Chapter Eight #2
Kitty thought maybe she bit her tongue in half. She felt as if he’d set her on fire, and Finn didn’t even look at her. He crawled into the bed, drew the light sheet that was all she ever needed in summer over him—but not up to his neck—and then smiled at her.
From about one foot away.
“Good night, Kitty,” he said, in the most mild voice imaginable.
And then, even more shocking, he turned on his side facing away from her and apparently… went immediately to sleep.
While Kitty lay there, wide-awake, on alert, and electrified, for hours.
Eventually, she fell asleep. But her dreams were a mess of jangled flames, delirious heat, and whispers in her ear she was afraid to listen to too closely. She woke up to find sunlight streaming into the attic bedroom and she felt as if it was beaming straight through her, burning her alive.
It took her long moments to realize that was because she seemed to be lying stretched out on top of a very hot stove.
And it took her longer than that to understand that her entire body was tangled up tight with his.
With Finn Patrick.
Her husband.
She couldn’t even really tell where her body was versus his, and had to really focus to work it out. His thigh was between hers. She had one hand tucked between them and her face was nestled into his chest while he lay on his side and held her close.
Kitty could feel his palm on the small of her back, and gradually concluded that had to be because her shirt had risen up as she slept.
This was all a disaster, of course. But it felt…
It felt so good that Kitty didn’t understand how she was supposed to go on with her life, not knowing that anything could feel this delicious. Because she wasn’t sure that anything should.
And then, when she opened up her eyes, he was right there.
Finn was maybe an inch away from her, right there on the pillow. The pillow they were apparently sharing, somehow. His face was right there, and she’d been dreaming about him all night, and there was no dream that could possibly prepare her for Finn Patrick this close.
Calling him beautiful was an understatement. Particularly with all this light all over him, bathing him, calling attention to the blue of his eyes and the serious set to his mouth.
He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t laughing. Finn was looking at her with an intensity that seemed to call everything inside of her to attention.
Kitty thought that what she needed to do was roll away from him.
Put distance between them at once and establish some rules.
Maybe throw some pillows down the center of the bed, to make sure this never happened again.
She thought that she needed to make some kind of speech to that effect, to make it clear what was happening, and more importantly, what wasn’t happening.
She thought that really, she should have considered the one bed thing earlier. It was obvious that she’d made a terrible mistake and now it would be difficult to untangle all of this. Starting with their bodies.
Instead, what she did was quiver, down deep in her belly, the way it seemed she always did when he was near.
But he was much, much, nearer now.
So Kitty… stopped thinking altogether, leaned forward, and kissed him.
She didn’t know what she expected, but she liked kissing him.
She remembered when he’d kissed her on the porch, how he’d used his mouth and the angle of his jaw.
She had paid attention. Or she had replayed it so many times in her head since it happened that she’d analyzed every possible movement he’d made.
She didn’t know. But she tried all of those things out on him now. And the more she moved against him, the better it felt.
But then he started kissing her back.
And this was something entirely different, she thought wildly. Because this was not standing up on the front porch, dressed to go out into public. This was not a kiss on a public road.
This was on a bed together, tangled up, already overly hot from a night spent touching like this.
His thigh was already between her legs, and she could feel the differences between them even there.
His thigh was all muscle, and there was hair on him, and as he moved between her legs, she felt it… like a power surge.
Then he shifted even more and that thigh pressed up into that space between her legs, right there in that place that ached the most, and Kitty moaned out a sound she had never made before, straight into his mouth.
His hands were on her face, maybe guiding her mouth to his or maybe simply holding onto her, she didn’t know.
But she could feel the way his body changed as he rolled over and was then even more firmly between her legs. He was bigger there now, big and hard, and he felt wonderful.
She had never felt anything so wonderful in all her days. She was shivering, trembling, and Finn pulled away to look at her. There was something like wonder in his eyes, and then, holding her gaze, he rolled his hips against hers.
And it was as if she burst wide open and became nothing more than a comet’s tail of brilliant stars, careening out into nothing.
Maybe she was careening forever. She couldn’t tell. And when she became aware of herself again she was still lying in her same old bed, but there was nothing same old about it.
Because Finn Patrick, who she was actually married to, was still there between her legs. Only now he had a look on his face that she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. Not from him. Not from anyone.
It was intense. It seemed to hollow her out and then fill that hollow with heat.
Until she felt as if she was pretty close to careening all over again.
Finn ran one hand up beneath her pajama top, smoothing his way over her belly until he could cup one of her breasts. He looked almost meditative as he looked down, so she did too, and she could see his hand beneath her top. And the movements of his thumb as he began to play with her nipple.
She felt that same hint of comet tails and a brightness tearing through her.
And she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She lifted them up a little, then dropped them again. Finn leaned closer and there was a smile in his eyes, though his mouth was still so serious.
She wanted to kiss him again more than she thought she wanted another breath. And she was not the sort of person who thought things like that.
“Kitty,” Finn said, in a voice as serious as his mouth. “I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to get mad.”
“Why would I get mad?”
He shifted, though she could still feel him hard and hot against the core of her, where she was softer now and far hotter. And his hand, that strong palm, was still holding her breast like it was his.
“Have you done this before?” he asked.
“Woken up with a husband in my bed?” She frowned at him. “No.”
“That’s good to know,” Finn said. “I realize I didn’t think to ask you about your previous exploits. But that’s not what I meant.”
He moved his thumb almost absently, she thought. Then again, he was looking at her so intently. She didn’t think there was anything absent about the way he was doing anything.
“You kiss me like it’s new,” he told her quietly. “I guess I’m wondering if it is.”
She felt her chin rise, though she lay on her back. “Yes, then, you are my first husband. That’s definitely new.”
This time he pinched her nipple slightly, and she hissed in a breath.
“Kitty,” he said, in the exact same steady voice. And something about his ability to remain so calm when she was being willfully stubborn made everything inside of her seem to shimmer. “Have you had sex before? Because that’s where this is heading. I need to be sure that’s where you want to go.”
She was breathing too hard. She was sure that not only could he hear her heart pounding, he could probably see it too, there in her neck. And god knew where else. Maybe he could feel it in her nipple.
But she still didn’t want to answer this question. So she opened her mouth, but as she did, there was something about the way he tilted his head, just slightly, to the side.
She could feel it go through her, like he was daring her not to answer him one more time.
It wasn’t that she feared consequences, it was that she didn’t think she had it in her to lie directly to this man. And she didn’t particularly wish to question herself closely about why that was.
She swallowed, hard. “If I didn’t want it to go there, I wouldn’t have started this.”
He shifted on the bed again, coming down closer, so he could prop himself up on his elbow and get his face directly in hers. Then he nipped at her jaw and she made another noise that she’d never heard from herself before.
It was like he knew things about her body she didn’t. He could make her sound like someone else and even as he did that, she could feel the ripples of that flow everywhere.
“Kitty,” he said, there against the side of her face so she could feel her name on his lips as he said it, “I’m going to need you to answer the question.”
“I hate this question,” she said, and she frowned at him. “What does it matter?”
“Are you asked that a lot?”
“No,” she said. But he only waited. That patience of his seemed to spread out everywhere and pin her down when he wasn’t even doing that with his remarkably large male body. So she made herself say it, as quickly as possible so she could get it over with. “I haven’t done it before.”
She waited for what she assumed would be laughter. Some funny remark. Maybe even something scathing. Or maybe he would be so repulsed that someone who was within shouting distance of thirty could possibly not have done this a million times, like everyone else seemed to.
But all he did was nod. His expression didn’t change at all.
“Probably a reason for that,” he said. “Are you sure you want to change it today?”
“What I am sure of is that I didn’t want to have this conversation in the first place, never mind lingering on it,” Kitty replied, her frown deepening. “I don’t understand why we can’t just get on with things.”