by K. Bromberg
By now, not only is my head dizzy but I’m panting from trying to wriggle out of his grasp.
“I swear to God, Finn,” I say as the elevator dings and he strides into it and closes the doors, telling other people they can’t get on. “Put me down.”
But he doesn’t. He just adjusts me on his shoulder and tightens his grip. “How the ever-loving fuck does one even get into a strip poker game on the floor of a casino, huh? How does that even happen?”
“It’s pretty easy when you’re Stevie Lancaster,” I snipe back.
“You know what’s even easier? Having a million videos and pictures of you all over the Internet, half dressed and totally drunk.”
“Well, it sure as shit beats the picture of you and me from last night being everywhere.” My words smother the small space and Finn doesn’t respond.
Where the alcohol was numbing before, now it’s just pure, unfettered anger. Sobering and almost invigorating.
The elevator dings.
He strides with me down the hall and only after he enters my suite with the key card he must have kept, does he put me down. And by put me down, I mean he throws me on the bed before walking back out as if he didn’t just haul me up here like he owned me.
I’m up and scrambling to go after him within a second.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I scream, picking up the throw pillow on the couch as I walk past it and throw at his back.
It hits him squarely between the shoulder blades and he turns back on me so quickly that it knocks me off my stride.
“Who the hell do I think I am? I’m the man who just saved your ass from causing a scene that you wouldn’t be able to undo.” He steps into me, the muscle in his jaw ticking and the tendons in his neck taut as he jabs his finger at himself as if to make the point.
“I don’t want your help.”
“I’m sure you don’t through your drunken goddamn haze but rest assured, you needed it.”
“I didn’t. Especially not from a quitter like you.”
And there it is—the reason I’m angrier than anything—laid out between us.
He quit on me when I thought he believed in me.
He quit on me when, compared to the loneliness of the last few horrific months, I finally had someone to anchor me.
He quit on me when he made me want him even though I didn’t want to.
“A quitter like me?” His eyes narrow as he steps even closer. His voice is calm and even where mine is wild and crazy. I don’t care because he hurt me when I’m so sick of being hurt. “I thought that was exactly what you wanted, Stevie. For me to quit so you could go crazy and sabotage the rest of your career to the best of your ability.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “Case in point, downstairs.”
“Case in point? How about case in point that you’re not the man I thought you were?”
“Oh, I’m wounded. As if you had me figured out in the whole ten days I’ve known you.”
“I have you figured out a whole lot more than you think I do.” I push against his chest, begging for a reaction from him. Needing him to feel as out of control as I feel right now. “I just didn’t figure you for a pussy who ran away when shit got real.”
“A pussy?” he scoffs.
“You’re goddamn right, a pussy. Get a little spooked that God forbid the world thinks you’re dating me? I’m sorry that the prospect is so bad you have to quit.” My voice breaks on the last words and I hate myself for it.
Screw this.
Screw him.
“I hate you,” I grit out and push against his chest, but this time he grabs my wrists with an iron-like grip.
“I’m not real thrilled with you either.” His eyes lock on mine and I can feel his heartbeat against my hand.
“You’re a bully.”
I hate you.
I want you.
Why does it have to be you?
“And you’re a rebel.”
“Well, aren’t we quite the pair,” I murmur, the anger suddenly ebbing as desire fights its way to the surface.
Our eyes lock. My breath hitches as he exhales oh, so slowly.
And then from one beat to the next, his lips are on mine. The kiss is hungry and angry and frustrated and ravenous all at the same time, if that’s even possible.
It’s like we’re fighting without words, each of us needing more from the other and taking it with scrapes of teeth and licks of tongues.
“I don’t like you like the article suggests I do,” he grates out before fisting his hand in my hair and forcing my head to tilt up.
“Good. Great. Neither do I,” I say, the last word coming out as a moan.
“This is just sex.” His free hand cups my ass and presses me against him.
“Just sex,” I repeat before his mouth meets mine again in another soul-emptying kiss that leaves my body aching for more and my head swimming with the sudden shift in gears.
His hands. They feel like heaven as they roam over my body with an angst and demand that tells me he’s battling the same battle I am—desperation meshed with anger.
His kisses. They’re greed tinged with need woven with hunger.
His groans. So guttural, as his hands map my body and find their way inside my shorts to push them down. An aural seduction.
His cock. Jesus. Can he just put it in me already?
“Finn,” I moan, needing more, wanting more, despite being furious at him.
His teeth scrape over my shoulder as he unbuckles his pants and shoves them down to his ankles.
There is no time to remove shoes, no need to take shirts off.
The only thing that matters is the end game. The climax after the rise. The blissful fall after the ravenous fury.
“Hurry,” I urge as his hand finds its way between my thighs.
“Christ, woman,” he groans and walks us backward where he swipes whatever is on the table off with his hand before pushing my ass against its edge.
His mouth is on mine again. Bruising and sensual and fraught with necessity as he pulls a condom out and protects us.
My core burns with an ache that I fear only he can put out. With a want that has been simmering since that first night we met. With a desire that’s so intense, it’s scary.
“Please. Finn.” I arch my back and spread my legs, willing him to step in between. Begging him to.
But his fist is in my hair again as he leans over, the crest of his cock pressing at my entrance.
His lips kiss my shoulder, along the curve of my neck, up to my ear.
“For the record,” he growls. “I wasn’t quitting on you. I was saving you from me.”
And with that, he pushes into me. Every nerve of mine sings with pleasure at the fullness of him and the sensations it evokes.
I fist my hand in the neck of his shirt and yank his face toward mine. “I don’t need to be saved.” I steal a kiss to quiet his response in a need to understand his words but only end up confusing matters more. “I just need to feel.” I release him and lie back on the table, eyes locked on his. “Make me feel, Finn.”
There’s a moment where he stares at me, where something more than lust is in his eyes but it’s too much to process, too much to figure out as I wait for him to punish me in the most pleasurable of ways.
The moment breaks when he slides out ever so slowly, the head of his cock teasing me, while his fingers flutter over my clit.
The sensation is torture.
It’s pleasure.
It’s frustrating.
It’s all-consuming.
Exactly how this relationship between Finn and me has been since day one.
And then he drives back into me. But this time he doesn’t stop. This time the anger is back—and the greed and the lust. This time it’s hands grasping and the table moving and the sound of us connecting.
It’s his thrust and my moan.
It’s the lift of my hips and his groan.
It’s quick and it’s
dirty and lacking all niceties—just how I want it.
Just how I need it.
It’s a shout on my lips as the wave of pleasure pins me beneath its current and drowns me in its bliss.
It’s a growl of my name as his fingers dig into the flesh at my hips and hold me still when he finds his own release.
And then there’s silence. Or rather the room around us is silent but for our panted breaths, and the thunder of my pulse, fills my ears as my heart decelerates and we come back to our senses.
To the knowledge that this didn’t fix a goddamn thing. He still quit and I’m still livid with him for it. But the rejection stings a little less now.
I wasn’t quitting on you. I was saving you from me.
Luckily, Finn pulls out of me and heads to the bathroom with only the sound of his belt where his pants are still wrapped around his ankles clinking with each step. It gives me a second to process everything. To sit up and pull my shorts back on so that we can face whatever the hell just happened fully clothed and without any evidence of sex present.
Like that’s going to work since the smell of it hangs in the suite around me.
I’m just finishing buttoning my shorts when his voice is behind me. “You mind telling me how exactly you got into a strip poker, tequila-shot drinking game of Texas Hold ’Em in the middle of a casino floor?” he asks.
“It’s none of your business.” And I’m not sure why my first words after he just made the earth shift beneath my feet are snippy, but they are. Maybe because I already know what’s going to happen next, and even though it’s exactly what I want to happen—him leaving with us still at odds—I’m already preparing myself for the sting.
He snorts in reaction as if he expects nothing less in an answer than that. “Good to know everything’s still the same.”
“Sure is.” My hands are on my hips as I study his face and try to read what his eyes are saying. I can’t and so I look away, afraid he might see too much in mine if I let him. “You were an itch. I scratched it. Thanks for that.”
“At your service.” He chuckles with a mock bow before taking a few steps toward the door. He stops and studies me again. Words are on his lips, but he shuts them without uttering a sound.
“Just for the record,” I say as he heads toward the door, “you were good, but I still don’t like you.”
“Good to hear. Try to stay out of trouble, Stevie.”
There’s a finality to the click of the door when he shuts it, a sense that this was the closure we needed to be able to part ways.
It was how we began.
And now, it is how we ended.
If that’s the case, why do I feel so unsettled listening to his footsteps as he walks down the hallway?
FINN
Gabe: Did your flight get delayed out of Vegas with that fire at the airport?
Me: It was canceled.
Gabe: Still heading to SD though?”
Me: In the morning.
Gabe: So . . .
Me: So . . . what?
Gabe: Did you get her out of your system?
I laugh as I look at the text when nothing about this afternoon is funny. Leaving Stevie’s suite, a delayed then canceled flight to San Diego, and now the search for another hotel room. All I want to be is out of this damn city. So, yeah, not funny.
Is she out of my system?
Isn’t that the fucking question of the day?
I’ll admit it was hard to not go back up to her suite for another round before I left the hotel . . . to make sure I got her out of my system.
Hell, I even hesitated when I closed the door to her suite before I walked away, the image of her standing there in her jean shorts and a red shirt with her hardened nipples showing through the fabric burned into my mind.
Just like the look on her face is.
The look that was so contradictory to the words she spoke. Haughty, arrogant comments while her expressive eyes read confused vulnerability.
I hated the way they made me feel. I wanted to stay and make sure she was okay.
That’s why I need to get out of this city, cut ties with a woman—er, client—who was never supposed to be on my radar in the first place.
Fucking Carson. I sigh and close my eyes as I sit in the back of the Uber on the way to The Strip, trying to figure out how to respond.
Me: Yeah. We’re done.
Gabe: So fucking predictable, but dude, U R the man.
Me: Can’t let them get too attached, now can I?
I hit send on the text and then stare at it for way too long, hating how it makes me feel.
FINN
9 Years Ago
THE BAR IS CROWDED FOR a Thursday, but it’s downtown and that means anything goes most nights. The music being piped in through the speakers is low and bluesy and fitting for the crowd—mid- to late-twenties, not too trendy and more urban professional. Glasses clink and talk is constant
I slide onto a seat at the bar beside my friend, Gabe, and sigh. I’m in town trailing Carson around trying to learn the ropes and even though Gabe moved on to the NFL, we still try to get together at least once a month when we can.
“It’s been a long fucking week, man.”
“Longest of long,” he murmurs before taking a long tug on his bottle of beer before shaking his head. “Got dumped by my girl, strained my fucking groin so I’m out for a few weeks, and got rear-ended by somebody.”
“You win.” I hold my hands up in mock surrender. “You definitely win.”
“I’d attempt to pick up the hot chick across the bar, but just my luck, she’d be a dude or have three tits or something,” he mutters and then laughs, completely consumed by his own misery.
“I thought all you had to do was say you play for the NFL and chicks fall at your feet.”
He looks down at the ground around us. “Just proved that theory wrong.”
“Fuck off,” I say around a laugh as the bartender slides my drink in front of me.
“Gladly but then you’d miss me.”
“So? Which hot chick are we talking about?” I’m already looking, ready to be his wingman . . . or perhaps to fly solo and approach her myself if he’s too chickenshit to do it himself.
He lifts his chin in the direction of an auburn-haired woman whose back is to us. She’s svelte with curls tumbling down her back and a sophistication about her that money can’t buy.
“Not bad, huh?”
“Not bad if you prefer looking at her from behind.”
“The front’s even better.”
“Maybe she’s just what you need to get over what’s-her-name?” I suggest when I most definitely know his ex’s name. How can I not when we may have fooled around a bit before they started dating? “How about I go be a wingman for you? See if she’s single and interested?”
“The last thing I need is you to go talk to her for me. The last time you talked to a chick on my behalf you banged her like three hours later.”
I laugh into my glass of whiskey and shrug. “You can’t exactly blame me for being her type.”
“Fucker,” he mumbles playfully as I push my seat back and stand.
“I’ll make up for it now,” I say and give a cheesy smile.
I move around the bar, scoping out prospects for myself as I go and lean my elbow on the bar just behind the woman of interest.
“So, I have a friend,” I say just above the chatter of the bar. “And he’s a little nervous to come over and talk to you so I told him I’d—” And my words trail off when the woman turns to face me. She may be older now—the freckles I used to think were adorable are gone, her face slimmer and more mature, her hair definitely darker—but I’d know those eyes anywhere. “Molly?”
It takes a second for me to believe it’s really her as recognition slowly etches the lines of her face.
“Finn? Finn Sanderson?”
She looks at me with the same disbelief I feel but I’m more than sure she doesn’t experience the pang of hurt
I do—even after seven years.
“That’s me.” For the first time in my life, I don’t even know what to say.
“Oh my God. Hi.” She grabs me in a quick hug as her laugh fills the air, and I’m not one hundred percent sure why I don’t enthusiastically hug her back.
I should be over what happened. Her kiss by the gym with someone whose name I don’t even remember was years—hell, a lifetime—ago and doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things . . . but it does.
She was my first love.
My first heartbreak.
The first female who proved my dad and all his crazy nonsense about women to be true.
“Look at you!” she says, her hands on my biceps as she takes me in. “How are you? What—I mean, there are so many questions that I don’t even know which one to ask first.”
I have a million too, but none are as benign as how are you?
“I’m good,” I say, glancing over to Gabe and holding my finger up to let him know to hold on a minute. The last thing I need him to think is that I’m hitting on Molly and not being a wingman, but truth be told, this whole setup just crashed and burned. “And you?”
“I am too. I’m studying for the bar exam. Corporate law.” She shakes her head. “This is just so crazy seeing you again after all these years. Tell me all about you.”
I’m typically a guy that isn’t fazed by much. I’ve been slapped by dates who are pissed at me, told to go to hell by females I’ve dumped, trolled on social media by women who can’t handle the fact that I moved on without them, but there’s something about seeing her that has me back in a past I’ve long since left behind.
That and there’s no way I’m setting her up with Gabe now. I know the irony is rich considering my long and sordid track record with women, but I don’t care.
“Finn? Is something—” Her smile falls and she rolls her eyes playfully. “You can’t still be mad at me. I’ve forgiven you, Finn.” At what must be a blank look, she continues. “I mean, what teenager wouldn’t take the hundred dollars and do that?”