“CAN WE GO to your house?” Tyler asked the second he swung open his front door for Fin. She blinked at him. He already had a stocking cap and a scarf on, his jacket swinging from his fingertips, his shoes perfectly knotted.
She quirked her head to one side, trying—and failing—to catch his mood. He looked a little harried. A little guilty. “Why?”
Tyler glanced back at the apartment behind him, shifting on his feet. He was freshly shaved, and she could smell toothpaste and deodorant on the air. She suddenly felt like the fuzzy penny you sometimes find at the bottom of a purse. For once, she wanted to be as polished up as Tyler.
“It felt weird to be here without Kylie. And I think if I have you over...”
“It’ll feel even weirder.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Like I’m lying to her or something.”
They’d been given the gift of forty-eight hours to explore this thing between them without having to explain it to anyone yet.
“I get it. When we’re at my house, it feels like we’ve got a little stolen time to sort of chart the waters.”
“Right.”
“But when we’re here it’s like we’re...cheating?”
Tyler grinned. “Exactly. I knew you’d understand.”
He leaned forward, cupping her elbow and pressed his mouth to hers. “Damn.”
He leaped back and so did she, one hand over her mouth.
“Seriously,” he groused, rubbing his lips where they’d just been static shocked. “What is that?”
She shrugged. “My place?”
Tyler just kind of blinked at her for a moment. “It’s really surreal to hear you say that to me.”
She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You’re not over that yet? I like you, Ty. I want you to come over and get under my afghan with me.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head and tugging his coat on. “This is not a dream, Tyler,” he muttered to himself, making her laugh.
They bumped shoulders on the way to the train. If it had been warmer, Fin wondered if they’d have held hands. But as it was, both sets of their hands were firmly ensconced in pockets. When they got on the train, it was midday and uncrowded, but still, they sat rather close on the bench seat. The train swayed and jolted, knocking his knee into hers. Fin stared down at their legs, that single point of contact. As she watched, Tyler pulled his large, booted foot back. He crooked it around hers, their ankles crossing, the entire sides of their boots touching. Fin caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked up at him. His eyes went from where their ankles crossed to hers. His navy blues looked slow and lazy, like he was turning to her underwater.
They practically ran home from the train, both of them desperate to get out of the cold winter air and somewhere warm. Her house, her couch, under her blankets, against one another.
Tyler nearly vibrated next to her in the elevator up to her apartment. Neither of them spoke.
They speed walked down the hallway to her door, and Fin considered it a small miracle that she didn’t drop her keys. The second the door was open, Tyler shouldered his way in, slamming it behind them, unwinding his scarf, unzipping his coat, yanking off his hat.
His hair stood up straight for one moment before it cascaded back down into its perfect fall. When he turned to her, she saw the need in his eyes, the nerves, the desperation.
And even in the midst of all that, he hung up his coat, folded his scarf, lined his boots up carefully.
She nearly didn’t keep the groan contained. Why did everything about this man just kill her? She’d never been into neat freaks before. So why now? Why this preppy blond with his collar all but popped?
He helped her slide out of her coat, though she could feel the impatience thrumming through him.
“Remember when I helped you with your coat zipper?” she asked, surprised when her voice came out breathlessly.
“I remember,” he said, just as breathless. “I held my breath while your hands were inside my clothes. I felt like if I so much as inhaled, you would have slapped the shit out of me.”
“I don’t touch people,” she told him, turning around to face him as he hung her coat up. “Almost ever, Tyler. I don’t really like it. It’s too intimate, sometimes it’s even invasive. But that day? Feeling the way your body heated up the air around you? I wanted to touch you. I wanted to press my chest to yours and zip that coat up around both of us.”
“That can be arranged,” he told her, stepping close enough for her to be able to see the large gulp that traveled down his throat.
“I like touching you, Ty,” she confessed, the words not much more than a rasp as they left her lips. “And I’ve wanted to, for a long time.”
“You have no idea, love.” He bent at the knee, landed palms on the backs of her legs and lifted her clear off the floor.
Fin, who was by no means short and by no means light, made an eeping sort of sound and clutched at his shoulders. But she felt the strength there. The tensile smoothness of his muscles. He took two long steps and dumped her backward onto her couch, following her down. Fin laughed, her hair flying everywhere, but the laughter stopped when his mouth came down over hers.
This time, they kissed right through that preliminary static shock, groaned into it instead of recoiling. They were in a pile on top of one another, her legs knotted underneath him and one of his feet on the floor to keep them both from tumbling into the coffee table.
Admitting to him that she liked touching him had popped some cork inside of her. Fin felt a rather giddy freedom when she tugged at his hair, used her thumb to trace the whorl of his ear, went palm-flat against his neck. His energy pulsed into her, so Tyler, so kind, so orderly, so unbelievably desirous of her.
She gasped and dropped her head back as his mouth opened up just below her ear.
Always, her whole life, she’d known that when a man wanted something, he took it. But today was different. Today she could feel the tremulous tornado of feeling that Tyler had for her. It was blustery and growing and sweeping them both away. But yet, he wasn’t taking from her. No, his warm mouth was tracing a pattern against her pulse point; he was groaning into her skin, keeping his weight mostly off of her. She felt the slope of his nose against her chin. And then his cheek against hers.
Had he?
Yes, he’d just stopped sucking on her neck in order to give her a quick little hug and... Fin. Was. Finished.
She planted her palms on his shoulders and pushed at him.
He folded back immediately, his weight and heat lifting off of her and making her feel like she might float straight to the ceiling if she wasn’t careful.
“All right?” he asked, panting and sliding a palm across his own chest like he was checking to make sure his heart was still working.
“Yeah,” she panted back, unknotting her legs and propping her knees on the outside of his hips. “Sometimes you throw me off when you’re so sweet. Like with that hug you just gave me.”
“That throws you off?”
“Yeah.” She shifted a little. “Most guys don’t do that. Hug in the middle of making out.”
“Too busy trying for a homer?”
“Something like that.”
Tyler stared down at her, his palms on his thighs, his eyes both seeing her and not seeing her as he worked his jaw, deep in thought.
After a moment, he disentangled them and went to stand, his hands sliding into the pockets of his slacks. Much as he had yesterday, Tyler made a circuit around the living room, touching the crystals she kept on the bookcase, running a hand over the top of one of her photos on the wall. He flicked on a lamp, looked out the window and then turned back to her, his hands back in his pockets.
“I like you, Fin. In a big way.”
She could taste the bright, metallic electricity of his nerves all the way across the room.
“I’m not trying to take something from you. I wasn’t back then and I’m not now.” He cleared his throat and leaned against the window. “At some point, I hope you’ll get used to that.”
Fin sat up slowly. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders, and because she was immediately too grateful for the curtain between her and Tyler, she started braiding it back, knowing instinctually that she needed to be open now. Bared to him.
“Tyler, are we going to tell her?”
“Kylie? Yes.”
Fin tossed her braid back over her shoulder. “You want to tell her tomorrow?”
He shifted against the window, hands still in his pockets. “Yes.”
“That what? That we’re together?”
He took a big breath, strode across the room, slid onto the couch and used one hand to hoist her legs over his lap. It was like he was using her body to pin himself down to the furniture. “Only if it’s the truth,” he said quietly.
Cocking her head to one side, Fin regarded him. “Maybe we should sleep together before we decide what this really is.”
Tyler stilled, his hand on her knee, his brow furrowed. “Fin.” He paused for a second, seemingly needing to gather his thoughts. “Are you asking me to audition?”
She burst out laughing. “No? Yes? Kind of? Sexual chemistry is important, Ty. What if we tell Kylie, and then realize that this whole thing is a big fat nothing? Not worth it.”
“Fin, you literally shock me every time we kiss. You think this thing is going to fizzle when we get naked together?”
She paused. “I’m not saying—What are you doing?”
He’d stood up and was yanking buttons on his shirt, untangling his belt from the waist of his slacks, tossing it aside. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“You’re getting naked.”
He bent down and divested himself of one sock and then the other. She knew how much he meant business because one of them flew over one shoulder and the other across the room.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve been offered the chance to get naked and show you how I feel. So, I’m freaking taking it.”
His shirt agape, barefoot, Tyler leaned down and then Fin was wrapped around him again and lifted into the air. “Ty!”
“No?” he asked, pulled his face from the crook of her neck, his eyes clear and calm.
She grinned. “Yes.”
He strode forward into her room, his mouth pressed against hers, his tongue doing this slow slide that made her lose the feeling in her legs. She was snaked around his body, his hands leaving a permanent imprint on her ass.
His shoulder knocked against the doorjamb and then her back was pressed, rather too firmly, into her dresser. He whirled around, and his shin banged the chaise longue.
“How is your room even put together?” he asked, panting, as he yanked his mouth from hers. “It’s a freaking corn maze in here!”
She couldn’t help but laugh and then even harder when he turned them sideways again and banged his elbow into her dresser, making all the jewelry tremble on the jewelry trees.
“There.” She pointed over her shoulder.
“The bed,” he sighed. “Safety.”
He launched them sideways and they landed in a heap. But it wasn’t quite the proffered safety he’d hoped for because her leg got caught in his leg and her knee jammed hard into his thigh, dangerously close to the goods.
He grunted, shot her a glare and pushed her knee away. He rolled to his back with a laugh. “Holy crap, that was close.”
Her heart galloping, turned backward and upside down in this new position it called home, she crouched over him, eyes wide. She was torn between laughing and begging for forgiveness. Fin opened her mouth to apologize but found herself already tugged over top of him again, their mouths clashing and opening, those lazy, half-open eyes of his just doing things to her. She twisted herself on top of him, pushing against his hardness at her belly, wanting more more more of everything.
“More,” she told him, feeling suddenly like it was the only word in her vocabulary. And what a useful word it was, covering such a wide manner of sins. More skin. More tongue. More bed-creaking grinding. More moaning into his mouth. More. Of. Everything.
His hands were tight on her back, pinning her down to him, twisted in her clothing. She had to push back hard against his grip to sit up. Once she was there, she grinned down at him. He looked wrecked, and she liked it. The most disheveled she’d ever seen him.
She reached down and yanked her tunic off over her head, tossed it aside.
“Holy mother Bethlehem,” he groaned, his eyes as wide as daisies as he looked for the first time at her chest, naked except for a bra. “I didn’t know. You always wear such loose clothes. But fuck. I—had no fucking—”
He stopped talking and sat up, his hands automatically tracing the hourglass of her hips and his eyes bottoming out on her breasts.
Okay. So apparently he was a boob guy. Which she’d never really known because of her clothing choices. He dropped his forehead against her breastbone and, for just a moment, pushed his whole face into her cleavage.
She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay, so you’re really a boob guy.”
“You have no idea.”
It was then she registered the scrabbling fingers at her back. He was yanking at the clasp of her bra, and she could feel the tremble in his hands. He put his arms all the way around her, hooked his chin over her shoulder and peered down her back. “Who the fuck designed this bra? The military?”
It was then, pressed flush against him, that she felt the wild, almost rabid, beat of his heart. With just one wincing snap, he finally stripped her bra off of her. She pushed him back, so that they were both on their knees on the bed. She grabbed two handfuls of his open shirt and yanked it over his head. But she pulled too fast, and his armpit and wrist got caught.
“Wait. Oomph. Crap.” He pulled it off himself, and then there was nothing left to do but just look at one another.
His chest was wider than she’d thought it would be. It was covered in a mat of light hair, muscular but not bulky. He still had that same dancer’s build as he’d had in the videos she’d seen. His shoulders capped his body off in a round, strong way, rolling sinuously as he leaned forward. He balanced on his knuckles, kissing her again. She noticed that he was keeping his hands to himself, and so she did the same. She could feel the raw heat from his skin, but their only connection point was their mouths. When he pulled away, his eyes were even lazier than before, somehow relaxed and urgent at the same time.
“Let’s each do our own pants,” he suggested, which she thought was a grand idea. They both flopped onto their backs to lift their hips and shimmy their pants down in identical fashion. They peered sideways at the exact same moment and burst into laughter.
“This might be the least smooth seduction I’ve ever been a part of,” he muttered to himself.
“Including when you lost your virginity at a party and a drunk kid saw your butt?”
He laughed. “Why did I tell you that? And yes. Less smooth than that.” Both of them pantsless now, he rolled over her, and her braid got caught under his weight.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.”
Shaking his head at himself, he rolled again, pulled her on top of him and let their bare legs tangle together as her weight settled onto him. He groaned and planted his hands over his face.
Huh. Sitting up so that she straddled his hips, his hardness pressing quite firmly into her panty-covered ass, she tugged his hands away from his eyes.
“Everything all right down there?”
He let out a long breath, his eyes stuttering on her chest, his hands compulsively going to the dip at her waist. “I just want you so badly, Fin. And you’re so—so—you hurt to look at. You’re like Helen of Troy or something. Seriously, if you’d been born in an earlier century, people would have worshipped you.”
She frowned.
“But that’s not even—” He tried again. “Fin, I’ve wanted this for a really, really long time with you. I had that major crush on you for so long. And then that went away. But then I got to know you again, and I wanted you in a different way. A stronger way. But I don’t think I even realized it. Because I wasn’t letting myself hope for it. I wanted it so badly that I knew it was idiotic to hope for it. And now I’m here and you’re naked and sitting on me and looking like that and, yeah... It’s a lot.”
It never ceased to amaze her, the kind of personal magic that words held. As soon as he said the words out loud, she could just stop guessing about it. His heartbeat had told her he was nervous, but now that she knew for sure, it was easier to understand. To quantify. And she could admit it herself.
“For me too.”
In case he didn’t believe her, she lifted his hand from the curve of her waist and pressed it to her chest so that he could feel her own heartbeat.
“I haven’t had sex in a long time,” she admitted to him, and then, deciding that since she was already straddling him, almost buck-ass naked, there wasn’t much point in holding back. “And I’m not sure I’ve ever had sex with someone who makes me feel...this.”
He sat up so that they were almost nose to nose. “Makes you feel what?”
Well, she wasn’t quite prepared for those kinds of declarations. She lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “Stuff,” she said stubbornly.
He smiled that easy smile of his and Fin felt some of her nerves abate. “I feel stuff for you too,” he whispered.
“That’s good.”
“I feel—” he held up two hands like brackets “—‘insert noun here’ for you.”
She laughed, cocking her head to one side and slowly unbraiding her hair, wanting to feel wild and unrestrained with him.
“I really really verb you,” she whispered.
They both laughed and he pulled her into an easy hug. Or, effortless, she should say. Because there was nothing easy about the place where their hips were joined, an incredible heat between them, begging for friction.
His eyes dilated to almost completely black and he licked his lips. “I don’t have any condoms,” he rasped.
This bit of information intrigued her. He was a forty-two-year-old sex-haver who didn’t have condoms on him? “Really?”
“Yeah. I used to keep one in my wallet, but then with Ky... Sometimes I’ll ask her to grab some cash out of there. I keep her medical cards in there. It just felt weird.”
Fin face-palmed. “God, you’re cute.”
She hoisted herself off of him and was two steps away from the bed when his arm came around her waist. “Where are you going?”
“To get condoms,” she said, rolling her head to one side when he kissed up, over her shoulder to just under her ear.
“Mmm,” he groaned. “There’s time.”
He tugged her back so that she sat at the edge of the bed, between his spread legs. She could feel his hardness pressed against her ass, straining against the fabric of his briefs. Tyler’s hands started a slow journey down her legs to the backs of her knees. She couldn’t stop staring at their legs pressed up against one another like that.
“You have long legs,” she gasped as he drew a line up the inside of her thigh.
“So do you,” he said, nibbling on the curve of her shoulder. He hooked his chin over her collarbone, peering down her body. “And killer tits.”
Fin burst out laughing. “No. Just no. Never. You are not allowed to say killer tits when you have your hand between my legs. Or ever, for that matter. Strike it from your vocabulary.”
He was laughing too, his smile pressed into the side of her neck. “Thought you’d like that. Figured it would fit my ’80s villain image.”
She turned her head to one side, caught his eye. “You know I don’t think of you like that anymore.”
“I know,” he whispered. “You verb me.”
“I do.”
This time when they kissed, her head twisted, his head over her shoulder, it was slow and long and spanned on and on. He had one hand pressed to the soft skin halfway up one thigh and the other hand palm down over her belly. Fin absorbed the slow, caressing nudges of his tongue, warming her, liquefying her. It wasn’t until she started wiggling in the cage of his arms that he finally moved his hands.
“Tyler,” she whispered, letting her head drop back as one of his warm, rough hands smoothed over her breast. His heart danced against her back.
Tyler weighed her in his hand, his thumb strumming across her nipple once, twice, and the third time she arched her back and pushed into him. His hips pushed forward into her ass and she made a sound she hadn’t expected to make. Turned on, desperate, tight and relaxed at the same time.
“Tyler,” she whispered again and he hooked his chin over her shoulder again. Just watching his hand play with her breast.
“I really had no idea you were shaped like this,” he breathed, letting his other hand come up and join in the fun. He was firm and gentle; he molded her and plucked and pushed her together, creating a deep crevasse of cleavage that immediately made him groan. He picked up her hands and made her hold her own breasts together while he dipped his fingers into the dark place between. He pulled her hands away and kissed her palms, one and then the next, guided her hands behind her, to his hair, making her body arch like a crescent moon.
“I might accidentally yank your hair,” she whispered, flexing her fingers against his scalp, feeling every impossibly silky strand against her fingers like some kind of liquid fire.
“You just do whatever you need to do, love,” he whispered, one of his hands still plumping her breast and the other one back on her knee. He drew that same straight line up the inside of her thigh and her leg swung free like a door. Knock knock, his fingers seemed to say.
“God, yes,” Fin replied, answering his unspoken question. His hand hesitated only briefly, his eyes still looking down her body, watching himself touch her.
And then the flat of his palm was laid over her, giving her his heat. His energy. She made a guttural sound. The man had no idea how potent he was.
“All right?” he asked, stilling.
“The hands,” she gasped, “have a certain kind of energy. Different than other parts of the body. Can you feel it, Ty? What you’re putting into me right now? God.” She tossed her head to one side. Even through her underwear, his hand over her heat was like mainlining him. It was a river of Tyler Concentrate all streaming in through her body, arousing her, overwhelming her, inundating her. She realized her hands were in fists in his hair, but couldn’t relax against the feeling. “Close your eyes,” she instructed him. “Do you feel it? What’s there between you and me? Even if you don’t believe, can you feel it?”
He did as she asked, his hand still and firm between her legs, his eyes clamped closed. She could feel him trying. Feel him searching. And that too touched her. After a moment, his breath hitched. “Wow. I think... Yeah, I think I can feel it. It’s like a flow. Like a river.”
“Exactly,” she gasped. He lessened the pressure against her but she chased him forward with her hips. “More.”
He didn’t need more urging than that. Tyler’s hand slipped up her stomach, his fingers pressed to that temptation of a line where her underwear cut across her skin.
“More?” he whispered.
“More,” she answered.
His fingers slid underneath her underwear and found her wetness. “Ohholymotherfuckdammit.”
She would have laughed if she hadn’t been too busy twanging with energy and sensation, her body coiling against the place his fingers rested. She hadn’t expected him to be so cursey during sex. It charmed her.
His fingers slipped, not making a pattern so much as exploring her. Her eyes were glued to the sight of his wide hand underneath her tiny underwear; she knew he was looking in the exact same place.
Her hands came down from his hair, releasing him, and she planted them onto his legs, feeling his coarse hair, the heat, the tensing of his muscles.
He let out a long breath she hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and this time, his fingers did trace a pattern through her wetness. A sort of figure eight that had her pushing forward, her eyelids heavy, her chest heavy with breath and heartbeat.
“Wow,” he whispered. “Wow, dammit.”
He started a soft little strum with his thumb, and she let her head fall back. He caught her eyes for a moment and then directed his gaze back between her legs. He was touching her softly, learning her.
“I—” She gasped. “Take work,” she warned him. “Don’t have—” She gasped again. “A quick trigger.”
He grinned. “You act like I don’t know you, Fin.”
And the featherlight butterfly of his touch didn’t increase in pressure but it did increase in speed. He was teasing her, his fingers tracing her, guiding her. She was chasing that feeling, rising. This didn’t feel anything like it usually did when she touched herself, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from rolling back.
She was losing herself in the touch of him, choking out his name when he pressed two fingers inside of her, his thumb still strumming. But she hadn’t lost track of time; she never did during sex.
She tried to turn, to press against him, move to the next act. But he put one hand on her hip and held her still.
“You’ll get carpal tunnel,” she protested.
He tilted her chin, looked in her eye, searched her expression. “Does it feel good?”
“God, yes.”
“Then be patient.” He pressed her back down and resumed, his fingers scooping inside of her, his thumb strumming, his breath hot on her neck, his hand sculpting her breast.
And again Fin was chasing sensation, losing her breath, gasping, writhing against him, one of her hands in a fist in the sheets, the other gripping his knee.
But again, time got its nails into her hair and Fin felt herself yanked back to reality. She tried to twist in his arms for the second time and this time he let her. She panted as she straddled him, her panties soaked, her mouth seeking his. He kissed her fiercely for a moment before he tugged his head back and searched out her eyes.
“What just happened?” he asked gently.
“Um, foreplay?” she said, a little bit of snark racing in to cover up the nerves that had started to wake up again in her gut.
“No. Why’d you have me stop? It felt like you were close.”
She cleared her throat and tried to lean in for a kiss again, but he raised his eyebrows. She held, just a breath from his lips, and sighed. “I told you I’m not a quick trigger. It can take a really long time to get me there.”
His hands traced the hourglass of her, a small smile making the corners of his mouth catch the blue in the waning late-afternoon light. “Good thing we have a long time with no obligations right this very second.”
His expression, light and sweet, clouded a moment later as he read the look on her face.
“Hold the phone. Are you saying that you don’t want me to even try to get you off?”
Fin felt her mouth twist up. She resisted the urge to slide off his lap and get under the covers, where she wouldn’t be quite so naked.
“It’s...been the source of a lot of frustration in the past.”
His brow furrowed. “For you?”
After a moment, she shook her head. “Usually for the guy. They get irritated when nothing they do works. But it’s not that big of a deal. I can almost always get there by myself during sex.”
Tyler’s mouth dropped straight open. His eyes went wide as he flopped backward onto the bed, his arms flinging up over his head.
“Wow,” he murmured to the ceiling. “Wow. It all makes sense now.”