I've spent the whole drive keeping it off my face, keeping my voice flat, running the disciplined-man routine I've had twenty years to perfect.
But I can smell how much she wants this. It's coming off her in waves, mixing with mine, and every animal part of me knows exactly what that means and exactly what to do about it. The only thing between that and her is the last thin wire of a control I'm not sure I've still got.
“I don't want you to say goodnight,” she says.
And there's nothing left to brace this time. Whatever I spent two months holding up came down somewhere back there, and there's nothing left to hold, and nothing left to hold it with, and I stopped being careful somewhere betweennobody noticesand the way she's looking at me right now like I'm the answer to a question she's been too scared to ask.
I lean in.
I stop, a breath from her mouth, close enough to feel her go still.
“Then invite me in,” I say, low, against her lips. “Because if I come through that door, Josie, I'm not saying goodnight. Not tonight. So you tell me. You tell me right now, and I'll do whatever the word is.”
She reaches back without looking, and pushes the door the rest of the way open.
“Come in,” she says.
And I do.
Chapter 25
Josie
The door clicks shut behind him and my little blue house has never been this small.
Finn Morrow is standing in my entryway. Finn Morrow is standing in my entryway at nine on a Monday night, filling it, an alpha in a space built for one omega and a lot of throw pillows, woodsmoke and clove rolling off him and mixing with the warm sugar mess my own scent has become, and neither of us has turned on a light.
“So,” I say, because apparently that's the entire vocabulary I've got left. “This is the house. That's a lamp. There's a kitchen somewhere, historically.”
“Josie.”
“I'm nervous,” I tell him, because I can't lie, and it comes out small and honest. “You're in my house and I used up all my cool in the truck.”
“You weren't cool in the truck.”
“I was extremely cool in the truck.”
He steps in close, slow, telegraphing it, the way he does everything, like I'm something that might spook. One handcomes up and cradles my jaw, tips my face up, and his thumb drags along my cheekbone where I know the flush is sitting.
“You're burning up,” he says, quiet.
“It's June.”
“Josie.”
“Don't.” My hand closes in his shirt. Second time tonight. It's becoming a habit, holding onto this man by the fabric. “Don't be careful. If you're careful I'm going to lose my nerve, and I have wanted this since a closet full of construction paper, so.”
Something moves through him at that. His whole body, one long slow wave of it.
Then he kisses me, and there's nothing careful anywhere in it.
It's not the reunion kiss and it's not the driveway kiss. Those had endings built into them. This one doesn't.
This one has hands in it, his hand leaving my jaw and finding my waist and pulling me in until there's no polite gap left, and the low pull that's been rolling through me all day surges up hard enough that the sound I make into his mouth is frankly embarrassing.
He swallows it. Makes one of his own, low, rough, half a growl, and the last cool thought I have is that Finn Morrow makes noises after all.
“Bedroom,” I manage, against his mouth. “Unless you have strong feelings about the couch, in which case I need to move some laundry.”
