One for the Money

A pleased blush steals over me. It’s nice to drive a man like this, someone experienced, someone almost jaded, to this kind of desperation. But it’s not enough. As long as he has words to charm me, I’m still not seeing the real him. The true Finn.

His caress steals up my bare thigh and around my hip. Along the sides of my body, almost ticklish if I weren’t already shaking with anticipation. Then his large palm cups my breast, and I let out a shaky breath. He holds the weight in his hand. His thumb brushes the tip. My nipple hardens through the fabric of the dress and my lace bra.

“Eva.”

I’m in such a dreamy state, I can barely focus. He has to say my name again before I force myself to concentrate. Of course he doesn’t make it easy. He still molds his hand to my breast, warm and sure and possessive. “What’s wrong?” I ask, my voice hazy.

“Did someone break your heart?”

I stiffen, but it doesn’t do anything to dampen my arousal. “Finn.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

A fist around my heart. That’s why he’s hesitating. My heart might already have been broken once. He doesn’t want to risk it. Specifically, he doesn’t want me to get the wrong idea about this encounter. He might kiss me and touch me. He might even fuck me, but it’s not going to change our relationship from fake to real. “You can’t hurt me.”

It’s a lie, but he doesn’t realize it. Or he can’t wait any longer.

He pulls the dress down, along with the lace, revealing my bare breast. My skin looks very pale in the dim light of the office, my nipple a dark red. “Someone should lock you up,” he mutters, still talking about how I’m illegal. It makes me smile, even in the midst of hurricane level passion, that he sounds almost annoyed that I’m sexy.

He presses a trail of feather-light kisses across my jaw. Down my neck. Across the cushion of my breast. His lips close over my nipple, and I suck in a breath at the heat. Arousal arcs through my body. It centers at my clit.

I want him inside me.

No, that would be too intimate.

My body doesn’t care. It wants everything.

I lean in and kiss the side of his neck.

He shudders as if it’s been a long time since anyone kissed him this way. Maybe it has. Maybe all the lovers he has in the city, and in all those fight clubs and in all those illegal poker rooms, haven’t been enough. I want him and not just Finn, the man who smiled at a poker table, but Finn, the man who comforts his father, the one who’s secretly running an empire, the one who hasn’t said a word to anyone except for nurses and doctors.

And now I’m one of them. That’s real enough.

I reach and fumble at his jacket. He helps me, shrugging it off. Then I go to work on the buttons of his dress shirt. My fingers feel useless under the onslaught of pleasure. He moves to my other breast, taking his time, tasting me as if I’m the finest wine.

I’m like the casino and the underground fight club, I realize. An experience he indulges in while he still can. He returns to my neck, and my head falls back. His mouth lingers on a place behind my ear, one that makes my breath catch. One that makes my thighs tighten around his lean hips. “Please,” I whimper, though I’m not sure what I’m asking for.

The truth is that even though he’s younger than me, he has more experience. Exactly like he told me. The truth is that I’ve had my heart broken. The truth is that I’m terrified that it’s going to happen again, and this time I’m not sure I would recover.

“Shh,” he murmurs, soothing me, running his hands over my body. Maybe he sensed my sudden panic. “My sweet girl. Let me take care of you. I’ll make you feel good.”

I pluck at the thin fabric of his dress shirt. “Finn.”

He yanks his shirt off, not bothering with the rest of the buttons. I hear them hit the desk and the wooden floor in small pings. An undershirt goes over his head.

Then he’s bared to me.

I always knew that he was broad shouldered and tightly built. Part of me knew, in an abstract way, that he would look as beautiful without clothes as he does with them. But I had no idea. None. Muscles lay over each other in a masculine symphony. Springy hair covers a broad, strong chest.

God, I don’t want to compare them. But I can’t help it.

Lane Constantine was much older than me when we had our affair. I was only nineteen years old. He was forty-six at the time. He kept in shape, but his body was mature. Finn looks like a statue of a Greek god come to life.