32. Finn
Finn
I've spent two months with a door shut in my chest, and Josie Porter just told me to open it.
I want you to claim me. Now, while I've still got my head clear enough to mean it. I want your bites. Please.
I don't do things fast. Ask anyone. I'm the man who re-sets a post that's fine, who sands a rail nobody's going to run their hand along, who waited two months in a craft closet because saying a thing out loud makes it real and real things can be taken away.
I have never in my life moved on the first offer.
I move now.
“Me first.” It comes out rough. I'm already crossing the nest, already easing her back into the pile of our shirts, and I look at Hudson and Logan and neither of them argues, because we settled this at the build site on Monday, in about four words.
Finn couldn't fake a feeling if his life depended on it. He goes first. She'll believe him.
“You sure?” I ask her. Because I have to. Because it's the only word that matters. “Say it once more. Clear.”
“I'm sure.” Her eyes are bright and steady and locked on mine. “Finn. I've been sure since the buttons too.”
And the door in my chest doesn't just open. It comes off the hinges.
I kiss her like I've been thinking about it for two months, because I have. She opens under me on a broken sound, brown sugar and oat flooding the air, and her hands are already fisting in my hair, dragging me down, past shy, past careful, nothing left in her but the heat and the need.
“Finn—” It's half my name, half a whimper. “Please. Empty. I need—”
“I've got you.” I mean it in every way there is. “I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.”
She can't answer. Another wave rolls through her and she arches up off the nest with a desperate sound, grinding against me, gone to instinct, and I stop making her wait.
I strip the rest of her clothes off. She's flushed head to toe, nipples tight, thighs soaked and glistening with slick, and the scent of her this close hits me like a fist. I put my mouth on her fast because she doesn't have slow in her right now.
I settle between her legs and lick a long stripe through her slick folds, and she cries out and shudders and fists both hands in my hair.
She's drenched. Soaked, dripping, her body making more with every drag of my tongue.
I seal my lips over her clit and suck and slide two fingers into her, and she's so slick they go in like nothing, her cunt clenching around them, and I fuck her with them deep and steady, curling to hit the spot that bows her off the nest.
“There—there—” She's riding my hand, chasing it, shameless. “Finn—can't—”
“So slick for me.” I suck her clit hard, feel her clench around my fingers. “Soaking my hand. Come on. Let me feel it.”
She shatters with my name in her mouth, slick gushing over my hand, her whole body convulsing, and I work her through it and don't stop until she's sobbing and clutching at me, past done waiting.
“Please,” she pants, dragging at my shoulders. “Please, please, need you in me, Finn—”
“Getting there.” Dry, even now, even wrecked as I am. I come up over her, and then the play drops out of both of us at once. I catch her jaw, make her eyes find mine. “Look at me. You still sure.”
“Yours—” It punches out of her, ragged. “Claim me. Please.”
That's all I need. I line up, drag the head of my cock through her slick, and push into her in one long stroke, and we both stop breathing. She's tight and hot and so wet I slide in to the hilt, and she grips me like a vise, pulling me deeper.
I grit my teeth and hold still, buried in her, jaw locked, every muscle a drawn cable, because two months of wanting is right there at the edge and I am not blowing this in four seconds.
“Move—” She's writhing under me, frantic. “Finn—please—”
“I've got you.” I drop my head and bury my face in her neck, right where her scent runs sweetest, and breathe her in, brown sugar and oat and mine now under it.
“Look at you. Taking all of me. You're—” And there it goes, the words, the way they always go when it's her. I give up on them. “Fuck, Josie.”
Something lets go in me then, some last bolt I've kept thrown for two months, and a growl rolls up out of my chest I couldn't stop if I tried. I don't try. So I stop being careful.
I pull almost all the way out and drive back in, hard, and she screams and I swallow it, and then I fuck her in earnest, deep and relentless, her under me and taking every inch.
The nest fills with the sound of us — skin on skin, the slick drag of my cock into her, her voice climbing, the shirts sliding, her nails scoring down my back sure to leave marks I'll wear like a citation.
She meets me thrust for thrust, gone, mindless, her cunt clenching around me with every stroke, and at the base of me I feel it start, my knot thickening, catching now at her rim, tugging.
“Yes—” She's barely words. “Knot—bite—please—yours—”
That word.
Yours.
One last brutal thrust and the swell forces past her rim and locks, stretching her wide around me, and it pops into place with a sound that punches a scream out of us both.
She clamps down on my knot and comes again on the spot, her cunt milking me, and the feel of her fluttering around the lock drags me over with her. I come harder than I ever have, spilling into her in hot pulses, filling her, my knot throbbing with every wave while her body pulls every drop deeper.
And my teeth ache. God, they ache, that old alpha instinct roaring up, everything primal in me lunging for one thing, and this time I don't shut a door on it.
“Mine.” It comes out of me low and rough, half growl, the only claim I've got, four letters, everything.
“Yours.” She tips her head, bares her neck, gives it to me on pure instinct. “Please—”
I set my teeth where her neck meets her shoulder, and I bite. Skin gives.
And the bond drops into place like a key finding a lock it was cut for.
I lick over the mark, slow, sealing it, and a purr starts up in my chest before I've decided to make it — deep and steady and involuntary, the most un-Finn sound in the world — rumbling out of me to soothe her. I feel it work.
She goes boneless against me, sighing, her whole body unspooling around the knot still locking us together. I press my nose to her throat and breathe her in, scenting her, marking her, learning the way she smells like us now.
“There she is,” Hudson murmurs, and then he's there at her side with a glass of water, easing it to her lips while I hold her, and she drinks in slow swallows without opening her eyes.
Logan's got a cool cloth, pressing it to the back of her neck, brushing her hair off her damp forehead.
Neither of them jostles us where we're tied.
They just tend her, quiet and sure, while my purr rumbles on and the bond settles bright and new between us.
I've heard men try to describe it. None of them get it right, because there aren't words the right size.
One second I'm a man with a door shut in his chest. The next the door is gone and she's there, on the other side of it, pouring through. Her relief. Her wonder. The giddy stunned joy of her, the specific bone-deep click of finally.
And under it, threaded through all of it, aimed straight at me, so bright it stops my heart. How much she loves me. Not the arrangement. Not the heat. Me. Finn Morrow, who hid in a closet and got handed a can of buttons and never recovered.
She feels it too. I watch it land on her face, feel it echo back down the bond, her breath catching as she gets the whole truth of me at once, two months of it, everything I never said pouring into her all in one go.
“Oh,” she breathes, shining-eyed, wrecked, wonderstruck. “Oh. You've been carrying all this? This whole time?”
“Every day since the buttons.” My voice isn't steady. I don't care. “Told you. It was never the reunion.”
She laughs, and it turns into a sob, and she pulls me down and holds on, still locked around my knot, my bite fresh on her throat, the bond humming bright and new between us.
I hold her there while the knot keeps us tied, and I don't rush a second of it.
I've got nowhere else I've ever wanted to be.
Somewhere behind me I'm dimly aware of Hudson and Logan watching with the particular stillness of two men who just felt the bond land on someone else and understood, all at once, exactly how gone they each already are.
But that's later. Right now there's just her.
The wave that's been riding her finally crests and breaks and lets go, and I feel the exhaustion roll in behind it through the new bond, heavy and warm. She goes soft against me, boneless, wrung out, her breathing evening out.
“Sleep,” I tell her, because she needs it and because I can give it to her. “I've got you. Nobody's going anywhere.”
She's already half under. Hudson eases a blanket over her hip.
Logan gets water to her lips and she takes a slow sip without opening her eyes.
And I stay wrapped around her, still tied, purring low and steady in a way I'd have sworn a day ago I didn't have in me, and I hold her while she drifts all the way down into sleep, safe in the middle of her nest with the first of three marks on her throat.
I don't let go. I'm not going to. Not now. Not ever.