still move, but I don’t want to. I want more of him, all of him, the weight and heat and hunger I’ve been trying to talk myself out of since San Francisco.
His tongue strokes against mine, and I make a sound I can’t take back.
Finn groans into my mouth. “Fuck, Bailey.”
My hands slide under his jacket, over the hard planes of his chest, through his shirt. I feel his body tighten under my touch. He wants me as badly as I want him.
Not in theory, or an unfinished argument. Not as date three’s inevitable conclusion.
I push his jacket off his shoulders. He shrugs out of it, never really taking his mouth from mine, and it drops somewhere near the table. My own coat follows. His hands find the hem of my sweater, then stop.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. “Can I?”
“Yes.”
He lifts the sweater slowly, like he’s giving me time to change my mind even after I answered. I raise my arms, and then it’s gone, falling to the floor with everything else I don’t care about.
His eyes move over me.
Black bra. Jeans. Boots. Skin already flushed from him.
The way he looks at me makes me feel stripped down further than I am.
“You are so beautiful,” he says, rough and quiet.
My breath catches, and I reach for the hem of his shirt. “Your turn.”
Something sparks in his eyes.
He pulls the shirt over his head, and I forget what I was going to say.
He’s all warm skin and muscle, broad shoulders, defined chest, the kind of body earned through years of training, impact, and discipline.
I’ve seen him naked.
Still, seeing him here, in my entryway, with his hair mussed and his mouth swollen from kissing me, feels like a new problem entirely.
He notices me looking.
His smile starts, but it doesn’t quite become teasing.
“Bailey.”
“I’m appreciating.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” I run my hands up his chest, feeling his breath change beneath my palms. “Don’t interrupt.”
That gets me his grin, quick and wicked.
Then his hands are on me again.
We don’t make it upstairs right away.
He kisses me against the wall until I forget the movie, the drive, the fact that this was supposed to be date three and not a terrifying shift into something neither of us has named. His mouth moves from mine to my jaw, then lower, to the side of my neck, the sensitive place beneath my ear.
My head falls back.
“Finn.”
“I know,” he murmurs against my skin.
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
His hand slides to my hip, pulling me against him, letting me feel exactly how much he wants me. “I have a guess.”
My laugh comes out breathless, and then it disappears when his mouth brushes the top of my breast above my bra.
“Bedroom,” I manage.
He lifts his head, eyes dark. “Say that again.”
“Bedroom.”
His control slips. I see it.
And God, I like it.
He takes my hand, and we move through the house too fast to be graceful. I hit the light switch in the hallway. He nearly runs into the corner of the stairs because he’s watching me instead of where he’s going.
“Eyes forward, O’Malley.”
“Only if you walk in front of me.”
By the time we reach my bedroom, the tension between us is almost unbearable.
I hit the light switch, warm light spreading across the room. For one second, I have the absurd urge to apologize for the laundry basket near the dresser, the book on the nightstand, the sweatshirt thrown across the chair.
Then Finn steps in behind me, hands settling on my waist, and all of that disappears.
He presses a kiss to the side of my neck.
Not rushed now.
Like getting to my bedroom was the first test, and now he is trying to feel every second of it.
“Still sure?” he asks.
I turn in his arms and look at him. “If you ask me that one more time, I’m going to start taking it personally.”
His mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious. “I need to know.”
I step back, reach behind me, and unhook my bra. The straps slide down my arms, and I let them drop.
Finn stops breathing.
“I’m sure,” I say.
His gaze comes back to mine, and whatever he sees there breaks the last thread of distance between us.
He crosses the room in one step and kisses me hard enough that I stumble back toward the bed. His hand catches me before I can lose my balance, and then we’re laughing against each other for half a second, hot and breathless and completely gone.
Then his mouth closes over my breast, and I stop laughing.
Pleasure moves through me fast, a bright pull low in my stomach. His tongue circles my nipple, then draws it into his mouth, and my fingers go into his hair. I tug, not gently.
“Like that?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He does it again, slower, his hand sliding up my ribs to cup my other breast. I arch into him, and the sound he makes against my skin is almost enough to undo me.
Then his hands go to my jeans. He unbuttons them, lowers the zipper, and tugs them down with my underwear, helping me step out before he sinks to his knees in front of me.
My breath catches as he looks up at me, dark-eyed and steady, staying there for one quiet moment like he wants to take his time with every inch.
The room goes quiet except for our breathing.
His hands slide up the backs of my calves, over my thighs, warm and rough and slow enough to make me shake. He leans in and presses his mouth to my lower stomach. Then my hip. Then the inside of my thigh.
I grip his shoulders. “You’re killing me.”
He smiles against my skin, then his mouth is right where I want it, and my knees almost give.
He catches me, one hand firm on my hip, the other hooked behind my thigh, holding me open for him as his tongue moves over my clit with the kind of focus that makes thinking impossible.
The first stroke is slow. The second is not.
He quickly learns what I want, or maybe he remembers, every reaction, every breath, every place that makes my body tighten and my fingers pull at his hair.
“Finn,” I gasp.
He makes a rough sound and keeps going.
There is no room for embarrassment. No room for the version of me that tries to stay composed, reasonable, untouched by want. He has his mouth between my legs and his hands on my body, and I am shaking apart while the man I keep telling myself is dangerous proves it in the best possible way.
Pleasure builds, sharp and heavy, pulling tight at the base of my spine.
His eyes lift, and the look in them is filthy and tender at the same time.
“Come for me,” he says.
I do.
Hard.
My body locks, then breaks open, pleasure rolling through me so fiercely I let out a scream. Finn stays with me through all of it, his mouth softening only when I start to tremble.
When he stands, I drag him to me.
The kiss is messy. Open. I can taste myself on his mouth, and the intimacy of it sends another hot pulse through me.
His jeans are still on.
I reach for his belt.
He laughs once, low and wrecked. “Impatient.”
“Very.”
“I noticed.”
“Less talking.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The ma’am does things to me that I don’t have time to process.
I get his belt open, then his jeans, and he helps. His cock is hard against my hand when I reach inside his boxer briefs, and the sound he makes is pure loss of control.
“Bailey.”
I wrap my fingers around him, and his forehead drops to mine.
“Fuck,” he says.
There is something powerful about having this much command over him. Big, strong, controlled Finn, the man who can take a hit on the ice and grin afterward, losing his breath because I’m touching him.
I stroke him slowly at first, feeling the weight of him, the heat, the way his hips move despite his effort to hold still.
His hand wraps around my wrist.
“Not like this,” he says.
I look at him. “No?”
“If you keep doing that, this is going to be embarrassingly short.”
A smile pulls at my mouth. “Professional athlete stamina, huh?”
His laugh is strained. “You’re naked and touching my cock. I’m still human.”
My whole body goes hot at the word.
He sees it, and the green of his eyes darkens.
Then I’m on my back on the bed, and he is above me, kissing me like he is done being patient.
He stands and strips out of the rest of his clothes, then reaches for his wallet on the floor. He grabs a condom, and I watch the muscles in his stomach tense as he rolls it over his cock.
The sight makes my mouth go dry.
He comes back over me, bracing himself on one forearm, his other hand sliding over my thigh.
This is where San Francisco rushes back in. Not the hotel room exactly. The feeling of wanting him. Trusting him. Knowing this time is different because there is no temporary insanity left to blame.
Finn lowers his forehead to mine. “Hey.”
I touch his face. “I’m here.”
His eyes close briefly, like the words matter more than I meant them to.
Then he kisses me, and I open for him as his hand slides between us. He touches me again, making sure I’m ready, though ready feels too small for what I am.
I lift my hips.
He groans. “Bailey.”
“Finn, please. Don’t make me wait any longer.”
That does it.
He pushes into me slowly, inch by inch, and my breath catches at the stretch of him. My fingers dig into his shoulders. He stops halfway, shaking slightly above me.
I wrap my legs around his hips. “Don’t stop.”
He sinks the rest of the way in, his mouth finds mine, and for a moment, neither of us moves. We just breathe together, the weight of him over me, inside me, my hands on his back, his face tucked against my neck.
The tenderness of it nearly takes me apart before the sex can.
Then he moves.
Slow at first. A deep roll of his hips that makes pleasure unfurl low and hot. I gasp, and he does it again, watching my face like every reaction thrills him.
“Like this?” he asks.
“Yes.” I moan.
He keeps that rhythm, unhurried and devastating, every stroke dragging against nerves still sensitive from his mouth.
I cling to him, my nails sliding over his back, my heels pressing into him.
The room fills with the sounds of us. Breath.
Skin. The faint creak of the bed. His low groan when I tighten around him.
It is so much hotter than San Francisco, not because we want each other more, but because we know each other better. Every kiss has history now, and I don’t want casual anymore.
The thought rises clear and terrifying.
I don’t push it away.
Finn’s pace changes, his control finally roughening. His hand slides under my thigh, lifting me, opening me more to him, and the angle makes me cry out.
“There?” he asks, voice ragged.
“Yes. God, yes.”
He gives it to me again.
And again.
The pleasure starts building too fast, and I hold onto him. His mouth moves over my jaw, my throat, my shoulder, and then he looks down at me like he is trying to stay with me through every second of this.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do, and it’s a mistake.
The best kind of mistake.
His eyes are dark and open and so honest. My chest tightens at the same time my body clenches around him, and for one wild second, I don’t know if I’m going to come or say something I can’t take back.
Finn’s hand slips between us, thumb finding my swollen clit, wet and desperate for him.
He only needs to circle it twice, and I break.
His name tears out of me as the orgasm takes over, sharp and deep, crashing through me while he keeps moving, keeps touching, keeps watching me like he needs to see what he does to me.
He follows right after.
His rhythm falters. His body goes tight above mine. He buries his face in my neck with a rough, broken sound, and I hold him through it, arms locked around his shoulders, legs still wrapped around him.
For a while, neither of us moves.
I can feel his heart pounding against mine.
Or maybe that’s mine.
Maybe both.
Eventually, he shifts his weight so he doesn’t crush me, but he doesn’t pull away immediately. His mouth brushes my shoulder once. Then again, softer.
“You okay?” he murmurs.
I laugh quietly because, of course, he asks.
“I’m more than okay.”
His breath moves against my skin. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He lifts his head and looks at me, hair messy, eyes softer than they should be after what we just did.
Something fragile moves through the room.
Not awkward or regret.
Something far more dangerous.
He kisses me once, slow and sweet, then pulls away to take care of the condom. I stay on the bed, pulling the sheet over myself while my body hums with the aftermath of him.
When he comes back, he doesn’t reach for his clothes.
He slides into bed beside me and gathers me against him like we have done this a hundred times. Like he belongs here.
I move in close, my head resting on his chest. His hand moves over my back in slow circles, while the house settles around us.
No hotel air conditioner or wedding music downstairs.
No excuses.
Just Finn in my bed, holding me after date three, like leaving would be stranger than staying.
My throat tightens.
I should say something.
Instead, I press my lips to his chest.
His hand stills.
“Bailey,” he says.
The way he says my name makes me lift my head.
His eyes are on mine. Warm. Unsteady in a way I haven’t seen often.
“What?” I whisper.
He looks like he's almost going to answer.
Like the words are right there.
Too honest. Too soon. Too much.
Then his mouth closes, and he shakes his head once. “Nothing.”
It is not nothing.
We both know it.
But I don’t push.
Because whatever this is, it is already bigger than we planned.