by Ally Blake
When it came down to it, Finn was no better. He had fake IDs in safety deposit boxes all over town. Money secreted in overseas banks. Hell, he had bundles of cash stuffed into his mattress if it came to that.
He could backpack. Walk the world. Grow his hair. Grow a beard. Put on weight. Change his accent. Stick to jeans and t-shirts and slap on a cap, and half the people he worked with would walk past him on the street without a second glance. Give it three months and he’d be unrecognisable even to those who thought they knew him best.
All he had to do was walk out the front door—
The buzzer rang, bringing with it a face.
April.
Just thinking her name, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet. Not tonight.
For all the sense of impending doom, he still had time. Days. Weeks even. He would do this right. Thorough not fast. Tie off every loose end so as to make his departure clean as a whistle.
He pushed himself to his feet, his legs still not quite his after his punishing run, marathon swim, second punishing run.
Pressing the security button, he unleashed a disembodied voice. “Evening Mr. Ward. A Miss Swanson here to see you.”
“Thanks, Joe. Send her up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Finn flicked out his hands. Cricked his neck. Paced back and forth. Adrenalin now tickled at the edges of the hollows inside of him.
As the seconds ticked by he watched his front door. He imagined her in the lift in one of her floaty, fairy dresses, watching the numbers, fixing her wild waves as the lift doors opened, walking down his hall.
As he uncorked a bottle of wine, he willed those seconds on. Hurrying them. As if she was the only thing that could fill those empty spaces. Could give him respite from the hard decisions needing to be made.
Altruism wasn’t in his DNA. He needed her too much right now. When he was with her, everything else faded away. Leaving him with clarity. Simplicity. Silence. Room to think. Licence to simply be.
For all the luxuries his success afforded him, those were the kinds of luxuries he’d never been able to afford. Until April.
Beneath all the pretty language, he was using her. Then again, she also was using him.
A soft knock nudged at the door.
Finn breathed out hard. Opened up. And...
“April?”
It was her. No doubt about that. But she’d been squeezed, flattened, and glossed till she only looked a little like the woman he knew.
Her hair fell over her shoulders in long, sleek, gold-tinted auburn swathes. Her wide, grey eyes were smoky and deep. Her lips were soft, dewy, and slick. A pale green dress that dipped at the chest and stopped inches shy of her knees melted over her lean curves like cream over ice cream. She white knuckled a small, silver purse till it wrinkled. And her shoes – binding her feet in straps of cream string – brought her nose to his chin.
She looked stunning.
She looked wrong.
She looked exactly like the kind of woman who’d fit in at Frank’s New Year’s Parties.
And it had Hazel written all over it.
April took a step – tottering a little on her shoes – and whooped as her hands flung out sideways for balance.
Finn’s coiling tension slipped a notch. For all the gloss and glamour, his April was in there somewhere.
Not his April. The April he’d expected. Two very different things.
“I look like an idiot,” she said, shoulders hunching, mouth turning down at the corners.
“You don’t look like an idiot.” Smooth, Ward. Right up there with “you’re not ugly”.
“You look gobsmacked. Like someone has literally smacked you in the mouth and you can’t close it. This wasn’t my idea, you know. The place I told you about the other night, the people who are helping me get this promotion, they kind of ambushed me. They did stuff to me. Without my express permission. I was beautician-ally violated. Then they shoved me out the door with a list of things I was supposed to say and do the moment I saw you including sashaying, and coy looks, and...” Her words faltered but she stood straighter, tugging her shoulders back until her breasts lifted against the confines of her dress. “Too many things to remember.”
“I believe you.”
She looked up, the anguish in her eyes dissipating like a drop of blood in an ocean of silver. “Really? Because I told them they were on the wrong track. That this, that we, were out of bounds. That unless it pertained to work, and my promotion, it wasn’t their business. But they’re maniacs. And I didn’t have time to de-makeover.”
He nodded. “Your hair...”
“I know, right? It hurts. Literally. Not the scalp but my actual strands. Don’t believe anyone when they tell you hair isn’t a living thing. Mine’s only just stopped crying.”
Relief and release poured through him as she dragged a smile out of him. “You look lovely. Different lovely. Like a Real Housewife of Sydney, but a lovely one.”
She gave him a look – dry, artless, amused – and he saw his April emerge from beneath the trappings. Suddenly lovely didn’t even come close.
It physically hurt not to touch her.
So he touched her.
Tucking a hand under April’s elbow, Finn eased her inside. He took her purse from her hands and dropped it to the small table in the entry where he kept his keys.
When he shut the door with a soft click behind her she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“A little fraught, are we?”
“Are you kidding? I’m so nervous I can’t feel my toes.”
“Take off your shoes.”
“Aren’t you cocky on your home turf?”
He grinned. Ear to ear. The dull ache left over from sending the letter was gone. And it was all because of her.
“Only trying to make you more comfortable. And less likely to leap behind the couch at the first loud noise.”
“I will then, thank you.” With that, she wriggled out of her shoes, shrank a good few inches, and nudged the offending beasts out of the way. “I imagined myself twisting an ankle and you having to drive me to emergency.”
“Very gentlemanly of me.”
“Oh, totally. You brought me coffee in the waiting room. Strong. Sweet. Still steaming. You held an ice pack on my foot. You stayed till I fell asleep. As far as anxiety attacks went, it was all rather romantic.”
She gave him another look then. As if she’d only then remembered she was alone with him in his apartment, for reasons of a romantic nature. Muttering under her breath about “taking a tour”, she headed deeper inside. Away from him. Her slippery dress doing its slippery thing as she padded, barefoot, through his home.
“Nice place you have here, Ward. Wow, what a view! Just moved in?”
“Not so much.”
“But where’s all your stuff?” Her gaze glanced off the minimal furnishings. “I can barely keep a surface clean my stuff keeps compiling so fast. Needless to say, you could fit four of my apartments into one of yours...” Her voice petered away as she shot him an unreadable look. “Ah. Halfway to packed I imagine. Smart move.”
Finn had been moving to the kitchen to get her a drink, but one foot stopped midair. His heart squeezing like it had been enclosed in a fist. How the hell did she know he was leaving? Had he actually intimated as much? He thought back over all the things he’d said, but it was lost in a blur of her smiles, her laughter, and drowning in her wide, grey eyes.
More importantly, she’d spent the afternoon with Hazel. Had it come up? Unfortunately, since he’d not told her about his link to Hazel, it wasn’t possible to ask.
Or was it?
He turned to April to find her leaning over his sofa, her arms resting along the backrest. One bare foot ran up the back of the other calf. The city lights played over her delicate profile.
At her simple beauty, so fresh and genuine, the pieces of himself that had loosened earlier, broke free inside of him. Like the sheering away of the face of an icebe
rg, they were there and then they were gone. The force of it as annihilating. As permanent.
And it hit him. None of it mattered. Not his messy past. Nor the big, blank future. Nor how they’d come to meet. They only mattered in that they’d brought him to this point. To this woman. This moment.
The wine could wait.
Pulse thrumming, he went to her, sliding an arm around her waist, pushing aside her long, silky hair, he kissed the back of her neck.
She sighed as if she’d been waiting for just that. Then she turned. Ran her hands over his back, into his hair. And smiled. All raw heat and unapologetic sensuality.
This. This was what he needed. To exist beyond the contents of the letters framing his life.
His hands ran over her slippery nothing of a dress till he found the dip of her waist. He pulled her close and she laughed, her head tipping back. The sound filling every corner of his place, of his world. Till with a groan he claimed her mouth. Claimed her. Taking everything she had to give.
Eons later, she pulled away, breathing hard, to tip her forehead against his chest. The twinkling lights of Sydney beyond were a shifting fog through his clouded vision.
“I’m clean, just so you know. And on the pill. But, when the time comes, little Finn needs a jacket all the same.”
He laughed. “Big Finn wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She lifted her head, her hair falling over one shoulder as she looked into his eyes. “My sister thinks this was a booty call,” she said, her husky voice scraping along his nerves. “Was she right?”
“Naturally,” he said, even while the truth was he had no idea exactly what this was. A grave error? Sheer necessity?
“She’ll be so pleased to hear it.”
He tilted her chin so she couldn’t look away. There was no hiding the flicker of frustration within the woozy lust. She didn’t even try. It paid to remember that if he planned to mess with this girl there would be consequences.
He let his finger trail from her chin to the soft spot behind her ear. Then leaned down to kiss the corner of her mouth. Then the other. “Are you pleased to hear it?”
She hummed. “Keep going the way you’re going and I’ll be very pleased.”
“Done.” He slipped his hands under her backside and lifted her bodily.
With a “whoop!” she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, her dress hitching up her thighs.
Laughing, filling up his empty loft with ribald joy, she leant her forehead on his shoulder and hung on for the ride. Carrying her over the threshold into his bedroom felt as inevitable as the rising moon.
When his knees hit the end of his bed, Finn let her go. She fell straight back and bounced, arms out, hair spread out on the grey sheets like silken fire.
Then she shifted till she was on her elbows, making herself more comfortable. Toes curling and crunching, she said, “Take off your shoes.”
“Now who’s the cocky one?”
She nudged a shoulder skyward. “Only trying to make you more comfortable.”
“Hmmm.” Finn did one better. He took off his shoes. Then his socks – twirling them slowly over his head before flinging them into the corner.
April gave a dramatic little shiver. “Rowr.”
Smiling, Finn’s hands moved to the cuff of his shirt. Her eyes followed. He edged a button half open. She swallowed, her next breath hitching in and out of her throat.
When he paused, her eyes narrowed, homing in on the button like lasers. “Go on then.”
Finn took his time, undoing his cuffs, then the buttons down the front of his shirt. He let it flap open. Getting a real kick out of the way her eyes roved over his bare chest as if she was committing it to memory.
He slid one arm out of the shirt, then the next. Then folded it over his arm. Neat as a pin.
Her teeth sank down on her bottom lip. And she crossed her legs. Tight.
When her eyes lifted to his they were full of fire. Humour. Challenge. “That all you got?”
He screwed up his shirt into a ball and threw it at her.
She batted it aside. Laughing. God, he loved her laugh. No apologies. No excuses. She owned her life in a way he never had.
“It wasn’t a criticism,” she said. “I get what you’re going for. It’s businessman-gets-naked-after-a-hard-day-at-the-office shtick. ‘A’ for effort. But don’t quit your day job.”
The fist around his heart tightened. She couldn’t have pinpointed the one thing he was trying not to think about if she’d tried.
He closed his eyes. Tried to once again drown out the sense of inevitability. Found he couldn’t. Not without her. Fuck it. He gave up on the striptease and eased down onto the bed. Crawling over the top of her until she had to lie back. Her laughter dried up quick smart.
He held himself over her as he kissed her. Lightly. Tasting those soft lips. Breathing in her kitten purr.
She lay back on the bed and sank one hand into his hair, letting the other rove over his bare back as she pulled him with her.
They kissed for what felt like hours. Soft drugging kisses. Deep melting kisses. Hot wet kisses.
Aching for her everywhere, Finn pulled back. Her eyes were dark and soft. Her lips pink and swollen. Little curls had sprung up around her temple.
“Wow,” she said, her voice cracking halfway through the elongated sound.
“You’re welcome.”
She grinned up at him and he felt it all the way to his groin.
“That’s one of the things I like best about you,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked, moving to nuzzle her ear.
“You are terrifyingly unapproachable – like you know how to take a man down, whether by way of bankruptcy, a knife to the side, or a scathing personal observation, which means every time you make me laugh it’s a surprise. A neat little burst of joy. And not all that much surprises me, Finn. Truth is, I don’t usually like it when it does. I feel cheated somehow. Like the wool’s been pulled over my eyes. But, weirdly enough, I like that about you.”
Finn breathed out against her neck. Hell, but she was sweet. Sweet and sultry, beautiful. A little odd. And shamelessly candid. And she liked the things about him that he’d never been able to accept. It was a devastating combination.
“Want to know what I like about you?” he asked, moving to the other ear.
“If you insist.”
He lifted to look into her eyes. Those rare, honest, deep grey eyes. Those eyes that read between his lines with such ease. Those eyes that already saw and knew too much.
“How about I show you instead.”
And he did.
Slow and sultry, taking his time to learn her body. Following her lead as she writhed beneath his touch, bit her lip, gasped.
Until their bodies were slick with sweat, their breaths choppy and hard, and the need for release in April’s eyes matched his own.
Face to face, gazes linked, bodies joined, he gently stroked her damp hair from her cheeks, and showed her what he liked about her until she cried out in ecstasy and his vigilantly contained world burst into a billion stars.
Then again in a hot, soapy shower that steamed up his whole bedroom.
And, just to make sure she was well-informed, a third time that left him with carpet burn in places he’d prefer to keep private.
He had no time to waste. No second chances. As he knew that after tonight his timeline had concertinaed dramatically.
Chapter Nine
April lay staring at the ceiling, her breath shuddering in and out of her lungs, her limbs trembling.
She’d hurt in the morning. She didn’t even know she could bend like that. The memory of how sent such a violent shudder through she couldn’t even finish the thought.
The man was a genius. A wonder. A sex god.
The man was snoring away quietly beside her, which reminded her that at the core he was still just a man. Which was somehow even more amazing. That he was actually real.
If that was what a booty call felt like, she’d have to do it more often!
Apart from the nerves that had attacked her the minute she’d entered his uber-posh building—all that security. Yikes! It had been so effortless.
Being with him gave the rumours at work validity, which eased her conscience.
Being with him quenched her thirst for the guy, which meant her urges were happy and quiet.
Two birds, one stone.
Simple.
But even as the thought slipped into her head it dissipated. It wasn’t the booty call side of things that had felt so unreal, it was the fact that she’d gone there with Finn. A guy who seemed to be living some kind of half life in his barely furnished apartment. Who had nothing personal in his bedroom, bar an upside down book on his bedside table—the one he’d told her he’d started by reading the final page, always needing to know how things end before they begin. The guy who...
But, no. Finn was no guy. Finn was a man. Flesh. Blood. Opinions. Feelings. Contradictions. Mysteries. Vulnerabilities. Strengths. Skills...
Oh, did the man have skills.
She glanced sideways. He lay on his stomach beside her, one arm crooked under a pillow. The muscles on his back rippled and flexed with each breath. And speaking of muscles, the sheet only covered his thighs, leaving his backside bare. Her fingers tingled as she remembered how she’d taken a hold, gripping on for dear life.
She lifted her gaze to the nasty-looking scar high on his left shoulder. Was it an injury? Maybe even an operation at some point. Rather than marring all that perfection, it gave his sleek beauty a savage edge.
The urge to reach out and run her finger along the scar, to soothe, to ease the burdens that cloaked him when he was awake was so strong she squeezed her eyes shut until it went away.
This had been a one night thing. It was time to go.
Of course her leg was twisted in the sheet that covered his thighs so extricating herself wouldn’t be easy. But extricate herself she had to. That was what happened after a booty call. The callee left. No expectations. No heartache when those expectations weren’t met.
Her mother would be so proud.
April brought her hands to her face. What a time to think of her mother. Was she trying to turn herself off? Yes! Yes, actually. Because for all the peppy, positive, “time to go” talk, she hadn’t moved an inch. And that backside was so damn close.