She looks back. “What?”
Even though I specifically gave Butter Boutique guidelines as to what we would and wouldn’t photograph, they sent a thong. “It’s too revealing.”
“Then don’t photograph the back,” she says.
They’ll know. People will look at my girlfriend and know there’s a string up her ass. “No.”
“But the photographs don’t even show my face. The whole point of this is that I’m anonymous.”
It’s true. Some of our success online is thanks to the mystery around Halston’s identity. The photos, artfully sensual, stand on their own, but our followers are also curious about her. I shake my head. “You promised, Hals. You agreed that if we did this promotion, I’d get to call the shots.”
After a moment, she nods. I have to draw the line somewhere. Last month, when Butter Boutique reached out to us, my original answer to having my girlfriend pose half-nude in cocky lingerie had been a resounding hell no. But Halston had forced me to see this was a joint decision. It’s her business too. It took some convincing to get me to agree, and the five-grand they offered us didn’t hurt, but my one condition was that I’d have final say over the pictures.
As she passes on her way back to the bedroom, I take her upper arm. “Hey.”
She looks up at me, her big, gray eyes open. Loving. “I understand,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
I bend a little to kiss her but stop. If we start down that path, I won’t be able to pull myself back. “I’m trying.”
“I know you are.” She rises onto the tips of her toes, angling her mouth toward mine, but I draw back. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
“We have to keep this business until we’re done, or I’ll go and fuck everything up. Your hair, makeup, this . . .” I trail my finger along the waistband of her thong. “Put it aside for when the camera’s off.”
She arches an eyebrow at me. “So you do like it?”
“Can’t you see that I’m hard right now?”
“Oh, yes. I can see that you’re very cocky.” Her eyes sparkle. “It’s going to be hours before I can do anything about it, though.”
“That’ll only make it sweeter when we get there.”
Halston changes into a red, Kimono-style silk robe. Still sexy but not as revealing. I’ve photographed her fully dressed and made her impossible to resist, so I’m not worried it’s too modest. She nails the fantasy. Butter Boutique recognizes that.
Halston wears rooster-red lipstick to match the robe. Paired with her blonde hair, she’s a verified seductress. My instincts war inside me, even with poultry on the brain. My heart races seeing her this way. One of the reasons I love her is her ability to strip herself bare for me. To open up and show me—and the camera—her wants and needs, her insecurities and vulnerabilities. I want to claim her, remind her she’s mine. At the same time, the purpose of this photo shoot is to share her with others. To post the pictures, advertise Butter Boutique, and get publicity for our account and the cause. Halston has been so focused on building our following lately. The more followers we get, the more she wants. It makes her happy.
She pulls the sleek collar of the robe up around her neck, and I take the photo, making sure to get only her red lips and blonde hair in the frame. Next, she turns around and looks back over her shoulder at me. I brush strands of hair from her face, but they fall back against the corner of her mouth. This close, you can see the faint, butterfly-and-blossom print of the robe. It’s perfect. Butter will love the shot. Everyone else will love Halston.
We work all afternoon. She models ruffled bra and panty sets, a dusty rose-colored babydoll dress, a nude negligee that ghosts over her nipples. If I squint, she looks naked in that one, so I try not to squint. In editing, I’ll make sure she’s covered.
Over a hundred photos later, the winter sun hides behind the New York City skyline. “That was nine outfits, right?” I ask, eager to finish. My hard-on’s getting painful. “There’s one more?”
“I saved it for last,” she says. “It might take me a few minutes to change.”
“Need some help getting into it?”
One corner of her mouth lifts. “Better if you stay here. Otherwise, we’ll never get around to finishing the shoot.”
Considering she’s just paraded around like a waking wet dream, I can’t imagine this getting better. Truthfully, I’m not sure I can handle anything more. If I hadn’t committed to photographing ten different outfits, I’d call it a day. I need to be inside her. “Just make it quick.”
I go into the kitchen to make us each a drink because I’m happy this is almost over, and five thousand dollars is definitely worth a toast. Halston gets looser when she’s buzzed, but I don’t want her drunk. We’ve both been frustrated for hours, and I anticipate a long night of de-frustrating ahead.
I get two tumblers and a bottle of bourbon from a cabinet and set them on the counter next to Halston’s journals. Journals—plural. I still can’t believe there’s more of the sexy poetry I found months ago in a coffee shop. Page by page, I’d gorged on her before I’d even met her. I’d drunk her in, made myself sick on her. And then she’d revealed there were other journals.
Can I handle more? After fate had given me just a taste of Halston, I’d done everything in my power to find her. I love that journal—it led me to right to her. I want more of it. I also recognize the sometimes dangerous power her words have over me.
I don’t want to torture myself any more tonight, but temptation gets the better of me, and I pick up the journal Hals called “dark.” With her approval, I’ve read parts of it, but only when she isn’t around because she’s self-conscious about it. I was interrupted mid-passage last night when she came home from work, so now, I open to that same page. She describes the cinch of a silk tie around her wrists. Being fastened to a bed, made helpless. How the cold hardens her nipples, but she has no way of covering herself. All that turns me on. Hals and I have experimented with tying her up, but we never get very far before we give in and fuck. But it’s the next part of her entry that nearly has me coming in my pants.
Spread out
I lie still as death
While you move just the ends of me,
Post to post.
Helplessly bared
My ankles in your possession,
You unfold me—
“Finn?” Halston calls from the other room.
I put the journal down—interrupted again and hard as fuck. The image of her ankles spread on the bed is fresh in my mind as I pick up our drinks. Mine. Completely mine to do with what I want.
I walk through the doorway, and Halston’s standing tall in high heels by the couch. A pink satin corset with little black bows flattens out her tummy and boosts her tits nearly up to her chin. The ends of her blonde, curled hair quiver with each breath, brushing the neckline. As if that weren’t sexy enough, the outfit comes with matching garters and thigh-highs.
She glances at the drinks and starts across the room. “Is that for me?”
“Stop.”
“What?” She freezes, then smiles shyly when she notices my hungry expression. “You like it?”
This is no time to play coy. I can practically feel my erection tearing through the fabric of my jeans. “Let’s do this one in the bedroom.”
“I thought our bed was off limits?”
It’d been another one of my stipulations for agreeing to this. Our bed was too personal to shoot images for money. Now, though, I can’t think of a better place for this one. “Bedroom,” I order. “Now.”
She turns and struts down the hallway, her half-covered ass cheeks bobbing with each step. I follow with the drinks and my camera. Sadly, my bedframe lacks posts, so there’s nothing to which I can tie her. I obviously wasn’t thinking ahead when I bought it.
I hand Halston her drink. She sniffs it as I step into her, sipping my own bourbon. I tuck some of her hair behind her ear and kiss her forehead, her cheek. “How do you want it?” I asked.
“Soft? Hard? Want to be made love to tonight, or something else?”
“I want whatever you want,” she breathes.
“That wasn’t what I asked. Tell me now, because I’ll be completely lost in you soon. Too lost to make coherent decisions. I want to make you happy.”
She flattens her hand on my chest and tilts her head back to look up at me. “I don’t have to tell you how I like it best. You always seem to know.”
I drop a gentle, light kiss on her lips. “Sit. Take your drink with you.”
She backs up and perches on the edge of the bed. Without instruction, she holds the glass of amber liquid between her legs. I take a picture. She dips her finger in the alcohol and draws a wet heart on the curve of her breast. Snap. She lies down, arching her breasts toward the ceiling, and I capture the curved space between her lower back and the white comforter.
“I want to see you,” I say from the foot of the bed.
Something flashes through her eyes. Fear? Anticipation? She knows I’d never photograph her this way for anyone other than myself . . . doesn’t she? She unclips her stockings, removes them with the garters, then lifts her hips off the bed to strip her underwear off. I graze my thumb over the arch of her foot and take her panties, tossing them aside before I set my camera on the armoire behind me.
She watches my every move, her chest rising and falling faster. I lift her bare ankle to my mouth to kiss her skin where it’s thinnest. Stepping sideways, I place her foot at one corner of the bed then do the same with her other one. She’s spread out, her warm, pink pussy open to me.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asks breathlessly.
“Arms above your head.” She raises them. I move each of her hands to the top edge of the mattress. “Hold on to that. Don’t move. At all. Even if it feels impossible.”
“Impossible?”
I admire the long, white line of her inner forearms, tracing a fingertip down to her face as goose bumps light up her skin. I lift her chin, thumbing the bow of her plump lips. She quivers but doesn’t move. I trail my fingers down her neck to the tops of her breasts. I’d bet all our earnings her nipples are hard as pebbles under that bustier. I’m tempted to open it, to free her tits for my hands and mouth, but I’m turned on enough as it is.
Halston manages to keep still until I caress the sliver of skin between the bottom of the corset and her mound. She bucks her hips and I press down on them, stilling her. She follows me with her eyes. Once her body is quiet again, I reach between her legs. I keep my eyes on hers as I slip one finger between her folds.
Her face crumbles. “Please,” she begs, even though I’ve barely touched her.
“You won’t move, will you?”
She starts to shake her head but stops. “No.”
I push the sleeve of my sweater up to my forearm and run my fingers around her clit a few times. She looks pained as she tries not to move. I explore her warmth, but my own patience is thin. Once she’s wet enough, I slide two fingers into her, appreciating the way she groans.
“Will you come this way for me, Hals?”
“Yes.” She sighs. “Yes, Finn. Please.”
I pump my fingers in and out of her, getting even more turned on by the fact that I’m fully dressed while she’s naked from the waist down and at my mercy. All I can see from my vantage point is her face and my hand cupped between her legs, my fingers disappearing inside her. I make her climax like that so she’ll be nice and loose for me to fuck.
After coming on my hand, she calms as I stroke her thigh. She blinks at me a few times. “May I move now?”
“Depends where you want to go.”
Hesitantly, she removes a hand from above her head, sits up, and reaches for the fly of my pants. Our eyes lock as she pops the button open. My hand is still on her leg, and when she takes me out, I inadvertently squeeze her thigh. My cock is thick and heavy in her hand, nearly purple with the need for release. Halston’s slender fingers feather up and down my shaft. She traces her nail along the rim of my head.
“If you keep that up, I’m going to come all over that precious corset of yours.”
She grins at me. “Good thing we don’t have to return it.”
Seeing her smile, her good humor, I just want to be close to her. I take her hand off me and kiss her palm. Eye level with my cock, she puts her mouth around me without prompting. It isn’t what I had in mind, but I thread my hand into the hair at the back of her head and growl up at the ceiling. She’s more confident than she was the first time she blew me, more in tune with how I like it. Which, to be honest, is however she gives it. Slow, fast, deep, shallow. I resist fucking her mouth because I know I’ll come sooner than I want to. I reach over to the nightstand and get a condom. “Put this on me, babe.”
She pulls back, panting a little, and opens the packet without questioning me. As much as I want to feel her skin to skin, to fuck her raw and trust the birth control, I can’t. She knows I won’t. I made that mistake before with my ex and paid the price.
I still have one hand in Halston’s hair, unwilling to let her go as she rolls on the condom. “I wonder if Butter Boutique knew this is where we’d end up.”
“Anything to benefit the barnyard,” she says.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” I agree, and then promptly lose my train of thought as she pushes my jeans down around my ankles. I step out of them as Halston stands and wraps her arms around my neck. “What do you want?” I ask.
“Lift me.” I pick her up and she wraps her legs around me. She nuzzles her nose against my neck. “Now sit.”
I do as I’m told and turn with her in my arms to sit on the edge of the bed. Halston pulls herself closer to me, lifting up. I catch on quickly, lining up my cock for her. She sinks down, gasping for breath. Like every time, I fill her fully, completely, but especially in this position. If it takes her time to adjust, I don’t know it, because she seats herself all the way down until I’m buried in her.
I grab her hips and rock her against me, forward and backward, as she keeps a firm hold around my neck. With her head tossed back, her soft, blonde hair, cascades around her. “You’re so beautiful,” I tell her. “And you’re all mine . . . my pink Valentine.”
I kiss her, opening her up. Our tongues meet, wet and eager. She’s warm everywhere—her pussy yielding to me like the inside of her mouth did. Her gyrations become less controlled, more fervent. I bring her down onto me harder and harder. I won’t last much longer. I dip her backward to deepen the angle and to give my mouth access to the swell of her tits. Consuming each other, consumed by each other, we fuck. Her fingers dig into my hair and pull. I suck her neck. I manage to keep my orgasm at bay until she writhes, her cries growing louder and less breathy. Once I feel her pussy clamping around me, pulling me deeper, I lie back on the bed and bounce her up and down my cock until I can’t hold back another second. I squeeze her waist and erupt for what feels like minutes. Even after I’ve finished, I pump my hips a few times, bobbing her forward so she has to flatten her hands on my chest to keep herself upright.
I slide my hands from her waist up to her shoulders, hugging her to bring her close. She folds in against my chest. This is just one of the many ways I love to have her—exhausted by me, vulnerable, quivering, close to my heart.
I can’t believe how big my love feels after relatively little time with her.
“Halston?” I ask after a while.
She must’ve fallen asleep, because she starts. She shifts just her head to look up at me. Her gray eyes are closer to blue tonight, sated and sleepy. “Hmm?”
“Will you be mine?”
“I already am.”
“I mean for Valentine’s Day.”
She wrinkles her nose up at me. “Don’t you know? I’m yours every day of the year. The date doesn’t matter.”
I smooth her hair from her forehead. Of course I know, because when a cocky bastard like myself catches a break from fate, he makes sure to appreciate it.
I know something good when I see it.
And Halston might be the best something to ever happen to me.
Read Finn and Halston’s complete story in Yours to Bare by Jessica Hawkins. Also available as an audiobook narrated by Sebastian York and Andi Arndt.
About the Author
Jessica Hawkins is a USA TODAY bestselling author known for her “emotionally gripping” and “off-the-charts hot” romance. Dubbed “queen of angst” by both peers and readers for her smart and provocative work, she’s garnered a cult-like following of fans who love to be torn apart…and put back together.
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She writes romance both at home in New York City and around the world, a coffee shop traveler who bounces from café to café with just a laptop, headphones, and coffee cup. She loves to keep in close touch with her readers, mostly via Facebook, Instagram, and her mailing list.
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Also by Jessica Hawkins
SOMETHING IN THE WAY SERIES
Something in the Way is an epic saga of forbidden love and a USA TODAY bestselling series.
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It was a hot summer day when I met him on the construction site next to my parents' house. Under the sweat and dirt, Manning Sutter was as handsome as the sun was bright. He was older, darker, experienced. I wore a smiley-face t-shirt and had never even been kissed. Yet we saw something in each other that would link us in ways that couldn't be broken...no matter how hard we tried.
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I loved Manning before I knew the meaning of the word. I was too young, he said. I would wait. Through all the carefully chosen words hiding what we knew to be true, his struggle to keep me innocent, and infinitely starry nights—I would wait. But I'd learn that no matter what you achieve in life, it means nothing if you suffer the heartbreak that comes with falling for someone you can never have. Because even though I saw Manning first, that didn't matter. My older sister saw him next.
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