by BETH KERY
Esa’s eyes shot open when he worked the first well-lubricated finger through her labia and rubbed her moist, sensitive tissues. Moments later the simmering fire in her flesh flashed into a blinding explosion.
“Shhhh,” Finn whispered softly as his lips brushed against her temple. Esa blinked in disorientation. She was lying on her back on Finn’s bed and he leaned over her, still wearing his unfastened jeans. Her breath passed raggedly over her lips in the aftermath of her orgasm.
“Oh my God, that felt so good,” she mumbled as her hands rose to touch his beautiful golden body. She could feel his hard penis pressed against her thigh. It emanated heat, driving her wild. She reached for him.
But he thwarted her attempts by grabbing both her wrists and pushing them to the mattress above her head.
“What are you doing?” she asked, miffed at being denied the treat of caressing his lean, well-defined muscles gloved in thick, smooth skin or stroking his long, shapely cock.
“I’m tired of your teasing me all the time. I told you I was the boss here in bed.” Although his look was hard, his lips curved into a sexy grin. “And the boss says you have to keep your hands above your head.”
“Or?”
“You don’t want to find out,” he told her pointedly. Esa rolled her eyes.
But she didn’t move her hands.
Instead she lay there in growing trepidation and anticipation as he knelt between her knees and deliberately spread her thighs wide. Her hips shifted restlessly.
“Finn…”
“Yes?” he asked as he looked up at her.
Esa swallowed heavily. She experienced a strange brew of paradoxical emotions. She wanted to close her legs and lower her hands to cover her vulnerable core. She also felt a powerful desire to remain spread like that for Finn—stretched open wide. Her fingers clutched desperately to each other when he began to lean down over her, his eyes on her face.
“I-I don’t think that—”
“I do think. No running this time, Esa,” he told her softly. He opened his large hands on her thighs, keeping her spread wide, and lowered his head.
And Esa forgot how to breathe.
She stared up at the ceiling wide-eyed, seeing nothing as sensation flooded her awareness. Nothing could distract her from the intense feelings that Finn’s firm, agile tongue or sublime suction wrought on her flesh. He’d taken away all possibility of action, holding her firmly so that her hips couldn’t squirm away from his exquisite, deliberate torture. She couldn’t even hold his head to her, cherish him, attenuate the pressure when it became overwhelming.
She just had to take it. And it was so, so good.
Finn growled low and feral a while later when she arched up off the bed, her muscles flexing almost unbearably tight as she came. He nursed her through the roughest part of her storm while she cried out and whimpered and her fingernails pressed crescent shapes into her palms.
She watched through heavy eyelids as he rose up over her and dove for the bedside table. Her body throbbed with a dull, heavy ache. When Finn shoved his jeans and underwear to his thighs she realized just how aroused he was. He wasted no time in sliding on a condom and positioning himself.
She cried out sharply when he arrowed into her in one stroke, hard and true. He shouted out simultaneously and dropped his cheek to her shoulder, pressing his lips to her neck. Esa waited anxiously as her body accustomed itself to his presence and Finn’s warm breath struck her in rapid puffs of air. He lifted his head slowly when she caressed his shoulders and back.
“Put your arms back on the bed, Esa,” he ordered.
Her eyes went wide. She slowly replaced her hands above her head on the bed.
His cock throbbed inside her.
He came up off her upper body, leaning on his muscular arms. Esa panted shallowly as he pinned her with his stare and began to move.
After a moment, Esa closed her eyes. It was really too much for her to bear. Pleasure swamped her. His cock filled her so perfectly, rubbing and agitating deep, secret, virgin flesh. But it wasn’t just that. Watching him as he watched her, feeling him merge with her so completely…it felt like the most intimate moment she’d ever experienced.
And Esa didn’t know what to make of that.
He allowed her the small escape of shutting her eyes for a while as he built the friction in her all over again. But then he changed the angle of his assault on her senses and slammed into her more forcefully.
“Open your eyes,” she heard him demand in an uneven, rough voice.
She followed his command, her face clenching with desire at the sight of him. He held his long, lean beautiful body off her with his hands on the headboard behind her. Their pelvises smacked against each other briskly with each downward plunge of his long, deliberate thrusts. His golden torso gleamed with a coat of perspiration.
When she looked into his heavy-lidded gaze his formerly smooth, long strokes became delicious, fast jabs. His handsome face tightened at the amplified pleasure.
“Come, Esa. Come with me.”
Esa jerked her head back and screamed, submitting to his command without conscious thought, climaxing powerfully. Finn roared as he joined her. He continued to pump into her hard and fast throughout his own orgasm, the sensation of his spasming, thrusting cock giving her the longest, most explosive orgasm she’d ever experienced in her life.
He collapsed on top of her, panting heavily. Esa finally moved her arms, stroking his back languorously, loving the feel of his weight on her and the bursts of his breath on her shoulder. Eventually his ragged gasps slowed and evened and he resituated himself more comfortably on top of her. He groaned when she lightly scraped his skin with her nails.
A heavy, warm sensation settled into Esa’s limbs. She felt her body sinking…sinking further into the mattress, further into this drowsy, delicious fog.
“Finn?” she muttered sleepily.
He lifted his head to look at her.
“You were right,” she whispered. She saw him quirk up one brow slightly in query. “I should let you have the driver’s seat more often. At least when we’re not in a car.”
Esa struggled to keep her eyelids open in order to see his growing smile.
“Esa?”
“Yes,” she mumbled.
“Go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
And just like that she did.
The sun shone brightly through Finn’s floor-to-ceiling windows when Esa blinked her eyes open groggily the next morning. She stirred lazily, only to sit up when she realized Finn wasn’t in bed with her. She’d slept without dreams last night, warm and content within the circle of his arm.
At dawn she’d awakened to see his gaze on her. They’d made love again, slowly and sweetly, and in the end with a wild, intense abandon.
Afterward Esa had stared out the window as panic rose slowly in her breast. Eventually she’d joined Finn again in sleep. But this time her rest had been haunted by anxious dreams.
She was falling in love with him. Last night had signaled the treacherous moment when she crossed that line that led from cautionary infatuation to dangerous devotion.
Esa groaned softly and fell back on the bed.
She must have fallen under some kind of spell last night to let down her guard so completely. Maybe there was magic in the air on All Hallow’s Eve. Because in the blazing light of day the events of last night—the memories of their passionate, soulful lovemaking—took on the quality of a dream.
It hurt knowing that while she’d fallen for him for all his wonderful characteristics, he’d given no clear indication that he cared for anything besides the convenient mutual sexual gratification that was behind their initial hook-up, an opportunity for some self-soothing rebound sex.
But surely there was more to it than that for him. Last night—his touch, his intensity, the raw need in his tone when he’d said her name.
All things that were easily ascribable to lust, Esa reminded herself grimly.
>
She jumped when the bathroom door opened. She was surprised to see that Finn had showered and dressed. He looked thoroughly edible in a pair of faded jeans and a light blue t-shirt that highlighted his lean, muscular torso, healthy tan and brilliant blue eyes to breathtaking effect.
“Do you have to go in to work?” she murmured when he came over to the bed and sat down.
He nodded before he leaned down and gifted her with one of his slow, hot, patentable kisses.
“I don’t want to but I need to—at least for part of the day. We have a lot to do before we open that express lane for Monday morning traffic,” he said softly next to her lips a few seconds later.
“It seemed just perfect to me.”
“Monday morning traffic is a bit more complicated to consider than one red-headed speed demon in a Ferrari,” he teased her warmly. He delved his fingers in her hair and studied the way it looked in his hand for a silent moment. “You were going to tell me something about a misunderstanding last night. Remember?”
“Oh, right. I guess I forgot with everything else that happened,” Esa said, trepidation jolting through her at his unexpected words.
He met her gaze and smiled. “It’s okay. You sort of made me forget about everything else too. So what was it that you wanted to tell me?”
Esa swallowed uneasily. “It…it actually all started with that car.”
His forehead scrunched in confusion. “The car? Your Ferrari?”
“Well the thing about it is, see, it’s not really my car. Those license plates and everything—SXKITN69. As if,” Esa rolled her eyes, her nervousness increasing when Finn’s gaze narrowed on her. “And—you’ll think this part is funny,” she said, although the last thing Finn looked like doing at that moment was laughing, “I’m not really the publisher of Metro Sexy magazine.”
“Why did you tell me you were, then?”
“Well, I never really did. You just assumed that.”
He gave her a strange, unreadable look and straightened. “I assumed that because your name was on the office door and you were sitting behind your desk.”
Esa bit her lip anxiously as she sat up in bed, securing the sheet around her breasts. It sounded even worse than she’d expected when she said it out loud. But she’d started now—she couldn’t stop. “That’s not my office. It’s my sister Rachel’s office. Everybody calls her Kitten. It’s her Ferrari. She’s the publisher of Metro Sexy. My offices are actually in Orland Park. I’m a physician.”
“You’re a physician,” Finn repeated flatly.
Esa nodded, not caring for the toneless quality of his voice. This was not going as well as she’d hoped.
“Your offices are in Orland Park,” he said, as though he were trying to get everything straight. “And yet I specifically remember you telling me some story about driving north in traffic that first night because you wanted to start a south suburban version of Metro Sexy.”
Esa grimaced. “Well, I had to say something—”
“And that something was a lie,” he clarified slowly.
“Well, yes, but—”
“What part of it was true then?” His eyes raked over the mussed bed before he stood.
“Finn, don’t ask that. Of course all the important stuff was…you know. Genuine.” She watched him in rising panic as he studied her, almost feeling him flying away from her, distancing himself even though he hadn’t moved, technically speaking. God, here he was bruised and shaken from the likes of Julia Weatherell and she pelted something like this at him. Esa suddenly felt as if she’d rattled his Self-Confidence Richter Scale like King Kong.
“I-I thought it was what you wanted.”
His nostrils flared slightly as he broke their stare. “Why would I want to be lied to?”
“You’re taking this all wrong. Let me explain—”
“Actually, I don’t have time for it right now, Esa. I need to get to work.”
Esa just stared in open-mouthed incredulity as he walked out of the room. A few seconds later she heard the front door open and shut with what sounded to her ringing ears like a grim click of finality.
* * * * *
“Are you sure you want to trade?” Rachel asked as she dangled the keys to Esa’s Lexus teasingly in front of her sister’s face.
They stood out on the driveway of their parents’ home. Both the dark blue Lexus and the red Ferrari gleamed brightly in the bright autumn sunlight. David Ormond finished winding the hose that they’d used to wash both cars and stood.
“I’m going inside to catch the end of the Illinois game,” Esa’s father said.
“Thanks for the help, Dad,” Esa called as he waved and walked toward the house.
“Go Illini!” Rachel cheered in her best macho voice.
Esa and Rachel often went out to their parents’ suburban house to wash their cars since they both had indoor parking spots in the city. Even though the day was chilly they’d decided to wash their cars before they returned them back to their original owners. Unfortunately they hadn’t been able to talk much while they did it since their father was there helping.
“Well? What do you think? I’m betting you don’t want to let go of my little pretty,” Rachel teased.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Esa mumbled distractedly as she grabbed her car keys. She’d been completely out of it all day. Her mind kept replaying the incident with Finn until she thought she’d scream if she pictured the way he’d looked at her one more time, as if she were a slightly revolting stranger who had suddenly appeared in his bed out of nowhere.
He just needed some time to process it. He had a right to be a bit dazed after learning she’d lied to him, after all.
What if he never wanted to talk to her again?
Esa found herself staring at the shiny cherry red Ferrari. It was all that stupid car’s fault.
“It was a nightmare driving that thing, you know,” she told Rachel sourly. “That car is like giving a double dose of Viagra to every horn-dog in the city.”
Rachel chuckled. “Horn-dog? Is that what you’d call Finn Madigan?”
Esa did a double take and grabbed her sister’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” she said sternly.
“Uh oh. Am I in trouble, teacher?”
Esa studied her little sister through narrowed eyelids. At the moment she looked almost exactly like she had when she was fifteen years old, when she’d made it her life’s mission to tease and torment every waking moment of Esa’s anguished teenage years. Her dark red hair was pulled into a high, bouncy ponytail. She wore faded jeans and white Keds tennis shoes. Her pretty face looked fresh-scrubbed as a dewy peach in the bright sunlight. Few would have guessed that the young woman who walked next to Esa with the mischievous glint in her big brown eyes had single-handedly launched and ran the most popular magazine in the city of Chicago.
“Carla spilled that you plotted with her for this whole flirting in traffic scheme, even getting me to drive that pimpette machine of yours to further your cause.”
Rachel smiled in a friendly fashion, completely unscathed by the fury in her sister’s tone. “I’d love to take all the credit but in all fairness I can’t. I wanted you to loosen up a little, have some fun, that’s all. Both Carla and I have been worried that you were going to pre-purchase your cemetery plot any day now. But you far surpassed my expectations, Esa. Who’d a thought you’d actually snag yourself a man as gorgeous as Finn Madigan?
“His brother though,” Rachel paused and made a sound of disgust, “I feel terrible that Carla got hooked up with such a loser. A few more dating nightmares like hers and Metro Sexy’s reputation is going straight down the drain.”
Esa refrained from sarcastically expressing the great loss to the world that would be. All of the fury and confusion about what had occurred with Finn this morning found a focused outlet on her sister.
“For your information, Carla is crazy about Jess. It’s my situation that’s a nightmare, and Metro Sexy’s got nothing to
do with that. No, that’s all your fault! You never could keep your nose out of my life. Just like that time you called Blake Merrill when I was in the tenth grade and told him I was crying my eyes out in my bed because he’d broken up with me.”
“I was pissed off at that jerk. I wanted him to know what an idiot he was for dumping my sister,” Rachel defended.
Esa stopped in front of Mr. and Mrs. Burbage’s brick colonial and turned to face her sister. “I was mortified. The last thing I wanted was for Blake to know how I really felt about him when he’d broken up with me!”
“And then he asked out that sleazy Marianne Jordan, remember?”
“Rachel, that’s not the point!” Esa shouted so loud that Mr. Burbage pushed back the curtains and looked outside. Rachel waved in a friendly fashion before she grabbed Esa’s elbow and forced her to start walking.
“And why in the world didn’t you tell me about Finn’s calling you?” Esa asked, her voice shaking with anger. She was at least mollified to see that Rachel looked a bit guilty.
“Oh, that. Well, I was confused at first—I mean, who was this guy calling me and saying he was concerned about me leaving and was everything all right, and would I please give him a call? I didn’t recognize his name and I haven’t gone on any benders for at least a month, so I knew I couldn’t have just blacked it out,” Rachel added with a gamine grin that faded when Esa gave her an exasperated look.
“Right. So the next thing I know he’s calling and mentioning not only your name, but Julia Weatherell’s. Well, that got my interest.”
“What did he say, precisely?” Esa asked, her footsteps slowing.
“He said he felt bad about Julia just walking into the bedroom like that.” Rachel paused and gave her sister an openly curious look.
“Go on,” Esa grated out.
Rachel sighed, obviously recognizing she wasn’t going to get anything juicy out of her dried-up older sister.
“He said that he and Julia used to be engaged and that apparently she felt she had the right to enter his condominium any time she pleased. ‘Which she doesn’t’—that’s what he said, rather firmly, I should add.”