Chapter 9
“I can’t believe I fucked—” His big blue eyes grow wide at my coarse description. “Excuse me, coupled with you.” I smile. “And I don’t even know your name.”
I hope my attempt at conversation will avoid the awkward after-the-fact silence. I know if a quiet covers us, comfortable or not, I’ll get into my head and think about things I shouldn’t. Like Mike.
“Finnley.” He breaks through my thoughts. “But you can call me Finn.”
“Hi there, Finn,” I give him a teasing look. “I’m Masha.”
“Ma-sha.” He says my name slowly, enunciating each sound with reverie. It’s like I’m hearing it for the first time, and I love how it sounds coming off his lips. “My beautiful ballerina.” His possessive declaration gives me pause, but we did just fuck, excuse me, have sex, so I can be his, at least for the moment. I let it go. For now. “Stay with me.” He whispers, his hands skimming over my shoulders with a featherlight touch, tickling me while eliciting a subtle heat that grows so fast I think I’ll burst into flame, like a phoenix.
“Finn, wait,” The words come out breathless as he kisses my neck and guides me down so that I lie flat on the ground beside him.
Reaching for the hem of his shirt, I lift it over his head and ball it into a rest to use as a pillow. Partly because I need something softer, but mostly because I want to admire his exquisite body.
With a smile on my lips, I enjoy the sight of his topless upper half and visually trace the muscles my hands explored. Different colors sparkle when the sun hits the silver chain he wears, which I hadn’t noticed without the bronze backdrop of his sun-kissed skin.
“I’m not running home, am I?”
Caging me between his forearms, with his half-pantsed lower half next to mine, he leans in, inches from my face, and stares. Intently. I’m unnerved, acutely aware of his gaze.. I meet his eyes for a fleeting moment but can’t handle the emotion I see in them. The emotion they bring out in me.
I’ve seen this look before. It’s as if I’m his world, his everything. It’s the same look I’d see in Mike’s eyes after an intimate moment. Which is ridiculous on so many levels. Still, it hits me like a gut-punch. Just like any thought of my former fiancé does.
Searching for something to say, I trail my fingertips down the center of this beautiful man’s corded back to the top of his buns-of-steel. Statues aren’t sculpted with such perfection.
Everywhere I touch, his warm flesh is soft on the surface, yet rock hard beneath his skin. Except, thankfully for the moment, his ridiculously long and thick cock. I finally understand the expression ‘hung like a horse,” because if anyone is, it’s Finn.
I want to tell this seemingly sweet man to stop looking at me with such affection. I can’t and won’t return it. I want to warn him not to fall in love with me. He should enjoy the moment, same as me. Because this moment is all we can ever have. I can’t accommodate a romantic interest in my life.
Regardless of what I want, I’m trapped in the forest, making the most of my life sentence. Even if I were free to go anywhere on earth, I could never love him. That makes me feel like the world’s biggest heel, but I can’t give what I don’t have. My love meter is on empty for anyone but Ana, and my heart is with Mike. It always will be.
Remembering the love of my life and father of my child sobers me up from whatever trance Finn has me under. My hands press against his shoulders. As if he understands I need space, he rolls onto his side, still staring. He trails his pointer finger over my breasts, grazing the pebbled area around my nipples.
“I only have seven days to couple with you,” he says with disappointment. “I need to bury my seed in you as often as possible.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I scoot up so that my forearms support my chest, shocked at his declaration. Is he claiming he wants to have non-stop sex with me for seven days, and then he’s gone? Is this a preemptive brush-off? No. That doesn’t make any sense. I can practically see the hearts in his eyes as he looks at me.
He presses his lips together and says, “Counting today, I have seven days to fuck you,” his eyes dart to the side a moment as color rushes to his cheeks at the use of the crude word. “Six, after today. As often as I can, to impregnate you.”
Impregnate me (!?) Is that his game? Get his kicks and leave me barefoot and pregnant to fend for myself and my children while he moves on to the next woman? I’m such an idiot. Here I am, living in the moment and forgetting that unprotected sex has very real consequences.
“Whoah, Buddy.” I sit straight up. “I think you have this all wrong.” I reach for the bracelet, fiddling with it so I can unclasp it and give it back.
His hands close around my wrist, stopping me. “You mustn’t take this off. If you do . . .” His large eyes turn into two pools of concern.
“If I do what? I’ve lived this long without it. I’ll be fine,” I insist.
He shakes his head. “It’s me. Please, I don’t want to hurt you.” His lips pepper gentle kisses along my neck.
My fingers tangle in his long blonde hair again, pulling his head toward me even as my words try to push him away. “You make no sense. If you don’t want to hurt me, stop saying it, and don’t do it.”
Pausing, he nods, then shakes his head, looking again at my wrist. “I won’t, as long as you wear this. It will keep you safe and protected, not just from me, but in case someone else finds you or something unexpected happens.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.” He’ll relax and feel better when I tell him about the leshy watching over me and the animals prepared to attack anyone who thinks of hurting me. Who am I kidding? He’ll run for the hills. Any sane man would. Still, I should warn him.
“There’s something you should know. I’m safe here, as long as I stay in the forest. You don’t need to worry.” I look up in the trees for Safra. It will be easier to show him than to explain. That’s strange. She’s gone. I don’t see her. Anywhere.
To make matters worse, he’s working my body into a frenzy again. His fingers trailed down my center to the little hub of nerves between my legs. My hips shift as he circles my clit. Stupid body. It’s gone so long without, it doesn’t realize I need a break.
Heat and dampness gather at my apex, but my hips are tired. I’m wiped out, and his erection is growing against my side. I glance down at what I can see of his lower torso. He can’t be as long as it felt like he was.
Instinctively, my hand reaches down to stroke his velvety soft member. Or maybe he can. It has to be a foot long. I feel him grow and thicken in my hand. How can he recover this quickly? No man I’ve ever been with had this kind of stamina.
“I can’t help but worry about your safety. If I plan to father your young and stay mated with you, I need you ready for me and protected.”
“What?” I ask, annoyed.
How dare he presume I want kids or that I want him around for the long haul! At first, I thought the old-fashioned-style clothes and language he used were endearing, but hearing his ideas leaves me thinking he’s either the most chauvinistic man I’ve ever met or not from this century. Women are more than baby-making machines.
I certainly am. Aren’t I? Life here is a long haul from the life of a high-profile lawyer I hoped for.
My thoughts wash away as he takes handfuls of my sore breasts and crushes them. His tongue laps over my nipples while he slings his leg over mine, rubbing his knee between my legs. Feeling like a blob of jelly, I quiver. He pushes my leg out further, making room for himself before climbing over me.
“For anything,” he says, reaching his hand under the small of my back and dragging me down under him. Feeling his tip at my entrance, I can focus only on feeling him enter me.
Again, I remember the bracelet. It’s enchanted. This thing is what’s making me act like a stranger: lacing into my daughter and facing off with Em. Not to mention allowing a strange man, and I mean that in multiple ways now, to take advantage of and ravish my body as if I exist only for his pleasure.
“You’re using this thing to control me,” I rush out in a single breath. “That’s why I let you take advantage of me and abuse my body!”
He looks like I stabbed a knife in his heart. Holy cow, what the hell is wrong with me? Why did I say that? He did no such thing. The pained look on his face makes my chest hurt. He backs off me and shakes his head.
“You wanted this. You wanted me before I ever gave you the bracelet.”
I’m an awful person. I’m being hurtful to him on purpose because I’m hurting and can’t come to terms with my destructive behavior. I know it has nothing to do with the bracelet. It’s guilt over having sex with a man that isn’t Mike. My heart aches so much it feels like a shrapnel-laced bomb exploded inside me. In response, I’m trying to transfer the pain onto Finn.
“I’m the man you dream about when you touch yourself.”
How can he possibly know this? There’s no way he can prove it.
“You’re not. That’s ridiculous.” I can’t stop myself now. Why can’t I shut my mouth?
“You wanted me to come back.” He gathers my hair in his hand, and my body ignites, my swelling breasts and enlarging nipples giving me away. Why am I so turned on? I wasn't afraid before, but I just gave him ammunition to use against me. “You wanted me to pursue you.” He whispers as if it’s a dirty secret, which, in truth, it is.
“You don’t know that. You can’t possibly.”
He nods, “I do. I saw it in your dilated pupils when you looked at me the first time. I felt it in the change in temperature around the spring. Your desire perfumed the area for a mile radius. You wanted to couple with me,” his teeth scrape against my bottom lip. “From the night we met.”
My pulse speeds to an erratic beat. “We never even spoke.”
He raises an eyebrow, “Do you need to speak to someone to hunger for them in that way?”
I shake my head. “Fine. Stop making it sound nice and virtuous. I wanted to fuck you. Okay, Finn. I wanted it, and you gave it to me down and dirty. We fucked like animals. Fast and hard.”
I’m losing control. My body yearns to feel him inside me. To, as he says, couple with him and become one. The intimacy between us in those moments did feel like we were connected so deep, we were one person.
My pleasure fed off of his. His pleasure fed off of my pain. The awkward part came after the fact, when the speaking started. Now, I want to return to that thoughtless ecstasy.
“And you liked it.” His hands at the top of my thighs press against my legs, spreading them apart.
I nod, my eyes tearing. “Fine. I liked it.” The way his eyes pierce into mine, it’s like he knows what I’m thinking and can read not only my thoughts, but my soul. I’m torn.
“Please, Masha. Don’t fight what’s happening between us. Let it happen.” His head dips between my legs, and his tongue slides across my seam.
“Ooh!” I cry out, tangling my fingers in his damp hair. “Okay. You don’t have to trick me for sex. I give it to you willingly.” I shake my head, sniffling. “But that’s all there is between us.”
“There’s so much more than sex.” He slides his naked body over mine, dragging the baseball bat he carries between his legs to my pussy and waking every nerve ending along the way. Rubbing his nose against mine, he smiles, and warmth fills my body. “I want to spend the next thirty years with you, raising our children.”
Oh my stars, I melt inside. Why am I pushing him away? Why can’t I accept what he’s willing to give and make the best of it? “I already have a child.”
“She is beautiful, like her mother.” Instead of the fact that he knows anything about my daughter flashing red lights, I see green ones. “I promise I will cherish her in the ways of my people. All children are special and should be cherished, even if they were sired by someone else.”
I allow my body to sink into the ground beneath me, hot, wet, and a mixed bag of emotion. For every reason I have not to trust him, he counters with some incomprehensible reason why I should.
And I do trust him. Even though I know I shouldn’t. He knows things he shouldn’t. I did fantasize about touching him, kissing him, getting lost in him. How can he possibly know so much about me when he doesn’t know me at all?
“Your bracelet is a match to my necklace. Whoever holds my necklace can control me.” Kneeling between my legs, he takes the silver-looking chain off and holds it as if he means to place it on me. He waits without moving for me to sit up and allow him to fasten it around my neck.
“I can control you now, because I’m wearing your necklace? Is that how you plan to control me? You expect me to offer you the bracelet?”
He takes my head between his large hands and presses his salty lips against mine again and again. “No. And I wouldn’t accept it even if you did,” he says, breathless. “Now, please, Masha. I’m hurting. I need to be inside you. If I don’t take you now, I’m afraid when I do, I might lose control.”