18. Finley
Chapter eighteen
Finley
Ryker tucks me into his muscular body, the sandalwood and citrus smell of him along with beer and whiskey hitting my nose. The song that plays as we sway is irrelevant, because my heart is pounding so loudly in my ears, it’s all I can hear. I shouldn’t have agreed to dance with him, but when he’s close to me, touching me, it’s hard to think straight—even when I’m annoyed with him.
“Joey is right; you’re a good dancer.” His husky voice wraps around me, and I swallow the lump that’s built in my throat.
“Thanks,” I say, avoiding his eyes. Ryker’s been leading me around the dance floor for the last couple of minutes with ease. He’s not a bad dancer himself, though I guess I should have known that would be the case. Ryker is good at everything he does except communicating with me in the last twenty-four hours.
“Do you go out dancing a lot?” he asks right before he spins me out.
The action takes me by surprise, but I’m quick to regain my bearings. When I come back into his chest, he’s smiling softly, and the hand that’s back on my waist is heavier than before. I should push it off or leave the dance floor, but I can’t bring myself to. It feels too good to be held by him.
I shake my head. “Not much anymore. I did a lot when I was younger since I spent my summers with my cousin, Jake, and his Pops at their bar in Texas. They’re big into line dancing and two-stepping there.”
He hums and continues to move us across the floor, leading me as if we’ve danced together a hundred times before. My body starts to relax naturally in his hold, feeling safe in his arms. When I meet his eyes, the intensity and longing in them makes my heart ache and my body stiffen again. I told him one dance, I can’t let myself get this comfortable again when I know it will lead nowhere.
Crap. I really should have said no. He’s lucky I’m even allowing him this dance, especially after the way he ripped that guy off me. Even if I’m secretly glad he did. Not that there was anything wrong with the man, but I could tell he wanted more from me than just a dance, something I wasn’t going to give. Ryker saved me from having to awkwardly slink away after the song finished.
Ryker leads me into another spin, and when he pulls me back in, our bodies collide. A small breath puffs from my lips, and before I can move away, Ryker presses his hand on my low back to keep us together. The heat of him seeps through my clothes, adding warmth to my already flushed skin.
“Ryker,” I say softly enough that only he can hear.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he lets go of my hand, our dancing now more of a slow sway, and lifts his fingers to brush a loose strand of hair behind my ear. The touch sends a shiver down my spine.
“Are you alright?” He pulls me tighter to him as if he thinks I shivered from the cold. My mouth goes dry, but I manage a nod, his pale green eyes sucking me into his vortex. Our dancing slows further, my breath ceasing in my lungs as he brushes the rough pad of his pointer finger along the shell of my ear then down my cheekbone. I should stop him or push him away, tell him this isn’t what we agreed upon and that Hawk or Joey will see. Not to mention, we said we’d be friends.
Friends .
I want to laugh. Who am I kidding? Ryker and I can’t be friends. It’s why I’ve already started to think of ways I can complete my last year of school from home, or if nothing else, spend lectures in his class then avoid him as much as possible otherwise, even if the idea makes my stomach hurt. Because despite everything that’s happened, I don’t want to avoid him.
“Finley.” His pained voice breaks through my spiral. “You’re so beautiful.”
My heart hits the pause button, and I briefly wonder if this place has a defibrillator in case I collapse.
I stare wide-eyed at Ryker. My skin is prickling from where his hands are touching me, and my vision starts spotting as I stare at his pink lips, lips that twenty-four hours ago were touching and teasing mine.
Another dancer bumps into me, and my body pushes further into his. His hard chest is now pressing against my breasts, making my nipples pebble beneath my shirt. The sensation does the opposite of what I’d think it would, though, bringing my brain back online to reality instead of sending me further into his thrall.
Ryker’s finger traces my cheekbone again, and the sounds of the bar filter back into my awareness. It’s only then I notice the song has shifted from a slow one to something upbeat. We’re not moving anymore, both of us caught in the other’s gaze.
“Ryker, what are we doing?” My voice sounds foreign and far away as his thumb brushes against the lower pad of my lip.
“I think I’ve been an idiot, Finley.”
A part of me wants to reply with a smart-mouthed answer, but I don’t need to reiterate how true his statement is. I want to ask him why he thinks that, though, have him confess whatever is on his mind. His thumb traces my lip again, and I open my mouth to ask him, but then I’m bumped into once more.
“If you’re going to stare at each other, do it somewhere else,” the woman who ran into me says as she and her dance partner move past us .
Her words feel like freezing water has been dumped on my head, and if Ryker was the type of man to blush, I think he’d be doing so right now. I pull away from his warmth, but his hand tugs on mine.
“I said one dance,” I remind him.
Ryker runs his free hand through his feathered dark hair, hair that’s wavy and free instead of under his usual hat. He looks more like the man I see on a daily basis, dressed casually in jeans and a black T-shirt instead of slacks and a button-up.
“Can we talk somewhere private?” he asks.
“We’ve already talked, remember?”
“Please, Finley? I—”
“Move already.” The same grumpy woman from before snaps as she makes another round past us. I glare at her, but all she does is glare back. Maybe she’s a sign that I should talk to Ryker.
I stare up into his hopeful eyes and nod. “Alright. We can talk.”
A faint smile tugs at Ryker’s lips, and he leads me away from the floor. I don’t know where he’s taking us. A small part of me screams at the rest of me not to follow him, that being alone with him when we clearly can’t stop staring and touching each other like horny, angsty people is a bad idea. But his voice sounded so— pained .
His hand grips mine tighter as we weave through more people, some drunk, some laughing. I quickly scan the bar area for Joey, and when I find him, I can’t help but smile. He’s there with Hawk, their bodies close together as Hawk laughs at something he says.
As if Joey knows I’m looking, he glances up and sees Ryker pulling me away. He waggles his eyebrows like he loves to do, and I imagine if I was next to him, he’d say something like “don’t forget to use protection.”
He’d been bothering me all night while we were dancing, telling me that Ryker couldn’t stop looking at my ass and that there’s no way the man only wanted to be friends. It’s probably why I’d been inclined to let Ryker dance with me and now talk with me. Joey softened me up, the menace.
The sounds of people and music fade as we enter a back hallway that leads to the bathrooms. At first, I think he’s going to take me into one, but then he keeps tugging me further down the dark corridor. Eventually, he comes to an emergency exit, but that doesn’t stop him. He pushes open the door as I’m about to protest, but thankfully, no alarm sounds.
The warm evening air hits with the sound of crickets chirping in the field behind the building. I suck in a long breath, and Ryker turns to me as the door closes behind us. We stand there for a moment, the dim lights from the side of the building illuminating his masculine features and serious face. We’re alone out here, and I can hardly hear the music or the patrons inside from where we are. Ryker lifts one of his hands like he wants to touch me again, but then he sticks them both in his pockets.
“I’ve really fucked up with you, Finley.”
I sigh. “We already had a conversation about us.”
“No, I—” He looks up at the dark sky and releases a breath before returning his gaze to mine. “I shouldn’t have told you I regret what happened.”
Okay, maybe now my heart has stopped in my chest. Is this what he meant when he said he was an idiot?
“What?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
He takes a small step forward, and when I don’t recede, he takes another one so we’re sharing the same air.
“I don’t regret what happened between us. At least, not in the way I made you believe.”
Maybe I do need a defibrillator. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because when I saw you in there, saw another man touching you, I—”
“No,” I snap. “You don’t get to do that.”
“Finley, I—”
“You told me you regretted me. That you regretted us. You don’t get to take it back now because you’re jealous.”
“Please, let me finish.”
“I don’t know if you deserve that.”
“I don’t!” he shouts before lowering his voice. “I don’t. But I’m begging you, please. I made a mistake.”
“A mistake? Or are you just being selfish now?”
He inhales a sharp breath, and it’s then I realize that we’re not only sharing the same air, the same space, but his body is touching mine again. How do we keep gravitating toward each other like this? And did he move or did I? Did we both?
“I am being selfish, I know that,” he says. “And I won’t deny that watching Joey flirt with you all day and seeing the way all those men looked at you in there makes me want to pull you close and never let go. But the moment I lied, I knew it was a mistake. I don’t regret us, Finley. I can’t regret you.”
I let his words sink in for a moment. My heart beats slowly in my chest now. “Then why did you say it?”
“Because I was a coward. I was worried about my job. More importantly, I was worried about what the implications of a relationship with you would mean for you . I know that part of me was right to think that, because you thought I picked you for this chase because I like you, not because you’re the most qualified.”
“I really only felt that way afterward. I didn’t question it until yesterday.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve been an idiot, I admit that. Please, Finley, I’m so sorry. Tell me what to do so you’ll forgive me.”
“Is that all you want? My forgiveness so you can clear your conscience or something?”
He shakes his head. “No, that’s not—I want you . I was an idiot to try to convince myself otherwise, because I do want you. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time—and I have since the moment you walked into my classroom. ”
His words wrap around my heart and squeeze like the tightening eye of a storm. But after what he said last night and the way he’s been acting today, my brain doesn’t want to absorb the words.
“I don’t believe you,” I say quietly.
Ryker steps forward, and my body moves with his. I’m about to ask him what he’s doing, but then my back hits the brick wall of the building. His strong body molds to mine, and his thumb strokes my cheek like it did minutes ago. The heat of it burns my skin.
“Let me make you believe.”
My mouth parts as Ryker cups my cheek, his head leaning down until I feel his warm breath on my lips.
“Can I kiss you, Finley?”
Reality fades around me, and all I can see is Ryker. My Ryker. The man who looked at me when I walked into his first lecture and smiled so wide, I felt his joy through it. The man who’s been nothing but kind and encouraging to me and my dreams since the moment I met him. The man who I’ve crushed on for far too long and has become a friend even when he shouldn’t have been. Even when I knew it was a bad idea to let myself fall for him harder than I ever thought possible.
“If you kiss me, you can’t take it back.”
He strokes my cheek and rests his forehead on mine. “I won’t. I won’t take it back.”
“If you do—”
“Baby,” he hushes. “I’m not going to take it back.”
His endearment does me in. As if my lips have a mind of their own, I press my mouth to his. For a moment, he’s still, his brain working to catch up to my action, but once it does, he unleashes.
Lips, teeth, and tongue are all I know for the next few moments as I try to catch up to the hurried strokes of Ryker’s tongue. My hands fly to his waist, gripping the bunching muscles between my fingers as I moan into his mouth.
“You’re so goddamn addictive,” he groans between kisses.
I lean my head to the side, and his mouth moves down the column of my throat. He sucks on my fluttering pulse, and I press my head back into the wall, gripping his toned ass with one of my hands and thrusting my chest into his so my nipples rub against the fabric of my bra.
“Ryker,” I moan as his swollen lips find mine again. His alcohol-flavored tongue massages mine, fingers gripping my head so he can dominate the kiss.
“Tell me this is okay,” he mutters against my lips, sucking the bottom one into his mouth. “Tell me you want me to keep kissing you.”
I pull his hips into me, feeling his erection heavy against my center. “I want more than that.” He curses under his breath and tugs me closer so our bodies practically become one.
I know I should slow things down, that we should use our words instead of our bodies to work things out between us. We haven’t discussed what this means for us and our future. We haven’t even been on a date—unless you count our chase gone wrong yesterday. This is all moving so fast, a vortex of lust and emotions colliding in a perfect storm. And even though I should care about what this means or doesn’t, I don’t right now. I only want to feel him everywhere.
“The motel,” he murmurs between hurried kisses.
“Joey—”
“We’ll put a sock on the door handle.”
I can’t help it; I laugh. Not only because Joey would one-hundred-percent know that sign to keep out and love it when he saw it but also that Ryker said something funny, reminding me of the man I know and like.
That man lets out a breathy chuckle then kisses up my neck until he’s hovering over my lips. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a yes, but I’ll send him a text instead.” I study Ryker’s face at my words, expecting him to balk or pull away at my suggestion, because if I do that, Joey will know who’s in the motel room with me. But instead of disagreeing or trying to stop me, Ryker puts his hand in my back pocket and pulls out my phone, handing it to me.
“Tell him the room will be occupied for a while. I have some making up to do.”