He’d never been allowed in her bedroom, though he’d probably frittered away more than half his teenage years imagining it, imagining
Of course Bailey had never been wanton.
Before.
Now, now the skin along his spine prickled as she shut the bedroom door behind them both. Then she turned, her soft, tender mouth curving as she toed out of her shoes and shimmied out of her jeans. She’d dumped her short parka at the bottom of the stairs, so now she stood before him in nothing more than a thin T-shirt and a teeny pair of panties.
“The bathroom’s this way,” she said, pointing to another doorway at the end of the room. Then she padded off in that direction.
He stayed where he was, frozen. The ruffles, the rumpled sheets, the confident sway of her hips shooting the needle high on his personal Lust-o-Meter. She paused in the bathroom doorway and looked at him over her shoulder.
Smiled like a witch.
Crossing her hands in front of her, she drew the T-shirt off, then let it fall to the floor. Naked shoulders. The tiny back vee of satin panties. The peach curves of her ass. No bra.
Then another graceful move.
Now no underwear at all. Just Bailey, tousled blond hair to bare bottom to bare heels. Pink and white and that ripe peach, right in the center.
Her eyes gleamed like blue jewels as she gave him another look over her shoulder and decamped.
The disappearance got him moving. He couldn’t lose her so soon.
The tiled bathroom was already turning steamy once he made it inside. For a few minutes he stood, transfixed by the sight of Bailey under the spray, her body blurred by the bubble glass of the shower door.
That odd pitching movement started up in his chest again-like that night in The Perfect Christmas-and he held his palm there to calm the movement. To calm him.
The shower door clicked open. A flushed face peered out. He saw one rosy breast. A wet knee.
“What’s a girl gotta do to get a man?”
This man was already hers. Still, he went slow. Slow removing his clothes, slow to cross to the shower, slow to open the door and climb in.
Slow to touch her with his hands, even as all her wet flesh pressed against his like a full-body French kiss. He bent his head to meet her mouth, but she stopped him with a hand to his cheek.
“Can your eye patch get wet?”
He caught her fingers and kissed her palm, tasting the water on her skin. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her fingers went back to toy with the elastic strap. “It doesn’t matter to me either.”
“There’s nothing to see,” he said. “It’s not ugly, it’s not anything. It just looks as if my eye is closed.”
“Then let me touch you everywhere,” she said. “With nothing to hide behind.”
When still he hesitated, she whispered the most sultry thing of all. “Trust me.”
So he let her draw the patch away even though he had so few secrets left from her. Her face betrayed nothing of her thoughts as she gently traced the few scars that showed on the outside. At the touch, he felt the old sharp ache in his bones, a phantom pain that would show up at times of stress. He tried breathing through it, but then lost his breath altogether as she went on tiptoe to press kisses to his usually protected flesh.
“Oh, Finn,” she whispered against the missing part of him. “How much you scare me sometimes.”
He groaned, his palms cupping her warm shoulders. “Bailey…”
“Shhh.” She ran her lips down the side of his face to his jaw. Her mouth sipped at the moisture on his neck, his collarbone. She found his nipple and tickled it with her hot little tongue.
Leaning against the tiled wall, he groaned again and refused to let his eye drift closed as it wanted to. He had to feel her
Her hands were slick with water. She stroked him, cupped him, ran her fingertip around the pulsing head of his cock. Then she circled him with one slow lap of her flattened tongue.
He pressed his hips against the tile, then forced his left palm against it too, only allowing his right hand to tangle in the wet disarray of her hair.
Her gaze lifted as she licked him like a lollipop. “I always wanted to do this.”
Christ! What was he supposed to say to that?
Her tongue slid back down his steely flesh. “Do you mind?”
Her little cat smile told him she already knew the answer. Still, he tried to sound casual about it instead of ready to beg. “I’ve always tried to be neighborly.”
It must have been the permission she was waiting for, because she bent over him and drew his cock into the wet heat of her mouth. His breath sucked in, his eye flared wide, he thought he could die happy.
Even happier, as she teased him with her mouth, setting his blood on fire and his pulse beating against his skin. His head clunked back against the tile and he stroked her hair as he watched the water sluice down her naked back and his flesh disappear between her pretty lips.
Then it was all too much. As his balls yanked tight to his body, he yanked her to her feet. “No more,” he said harshly.
“But-”
He half dragged, half carried her from the shower. Laughing, she snagged a towel and managed to throw it down on the bed before he tumbled her there. She tried scrambling to a different position, but it only inflamed him more.
He had to have her now.
With his hands on her hips, he flipped her over. She stilled.
No longer laughing.
No longer a saucy flirt with the upper hand.
“Get on your knees,” he whispered, his voice rough. They’d never made love like this. Teenage Finn would never have dared. He came behind her as she slowly moved higher and then he slid his knees between hers to widen them. His palm slipped from her hip to spread across her belly, his pinkie finding the slick wetness that wasn’t from the shower.
“Finn?” She glanced over her shoulder, her wet bangs in a tangle over her eyes, her mouth swollen. Her voice…unsure?
“All grown up now,” he said. He fit himself to her body, key to lock. Pushed inside as she jerked back against him, her pretty ass snug to his groin. “All grown up.”
Then he rocked, and the hand that held her tight against his body took in the rippling movement of his invasion and her surrender. Of them becoming one. She arched her back and he kissed the place where her wings would meet if she was truly not of this world.
And didn’t just feel like heaven.
His mouth went dry as she moaned and pushed back against him, harder. He surged deep, holding there, as his pinkie played over her clitoris. She jerked back again, arched again, and he pressed his mouth to her damp spine as they both came. Adult to adult. Lover to lover. Angel to man.
Afterward, Finn thanked God he hadn’t held on to his idea to go cold turkey. But he couldn’t say anything to Bailey. Not yet. His throat was too tight, his chest too heavy, his head overflowing with memories of how it had been with them this time. So he cupped his body around hers and pulled the covers over them both, burying his nose in the drying hair at the nape of her neck.
He had no idea what she thought about. If she dozed.
If she dreamed.
But as dawn filled the room, casting pink light across her bare arm, he knew she was awake. Her skin goose bumped as he drew his forefinger from her shoulder to her elbow. He sensed the tension in her body.
“Bailey?”
She stiffened. “What?” As if afraid of what he might ask next.
