Chapter 27

 

 

 

 

 

Finn

 

“What are you doing here, Gia?” I ask, opening my front door and rubbing away the sleep from my eyes. I’m exhausted. In fact, I can barely open my eyes.

That is until I see her. She’s leaning against my doorframe, her blue-green eyes are big and bright and lined in kohl. Her black hair is piled up on top of her head. Her lips are red. Motherfucking fuck-me red. And that dress. Jesus Christ, is she trying to kill me right now? She’s wearing that red dress she wore at that party back in October. That strapless red dress which is beyond short with that amazing V down the center of her cleavage.

She entices the sleeping devil inside me, urging him to come out and play. She’s a siren. A goddess. And so I’m so far past screwed at this point.

“What are you talking about?” she asks me. “You sent me a text, asking me to come over.”

“Huh?” I tilt my head at her and she winks.

Gia steps inside and runs her fingers up my bare abs and chest. Slowly. She watches herself touch me with a wicked smirk on her lips and then when she reaches my neck, her eyes flutter up to mine. “I’m done with the games, Finn. I’m done with wanting you as much as I do and not being able to have you. I need you. Please give me what I need.”

I kiss her.

My lips crash down on hers and I capture her face in my hands. The hot chocolate I bought her, wavers, threatening to topple over, so I take it and set it down on my coffee table. Because suddenly, we’re at my couch. I don’t care how we got here, I just know I need more of her mouth.

She moans against me, caressing my skin with her warmth. “Yes,” she breathes.

And then I get serious. Positioning myself so that I’m hovering over her body, I meld my tongue against hers, groaning at the flavor.

Her hands grasp onto the muscles of my shoulders, pushing me away and pulling me closer in equal measure. I get her conflict. Understand her struggle. I am an asshole. I’ve been nothing less to her. She’s right to question me. To push me away and demand answers.

But her will isn’t strong enough to do any of those things.

Gia Bianchi wants me just as much as I want her and holy hell that makes me insane with a need that matches hers.

Sitting back on my couch, I pull her on top of me, her thighs straddling mine. Her dress riding up higher until her fantastic heat presses just where I need it to.

She moans into my mouth as she grinds against my achingly hard cock. Cries out as I rip the pins from her hair, making it tumble down her back in thick black waves. Groans as I yank down the front of her dress and cover her pink nipples with my mouth. Her tits are large and full and more than fill up my hands as I squeeze them.

The remains of her dress are bunched up around her waist, her sweet pussy rocking into me in the most sublime of rhythms.

“Gia,” I growl, not even sure what I’m asking for when I say her name. It can’t be for her to stop, even if it’s madness for her to continue.

“Finn,” she purrs my name. “Oh god, Finn.”

And that’s it. That’s all it takes. Her swearing my name in combination with God’s.

Flipping her body so that she’s on her back again, I wrench her dress up, getting off on the sound of it tearing and then I lower my head into her panties. Also red, but they don’t last long. They come off and then my mouth is exactly where I want it. Exactly where she wants it. I lick and suck her with just the right amount of pressure and she whimpers, her back arching off the couch. Her sounds instantly become the best sounds I’ve ever heard and the way she claws at my back and scalp, only spur me on.

“Come, Gia,” I demand. “Come all over my face.”

She does. She comes hard and loud. Her body writhing against me, her voice practically screeching as she tugs on my hair with surprising strength. It’s not enough. Not nearly enough to keep her. To make her mine.

So I yank down my pants, and shatter every rule I ever created since the moment I met her. I enter her body and she invades my soul. I pump against her and she burrows a hole into my heart. I moan into her lips and she becomes part of my blood.

A part of me.

Gia becomes everything and I don’t even think she realizes it happens.

But she does. Gia is feeling this too, because her eyes are locked on mine. Sweet beautiful tears falling from them.

“I won’t leave you, Finn.”

My heart hurts.

“I love you, Finn.”

I want to die.

“The past doesn’t matter, Finn.”

It’s all that matters.

But I keep going because I can’t stop. Because all I can think about is Gia. About how I want to cling to her promises. I’m so desperate for them to be true that I can’t think straight.

But the moment it’s over. The moment after she convulses around me and I come inside her without a condom on and the world is so goddamn perfect, I panic. My stomach twists and body aches to run and leave her here, half naked on my couch. I look down on her and she’s smiling, but I can’t think of anything other than all the ways she can destroy my very existence.

She’s going to get pregnant.

She’ll get pregnant and then I’ll lose everything. I can’t do it again.

I won’t.

Stupid fucking need. Look where you got me.

Inside the one woman who possesses the power to annihilate whatever’s left.

I wake with a jolt. My body slick with sweat as I pant, trying to calm my racing heart. My ravaged heart. What the fuck was that? Dropping back down into my bed, I cover my eyes with my forearm. I have no idea what time it is. My room is dark. I have my thick, room darkening shades completely drawn.

But my alarm hasn’t gone off yet, so it’s not time to pick Gia up yet.

Shit.       

After Gia got on that elevator last night, I pulled up the reservation for the car service on my phone. I stared at it for a very long time, debating everything. I should let her go be with this Mason guy and crawl back into the shadows of my life.

But I didn’t cancel the car service.

And the irony of this, I can’t even cancel with her because I don’t have her phone number. I never got it. We’ve been perpetually running into each other.

Shit.

Getting up, I shower and dress for an evening outside in November in a windy-ass stadium in New Jersey. For an evening out with Gia Bianchi. The girl who I can’t seem to stay away from. The girl who drives my overactive imagination wild.

Damn, that dream felt so real. She felt so real. So good.

The driver of the limo–okay, maybe I went a touch overboard–pulls up in front of Gia’s building, and I hop out and buzz up.

“Oh Finn,” she purrs into the intercom. “Always on time. You coming up or am I coming down?”

“Come on down, baby.”

I say that and immediately pause. Baby. My chest clenches like a vice is squeezing it and I find I have to brace myself against the side of her building.

“Finn?” I feel Gia’s hand on my back. “Finn? Are you okay?”

I look over at her, those aqua eyes and that raven hair and that…Patriot’s football beanie on top of her head complete with red, white and blue pompom on top. And I laugh. I laugh so goddamn hard. Because she looks nothing like she did in my dream last night and I’ve never been so relieved by anything in my life. Yes, she’s still beautiful, but it’s so very different.

“Hey,” she squawks, feigning indignation. “It’s a football game in November, jerk face.”

“Jerk face?” I laugh even harder.

“Yes. You’re a jerk face for laughing at me.” She unzips her coat and holds it open with a big bright smile. “Check this action out.”

“Tom Brady?”

“TB12, baby.”

I throw my arms around her without even thinking about it and I pull her into me. Hard.

Because I didn’t laugh for three years. I cannot recall one single smile in those three years either. The first time I smiled was the day I sat next to her on that stoop. It was also the first day I laughed. It’s how I knew she was different. It’s how I knew I would think about her with a pang of regret after she got up and walked away.

And now?

Now I’m in love with her. It’s not even a question in my mind.

She’s absolutely everything which is bright in my bleak existence.

But I don’t know how to go from that to this.

Because if there is one thing I’ve learned from the many heartbreaks I’ve endured, is that life doesn’t care how much you’ve suffered.

There is no karma. No justice. No harmonic balance. No fairness and definitely no right versus wrong.

Nothing that says what I’ve been through won’t happen again. In fact, I expect it would. Being born under a bag of shit doesn’t disappear just because you’ve met someone who makes you feel alive instead of dead.

So I pull away from her, ignoring her bewildered expression at my sudden burst of affection and joy and go back to the waiting limo. “Jesus, Finn. You didn’t have to get a limo. I would have been cool with a moped.”

“Too cold for a moped. Get in, we’re going to hit a shit ton of traffic.”

Gia gets in, sliding against the smooth black leather seats, removing her jacket as she goes. Her eyes scan around the limo and then she looks up at the sunroof. “Did you ever see the movie Big?” I nod, knowing exactly where she’s going with this. “You know that scene where they’re riding around town, standing up and hanging out the sunroof?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve always wanted to do it. But I don’t think today is the day for that.”

“I’ll make sure we take another limo ride when it’s not thirty degrees out.”

She looks over at me with a smile. “I’m holding you to that. But only if after that you take me to your apartment so I can jump on a trampoline and sleep in your bunk bed.”

“I always wanted bunk beds.”

“Me too,” she sighs, sagging back. “Being an only child sucks sometimes, you know?”

Not where I was growing up. A sibling would have just been another person for my father to beat the shit out of.

“Did you get enough sleep?” I ask, changing the subject completely.

“No. I freaking hate night shifts. They completely mess with my circadian rhythm. But no matter, I’ll sleep tonight after the game and I don’t have work tomorrow until noon.”

“How’d you manage that?”

She gives me an incredulous look. “I took the morning off, Finn. What else is a woman to do?”

With her rhetorical question lingering in the air, she sinks down, propping her feet up on the bench seat perpendicular to us. Then she shifts until her head is resting against the edge of my arm.

I inwardly sigh. She audibly sighs.

“In case hell actually manages to freeze over tonight and the Patriot’s lose and I’m too pissed off to say anything pleasant, thank you for the tickets.” She angles her head so that her eyes catch mine. “This is the best birthday present ever. And for the record, you’re a much nicer guy then you let anyone believe. But I’m on to you, Finnigan Banner. So no more trying to fool me with your asshole ways.”

I lean down and kiss her forehead. I watch as she closes her eyes while I do it. I let my lips linger and when it gets to the point where I know I need to stop, I rest my head against hers.

And that’s how we spend the hour and a half that it takes to get to the stadium.