When I sink into the tub, I have to moan. The water is the perfect temperature, and it smells like heaven, if it were made of bath soaps. The last bit of anxiety lingering at the base of my skull unknots and floats away.
I slide all the way down until I’m completely submerged, my hands pushing to keep me under. There’s nothing but floaty warmth where I am.
Eventually I bob back up, water streaming through my hair and down my face. As it does, I feel Stella draining away with it. I don’t have to be her ever again, thank goodness.
Finn is smiling at me. “You looked like a mermaid.”
“Lucky for you I don’t have a tail.” I push my hair out of my eyes. “Unless fish tails are a kink of yours?”
“If you had a fish tail, yes.” He reaches for a bottle of shampoo on the tub’s edge. “Don’t worry; it’s color safe.”
He begins to massage the shampoo into my hair, his fingers rubbing slow, hypnotic circles on my scalp. I close my eyes and let him go to town.
This is a side of Finn I haven’t seen yet, this tender, caring man. Not that he was mean before, but taking care of me like this… It’s doing a number on my heart. This is exactly what I need after that interview, and he knew it even before I did.
“Did you bring the Go board?” I ask sleepily. First I want to break in the hotel bed—it’s a king, so why not?—then I want to match wits against him.
“No.” His voice is lower than usual. “We can play at my place later.”
“I have to say your bathroom looks amazing, but this is the best bath I’ve ever had.”
He lifts his hands from my hair, and I open my eyes. “Sit up and tilt your head back.” He takes one of the little plastic cups that was by the ice bucket and uses it to rinse my hair, massaging all the shampoo out.
“Where did you learn to do this?” This is better than some washes I’ve had at salons.
“You have to learn how to wash hair?” He’s opening a conditioner bottle now. “Like, at a special school?”
“Well, I don’t know if you have to go to school, but shampooer is a position at certain salons.”
He shakes his head as he squirts some conditioner into his palm. It’s thick and rich, the kind I privately call “bear-fat conditioner.” The man knows his hair products.
As he combs the conditioner through my hair with his fingers, I let my head fall back, savoring this pampering. I feel completely like myself again, only better. More relaxed.
“We should’ve gone back to my place,” he says conversationally. “My shower will spray you from three hundred and sixty degrees. And there are showerheads at hip height too.”
He lets my imagination work on that, at where exactly that stream of water would be directed. I wouldn’t even have to worry about holding the shower nozzle.
“Yeah, we definitely need to go back to your place.” I tilt my head so he can comb through the hair over my ears. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone do my hair so gently, not even my mom.
“Head back.”
The water sluices through my hair, down my back, along my shoulders. Everything is washed away except for sensation. The warmth of the water, the lingering tingles in my scalp, the scent of the shampoo, the sound of his breathing.
When he’s done, I keep my eyes closed because I’m too relaxed to open them. “Are you going to scrub me down now?”
His laugh is low and rough. “I like you dirty. No, no scrubbing—but I am going to play with you.”
Oh, I do like the sound of that. But I want to play with him too. So I grab the front of his shirt and pull him down to me. The water swells over the edge of the tub, sloshing across the floor and soaking his knees. Good. We’re both wet now.
If he notices, it doesn’t stop him from kissing me deeply. In fact, it feels like he might be smiling against my mouth.
“You couldn’t even let me get undressed first?”
I tighten my grip on his shirt. “Are you complaining?”
“Hell, no.” With both arms, he reaches into the tub, getting soaked up to his shoulders, and lifts me out. We’re both dripping like crazy onto the floor, and I kind of love it.
As he carries me into the main room, I snag a towel from the rack. The bed’s definitely going to get messy, but at least we can contain some of it.
“This bed is crap,” he mutters as he looks down at it. “We should have just gone back to my place.”
“Oh, we’ll fuck there too.”
The heat in his expression threatens to singe my eyebrows off. “Holy Christ, you’re perfect.”
Perfect. A man’s never called me that before. Not like this, like I’m the answer to all his dreams.
Unless… unless Finn has called other women perfect before. This is heat of the moment and all that.
Before I can ponder it more, he’s tossing me onto the bed. I roll the towel under me as quick as I can, just so the bed isn’t soaked.
He strips off his clothes, tossing them into a pile. It’s cute how careless he is about it—he’s not putting on a show, he just wants the damn things off. Wants to be naked with me.
I shiver and not from the cold. He wants me so much, as much as I want him. That’s some heady, dizzying stuff.
He crawls up over me, closing me in with his big heat. We kiss, long and slow, dreamlike. I’m still a little woozy from the bath, and it feels like he’s getting a little woozy too, that he’s falling into this waking dream with me.
Our hands are busy, running over skin—his hands on me, mine on him. His hair is coarse, his muscles are like steel, and his skin is molten silk. His hands make my skin feel like silk too, make my muscles melt and my pussy clench.
“You remembered the condoms, right?” If he’s forgotten them, I’m revoking his genius status immediately.
He pulls open the bedside drawer, revealing at least four boxes of Trojan Magnums. Phew. His genius status is safe.
His hand comes back to me, settling in the small of my back and pulling me upright. He arranges us so that I’m in his lap, straddling his thighs, spread wide for him. It’s painfully intimate, almost more so than my being on top or beneath him. We’re completely face-to-face; there’s nowhere to look but at each other.
His cock juts between us, thick and flushed deep red. The crown is nearly purple.
“Is your brain still getting oxygen?” I ask.
He laughs, once, short. “Not as much as usual. Don’t worry, I won’t pass out. I can think with this head just as good as the other one.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. As I do, his hand slips between my folds. My laugh gets caught in a gasp because I’m so wet for him, and all we’ve done is kiss.
It was the bath. It was the shampooing. It was the tenderness.
He finds my clit, stroking it. His touch is knowing, expert—he’s learned the secrets of me so quickly.
I can only look into his eyes as he works me into an orgasm. He looks… amazed. At me. And maybe at himself, that he can bring me to this point, on the edge of the most incredible pleasure. He’s a genius, made scads and scads of money—but this is what amazes him.
It’s his expression that sends me over the edge. I come with a clench and a moan, then another, my climax flowing over me like the water escaped the tub, uncontainable.
When I can see again, he’s already rolling one of the condoms on. I rise up on my knees, our hands meeting at the base of his cock as we match his angle to mine. Then I sink down on him.
There’s nothing like the fullness I feel when he’s inside me, deep. It’s beyond complete. I roll my hips, searching out that friction. He pumps, slow and long, pulling out until I’m just ready to protest, then thrusting into me until I’m stretched almost too far to bear. The contrasts drive me wild, have my hips bucking.
I sigh, and his control breaks right down the middle. No more teasing thrusts—he’s driving into me, and I’m meeting him stroke for stroke. His pelvis is catching my clit, grinding on it, and it’s already sensitized from my earlier orgasm. Every touch is a zap of pure lightning.
I bite my lower lip hard. “Fuuuuck.” His shoulders are like iron under my hands, bunching against my nails with each thrust.
My tits are bouncing, my thighs are burning, and my pussy is so slick I can hear us moving together. This is dirty, frantic sex—but with eye contact—and I love it. Adore it.
This is the kind of sex I want to have for the rest of my life.
My orgasm this time isn’t anything like water; it’s sharp and bright, a dagger of sensation. It twists in my core so hard my vision goes blank.
But I feel his cock swelling in my pussy, can hear his grunts as he pumps quick and fierce into me, sense his muscles tightening, then releasing as he comes, spilling deep inside me.
We’re still upright, still clinging to each other, but we’re sweaty and limp now, propped against each other. His forehead is touching mine, our breath sawing in and out in unison. We’re sticky and loose, and the towel under us is wet and cold on my ass… but it’s perfect.
I shift, trying to bring some blood back to my hips. There’s an ominous creaking from the bed frame.
“Is that—”
There’s a sharp crack, and then we’re falling half a foot. My teeth snap together when we hit bottom.
We blink at each other.
“I think we broke the bed,” I say, quietly shocked.
“I think we did too,” he says, just as quiet.
And then we start to laugh so hard that tears stream out of my eyes.
“Oh my God,” I gasp out. “The poor housekeepers. We’ll have to leave them a massive tip.”
“Fuck it,” Finn says. “I’ll buy the whole hotel. Problem solved.”
“Really?”
“After what we did to this room?” He looks toward the bathroom, then bounces on the bed. “Yeah, I have to.”
I lay my head against his chest and listen to him breathe for a moment. “We should get out of here before we do any more damage.”
“Definitely. But if we break my bed, I’m going to be pissed.”
The laughter in his voice tells me he won’t be. Not really.