CHAPTER 3 NORA #4
He shakes his head, his thumb dragging over my lips until I dart my tongue out to taste him.
He presses his thumb into my mouth, presents it like a gift for me to suck.
And I do. I close my eyes because somehow the taste of his thumb mixed with the lingering taste of his cock is exactly what I want.
“You have to wait your turn.” And then, “I’ll tell you. I’ll talk for you.”
I take him back in my mouth. Maybe, now that I know he has a one-eighty view, I push my ass out, spread my legs. Maybe I do it just to hear the hitch in his breath.
“I want to snap that thong so bad, Nor,” he says, and it’s so silly, so casual, the way he says it, leaning back on both hands, that I giggle around his cock, feel his answering shake against my mouth. “You wore those for me?” But he can’t actually be asking. He has to know.
I glance up at him, and he’s looking down at me so seriously, so intent on my answer. I nod, hum, and he closes his eyes, lolls his head on his shoulders. His hand lands heavy on my head.
“This okay?” he asks.
He scrunches my hair in a gentle fist when I hum again.
“You look so beautiful.” He croons the words so delicately. “Your skin is all silver in the light. You don’t look real.” He follows the slow bob of my head with his hand, catching my lips with his fingers. “Are you real? No, don’t answer that.” His voice is thick, indulgent.
Teasing.
Hot.
I’ve been wet, wanting, since before he even came upstairs. The anticipation almost as potent as the real thing. I slip my hand between my legs, trying to hide it from him with gentle pets over the fabric of my underwear.
“Don’t come, okay?” He sees me. “I want to do that, okay, Nora? Okay?”
And maybe he was right to question reality, because sex has never felt like this before.
At least, I have never felt like this during sex: emboldened, electric, in control yet completely at his whim.
The reality of this moment dissolves into the drag of my tongue against his skin, the scent of his body, sweat and expensive cologne, pressed up against my nose.
The gentle pressure of his hand against the back of my head, the toy of his fingers at my ear.
The heavy hum of his voice, the lilting tease when I drag my teeth.
He asks me, Is it as good as you imagined, and, Did you touch yourself thinking about this.
I take him deep to the back of my throat, deeper, deep enough that I gag, and his hand clenches in my hair.
I hum, because yes, this is exactly what I thought of sprawled on my bed, sheets thrown off, underwear stretched around my hand, pillow gripped between my teeth.
Yes, it’s better than I imagined. His tremor that belies the calm, quiet coaxing in his voice.
I knew he’d be gentle with me, but I’m surprised by how sweet.
I experiment with how much I can take, relish the tears that leak from my eyes.
He shakes his head. “Oh god, Nora. Oh god.” And he leans forward, just enough to reach the hip of my thong and he snaps it once, the sting like a praise.
He pulls it higher up my hips, just beyond comfortable, and snaps it again.
I grunt around him because it hurts, but I spread my legs wider, slide my underwear to the side, because I want him to see how much I like it, how much I hope that sharp sting of fabric leaves a mark on my skin that I can wonder at later.
“Are you going to swallow me?” And then, quickly, “You don’t have to.”
He’s bigger in my mouth now, impossibly large, engorged and leaking and devastatingly hot.
My lips are swollen, fat. Maybe they’ll be bruised, and I close my eyes to imagine the sight of that.
How I’d walk out of this room tomorrow, my lips abused, and everyone would know.
All of our friends. They’d know. The sight of my lips all the confirmation they’d need, and I moan at the thought, moan around his thick, smooth, stretched skin.
“Nora, I—I…” He gasps as the first warm rush of his orgasm hits my tongue, tries to pull out but I follow him, desperate for more, for the taste of him. He comes on my lips, a drop on my chin, my tongue, taking over for my hand as he pulls and strokes out the rest of his orgasm.
He drops his hand from the side of my head, cupping my ear, to my shoulder.
His grip firm, like he’s trying to steady himself against me.
Finn slides from the bed, all the air leaving him in a gust, landing on the floor with a thump.
His legs are spread wide on either side of me, his cock soft against his thigh and he gathers me to him, one arm around my hips, the other curled around my shoulders.
Finn kisses my temple, my eyelids, my nose.
I pull away when tries to kiss my mouth, but he stops me, pouts.
He wipes his come from my skin, feeding it to me on his thumb.
“You’re so good, Nora baby,” he says when, after a moment of internal turmoil, I open my mouth and lick the taste of him off his skin.
“You’re so fucking good.” And this time, when he holds my face in his hands, when he drops his lips to mine, I let him.
I let him kiss my lips, open my mouth with his tongue, and swallow his moan, his relieved, tortured sounds.
And, okay. That was a lot.
Compared to the now quiet house, between Finn’s heavy breaths and his heartbeat slowing to a healthy level against my ear, this room is loud.
How loud were we? Did everyone hear us?
Finn is warm, but I start to shake. Finn is calm, but my heart only pounds faster.
Because that was a lot. And we were probably loud. Our friends aren’t jerks but still, I can’t stop thinking about what they’ll say tomorrow, the jokes, and whispers, and raised eyebrows. The teasing.
“Nora.” Finn’s voice is far away. “Hey.” His hands rub up and down my arms. “You’re cold.”
It’s not that I’m cold. I’m freaking out.
That was intense, unprecedented. And I liked it.
But I’m not supposed to like it, not this way, like now that I’ve had a taste, I just want to do it again.
It was supposed to satiate a craving, not turn the craving into a full-blown addiction.
Because we can’t do this together, me and Finn.
We can’t be more than friends, than frenemies.
I’ll be ready to buy my own place this year. I just paid off my student debt. I date men who get haircuts, who work jobs that don’t make them late all the time—or maybe Finn is always late to his job?
What kind of friend am I that I don’t even know the answer to that?
“Nora. Are you freaking out?” He tucks my hair behind my ear. I don’t know why he bothers, it’s probably a mess anyway. “You’re freaking out,” he says, sighs, but not one of his annoyed, bothered sighs. The kind of sigh I haven’t heard from him in a while. The sound is affectionate, endeared.
A bad friend. Bad. That’s the kind of friend, frenemy, whatever, I am.
“Nora? Baby?”
“Finnick.” The two syllables of not his full name drop like stones between us. They measure out the distance I obviously cannot carve for myself.
Finn, bless him, smiles. “So, it’s going to be like that, huh?”
I lick my lip, only to be hit with the salty taste of him.
“It’s going to be like what?” I ask, innocently.
He begged me before, but I’m the one begging him now to play along.
Begging him with the force of any loyalty we’ve built between us after more than a decade of sitting on opposite ends of the couch during movie nights, of sneaking alcohol into Judith’s basement, and of New Year’s Eve parties, with my eyeballs.
Because I don’t want this to stop, not right now, but I also can’t talk about it either.
“Eleanor,” he says, stern, and oh god I could kiss him.
Which is technically what got us into this mess in the first place.
But still. If he wasn’t moving to stand, gathering me to him and unceremoniously dumping me—as if—on the bed. If it wasn’t for all that, I’d kiss him for his well-timed Eleanor.
“Your turn.” He nods at me—at my crotch—as he tucks himself back into his black underwear but keeps his pants open.
“Excuse me?” I cross my arms over my chest. “My turn? What is this? A ride at Canada’s Wonderland?”
He arches an eyebrow as he drops his shirt onto the floor. “You ever done it on Thunder Run?”
“You mean, like, sex?” I screech.
He shushes me. Shushes.
“Can I borrow another hair elastic?” he asks, gathering his hair at the back of his head.
I shiver, even as warmth floods down my spine. “There’s one in the bathroom.”
And he glances over my shoulder, staring at the darkened entryway to the bathroom, like I’ve told him to walk to Sarnia.
He shakes his head once, closing the gap between us with one large step—a regular step for his long legs—before dropping to his knees.
He grabs me by the ankles and pulls me, slowly, toward the edge of the bed, dropping kisses, mouth open, wet, at my ankle, my calf.
He bites into the muscle just above my knee, glides his palm up my other leg.
And now that he’s here, on his knees in the moonlight, his hair falling down his back in his reflection in the mirror, looking up at me, eyes light in the dark.
Now, when he chases after my hand with his mouth as I run my fingers through his hair, his teeth making a playful snapping sound, the white flash of his grin.
Now, suddenly, I want to talk, to tell him…
I don’t really know what, exactly. Something personal, maybe?
Something we don’t tell each other.
“Finn,” I say. He turns his face into my hand, kisses my wrist. “Finn, I…”
“Shhh…” This time he’s far gentler in his shushing. “Nora.” He breathes my name against my inner thigh.
And I don’t have a tattoo, have never wanted a tattoo, but I can suddenly see the appeal. To be able to look down every day and see my syllables in his font.