But Bailey wouldn’t back down, ironic as it was that at the start of the evening she’d been dreading a personal conversation. “No. We can go back to Coronado, leaving forever the mystery of why you brought
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up on her tiptoes so they were face-to-face. “Why I want you so bad I’m walking with a flagpole in my pants? Why your nipples are so hard it looks like you stuffed cherries in your bra?”
She jerked back in his grasp. “Finn-”
Her bad boy kissed her quiet. Fierce, demanding, all hot lips and needy tongue, and the only things swept clean were the sensible objections from her head.
Bell ringing at Christmas is a holdover from pagan times when noisemakers were sounded to frighten away evil spirits during winter solstice festivals.
Chapter 13
Towing Bailey in the direction of his loft, Finn knew he’d had too much to drink-though he wasn’t anywhere near binge drunk. Christ, that would be easier. Then he’d be on his way to passing out and feeling nothing, not the grinding loss of Ayesha or the greedy hunger for the woman beside him. There was disaster in the offing, he could feel it, smell it like cordite in the air, but he didn’t give a flying fuck about his sixth sense this time.
“What are we doing? Where are we going?”
He shut her up again by hauling her close for another kiss, thrusting his tongue in her mouth to ensure she kept quiet. There’d been enough of talking tonight and now every cell and fiber of him craved action.
For days, months, hell, it felt like
The rest of the world might wait until December 31. For Finn, this was the moment to usher out the old and bring in the new.
He set Bailey back on her heels. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth was wet. She licked at his taste on her bottom lip, and at the sight of her pink, velvety tongue, his cock jerked against the hot skin of his belly.
“I’m going home,” he told her, his voice hoarse. Dark, like his mood. “To my loft. Are you with me?”
Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the lobby of the next building.
“Why do I hear an ‘or against me’ in the air?” she asked, even as he gave a nod at the security guard and pushed her into the waiting elevator.
When the doors shushed shut, he backed her into a corner and circled her waist with his hands. Desire was pumping like a steady back rhythm in his blood, a beat on two, a beat on four, driving up his temperature. Driving up his desperation.
“I’m not playing word games, GND. I want to touch you. Feel you.” She started to say something, but his right fingers pressed briefly against her lips. “In silence.”
She blinked. “Silence?”
He slid his hands up the bumps of her ribs to stop just below her breasts. Her short, fast breaths pushed the edge of his fingers closer to their soft rise. “Near silence, then. You’re allowed ‘like that,’ ‘there,’ ‘please,’ ‘more.’ Nothing else.”
Bailey had never asked for his touch in her life, but he needed to be sure tonight was without words. Without emotions.
With only that insistent thump of blood in his veins.
She swallowed, a flush rising on her throat. “Finn-”
His hands cupped her breasts, squeezed. “Decide.”
The elevator doors opened before she had a chance to reply. He tugged her through them and then to his front door. It opened, then shut with a firm click, leaving them alone in the locked privacy of his loft.
He pushed her against the gunmetal gray paint, staring her down in the dim glow of the one lamp he’d left on in the living area. “Sex, or no?”
She wanted him, he didn’t doubt that, but she could still roll her heaven-blue eyes. “Oh gee, stop with the hearts and flowers, will ya?”
He wouldn’t tell her he’d broken the bank in the hearts and flowers department ten years ago and she’d run away before he could prove it to her. That was then; this was now. “Why are you complaining? From what I can tell your bed’s been empty lately.”
She stiffened. “You really investigated me?”
“Didn’t have to. I know you, remember?” Action. Bending his head, he tongued the curve where her jaw met her throat. “You’re picky.”
She shivered under his hands. “I…I picked you, didn’t I?” The words sounded shaky. “Wh-what does that say?”
He feathered kisses from her ear to her mouth. “That you’re talking too much.
Without words, remember? Without emotion. His teeth nipped her bottom lip.
She arched against him, and he heard that telltale swallowed moan that was the muted sound of Bailey turned on.
Just like that, the two and four rhythmic pound of his blood expanded to a heavy metal-band blast beat. In music production it could create a wall of sound. In Finn it created an explosion of want.
He pressed his erection against her soft mons. “Decide.”
“Finn…Is this smart?”
“Talking too much. Thinking too much.” His mouth moved to her ear and he licked the lobe. “It’s simple. Sex, or no?”
“Neither…one…” Her head tilted to give him better access to her neck.
“Neither one what?” He licked along the pale column.
“A word…you said I could use.”
He smiled against her lips as he kissed her. “Add ‘sex’ to the short list.”
A heartbeat passed. A second one. Then her arms slid up his chest as she offered her mouth to him again. “Oh, fine. It’s Christmas, isn’t it? Please, Finn. More.”
So many words when only a single would do. Wasn’t that just like a woman? But as he went lip-to-lip, need exploded inside him again like sound inside an echo chamber, reverberating like another pulse. Reminding him this wasn’t just any woman in his arms. This was Bailey.
Her mouth opened under the pressure of his and he swept his tongue along the slick surface of her teeth. He tickled the underside of her upper lip and she crowded closer to him. His hands fell to her ass and he tilted her hips against his, grinding against her with no more finesse than a teenager dry-humping his way through a slow dance. His cock pulsed. Ready to go. Ready to go off.
He groaned, pushing her away. “I need air.”
Her palms flat against the door, she leaned back, her mouth red, her breasts heaving in that pretty dress.
And just like that, touching her was imperative again.
There was a wide belt at her waist. He pretended not to notice his shaking fingers and her shuddering breaths as he unfastened it. When he peeled it back, it took the sides of the Bailey-blue dress with it, unwrapping the garment like the petals of a flower.
Underneath the fabric she was wearing a strapless, black lace bra, matching panties, thigh-high stockings that
