Dirty Rowdy Thing (Wild Seasons, #2)(31)

It’s the sound of his voice. The richness of it, the reassurance of it. Words like pretty and good and strong and lose it, oh f*ck I’m gonna lose it filter in through the haze of pleasure.

It’s so good. It’s so good.

This is the only thing I can think, over and over. He’s making me stare right into his eyes—at least it feels that way, though I don’t think he’s actually told me to. But the way he’s looking at me . . . it’s intense and obsessed and tender and adoring. I can’t look away, I don’t want to.

I don’t remember ever coming like this, where I can’t localize the sensation, can’t pinpoint where it starts, or even how long it lasts. I’m trying to be quiet, trying so hard, but my cries slip out even as I taste blood on my lip. I give up, screaming and pulling against the binding as the wild bliss tears through me.

Finn growls, thrusting up hard and fast—and then he bellows, pulling at the cord behind my back and shoving so deep in me as he comes that I feel bent in two.

He slows, and then stills, wrapping his arms around me and grunting into my neck with every quiet exhale— f*ck, f*ck, f*ck—long after he’s already come. Around me, his big arms are shaking from exertion, wet with sweat, and I’ve never felt more overwhelmed by someone in my entire life.

I realize I’m going to cry only a split second before I feel the tears spill and run down my cheeks.

But his face is still pressed to my neck, his breaths slowly evening out. “Harlow. Don’t move. I can’t . . . just give me a second.”

I don’t think I could even if I wanted. I don’t ever want to move off him.

His mouth slides over my shoulder, and he begins to slowly massage my thighs, my ass, my lower back. Lifting me carefully, he reaches between us and takes off the condom, quickly tying it and dropping it somewhere on the couch next to us.

And then he’s loosening the knot at my back.

“No,” I choke.

He looks at me, sees the tears on my cheeks and maybe thinks I’m crying because I don’t want him to free me. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I’m just spent, and if he can’t be inside me anymore I need to be tied up, and if I can’t be tied up I need another way to know that, right now, I’m his and he’ll take care of me. That he’ll take over and fix everything because I’m not sure I know how.

Finn swipes at my face with his thumbs. “I have to, sweetheart, you can’t be bound up any longer.”

It just feels like it’s the only thing holding me together.

“I know,” he says.

Oh God. I said it out loud.

“Shh, shh, come here.” He unwraps me like a gift, running a gentle fingertip along every groove the bungee cord left in my skin, and then he picks me up like I weigh nothing—I have no bones, no muscles, only skin and lust and blood—and carries me to my bedroom.

“This one?” he asks at the end of the hall.

I nod and he ducks in, pulling back the covers with one hand and sliding me under. I’m terrified he’s going to leave, but he doesn’t. He climbs in behind me, spooning me, running a reassuring hand down my side, over my hip, up my stomach, until he’s soothing the cord lines around my breasts with his tender, rough hands and kissing my neck.

“I need to hear you’re okay,” he rasps. “Tell me you don’t hurt.”

“I’m okay.” I take a deep breath but it chokes halfway through. “But don’t leave.”

“I don’t think I could. I’m . . . it’s intense for me, too. I . . . forgot.”

I’M A LIGHT sleeper, but I don’t wake once in the middle of the night. Not for water, not to go to the bathroom, not even to roll over and find a cool section of the sheets. When my eyes do open, the sun is high in the sky, and Finn and I are in exactly the same position we were in when we fell asleep.

He’s not awake yet, but his body is. It takes about a hundred promises to myself—new shoes, ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner, an afternoon swim—to get out of bed and not roll him onto his back and take him inside my body just to see if he’ll look at me again the way he did last night.

I do get out of bed, though, because it terrifies me that the first thought I have isn’t about my mother, or whether she still needs me to drive her to her appointment later today, or how she slept last night. But it should be. Not forever, but God, for at least the first few weeks when my family—my center, my universe—needs me.

I have coffee brewing and am pacing the kitchen when Finn pads in, wearing the boxers he must have retrieved from the living room floor. I haven’t even peeked around that corner, not sure I can handle seeing the loop of bungee cord discarded so casually on the carpet.

He rubs his eyes, walks over to me, and kisses my neck. Because I’m trying not to melt, I stiffen instead and I can feel his little laugh against my skin.

“I’m freaking out a little, too,” he admits.

“It’s just that I have . . .” I start explaining. He pulls back and looks at me, those complicated eyes growing unreadable as he listens. “It’s one thing to want distraction, but I don’t need another obsession.”

Way too honest, Harlow.

But he’s already nodding. He even looks a little relieved. “I can respect that,” he says, pulling his hands from my hips and stepping away. This is exactly how I needed this conversation to go, and yet . . . it stings a little. Finn softens it by adding, “I’m in the same boat, so to speak. And last night, you stopped being an easy f*ck.”