‘We’ve waited this long,’ he mumbles against me as we stumble into my room. ‘I wasn’t going to let this happen on a counter next to the fucking crumpets.’
‘But crumpets are sexy,’ I say, my calves hitting the mattress. ‘All those—’
‘I swear to god, if you say “holes”, I’m gonna leave.’ I fall onto the bed and his arms cage me in. ‘And we all know the sexiest bread is focaccia, anyway. So let’s move on.’
A laugh spills out of me and his eyes light up in response, before he moves me further up the bed until I’m leaning against the pillows, half naked and buzzing with anticipation.
‘Beautiful,’ he mutters, so quietly I think he might not have meant to say it out loud. But then he meets my gaze and says it directly to me, his voice clear. ‘You’re beautiful, Ava.’
The sardonic part of my brain wants to tell him to stop using that mouth for words when he could be doing other things with it, but truthfully, he’s setting off fireworks either way.
He moves back down to my breasts, tongue and teeth skimming the skin there while I scrape my nails along his scalp, his neck, his shoulders. Meanwhile, his hands snake to the waistband of my shorts, stopping at my thighs and stomach and ass on the way down, digging into the flesh like he’s not convinced it’s real.
He grips the fabric at my hips. ‘Can I?’
Taking my nod as his cue to continue, he pulls my shorts and underwear off tantalisingly slowly, kissing along the inside of my thighs, my knees, my calves, all the while moving further away from where I want him, taking my restraint with him as he goes.
As the world’s current most impatient woman, I move my own hand between my legs, and a gasp escapes me at the contact, drawing Finn’s heavy gaze first to my fingers, then up to my face. I don’t break eye contact as I touch myself, enjoying the way he swallows,the way he fidgets slightly to relieve the pressure in his trousers, the way he takes short, sharp breaths through parted lips as if he’s the one doing any of the work right now.
For a few wordless moments more he watches and listens, and then he’s kneeling between my legs, gently taking my hand away and tracking the movement as I bring it up to my mouth. When I suck my own fingers clean, I swear he looks at me like I’m some kind of god. It makes sense, because there on his knees, he could be a disciple praying at an altar.
But then he pushes my legs further apart and drops his head between my thighs, and I wonder if he’s the Devil instead.
‘This isn’t fair on you,’ I say, ignoring my increasing breathlessness as he cups my ass to angle me closer to his mouth, as his fingers work in tandem in all the right places. ‘I got all the fun last time.’
‘Believe me,’ a hand presses me against the bed by the stomach while his tongue almost sends me into orbit with one deliberate stroke, ‘I’m having fun.’
t doesn’t take long before my hips take on a mind of their own, jerking forward to meet him, warmth spreading through me until the sparks ignite into an inferno that sets every nerve ending ablaze. My back arches as I grab at his hair and the sheets, dimly aware I’m crying out, so blissfully absent I don’t even know where I am, or if the fire will ever go out.
Once my contented body has burnt down to embers, I pull him onto me and register every inch; the strong line of his shoulders, the firm muscle at his back, the urgent thump of our hearts beating in time like the Doomsday Clock.
My hands tug at his hair as his lips find their way back to mine, and we move back into a heady rhythm of tongues and sighs and gentle movements that satisfy me for maybe twenty seconds, before the desperationhits me again and I remember how much more I want to do.
‘Do you trust me?’ I ask, meeting molten eyes.
An incredulous laugh tips out of him, and for the first time since we met, he replies, ‘Not at all.’
I push him onto his back and make my way down his body until I’m kneeling between his legs. He leans against the pillows, one arm folded behind his head while he watches my hands trail down his broad chest, past the dusting of dark hair below his belly button, until they’re at the top of those godforsaken pyjama bottoms.
‘Can I?’ I repeat his question to me.
‘Please,’ he says through another laugh.
Then he’s naked too, and I finally wrap my fingers around him, skin to skin, relishing the feel of this unchartered territory and the reaction it elicits from the man underneath me. I move my hand slowly at first, watching each rise and fall of his chest, listening for every deep sound he makes.
When I bend down to taste him, eyes meeting his just as I make contact, his head lolls backwards and he lets out a string of expletives that go straight to my ego.
‘Ava.’ He says my name like it’s water in a drought, and he drinks it up, and I drink him up too, completely inebriated on the way he reacts to every pump of my fist, every glide of my tongue.
Leaning forward to scoop my hair back with one hand and hold it in his fist, he murmurs, ‘I’ve always liked your hair in a ponytail.’
I hum in response, and when his eyes drop to mine again, I think he might ascend there and then.
As a man who, generally speaking, cannot shut up, I could’ve predicted him to be vocal. But I didn’t expect to enjoy the words that spill out of him as much as I do; the violent praising of my mouth, my body, even my “illogical cynicism” at one point, which is a new one for the bedroom but, well, it does thejob.
‘You know,’ I release him from my mouth with a quiet pop, ‘dicks are objectively kind of hideous, but yours could be a lot worse.’
‘I’m really gonna miss that way with words,’ he says hoarsely, lightly tugging my ponytail with one hand while the other roams my body, sending shivers reverberating across my skin like ripples in a pond.