Chapter 15
Finn
I looked at Juliet, at her flushed damp skin, in momentary confusion. I was so worked up that for a second I had no idea what she was talking about.
Then the words sunk in. I felt her fingertips moving along my scar.
“It’s from surgery,” I said.
Juliet’s brows drew down. “What surgery?”
This was the worst possible time. I had the woman of my dreams naked in the bath, in my lap, my hands on her perfect skin, her thighs squeezing my hips. My body cried out in unfulfilled agony, but we weren’t happening unless I explained. I made myself speak another full sentence. “I had brain surgery a few years ago. To remove a tumor.”
She stared at me in confusion. “Finn, what are you talking about?”
Well, I knew one thing: Alistair was good at keeping my secrets. I had asked him not to talk about it to anyone but Vicki, and it seemed that he’d kept his word. “I started getting headaches while Dad was sick,” I said. “I assumed it was from stress and lack of sleep. But it kept getting worse after Dad died. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t just grief. That there was something really wrong. So I went to my doctor, and he sent me for scans.”
Juliet’s deep brown eyes were fixed on my face as she listened. Her fingers were still in my hair.
“It was really bad,” I said, playing it down a little. It had, in fact, been agony, and then it had been terrifying, and then it had been both mixed together. I didn’t want to lie, but the conversation was already bad enough. “The tumor was slow growing, but it was far along by the time we found it. There was no way they could treat it with radiation. They had to operate to take it out.”
“Jesus Christ, Finn,” she said softly.
I reached up and drew a finger under her eye, where her makeup was smudged. “Don’t worry about me,” I told her. “I’m a rich asshole, remember? I sleep on a bed of money. I could afford the best surgeons, the best care. I’m better off than most people. They went in, they took it out, they put me back together. They thought it might be cancer, but it wasn’t.” I drew my finger along the soft skin beneath her other eye. “Did you know that they don’t know whether it’s cancer until they take it out of you and analyze it in a lab? That’s the only way they’re sure.”
“But you thought it might be,” she said. “Until you knew the results. You thought it might be.”
She understood everything. How I’d felt in the period of not knowing, how that weighs on a person and makes them rethink everything they’ve ever known. How I had come out of that experience changed in ways I was still figuring out. She saw to the heart of it.
I watched Juliet’s expressive face as she worked this out. Her blond hair was damp against her temples, with strands stuck to her neck. I lifted the hair from her neck and stroked her skin. Now that I had her here, I was unable to stop touching her.
“Who knows about this?” she asked. “Does Vicki know?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Alistair was with me through the whole thing. Vicki knows, and I believe your mother does, too. But I asked everyone not to talk about it. It happened, it’s over, and I don’t want it to be a topic of discussion. I wanted to keep it private.”
Her brows were still drawn down, but I felt her body begin to slowly relax against me under the water. “I get that,” she said. “First your dad, and then the surgery. You wanted to put it behind you.”
“That was part of it.” I didn’t want my surgery to end up on a “Where Are They Now?” listicle. The internet could make fun of me however it wanted, but not about that. I had needed months to recover, and I hadn’t really moved on. Not until Juliet had come back into my life, this wild girl who felt everything and wanted so much. This woman whose demons I understood so well.
I shifted beneath her, making the water swell. The topic was a downer, but my cock hadn’t entirely received the message. My cock was still fixated on Juliet Barstow straddling me naked. “Listen,” I said. “It’s nice to share, but we’re naked right now, and we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, but could we at least change the subject?”
That got a sexy smile out of her, one that made my heart squeeze. She was a goddess. I wanted to get her out of this bath and into bed, where I would do anything she would let me do. I didn’t care, as long as I was with her.
She leaned down and kissed me. I opened to her, and the taste of her made everything else leave my mind. My body was back on board, too.
We were tangling closer under the water when she suddenly broke the kiss, as if she’d just thought of something. “Wait, Finn. Are you in pain?” she asked.
I gritted my teeth. “No. Except for sexual frustration. If that’s what you mean, then yes.”
She laughed softly, leaning down, her breath against my damp neck. She kissed me there, then sucked my skin. At the same time, her hand slid under the water and gripped me, sliding down and then up.
I bucked under her, gasping her name. Her hand kept moving, and I lost it. My eyes closed, my head thunked back against the edge of the tub, my fingers dug into the sweet flesh of her hips. She rode me like that, her thighs gripping mine, her breasts brushing my chest, her hand moving firm and steady, while I pulsed under her and water splashed on the floor. My brain was nothing but white-hot pleasure.
It took an embarrassingly short time, but I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry. I came in the warm bathwater, and it wasn’t just good, it was fucking religious. Even if she never touched me again, I would pray to the altar of Juliet Barstow for the rest of my life.
It took a moment for me to catch my breath enough to say the one word my brain would form. “Stay,” I said into the steamy, silent air.
For a brief moment, Juliet tensed. It was so subtle, I wouldn’t have felt it if she wasn’t skin to skin with me, our bodies twined together.
Don’t run, I silently begged her, knowing that if I said it aloud, it would make her get up and leave.
But she hesitated, and then she relaxed again. She pushed herself up to look down into my face. A smile touched her lips.
“All right,” she said. “Just for a little while.”