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I did not at all think he meant this kind of dance.
All I can say is, “I’ve…never been kissed before.”
He tugs on my hair, and I think I lose my soul to him. “My dear.” He nips at my bottom lip. “That was not a no.”
It most definitely was not.
Both my hands skim up his chest, around his neck, and into his auburn locks. I lift myself to his mouth against the pull of his hand in my hair. As our lips connect, urgency consumes the action, pressing his warmth into my body, into my veins. My nerves erupt.
He controls me, guides me, pushes me back until I collapse against one of the benches in front of the fountain. The hard wood bites into my spine as his fingers dive from my hip to my knee, dragging a sensation of presence all the way down my thigh. I swear. He swallows the word.
When he pulls as far back as I’ll let him—which isn’t so far at all—I catch the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.
He’s tousled. Wrinkled. On his knees before me. My skirt is flared and pressing to his jacket as my legs rest around him in a sort of scandalous manner I don’t want to think about.
Flushed, lips parted, he scans my position in relation to his body, from my awkward posture to his grip on my leg. Then…he smiles. Dragging me by my knee against the seat until I’m on the edge, he catches my entire jaw in his palm and looms over me. “That’s my girl.”
A shock zips straight through my chest, frying my nerve endings.
I have never, not once, been anyone’s girl. Ever.
But, right now, I think his assessment is one hundred percent correct…
Moving back, he jerks me fully onto his lap in the grass. The wood presses into my wing bones as both his hands take my wrists prisoner.
He’s stable. Commanding. Assured.
Everything I think I’ve always wanted.
When his fingers slip around mine and clutch, I tremble. When he whispers, “I really like you, Marcella,” I tense.
It is so very, very hard to breathe. “I…would hope so. After all this.”
“I want a life with you.”
My stomach clenches.
“I don’t mind figuring out what that looks like so you can be happy. I don’t mind learning how to fulfill what you need. You destroy me, Marcella.” He kisses my cheek, hard. “Teach me how to love you.”
A shudder pours down my spine, and I lose all the feeling in my body. Pressed—completely—against him like this, I can hardly hear my own thoughts above the hammer of our hearts singing together.
Hoarse, I say, “What haven’t you given me, Finn? What more could I ask for from you?” I wet my swollen lips. “You aren’t the one who needs to be taught anything else if we’re going to work out. I am.”
His head tilts. “Are you saying you’re happy with me? Just as I am?”
I swallow, averting my eyes. “I…don’t know. At the very least I’m saying you’ve put in every effort to meet me where I am, when I haven’t even bothered trying to appreciate it.”
“I don’t like how you talk about yourself sometimes, pumpkin.”
“With honesty?”
“It’s not honest.” Releasing one hand, he hooks a finger in my necklace, then he yanks my face to his. “Being guarded isn’t the same as dismissing me entirely. Countless times over these past few months, I’ve challenged you, and you’ve conceded when you’ve agreed that I was correct. You aren’t stubborn. You aren’t difficult. You aren’t emotionless. You have given me every grace when you have felt safe enough to do so. You are allowed to withhold your emotions concerning me until you feel safe to experience them.”
I might cry.
I really don’t want to.
Lip quivering, I whisper, “But I am stubborn. I’m still sleeping on the couch when there’s something like seventeen beds available.”
