Chapter 6 #2
“That’s a very good thing. He likes you. And that,” he said as the cat started to press his paws into her thigh, “is called making biscuits. I only know that from the extensive cat research I had to do when Henry made me take him home, not because he’s ever done it to me.”
“Henry is … a lot. And that is coming from someone with an older sister who is taking her future on the throne with a grave sort of determination and thinks everything I say or do is embarrassing or inappropriate.”
“Did he insult you?” Finn asked. He was surprised by the way his stomach boiled at the idea.
“Oh, only about everything about me,” she said, sighing. “I’m too fluid. My voice is too wishy-washy. My toes are weird. I don’t know what talk shows, town halls, or diners are …”
“Your voice is not wishy-washy. It’s a little sing-song, but in a charming way.
I think your gait is like night and day from yesterday.
Talk shows, town halls, and diners are on his mind because they’re on my itinerary in the coming weeks and months.
But there is plenty of time to learn about them.
As for your feet,” he said, moving to sit on the coffee table in front of her.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing to her feet.
She offered him a shrug, so he reached down to pull one foot onto his leg.
“Wow. Your toenails are naturally pink?” he asked, looking at the shimmery nails.
“That is something Henry liked. He said it would save a lot of time on pedicures. Whatever those are.”
“Then what’s the problem?” She had perfectly nice feet. Petite, even.
Iris sighed and spread her toes.
“Oh,” Finn said, surprised. There, between each of her toes, was a small amount of light, pearlescent webbing.
He couldn’t stop his thumb from moving out, teasing across the webbing, finding it warm and smooth.
A gasp escaped Iris, making his gaze shoot up.
Was that surprise?
Was she ticklish?
Or was it something else entirely?
He knew he needed to keep his hands to himself. He didn’t want to overstep a line. Especially when he didn’t know how willing a participant she was in this arrangement yet.
Yet, there was no stopping himself from letting his finger do one more innocent swipe.
Iris stiffened as she sucked in her breath.
Watching her face, he saw the furrowed brows of confusion, but the hooded lids of desire.
“Are your land legs new to you?” he asked, his head tipped to the side.
“Yes. Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever really used them.”
And then there was Henry, forcing her to walk around his apartment because he didn’t like that she had a ‘fluid’ walk. He knew his campaign manager well enough to know that when he said ‘fluid’ what he truly meant was ‘sexual.’
But she was a mermaid.
She couldn’t help that.
It would be like being frustrated with a vampire for having a menacing air about them.
“Are they killing you?” Finn asked, running both thumbs up the center of her foot.
The moan that she let out was giving his body all sorts of ideas that most men thought about their fiancées, but he couldn’t let himself think of his. At least not as things stood right then between them.
“I don’t understand,” Iris said, her voice sweeter than before. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was what pleasure did to her, what she might sound like if his hands were drifting up her thighs, if his face was turned into her neck, breathing in that citrus salt scent to her skin …
“Don’t understand what?” he asked, hearing the husky edge to his own voice and needing to cough to cover it.
“My tail never hurt,” Iris said. “Why do land feet hurt?”
“I would say it’s because they’re new, but my feet can hurt me too. I don’t have a good answer for that. Though, I suspect shoes have something to do with it.”
Iris relaxed back against the couch, her eyes drifting closed as his thumbs pressed into her arch. A little moan escaped her that had desire pinging off his nerve endings.
“Feel good?” he asked, though he already had his answer.
“Yes,” Iris said, her voice even more hypnotic with her pleasure.
“So … did we just forget about the food, or …” Monty’s voice broke in.
A snorting laugh escaped Iris as her eyelids fluttered open.
“You have talked about nothing but food all day.”
“You’re not excited because you don’t know what land restaurants have to offer.”
“I know, I know. Seafood buffets.”
“Not only that. Pizza. Pasta. Soft pretzels.”
“Sounds like I need to order a little bit of everything for you to try,” Finn said as he reached for Iris’s other foot.
Monty counted on his flight feathers all of the dishes he wanted to try as Finn pressed his thumbs into Iris’s other arch.
She melted into the touch—and the couch—her back arching, her eyelids drifting closed.
He took advantage of her distraction, allowing himself to study her stunning face.
Even in stillness, she shimmered with the kind of magic that artists could spend lifetimes trying to capture.
She was luminous in a way that made him feel suddenly dim, but, God, he would never want to dull her shine.
He was so entranced by the curve of her mouth—and all the images it conjured up in his mind—that he hadn’t noticed her eyes had opened again until he was caught looking at her, the hunger, no doubt, plain on his face.
He’d been expecting immediate discomfort, if not outright disgust, but Iris’s head tipped to the side, watching him with those sea glass eyes—their depths unreadable.
“Don’t mind me,” Monty interrupted, flopping onto his side with a long, pained groan. “I’ll just nibble my own wing while you rub toes and forget your loyal, underfed companion.”
“I guess we need to feed him,” Finn declared, giving both of Iris’s feet a gentle squeeze.
“You’ll be fishing Checkers out of his beak if you don’t,” Iris agreed, pulling her legs off his lap.
The moment, it seemed, was over.
There was no accounting for the churning disappointment in Finn’s chest as he started to take the order for Iris and Monty before listening to the bird’s list of demands for his bedroom.
It included Egyptian cotton sheets, a sound machine, and a TV with every subscription channel available.
Apparently, he had a lot of catching up to do on his ‘stories.’
Iris was mostly silent through the whole process, save for the occasional question about an item Monty was asking for.
She was a lot more sheltered than he—and he ventured, Henry—had realized. Finn had been operating under the assumption that mermaidian royalty would have had many occasions to leave the ocean and experience the surface.
That was clearly not the case.
Monty had needed to demonstrate to her how to use a fork to eat her food. What a dishwasher was for. How the television worked.
Finn let the pelican take the lead, not wanting it to seem like he was condescending to Iris. She had a poor enough impression of him since brunch; he was going to attempt to win back her favor.
Because despite the arrangement being only on paper, Finn couldn’t help but hope for it to turn into something real.
Sure, he would do what needed to be done for his career.
That said, who didn’t want to fall in love with their partner?
To have someone to share all the highs and lows with?
To lean on? To create warm memories with?
Maybe, if he was lucky, to build a family with?
By the time he’d gotten out of the shower later that night, he’d found Monty asleep, perched on the end of his desk in the office.
Iris passed out on the sectional. He wasn’t prepared for the rush of warmth that flooded his chest, this strange, bone-deep rightness he felt filling him at seeing her there, in his home like she belonged.
“That’s not gonna work,” he murmured to Checkers, who was keeping watch over his new favorite person from the back of the couch.
Finn slid his arms under her slowly, not wanting to disturb the first moment of peace she’d known all day.
She jolted hard as he lifted her up, but he just pulled her more tightly to his chest. “You’re okay,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
As he walked, she seemed to go more and more lax against him, likely from a lifetime of the comfort of currents in her sleep. He couldn’t help but wonder if her sleepy mind confused his arms with those same currents, like something safe and steady.
He placed her gently down on his bed, pulling the covers up over her body. He was incapable of fighting the urge to swipe her soft pink hair from her pretty face.
But he didn’t let himself linger; he just gathered his pillow and then went to sleep in the living room.
Where he drifted off with the scent of her in the cushions and all over him, giving him vivid, steamy dreams he had no right conjuring up for a woman who clearly wanted nothing to do with him.
He wanted to believe that could change.
Not because of polls or favorability ratings.
But because every time she let her guard down—even a little—it cracked something open in him too.
And he didn’t want to close it again.