His other hand comes up to join the first, cupping my breasts and beginning to gently squeeze them. It feels heady and wild – the first time I’ve ever had a man touch me like that, somewhere so intimate – and I lose myself in the kiss once again as he touches me. Out of nowhere, through the closed lids of my eyes, I think I see a flash of light, I think the music gets louder; but when I open my eyes to process what I sensed, I see nothing, only the door closed like it was before. I close my eyes again and sink into this feeling, my breath coming hot and heavy between our kisses, my heart racing so fast.
Finn’s hands move to the top of my dress and his fingers begin to slip behind the fabric, making it give way. I tense up momentarily, but only for a moment. I want this. I want his hands on my bare skin more than I would have thought it possible.
But at that moment he stops, and pulls back from the kiss, and rests his forehead against mine, panting just as hard as I am.
“Why did you stop?” I ask, and he looks at me with a flash of doubt that almost shakes me to my core because now I’m terrified that he’s changed his mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Finn
“I don’t know,” I tell her, trying to regain my balance. Just one quick move and my hands will be inside her dress, on her bare skin, and I know I’ll be at the point of no return. I’m not sure how I managed to stop myself to put the brakes on, but somehow I did it. Just one more moment and I’ll lose my resolve. I have to snap out of it, make sure that I follow through on my good intentions. “No, I do know. I… wait.”
I reluctantly sit back from her, taking my hands away from where they were resting at the neckline of her dress, dropping them down to the sides of her arms. She looks at me flushed and out of breath, her hair mussed slightly from my hands, and with a drop of something like fear in her eyes. Fear? Why? Would she think…
Is she afraid that I’ll go too far?
Now at this distance, and with that thought in my head, I can muster my resolve again. I blink once to try and clear my head before I speak. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, half-saying it and half-breathing it, her eyes flashing with desire. “Yes, I want it. It’s alright.”
“No, I mean…” I pause and wipe a hand across my forehead, catching my breath still. “I mean, are you sure you want to do it here?”
“Yes,” she says again, so quickly that I think she can’t possibly have thought it through. Not the question I’m really asking her. Because this is happening. This is just a question of location.
“Are you sure?” I ask again. “I can take you back home. To my place. It will be even more private there, you know. No risk of anyone seeing us at all. No sticky cushions that someone else has… well, I guess we have no way of knowing what someone else has done here.”
“I don’t know,” she says, sounding dazed. “I… I don’t know where I want to go.”
I smile. She sounds as out of it as I feel, driven half-mad by lust, by the feel of her in my hands. “Well, how do you like it? Do you like the risk? Does that turn you on?”
“I don’t know,” she says again, sounding desperate. “I have no idea what I like or how I want it – I – I’ve never done anything like this before – I…”
“You mean, you’ve never come close in a public place like this?” I ask, reaching out for her hand, hoping that I can provide some grounding for her obviously scattered thoughts.
“I’ve never had -”
She stops herself with a wild look, throwing her hand over her mouth.
Wait.
She doesn’t mean…?
“You’ve never had sex?” I guess, my heart leaping into my throat.
Mutely, she shakes her head. There’s a look in her eyes that mixes shame, apology, fear, doubt and excitement and so many other things I can’t name. Like she can’t believe she’s admitting it, but she hopes it doesn’t matter.
But it does matter. Of course, it matters. How could she think that it wouldn’t?
“This changes everything,” I say, making myself let go of her hand and scoot away on the cushions so we are no longer in close contact.
She makes a noise in the back of her throat and reaches for me, but I stop her and push her hand away. I shake my head when she raises her eyebrows and tries again.
Everything is different now, and I can’t just go on like we were before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Candy
Deep hurt stabs into my chest, seizing me up with pain. What? Just that – that little thing? That’s enough to make him want nothing more to do with me – just because I saved myself until now?
“I-I’m sorry,” I stutter, pulling my dress back into place, all too aware that I was showing just a little too much. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Of course, you should have,” he says. “I needed to know. This isn’t the kind of thing you should keep a secret.”
“But…” I screw my face up, trying not to cry. “I’ve ruined everything.”
“No, you haven’t.”
I look up in surprise. What is he talking about? If he no longer wants to have sex with me, then, of course, I’ve ruined everything. Oh, why did he have to stop? Why couldn’t he just carry on and then ask the questions later, when it was already done?
“You can’t ruin anything,” he says, reaching for my hand again. But this time, it’s different, he doesn’t grab me with passion and surges toward me, locking onto my lips. He takes it gently and with tender care. “I almost did. If I had carried on… there’s absolutely no way I’m taking your virginity in the back of some seedy club. You deserve far better than that.”
“… What?” I say, stunned by his words. Does this mean…?
“I want to do right by you, in all ways,” he says. “That means making sure you have the best possible time, always. And for your first time – that’s so important. We can’t just do it like this. It has to be special.”
“I’ve never been in a private room at a club,” I protest. “That feels pretty special to me.”
He chuckles. “Maybe. But for me, this is just… normal. I have enough money to give you this every single time we ever come to a club, Candy. That’s not special enough. You deserve something really special.”
“Like what?” I ask. “I can’t imagine…”
“Well, don’t worry, because I can.” His thumb comes up and traces over my lips, still feeling hot and swollen from our kisses. “I can picture it all. And I’ll make it happen for you. This weekend – we can go somewhere together. That way, we can be out in the open when we date, instead of having to hideaway. We can live freely for the weekend. And I’ll give you what you want. You just have to wait a couple of days.”
I nod slowly, feeling both disappointment and relief wind like twin flames in my chest. I wanted this so badly, but I also like the sound of what he’s suggesting. Time to ourselves, without having to worry about being seen. And making it special – I don’t know exactly what that means, but it has to be good.
“Alright,” I nod. “I… I trust you. Whatever you think is best, that’s what we’ll do. But what do we do now?”
“Now?” Finn looks thoughtful. “Well, I’ll take you back to campus. We’ve been here a while, and I have a lot of planning to get started on. You don’t need a late night on a weekday. I’ll drop you off somewhere outside so that Lexie doesn’t see.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment. I would like to spend more time with him, but if this is how it has to be in order to make the weekend happen, then I can put up with it.
“But first…” his fingers trail over my lips again, rough pads making me shiver. “You said you trust me, right?”
“Yes,” I say, immediately. Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s not like I have a reason to. But for some reason, I trust him right away.
“Then let me make you feel good,” he says, his fingers tracing over the side of my face, my neck. “Bef
ore we go, let me give you something to remember me by until the weekend.”
Remember him? As if I could forget. But I don’t argue, because the way he says it makes me shiver in the most delicious of ways, and as his hands trace over my arm it sends a wave of goosebumps over me that make me want to fall apart in his arms.
“Just relax,” he breathes, his hand slipping down to my thigh, to the bare skin where my skirt keeps riding up. “Let me take care of you.”
I let my eyes slide shut, trusting him utterly. If I don’t see what he’s doing, I won’t get bashful or nervous. If I don’t see what he’s doing, I can just relax. His hands are on my thighs, and before I know it I feel him shifting from beside me, moving, gently nudging me around…
I open my eyes and see him kneeling in front of me, pushing his torso up between my knees, and even as I watch he takes hold of me by the hips and pulls me towards him. I scoot to the edge of the seat and let my eyes close again so I don’t have to think about how close he is to me, what he’ll see, how exposed I am and will be before him.
It starts with light kisses on the inside of my thighs, making me part my legs wider in reaction. My skirt rides further and further up my hips and Finn’s hands follow it, gliding along the outside of my thighs, only stopping when his fingertips hit my panties. I shudder and blush despite my closed eyes, knowing how intimate this is, how no man has ever seen my panties like this – not while I’m still wearing them.
Finn’s hands linger, but his face moves, getting closer in towards me as the kisses land higher and higher up my thigh, making me open before him like the petals of a flower. His fingers hook into the side of my panties and they begin to move downwards, making my breath catch in my throat. But I remember what he said that I should trust him. That if I trust him, he’ll make me feel good.
And this already feels so good, I can’t imagine how much better it could get.
Finn draws the lacy material of my panties away so slowly, it makes me shiver. He kisses the inside of my knees before he draws the fabric down over them, and then lets it drop to the floor, before unhooking the panties from one of my feet. Now I’m so aware of how open my legs are how wide I’ve spread them – how much he can see of me, everything, laid out bare before him.
The thought is driven from my head as I feel a first tentative touch right there between my legs, such a light brush that anywhere else it might have been ignored. But not there – not right on the most sensitive part of me, where everything is magnified a million times and that one touch makes me breathe sharply. And oh, god, mentally beg him to do it again.
Finn gives me what I want right away, and this time the touch is surer, firmer as if he was only getting me used to the idea. His fingers rub and circle over my nerves in a way that feels so incredibly good, the rough pad of his thumb distracting all other thoughts from my head. My head lolls back against the seat, I’m so lost in the sensation that nothing else matters. I hear myself moaning low in my throat, unbidden and unexpected. It’s like I’m not in control anymore – he is, and I’d give anything to keep it that way.
Finn’s hands move deftly, slow and gentle and then faster, and still, he kisses at my inner thighs and sends me higher and higher all the time, floating on this cloud made by the sensations he extracts from me, unable to come back down. I reach out and grasp hold of the edge of the seat, needing something to hold onto, to anchor me here in reality, as if I’ll simply float away otherwise.
Then Finn’s hand moves, his fingers leaving me, and I want to groan in protest – but before I even have a chance, I feel something else, something new. His fingers glide downwards, parting my lips as if through a wave, trailing through wetness that I can feel. And I gasp as his fingers trail to the entrance there, hesitate and slowly encircle it before dipping inside –
Inside me.
My eyes fly open onto only the ceiling of the room as he pushes in a little further, filling me with so many things I can’t name, the sensation of fullness, a tingling of my nerves, all kinds of reactions that come from my body only without my control, a tightness that I expect and don’t expect. How his finger could fit inside there I don’t know, but of course, it must because of what else will fit inside there, and oh God, it’s all too much to think about.
Finn’s finger glides in and out slowly, each time dipping just slightly further in, as I fight to relax my legs against some of the tightness that comes. It’s as if he knows exactly what to do, every time I think it might be too uncomfortable, he pulls back, and then it becomes so much better, starts to feel so good.
And then Finn’s thumb comes down in that same place that was so good before and starts to stroke in circles as his finger moves in and out, and it’s too much to bear.
“Finn,” I whimper, and I find myself gripping onto the bench seat harder as something rises inside of me, a feeling that can’t be held back or slowed down or stopped. A feeling like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, building like a slowly swelling balloon, and sooner or later – sooner or later it has to –
It bursts over me like a wave of sensation, going from the tips of my toes to every hair on my head, filling me with a simple yet intoxicating pleasure that tingles through me, leaving my hips surging forward uncontrollably, a deep pulse within that has me gasping and moaning, running through me again and again.
I open my eyes to see Finn sitting beside me on the bench again, a grin on his face. “Good?” he asks.
“Good,” I tell him, panting for breath, hardly able to comprehend all the feelings rolling through my body. It’s like there’s a haze of rosewater over everything, making everything that much sweeter and lighter.
And if that’s just the taster to hold me over until our weekend together, then I can barely wait and find out what the main event will be like.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Finn
As much as I should probably be focusing on work, I can only think of one thing Candy, and our upcoming weekend together. I know it’s going to be the best two days of both of our lives so far. I just have to pull out all the stops to make sure it’s as special for her as possible. Not only is it going to be the kind of thing she should never forget – being a memorable milestone in her life – but it should also be unforgettable in every other way as well.
I stroll into my office and start up my computer, thinking I’ll start the day by checking my emails and then get to booking things. We’ll need a hotel for a start, as well as some idea of activities in the local area, bookings for restaurants, and of course, I need to first decide where we should go.
I open my emails as I do every morning and glance over them. There’s a business alert that catches my eye. I have it set up to pull any news pieces about the gallery, including anything that mentions my name. It’s good to know what reviews are coming in, which journalists to invite to our next opening and which to strike off the list, and so on.
But this morning, it’s not news about the gallery that flashes up on the screen.
It’s news about me.
I lean in towards the screen, alarmed at what I see. The headline immediately gives me cause for panic Local businessman exposed on date with underage girl. It’s a local paper, not a national one, but the headline is catchy enough – and the article is online – and this could spread.
I scroll down impatiently until I see the picture that accompanies the article, and I freeze. It’s a grainy shot, taken in low light, but it’s pretty easy to see who and what is in the frame. It’s me and Candy – last night, in the private room at the club.
How did anyone take this picture? From the angle, it was clearly taken from near the door. My back is to the camera, but with my head turned in profile, it’s clearly recognizable as me. For Candy, it’s even worse: she’s full on to the camera, her eyes half-closed and her lips parted as I lean down for another kiss. The dress she was wearing is hiked halfway up her thigh, and my hands are on her breasts, obvious for all to see.
I
t’s lewd and inappropriate, the kind of image that neither of us would want anyone to see. We were trying to keep this quiet, and now it’s splashed all over the pages of a local paper. We made a mistake, thinking we could keep this from Lexie. Everything has come crashing down already, and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since we decided to keep seeing each other.
My heart is pounding rapidly in my ears as I skim-read the article. They’re making out that Candy is under sixteen years old – which isn’t true, and I’m sure anyone looking at the image could also guess that she isn’t because she looks older than that. They haven’t mentioned her name, which perhaps means they don’t know her identity – so why publish that she’s underage? Why print this image at all?
Unless, of course, someone put it online to try and disgrace me. To ruin my reputation. Now that this is out, it will be going around the art blogs and magazines by the end of the day – there’s nothing the art world loves more than salacious gossip.
My phone pings and I look down at the screen. It’s a message from an artist I sometimes buy work from, letting me know that he’s seen the article and thinks I’m disgusting. Goddamnit. This is getting out fast, and it will only continue to spread. I have to do something.
But before I can even think about fixing this, I have to talk to Candy. I have to warn her. She’s in this photo, too, and she’s not going to get a personalized news alert like I did. She needs to hear it from me before she sees herself somewhere and has the shock of her life.
I grab my cell phone and dial Candy’s number, waiting for it to connect. I tap my hand restlessly on the desk as it rings, and rings, and rings. She doesn’t answer. When the answering message kicks on, I swear and try again, and again, and again.
She’s not answering. I have to go over there and check that she’s alright – before someone else gets to her first.
My Roommate's Dad: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance Page 6