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I wrinkled my nose at that. “Only to you,” I told him honestly.
Lifting his free hand, he cupped my chin. “I’m the only one who matters, aren’t I?”
A smile curved my lips. “I guess you are.” Well, that made me feel like I was going to glow. He was right. To the one man who mattered, I was as sexy as a pin-up model. Because even with low self-esteem, there was no way I could mistake how hard he got around me. And how often.
“I work too much, I get really engrossed with what I’m doing, and I might even forget to pay some bills because I just forget about that stuff.”
He chuckled, and the sound was so light, it made me feel like I was floating. I’d never heard Finn chuckle before. Sure, he’d laughed, and, of course, he’d smiled and grinned. But that sound was so carefree and light-hearted that I thought I might melt.
“You don’t have to worry about the bills anymore. Lena was right. You’re going to be a wealthy woman when we’re wed. I work too much, so if you’re working, too, it won’t piss you off when I’m called away or if I’m not home every night at seven on the dot. And you’re focused. As someone who has been at the center of that focus, I’m not about to complain.”
My cheeks heated, but I didn’t think he could see that in the dying light.
“What I’m trying to say, Aoife, is I don’t care if you’re a pain in the ass before you’ve had an IV of coffee. I don’t care if you’ll butt heads with me over random shit. I don’t care if you’re stubborn. All that matters to me is you’re happy and safe. With the latter taking precedence from time to time.”
Considering what he did for a living, that made sense.
I bit my bottom lip, and when he reached over to tug it free, he murmured, “That’s mine to bite, not yours.”
I shivered at the raspy note, loving how he could make me feel with just a simple touch and a few words.
“S-Sorry,” I half-whimpered, and I knew my tone, if not the apology, satisfied him because he fidgeted in his seat, sinking slightly lower—to ease the bulge of an erection, maybe?
Ugh. My mouth watered at the thought. I didn’t even care that Samuel was less than two feet away!
This man, and what he did to me, was addictive. It was like he took me out of my own skin and made me someone else, someone who was free to live and love and to be.
“Are you scared about what I do?”
I thought about that for a second, and though it was a dash of cold water on my libido, I shook my head. “If my mom was still alive, then maybe.”
He frowned. I saw it through the headlights that flashed in the window. “What? Why?”
“Because she’d have tried to talk me out of this, even though she always told me to never say no to a Five Points man.”
He cringed at that. “I’m glad you were never in that position.”
“Me, too,” I told him softly. “But she’d have tried to convince me, and I don’t want convincing.”
That had him clearing his throat. “Why not?” He cut me a look then. “I understand to a point. I’m not the kind of guy you’d take home to a Catholic mother.”
I snorted. “It depends. Don’t forget, most Catholic mothers don’t care so long as you go to church.”
“True. That’s Lena’s fixation.”
My lips curled—mothers were the same the world over, but Irish Catholics? They were a different breed.
“So, I wouldn’t want her to convince me because she’d tell me you’re A, B, and C. But I see D, E, and F.” I shrugged. “We’d never agree, and she’d probably piss me off in her attempts to change my mind.
“I’m not an idiot, Finn. This thing, itiscrazy. It’s so fast, it makes a whirlwind look slow. I know that. I do. But no one has ever made me feel the way you do. I’m not about to pass that up.”
He laughed softly. “Good to know.”
Maybe he was relieved that I hadn’t used words of love. But I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t going to gush over him—well, not outside of the bedroom, I thought with an inner giggle. I wasn’t going to expect declarations of love from him, either.
This wasn’t about love.
It went deeper than that.
