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Chapter 21
Finley knew a thing or two about the female body. I’d never really liked losing control, yet he was pushing all my buttons. The rough caress of his tongue on my nipples had me arching my back and moaning. I heard myself and didn’t even care that I was putting on a show. I couldn’t help it.
Slowly, Finley moved his way down my body. His navel explorations tickled. When he made it still lower to the really interesting territory, I pressed my thighs together, trapping his hand. “That’s enough,” I said, the words breathless.
The man was hard again…shockingly, incredibly hard. “Open your legs, Duchess. Or I’ll have to do it for you.”
The carnal mental image of Finley taking my ankles and pulling them apart made me feel faint. I thought I’d been turned on before. That was nothing apparently. Now I was gasping for breath, trembling with the need to come.
He must have sensed my unease, because his expression gentled. “You can trust me, McKenzie. I won’t hurt you, I swear. If I do something you don’t like, all you have to do is tell me to stop.”
Judging by what had happened so far, we’d both be old and gray before I ever uttered that four-letter word. Telling him to stop wasn’t the problem. It was me feeling like I was going to shatter into a million shining fragments. I didn’t know if I’d be able to put myself back together again.
Swallowing my misgivings, I tried to relax. Though it seemed desperately erotic to spread my legs with him watching, I did it anyway and was rewarded by the look on his face, part exultant, part stunned.
I dug my heels into the mattress and gripped handfuls of the sheet. “I’m ready.”
He laughed at me. The infuriating man laughed at me. “Good Lord, Duchess. You’re not bracing for a firing squad. Relax.”
Easy for him to say. I’d never actually had a partner who returned the favor of oral sex. How did I even know I would like it?
In the beginning, he only used his fingers to play with me. That alone was enough to bring me to the brink. He read my body language and drew back at the last minute. “I love watching you,” he said hoarsely. “You see yourself as shy and repressed, but damn, McKenzie, you’re so sensual and natural you make me tremble.”
I was no longer interested in a discourse about my sexual experience. “Please,” I begged. “I can’t bear it. You’re being mean.”
“Not mean, angel. Not at all. I want to give you everything you’ve been missing. The men in your life should have treasured you…cosseted you. I’m trying to erase the sins of my fellow man.”
“Consider them gone.” I put my hand on his taut thigh. “Please, Finley. I want to come with you inside me. I’m so close it won’t take long. Please.”
For one insane moment I thought he was going to say no. It wasn’t that I had any objection to what he was doing with his fingers and his tongue. I needed him so badly, I ached.
My speech must have convinced him. He grabbed his pants and found a second condom. Then he settled between my legs and thrust hard. He held there at the deepest point for interminable seconds. “Next time I want you from behind,” he muttered. “For now, I have to see your face.”
I knew what he meant. Still, I wanted to guard my emotions, my inner self. Finley was having none of that. Everything in my eyes was there for him to read. Nothing new, maybe. A woman infatuated with him.
Never had I given so much of myself to a man. Not only my body, but my soul. I understood suddenly why the charity masquerade balls I had planned and attended were so effective. They allowed for flirtation and seduction without the added danger of vulnerability.
When Finley started to move, I closed my eyes. Seeing him was too much. How did couples ever survive this stripping away of pretense? Man and woman. Yin and Yang. I wanted to scream and dance and run naked into the storm. My climax hit me with the force of the boulders that had crashed down the hill.
One moment I was straining for the peak, the next, I was falling through fire, each cell in my body exploding with joy.
The room was quiet after that. I cried a little bit when we were done. Thankfully, I don’t think Finley noticed.
He kissed me softly, our lips clinging as if unable to give up one last connection. I felt the muted force of his personality like a soft, familiar blanket. Security. Peace. Sometime later, without speaking, he got up and went to the bathroom. I wanted to freshen up as well, though I wasn’t sure my legs would work. I felt the same sense of disorientation that occurs after a tragedy, only in my case it wasn’t a tragedy at all. Simply a jolting realization that my life would never be the same.
I was almost certainly falling in love with Finley Craig.
Even as I named the truth that filled me with wonder, I grieved. If Finley wanted a woman in his life on any kind of regular or permanent basis, he’d had plenty of opportunities. He was over thirty-five. Women were drawn to him wherever he went. The female sex was ripe for the picking, yet Finley was still single. And apparently very happy in his bachelor state.
When he came back from the bathroom, he added more wood to the fire. Dragging the sheet around my shoulders again, I crawled out of my comfy cocoon. “I think I’ll take a shower,” I said. And maybe cry like a baby because I had let myself get too close.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Water will be getting cold. Power’s off.”
I nodded. How had I not noticed? Even with forlorn daylight sifting into the room, none of the lamps were lit. I had specifically left a small light burning in the hallway. Now, the corridor leading to the bedrooms was dark.
Why wasn’t Finley talking? We’d committed the unpardonable sin. He and I together had created a morning-after-the-night before with no place to go. Literally.
Once I managed my escape to the small, dated bathroom, I wrapped a towel around my hair to keep it dry and managed a brief lukewarm shower. I was counting on the fact that after I was dressed I would feel better.
