Chapter 16 #2
Her whole body burned as if it had been kissed by hellfire. The words hadn’t sounded nearly as wanton when she’d said them. “Bold of you to assume I feel that way now.”
His arms, which had been sweeping back and forth just beneath the surface, sculling the water, stopped moving. He squinted softly. “Are you saying you don’t?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. No good could come from telling him the truth, and she’d promised not to lie. “Is this where you bring all your dates?”
If he was surprised by the change of topic, he didn’t show it. “I’ve never brought anyone here.”
“No one? Ever?”
She’d be lying if she said that didn’t make her feel special.
“I used to come here as a kid with my dad. That stopped when he left, obviously, but after I got my license, I started coming here when I wanted to go somewhere that felt like it was just mine. Most folks go to Amicalola Falls, or Panther Creek if they want to swim. I’m not saying nobody knows about this place, but I’ve never run into anyone. ”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, wading a little deeper, closer to where Finn stood. “But I’m sure you’ve been to a lot of beautiful places. You have a favorite?”
“Oof, favorite?” Finn tipped his head back, staring up at the sky with a pensive frown.
“That’s tough. I don’t think I can pick a favorite, but the most beautiful?
Pamukkale, maybe. They have this travertine there, these terraced white-limestone thermal pools, and the water in them is this icy blue I’ve never seen anywhere else.
But ask me again tomorrow and my answer will probably be different. ”
She let out a curious hum. “What about Scotland?”
It didn’t matter how many beautiful places she’d been—and she’d been to many—no place could ever hold a candle to the Isle of Skye except maybe the Outer Hebrides, and even then, she wasn’t sure.
Finn shrugged. “Never been.”
Her jaw dropped. “What? You’re kidding. Why not?”
“I’m not sure if it was even a conscious decision, but whenever I had the opportunity, cheap tickets, or whatever, something else would always come up, I would always find a reason not to go. There was always somewhere else I needed to go first. I think I was putting it off.”
“Were you trying to save the best for last?”
“I think…” His teeth scraped against his bottom lip, a move that left his mouth red and distractingly kissable.
“I think I was scared that if I went, it wouldn’t live up to the place I was all but sure I’d been dreaming about since I was a kid.
If I went, and reality fell short…I don’t know what I would’ve done.
I mean—” He ran a hand through his hair and let out a rueful laugh.
“I was already comparing every girl I went out with to the one I was dreaming about, and none of them, through no fault of their own, could measure up to…well, to you. My concerns weren’t entirely unfounded. ”
Maybe if Effie were a better person, a more evolved person, she’d feel guilty for inadvertently torpedoing Finn’s romantic life.
But seeing as she was not a better, more evolved person, seeing as she was instead a demon with a wonky moral compass and the ability to carry out the homicidal impulses she was working very hard to ignore, and seeing as she was Finn’s first lover and would have been his only had fate not cocked up her plans, knowing that she’d left such an impression on his psyche that no one else could compare was a small consolation.
“What did you dream about?” she asked. “You say you dreamt of me. What of me?”
“Well.” He paused. “The dreams weren’t heavy on plot.”
She snorted.
“No, I don’t mean it like…Well, I do, but…” He trailed off with a chuckle. “They were these short, vivid snippets. Like clips from a movie, shot point-of-view style. I couldn’t see myself, but I could see what I was doing.”
“And you’re sure it was me?”
Finn’s expression flattened, unimpressed.
“No, no, bear with me. I’ll be the first to tell you the devil needs no advocate, but aren’t dreams usually a product of your brain processing information?
Sorting and filing and recontextualizing?
Who’s to say you haven’t been dreaming of some random girl who just happens to look like me, with hair or eyes like mine, someone you saw on TV or in a store somewhere or—or porn? ”
“Even ignoring everything I now know about soul bonds and past lives and how the simplest explanation is usually the right one? It was definitely you.”
“So you saw my face?”
A fleeting smile graced his lips, his eyes dark as he stared down at her from under heavy lids. “No.”
“Then how’d you know it was me?”
“Because,” he said, eyes studying her face, drinking her in as he drifted closer.
One of his hands rose above the water, tucking a curl behind her ear, the other curving around her hip.
“I dreamt of your hair, wild and splayed out under you, under me. And I dreamt of this little freckle you have right…”
She held her breath as his fingers ghosted across the side of her neck, her clavicle, sliding under the strap of her bra and drawing it down her arm, his thumb brushing the swell of her breast where, just beneath where her bra strap had been, there was a brown splotch of a freckle. Finn inhaled sharply.
“There it is,” he whispered, and the way he stared so reverently at that teeny tiny freckle made her knees go weak. “I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve spent dreaming about kissing you right here.”
“That wasn’t…” She swallowed hard. “That wasn’t just a dream.”
If Finn had kissed her there once, he’d kissed her there a thousand times, a million, that freckle among his favorite places to put his mouth. Her favorite, too. What she wouldn’t do for him to kiss her there again…God.
She squeezed her thighs together, unable to stop herself from picturing it, his breath hot against her skin as he nuzzled the space behind her ear, leaving a trail of kisses down her neck to that freckle high up on her breast. The way his warm, soft lips would linger there, kissing, biting, worshipping that one square inch of skin until—
Finn dropped his forehead to hers with a groan. “I swear to god, if you keep looking at me like that—”
“You’ll what?” she blurted, her chest heaving as she panted. “What’ll you do, Finley?”
“You know, it almost sounds like you’re trying to bait me.” One hand squeezed her hip, the other rising to tangle in her hair, drawing her head back until he could look her in the eye. “Which is silly, because we both know I’m already yours.”
“I don’t even know what that means anymore.” She rested her hands on his chest. He was so much warmer than her, had always run so much hotter. She’d forgotten how cold she was until he touched her, until he put the difference in stark relief. “Yours.”
Finn smiled, no more than the barest curl at the edge of his lips, but the sudden desire to hear him test out the word mine made her stomach swoop with an intensity that robbed her of her breath.
“It means the same thing it always has.” He let go of her hip and reached out, thumb teasing her lip from between her teeth where she’d had it trapped. “If you want something from me, all you have to do is ask me for it.”
Faced with the prospect of giving voice to her desires, she faltered, doubt seizing her. “Things are already too complicated.”
A frown creased his face. His chin rose defiantly. “What’s stopping you from asking for what you want?”
She could give him a whole host of reasons why this was a bad idea, but most important—“I’m leaving in eight days.”
“Don’t think about that right now.” He dragged his knuckles up her arm, her shoulder, fingers grazing the place where her pulse fluttered wildly under her skin. She bit down on a whimper, and his lips quirked. “I’m not.”
Ignoring a problem wouldn’t make it go away, and yet fuck if Finn didn’t make it sound like a compelling argument when he was touching her, that invisible string that was ever present between them pulled so taut it practically hummed.
“Finn.”
“Come on, baby,” he said, voice tight with desperation, his eyes dark and hot and hungry. “You can do it. Ask me for it. Anything.”
Anything was a dangerous offer to make someone as incomparably greedy as her. She would take and take and take and still want more.
Want overrode reason, silencing her doubts and convincing her she could have this time with Finn.
She threw her arms around his shoulders, burying her hands in his hair. “Kiss me.”
Finn’s mouth came crashing down on hers, capturing her lips, coaxing them open.
This wasn’t like any kiss they’d shared before, not in this lifetime.
It was hard, urgent, possessive, and it made her dizzy with how much he wanted her, each brush of his lips and nip of his teeth a claim to which she readily surrendered.
Never had she cursed her need to breathe more than she did now, her lungs screaming for air.
She pulled back, gasping for breath. Undeterred, Finn planted a trail of kisses from her cheek to her chin and along her jaw.
His teeth grazed her throat, and the coarse hair of his stubble rasped against her skin.
“Finn.” She dropped her head back, nails raking against his scalp, and gasped when his lips closed around a spot just beneath her jaw, sucking a bruise into her throat. “Please.”
“Baby,” he said, lips brushing her jaw, and he clutched her to him like she’d disappear if he let her go. “What do you need? What do you want?”
The arm he had banded around her waist made it difficult for her to do more than squirm against him. “Touch me.”
He hummed softly under his breath, mapping her body slowly, reverently, like he was trying to memorize every curve, his palms skimming over her ribs and down her waist. “I am touching you.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she groaned. “You know that’s not what I—”