5. Lily #2
She let that statement hang there in the Vegas air.
And I couldn’t unhear it. Couldn’t unthink it.
She’d homed in on something so obvious I’d nearly missed it.
Finn was indeed obsessed with my pleasure.
It was the thing that drove him. Me . He loved taking care of me in bed.
Even when he was dirty and dominant, he was always focused on making me feel out of this world.
That’s what he did every night.
And maybe that was the missing piece I needed to have the courage to speak my desires. The reminder that my fiancé was a man on a mission.
His mission was me.
Perhaps I’d be giving him his dirty dreams too—the path to giving me the most pleasure.
“You may be right,” I said as a new land of possibilities opened before me.
“I am definitely right,” she replied with a smile. She spun on her heel, tipping her head toward the club. “Want to go?”
“Yes,” I said and as we wove our way through the casino, soaking in the glamour, the glitz, and the sin, I let myself imagine more specifics than I’d ever imagined before.
I pictured two men I knew—two men who’d take me to the moon and back. One I loved madly and one I knew quite well, indeed.
The idea was more tantalizing than I’d ever imagined.
What a strange and filthy new place my mind was.
And everything felt more possible than it did before we got off to the Penn Badgley lookalike.
It felt possible because I understood that we would both get something out of this. I would get my fantasy and Finn would get the chance to fulfill it.
Was that crazy? Or was it the good kind of crazy?
The line for Edge was long, but Finn called me over to where he stood by the door. The owner, another one of his cousins, let us in. We thanked Brent then headed for the bar, ordering mojitos.
Seconds later, Nina joined us. “I haven’t seen you in soooo long,” she teased.
“I know. Let’s never spend more than eight hours apart.”
“It’s a promise,” she said.
“Yes. Now, I need a gin and tonic.”
“Then, you shall have one.”
We added to the order, and when the drinks arrived, I took the first swallow of my cocktail then tugged Finn closer.
I was ready to be in his orbit, not the ones of my friends anymore.
I loved my girls madly, but I’d already fueled up from my conversations with them.
The different chats with Nina and Kate had emboldened me.
I said to my guy, “I know how you love mojitos. Taste it on me.”
He obliged, claiming my lips, sucking on my tongue.
“Don’t let us interrupt anything.” Jake must have just shown up, and his voice thrummed through me, my pulse spiking.
Had his voice always been this sexy?
I broke the kiss, feeling a sliver of guilt. I should be arrested for fantasizing about my almost-husband’s best friend. But truthfully, I knew myself, knew my mind. The fantasies weren’t about Jake—they were about me . About Finn and me, and about our love life.
I’d never entertained dirty dreams of sleeping with other men.
I didn’t even think of Jake that way after Kate had planted the seed.
I only pictured the three of us—or really, the two men servicing me.
All my dreams were of us together. Finn, me, and another man.
I tried my best to table those thoughts as Adam arrived.
He and Nina lived in the same building, on the same floor in fact.
They’d always had a friendly teasing vibe between them.
And fine, maybe I had a little matchmaker in me, but I could see them together too.
Except, she’d probably deny it as vociferously as Kate had.
“At last, the party can start. I am here,” Adam said, arms held out wide, like arriving royalty.
“Yes, yes. We wouldn’t deign to start without you,” Nina deadpanned.
“Good answer,” he said with a wink.
“The only answer,” she said and for a second, my mind wandered again to after dark affairs. Nina had talked about fantasies and I wondered if hers involved him at all.
And if his involved her.
Or maybe fantasies were simply on my mind. Adam snagged a whiskey and the six of us toasted to the coming weekend and caught up on work, while I kept my mind on the moment, not on after-dark options.
It worked for a while, and soon Jake ordered another round for all of us.
We all seemed to flow in and out of each other’s conversations—Adam and Nina were wrapped up in a conversation about the best new podcasts on science and travel, with Kate and Finn weighing in, while I took the lead when the talk turned to sports.
As I knocked back more of the drink, Finn banded an arm around my waist possessively. He dipped his face to my neck, kissing me. A groan seemed to rumble up his chest as I turned to face him.
He sealed his mouth to mine, hard and rough in front of our friends, something he’d done countless times before.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was claiming me. I wasn’t sure if his roughness meant something or nothing.
When he broke the kiss, I arched a brow. “Are you marking me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have to mark you to know you’re mine.” That answered my question; he wasn’t marking me. And it reconfirmed that his faith in us as a forever thing was so damn strong, he didn’t have to claim me.
He’d already done so for all intents and purposes.
“I’m always yours,” I said. I grabbed his hand and tugged him to the dance floor, eager to feel that sultry freedom.
We joined the sea of beautiful people on the dance floor. Time to get lost in the music, to let it move through me.
Finn danced smoothly. His hips swayed side to side as he brought me close, my ass against his pelvis. He was subtle, moving in a long, indulgent kind of rhythm, and I was even more aroused in seconds.
That was when I took the next step.
My eyes wandered, roaming the club, picturing male bodies, moving them like chess pieces around my sexual fantasy board. A knight here, a bishop there.
None got me closer to what I’d envisioned earlier until my gaze drifted to the bar.
To our crew of friends.
Jake’s crooked grin had spread on his face as he chatted with them, oblivious to us. Stubble lined his jaw, and I wondered briefly what that faint trace of a beard would feel like on my breasts, my belly, my thighs.
Yes, he was the third person.
It had to be him.
I shivered, and Finn gripped my waist tighter, yanking my body closer. “You’re watching our friends,” he whispered roughly in my ear.
I swallowed, and worried briefly that I’d been caught stealing.
But nothing in his voice suggested anger. Everything in it spoke of desire, underlined by that same confidence he possessed when he’d talked about marking me, about not needing to. Perhaps the reason he wasn’t jealous was that he knew who I went home to.
Who I’d always go home to.
And because he had his fantasies, and I had mine. “Yes, I’m watching them,” I said, admitting the barest of truths. A start.
“And what are you thinking?”
“How pretty they all are,” I said, grinning as I glanced back at him.
“Yes, they’re all so very pretty,” he said, joking.
Kate looked over at us, and her eyes locked with mine. They seemed to say something. Something like I know what you want .
A few seconds later, Jake pulled his gaze away from the others. His dark eyes locked with . . . mine?
I startled. Did they really, or did I imagine it?
My breath caught in my throat, and Finn noticed, because he dusted his lips up my neck to my ear. “You like when people watch us.”
It was a statement, clear and commanding. He knew the answer.
“Yes,” I said, and a small knot of worry in me loosened as we danced closer to the secret wish inside me. “Don’t you?”
He nodded against my neck, his hands circling my waist tighter. “Love it. Love it so damn much, because I know what we have.”
“What do we have?”
“Love, trust, faith,” he whispered, and the words were charged with sensuality, as if trust were a black lace garter and faith were our king-size bed.
Maybe they were one and the same.
“We do have that. Does that turn you on?” I asked.
“It does, because I know nothing will change it,” he said, and those words were iron, they were stone.
He didn’t need to keep me all to himself, because he knew I belonged to him. But would he share me?
I danced against him, raising my arms into the air, my body moving like water. “What if someone did watch us?” I asked, taking a chance, another small step out of the realm of imagination.
“I bet you’d like it. Just like you did the other night.”
His comment was so nonchalant, so casual that it caught me off guard.
Were we talking hypothetically or specifically?
About Jake or about the guy from the store?
Or anyone? I didn’t know, but I had to find out.
Adam and Nina had stepped away to say hi to someone.
This was my chance to take one more step toward my fantasy.
“I like when people see how hot we are for each other,” I ventured, my gaze drifting again to Jake and Kate. “Even people we know.”
Finn grazed his hand down my belly. “I see where you’re looking, baby. And I bet you’d love it if he saw what you did to me.”
He.
We were talking about the man we knew. We weren’t talking about the man from the store any longer.
My skin turned electric, and pleasure popped inside me like a drug, an intoxicating drug that flooded my veins with endorphins.
I rubbed against his erection. “What do I do to you?”
“You make me so hard when you tell me your fantasies. I want to make them all come true.” He ran his hands down my thighs and all I could think was Kate was right. Kate was definitely right. Finn wanted me to have all my dirty dreams. “All of them, Lily. Every damn one.”
We were close, so close. “Every one?” I asked nervously.
“Every one. Like how aroused you get when people watch us. You love it because you’re so damn sexual and so incredibly mine.”
“I am yours. You know that, right?”
“I damn well know it.” He growled. “And you better, too.”