Coming home soon?
As I wait, I inspect my reflection. My straightened hair is curling. My scrubbed-off lipstick has left my mouth pink. I find body lotion in a cabinet under the sink and use it to remove my smudged mascara, wondering if it belongs to Finn or Kendra.
My phone vibrates on the sink counter. I pick it up and read Nathan’s reply.
Not yet. Basketball game was cut short because of the rain. We’re having a beer.
Sitting in a pub on a rainy afternoon sounds about right for my mood. I did tell Donna I’d try to make it out to Park Slope soon, and I should probably be anywhere but here. I invite myself.
Which bar? I can meet you.
He’s typing. I wait. I could shower, change, and be on the train within an hour. If only Brooklyn were closer. My phone alerts me to his answer.
At Mikey’s place. Poker.
I look back into the mirror. If Joan mentioned living with Mikey, I don’t recall. Suddenly, I regret drinking as much as I did that night. They’re engaged—I remember that. Generally, engaged people live together. She could be there right now with Nathan, who knows I won’t show up because I have a real thing about gambling. My dad and mom are casino rats. They came home many nights reeking of cigarettes and cheap liquor. They lost money they didn’t have and cash they’d promised me. First, it was for little things—a ticket to my high school prom, lunch money. Then it was college applications, and finally college itself. They did one thing right, though—maintaining a level of poverty scholarship funds smiled upon. That was when I recognized I was the only one who could shape my life into what I wanted it to be.
I’m about to exit the bathroom when another text comes through from Nathan.
The game will go late. Don’t feel like fighting the storm. I might crash here.
That’s what you think, is my first thought. I type rapidly and end up having to fix several mistakes.
You’re a grownup not a kid at a sleepover. I want you to come home.
I don’t think an actual confession would shock me more than his next response.
If I’m not in our bed, what difference does it make where I sleep? I’ll be home when you wake up.
I narrow my eyes at the screen and wonder who this man is. He isn’t my Nathan, who used to call me randomly at work just to say he was thinking of me. This man doesn’t even think spending the night elsewhere merits a conversation.
After I leave the bathroom, I grandly dump my phone back in my purse. Nathan has plenty of reasons to come home, but he’s given me none to do the same. In the living room, I close my eyes and appreciate the rich smell of coffee brewing. I lay the towel Finn gave me on Kendra’s green velvet couch. My dress is slightly damp. It’s my undergarments, though, that’re wet enough from the rain to make me uncomfortable.
Finn returns barefoot with two mugs. Steam curls over the rims. “You didn’t need to do that,” he says.
“It’s a lovely couch.”
“It’s an eyesore.”
It is a beautiful and well-made piece of furniture. It belongs in a store window or a historical movie set in an English castle. It doesn’t fit Finn, though, who is more bull-in-a-china-shop than monarch. He still hasn’t done anything with the apartment. I wonder if his reason for not liking it extends beyond personal taste. I don’t decorate the apartment with anything I think Nathan wouldn’t like.
The coffee warms my hands and cheeks. It smells of going home for the holidays, even though those aren’t particularly favorable memories for me. Trips to the Beckwith family home generally boil down to Andrew, Nathan and I trying to survive my parents’ bickering.
Finn and I each take a sip. “This is good,” I say. Already, it’s eased my tension. “Did you spike it or something?”
“No, but I can.” He grins. “The beans are from Quench Coffee.”
“That’s why I like it.”
“I’ve been going there since college,” he volunteers. “Minus the Connecticut years.”
I look away. Connecticut is a dirty word. It’s a side of Finn I don’t want to think about. It’s a side of myself I don’t want to acknowledge. Rain beats against the window. “Can you seriously spike this?”
He leaves the room and returns with Kahlúa. “Try that,” he says with a conservative pour.
I taste it, looking up at him. “More.”
He tops my drink off, then his own. “Cheers.”
“What to?” I ask.
He sets the mug on the table without drinking any and picks up his camera. “Bad decisions?”
Mid-sip, I flit my eyes up to him. He isn’t dense enough to believe we’re doing nothing wrong, but there’s no reason to announce it. I gulp down some coffee and ask, “Are you trying to get me to leave?”
“Not quite.” He glances at me from under his lashes as he plays with the camera. “I was talking about gray as a background for your headshot. Not the best decision on my part.”
I purse my lips. “That’s what you want to cheers to?”
One cheek dimples with his smile. Each time he hits a button, the camera beeps. He hums. “I can definitely work with most of these, though.”
I lean forward. “Can I see?”
“Let me find a good one.” He shuffles toward me, distracted by his task, until our naked feet touch. My knee ghosts against the fine hairs on his shin, and my skin prickles. He holds the screen in front of my face. “Here. How’s that?”
In the photo, my arms are crossed, my smile confident. It’s good, although the graffiti on the wall behind me gives me pause. I’d prefer a less aggressive backdrop. “It’s an option . . .”
“Not my favorite.” He flips through a few more shots and chooses one taken seconds before the rain started. My squinted gaze holds the secret to my next client’s success. New York City fall is my backdrop, with multi-colored foliage against a graying sky. I’m not as poised.
“What else?” I ask.
“What about this one?” He shows me another. My head is twisted over one shoulder, my expression playful, my hair plastered to my cheeks. I don’t remember biting my lip, but the evidence is there on the screen. I’m not looking at the camera, though. I’m looking above it. At Finn. My insides tighten.
Finn touches something, and the screen goes black. He holds the viewfinder over his eye. Snap.
“Finn . . .”
He brushes his knuckles softly down my cheek and clears some hair off my neck. He takes another, but the graze of his touch remains.
“I took my makeup off.” My attempt to thwart him sounds as lame as it is.
“Hmm.” He adjusts a dial before taking the next photo. “I noticed. Funny how I . . . I mean, the camera . . . likes you anyway.”
This time, when I say his name, it’s a warning. “Finn.”
“I can’t help myself.”
“You can’t?” I ask. “Or you don’t want to?”
I see the edges of his smile from behind the camera. He lowers it. I’m likely wearing the same expression I was in that last photo. I’m not a model, and I’m no actress. That lusty look in my eyes was the real thing, and it’s not going away.
Finn reaches out and traces my neckline. Just the feel of his hand through the fabric sends my heartbeat racing. Lights up my skin with goose bumps. He pushes a fingertip into my dress, against my skin. It’s not enough. That simple, barely-there touch puts me more on edge than if he’d just gone and grabbed me. He tugs until I sit forward.
“Can’t help myself,” he answers my last question. “Don’t want to. Won’t.” Slowly, deliberately, with ample time for me to protest, he lifts my hair off my neck and slides my zipper down the length of my spine. He peels the dress over one shoulder, exposing the curve of it.
And he takes my picture.
He angles my jaw a little to the side. The room is darkening from the storm. The only sounds are raindrops against glass, my body-swaying breath, the slice and click of the camera.
“Fix your hair,” he s
ays quietly.
“How?”
“However feels right.”
I rake a hand through my roots. I gather it in a loose, damp ponytail.
“Pull it.”
The little I’ve already given in makes my restraint slippery. He’s not asking, so I don’t have to decide for myself. I curl my hair around my hand and make my scalp tingle. I wait for his next command, my ass melding to the couch cushions. My dress is stiff. He pushes it down by the neckline, over my bra, to my waist.
“You’re made for the camera. For this lighting.” His voice scrapes like a dull knife on my skin. “For me.”
Despite the heat, a series of tremors runs through me. I try to keep them inside, try not to move, as if my participation is ambiguous. There are things I want to feel—Finn’s tongue in my mouth. His hands on my breasts. The rock hardness of him pressed to my thigh. I don’t know if all that means I want to do this, though.
“It’s okay to move,” he says.
I hug myself to stave off any more trembling and run my hands over my biceps. I drink more coffee and Kahlúa. The heat coats my throat and chest like a syrupy waterfall.
“You asked what I like to take pictures of,” he says from behind the safety of his black box.
I look at him. His one exposed eye is squeezed shut. “Strangers,” I say.
“The opposite. I prefer someone I know. I get to see a new side of them.”
“What are you seeing now?”
“You have a lot of levels, Sadie. You don’t show them easily. Maybe you don’t even realize they’re there.” He can see all of me, yet I’m missing most of his face. I’m not sure if that’s making this descent into moral gray area easier or harder. His words are physical, hands on me, several of them all at once.
I suppose Finn is right—people are just layers upon layers, some permeable, some impenetrable. I’m no exception.
“You wear nude, lacy bras,” he adds. “I didn’t know that.”
My laugh dies before it ever leaves my mouth. Instead, I exhale softly. My panties match my bra, and he must be wondering about them. I shouldn’t encourage him, but his attentiveness feels like a warm lamp in a cold room. “What else?” I ask.
“You take direction well.”
“There’s one I haven’t heard before . . .”
“Lie back. Feet on the couch.” His voice has taken on a new tone, one not to be argued with. I move lengthwise on the couch and rest my shoulder blades against the arm.
“Let me see you. All of you.”
The pulsing swell of arousal between my legs is the only thing driving me now. I’ve barely slid my dress over my hips when Finn comes around the table and grabs the hem. He yanks it down, down, down, over my thighs, calves, ankles, to the floor. When was I last undressed in front of someone other than Nathan? I cross my ankles and cover my bra.
“How can I see when you do that?” he asks.
“You can’t,” I say. “That’s the point.”
“You don’t want me to?”
I hesitate. I’m not worried he won’t like what he sees—I’m worried he will. That he’ll want to do more than look. That I won’t stop him, even though I should. Shouldn’t I? It’s not as if Nathan has made any effort to stop me. He watched me walk away this morning. He ignored my requests for him to participate in the shoot, to come home, to let me come to him. He’s turned down sex, intimacy, conversation. After a quick glance over the past few months, I’d be stupid to think he wants me to chase after him anymore.
I unfold my arms first.
“I’ve never seen anything like you,” Finn says, capturing my every move. “Now your legs.”
I uncross them, bending one knee, scraping the velvet over the ball of my foot. It’s more coarse than comfortable. “Have you done this before? Photographed someone like this, I mean.”
“Haven’t taken things this far, no.” He pauses. “I guess I never had the right subject.”
“Not even—”
“No. She doesn’t inspire me.”
I keep my eyes on the lens. To him, I’m the right subject. The only subject. How can so much have blossomed in so little time? Yet, I understand it. I’m wrapped up in him enough that I want the camera gone, but not enough that I’m bold enough to do something about it. I want to pause time. For this not to count. In the steely gray early evening, in a warm place that seems as if it could only be my imagination, I think, maybe for tonight, this could be a private space between realities. Somewhere only we exist.
A bolt of lightning reminds us how dark it’s gotten. Finn switches on the lamp at the foot of the couch. I look down the white-dune hills and curves of my body at him.
He takes my ankle and lengthens one leg. His touch on such a private part of me is foreign at first, and then it liquefies, melding with my skin. My silence is a form of trust. I’m not stopping him.
Keeping a firm grip on me, he puts a knee between my feet. “Are you shaking because you’re scared?”
Since I first saw Finn in the hallway, we’ve been engaged in this drawn-out, fucked-up dance of innuendo and lingering glances. Foreplay with him is the space between us: the things we haven’t said; the admissions we haven’t made. If I’m scared, I can’t feel it, and if I’m shaking, it’s surpassed by my anticipation. “I’m not scared.”
“Good.” He leans forward so the camera looks directly down on me. “Show me.”
“What do you want to see?”
“Whatever you want me to see.”
His attention is heady, addicting. I won’t know how far I’m willing to go until I get there. When I do, I’ll stop. It won’t ever be too late to walk away. And if I don’t walk away at all? I’ll have my answer—I can’t stop.
My hands are unsteady as I reach under myself, arching my back. I unclasp the single hook-and-eye of my bra and remove it with the delicacy it demands. My nipples pebble with their freedom, with Finn’s eyes on them.
Finn watches my every movement, unwrapping his present with captivated eyes. His gaze devours this private part of me. “What fucking tits,” he says, and my body trills. It’s crass and unlike him, as if he just had to say it. I’m getting wetter, too swollen for my panties.
“Finn,” I say like a prod in the arm, because he’s not taking pictures.
“Sorry.” He aims the lens right at me, but nothing happens. He sets the camera on the table with a thud. His hands are on my waist. Large. Warm. He slides me down the couch until my head falls from the arm to the cushion, and my crotch is pressed up against his knee.
For an electric moment we stay that way. Only my chest moves, and his hair, which lags behind his sudden movements, falls sluggishly over his face. He lowers his head.
When he’s an inch away, I slap my palms against his chest, halting him. “Finn.” His name comes out like a moan. “God. We can’t.”
His hair is liquid gold, tickling my forehead. “I can.”
I open my mouth to say “It’s wrong” but it comes out as a hoarse whisper.
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Yes, but—”
“So let me satisfy it.” He cups his hand under the hem of my dress, right over the core of me. I hiss through my clenched teeth. “Your curiosity, that is.”
I should leave. I should be outraged. I should not, however, be surprised it’s come to this. As if I didn’t know it might.
“I want you, Sadie.” I can practically taste the coffee on his breath. Lightly, over my lace thong, he strokes my opening with his fingertips, presses his palm to my clit. “I think about nothing else. Just you. Your eyes. Your lips. Your wet cunt.”
I groan. A flush overtakes my entire body—embarrassment. Arousal. He’s only touching me enough to tease my pleasure to the surface, just to where it overtakes my protests.
“We can do it this way if you want,” he goads. “If it makes you feel less guilty. It’ll take longer, but I don’t have anywhere to be.”
I’m trying not to squir
m. His gentle, fluttering touch is infuriating. My panties are wetter now than they were even seconds ago. Knowing one word will get me what I want destroys my control.
“I think about you too,” I say.
He stabs a finger into the fabric, almost piercing the lace, nearly inside me. My hips buck. I put my palms on his cheeks. I don’t know if it’s to stop him or bring him closer. The thought of another man terrifies me. The reality, though, excites me. That he wants me this badly. That he can’t keep his hands off what doesn’t belong to him. My mind is wondrously wrapped up in him, and we’ve barely touched.
With his other hand, he grabs my hair by the roots. “If you can’t do this, I will,” he says. “I’ll make this decision for us. When you hurt tomorrow, physically or emotionally . . . when you question what we did . . . when you ache to do it again—I’ll take the blame for all of it, Sadie.”
He assaults my mouth with his kiss. My heart seizes up with surprise and fear. His tongue dominates mine, his lips hard and bruising, and the burn of desire scorches my final reservations. I catch up with his greedy lips, sweeping my tongue in broad strokes, searching for purchase with my teeth. I nab his pouty bottom lip, as I’ve wanted to for weeks, and he growls into my mouth.
He’s stopped touching me, but I bury my hands under his clothing. He’s fiery hot, shuddering when I spread my fingers across his abs. I pull at his shirt, and he props himself on one arm to remove it by the collar.
As I thought, my blond, bearded lover has the physique of a Greek god. I run my hands over the planes of his pecs, the grid of his stomach. He doesn’t let me adulate long. He pinches my chin between his fingers and turns my head toward the room, the front door. “I saw you in the hallway with him the other night,” he says into my ear. “I was crazy over it.”
I curl my fingers into the scratchy velvet. It’s infuriating—Finn watching us, thinking he has any right to be crazy over me, bringing it up now. Any emotion I have is fuel on the fire, though. It just makes me twist under him, desperate for some measure of relief.
Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set Page 16