CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THERE WAS SOMETHING different about Finn’s kiss. A desperation to it that Lane couldn’t quantify. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. She just wanted to be kissed. And kissed, and kissed, by the only man she could imagine wanting for the rest of her life.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, folding her into his embrace. This felt less like a claiming, and more like a coming together.
She thought back to that very first kiss that had happened in the Mercantile. How angry she had been. How she had felt like he had demolished all of the very necessary walls she had placed between them.
The little fictions she had erected in order to maintain their friendship.
This was different.
This was a kiss to rebuild. Each press of his lips. Each pass of his tongue worked to remake what had been destroyed. Or maybe that wasn’t even it. Maybe this was building something new entirely.
She had felt it. From the moment she had walked into the house tonight. That this was the time. To make it different. To build a bridge between that time they spent talking and laughing, and the time they spent in bed.
It scared her. To realize that she didn’t want to be friends and lovers. To realize she wanted to blend the two. To realize that she actually did want to change the friendship.
It was scary enough that it made her want to run away, even now. Even though she was the one who wanted it. She had been silly in the beginning. Thinking that they could have those two things, keep them separate. Keep them distinct.
As if they would be two separate people. Friends by day, in each other’s pants by night. Life didn’t work that way. It just didn’t. Yes, they could have a friendship right along with everything else, but she wanted all of it, all the time.
Intimacy. Sharing space. Sharing bodies. Sharing trauma. Sharing good things and bad. Not being afraid to reach down deep and explore those dark, hidden scars. To scrape back the facade that they both showed the rest of the world. To trust each other with everything.
The difference between choosing people who helped reinforce your individual defenses against the world, she supposed, and finding that one person she wanted to hunker down with. That was what she wanted. To build a wall around them both, with nothing between them. For him to be the one that she clung to when life got hard. She wanted him to do the same to her.
“Finn,” she said, her voice soft.
He ignored her, pressing his lips to hers again, tightening his hold.
She put her hand between them, bracing her fingertips against his chest. “Finn. I want to talk.”
He drew back, the look of horror on his face almost comical. She supposed she was being the worst. And, if she were only his hookup, she might feel a little bit bad about it. But since she was also his friend, and she wanted to be more, she was going to go ahead and be the worst.
“Why?” she began, but her throat was dry, and she realized that she hadn’t really framed the question all that well. “Why are you against getting married? Why don’t you want kids? We had that discussion about me. We had this whole, symbolic letting go. And it was really good. It meant something. It changed something. And I feel... I feel closer to you. And a lot closer to where I need to be to be a sane, healthy person. I want that for you too.”
He shook his head slowly, taking a step back. “Lane,” he started, “I know that this is new and different for you. And I needed you to trust me in order for what we are doing here to work. Because it was a change for you. To start... To start sleeping with me. But like I’ve already said, it’s not a change for me.”
“So... You don’t have anything else to tell me about yourself? We don’t have anywhere to go?”
“What does that mean? Anywhere to go? We’re friends. We always have been. I always wanted you—now I’m having you.”
Frustration clawed at her, along with the nameless need that she didn’t want to stop and examine right now. “You know what I mean. You can’t...you can’t sleep together and not have things change.”
It was all in direct contradiction with everything they’d talked about before. But frankly, what was happening between them was in direct contradiction with that too. Like he’d said, she had to change. She had to drop her guard, give him parts of herself that she had held back before. So why didn’t he have to? He could talk all he wanted about how his feelings hadn’t changed, because he always wanted her, but their actions had changed and that had to count.
She’d had physical relationships that hadn’t contained any real intimacy. But when it came to Finn, he couldn’t go deep inside her body without going deep into her soul too. She couldn’t have known that beforehand. And even if she could have, she might have ignored it. Might have ignored all the warnings and the potential consequences so that she could have what she wanted.
As a great many red-blooded women would have.
But she had reached that point. That point where she could no longer ignore the potential consequences. Where she could no longer ignore all the changes this new intimacy was effecting inside of her.
It was only now that she felt so close to him that she was conscious of the distance he kept between them. When she was hiding too, she hadn’t fully realized that he was doing it. He had seemed like her dependable, easygoing friend, and she hadn’t looked much deeper than that.
But now that she was stripped bare, now that she had told him everything. Now that she had laid it all on the table, brought herself closer to him, determined that she wanted all the empty spaces between them closed, that she wanted to be pressed up against him, as close as two people could be, she could see what was preventing that.
It was him.
“That’s all?” she asked. “You’re having me? That’s the beginning and end of it? Am I supposed to be flattered by that characterization?”
“It was good enough for you last night.”
She shook her head, furious. “No, it wasn’t. But I assumed that all of the things that were changing in me were changing in you too.”
“What things, Lane?” His blue eyes were sharp, dangerous.
She felt something weighing her down, pressure building in her chest. She didn’t want to be in this conversation. Didn’t want to be in this argument. Didn’t want to have to dig deep enough to find an honest answer to his question. All of the feelings that were currently howling through her like wind in a storm were difficult for her to pin down. Difficult for her to identify. She didn’t want to. She just wanted to feel them. And she wanted him to understand them.
“I don’t want to be nothing to you,” she said, knowing that she was being overdramatic.
“You’re not nothing to me,” he said. “You know that. You’re very important to me. If you weren’t, I would have kissed you the day I met you. Instead, I resisted for ten damn years, so don’t talk to me like you believe that.”
“Fine. Then maybe I just don’t want to be on par with Mark. Except you make out with me.”
He shifted, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “You know that you’re not like Mark.”
“Why?” she asked, feeling desperate now. “Because you’re having sex with me? Because that feels like two different things. Two things that are on the opposite end of the spectrum with a massive gulf between them. Like we’re friends over here, and doing it over here, and that doesn’t work for me.”
“You seemed fine with all of this not long ago.”
“I know. But things are changing. I’m changing. That whole thing that happened down by the lake... And I realized when I poured all of that out to you how much I keep from everyone. How almost nobody that’s in my life that I consider a friend knows me at all. And when I got over thinking about myself, thinking about how all of that applied to me, I realized that it was true for you too. I don’t know you, Finn.”
“That is the second most ridiculous thing you’ve said. Along with saying that you don’t matter to me.”
“You’re avoiding the question. Why don’t you want to get married?”
“You know all this, Lane. You know why. My damned father went and made a new family rather than staying with me. At least that wasn’t unique to me. He did it to Cain too. But you know, getting abandoned by one parent can be random. Getting abandoned by both at different times? That’s a little harder to ignore. I just don’t want anything to do with having a family in that way. My father never married my mother. They were both terrible parents. The thought of trying those types of relationships again—even on the parent side—just doesn’t appeal to me at all.”
She didn’t really know what to say to that. Because part of her wanted to ask if he honestly believed that she would abandon him too. If a marriage and children would really be so bad, so toxic, as long as there were no bad and toxic people in it. But she didn’t want to put that out there. Didn’t want to put herself out there like that.
“Finn,” she said, the words muted, “just because your parents left... I... It’s not the way everyone will be. It’s not the way everything will be. You can’t let one thing...stop you from being happy.”
“But you can?”
She bristled. “That’s different.”
“Maybe it would be best if you went home tonight,” he said, the words falling heavy between them. She could still fix this. She could still say something. But there was always the chance that what she had to say would break things even more.
All that thinking about rebuilding. And now here she was. But then, it was entirely possible that this was new construction. That the old building, the one that housed their friendship, was condemned. Had nothing to do with what they had now. What they would have in the future.
Suddenly, it all seemed black, blank. She couldn’t see back; she couldn’t see forward. She was far too different from whom she’d been. And so was he. Well, no. He wasn’t different. That was the problem.
He turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her standing there by herself. She stayed there for a moment, completely immobilized. Surprised by the turn that things had taken.
She shook her head, getting a grip on herself before striding out the way that Finn had just gone. He was halfway up the stairs, headed toward his room, she imagined. She frowned. She looked toward the front door, and then she looked back toward the stairs.
She thought about leaving. But then she asked herself when the hell Finn had ever made it easy for her. He had pushed and pushed and pushed when he had decided that he wanted her and he was going to do something about it. He hadn’t listened when she told him she wasn’t ready.
Why should she give him courtesy he hadn’t offered her?
She made her way over to the stairs, taking them two at a time to try to catch up with him. By the time she got to his room, the door was closed firmly. She thought about knocking. But, in the grand spirit of not respecting his agency in the least, she figured she would just barge in.
She did. But he wasn’t in the room. She heard the shower turn on in the bathroom. She didn’t even have to think about what she did next. She stripped her shirt off, throwing it onto the floor. Followed by her bra, her jeans and her underwear. She kicked them both to the side and took a deep breath.
Finn had seen her naked more times than she could count now. Actually, if she thought about it she probably could count them. She remembered every time with him. Absolutely every time. Because each one was unique, each one had changed her in some way. Had stripped another bit of her defenses away.
And that was why it was so maddening to realize how much of his were still in place. Defenses he didn’t even seem bothered by. He had demanded that she tell him everything. That she give him everything, and all the while he had not intended to do the same for her. He didn’t even think he needed to.
She didn’t want to make love to a brick wall. Not when she herself was so reduced.
Thankfully, she knew there was more behind it. Knew there was more to her friend. To her lover. To the man who could very well become everything.
She pushed the bathroom door open, and Finn was already in the shower. She paused, looking at the long, lean shape of him that was visible through the glass door. She couldn’t see the details of his perfect, honed body. This was like an impressionistic rendering of Finn. And as gorgeous and artistic as it was it wasn’t enough.
She padded over to the door and pulled it open. He looked up, an expression of surprise on his handsome face. “Move over,” she said.
She didn’t wait for him to comply. Instead, she simply stepped inside, closing the door behind them, enveloping them both in warm steam.
“I told you that you should probably go,” he said.
“And you’re the only one who gets to break rules? I have to respect personal boundaries? Screw that, I say. You need to be pushed. So I’m pushing you.”
His expression hardened, but that wasn’t all that hardened. His body didn’t mind that she had joined him in the shower, no matter what his lips might say.
“I’m not in the mood,” he said.
She arched a brow. “Really? Because it doesn’t look like you have a headache to me.”
“Lane,” he said, his tone a warning.
“No. That’s not how this works. You’re not in charge. You don’t get to push at me, come into my store and kiss me. Take me down to the lake and strip me completely. Make me tell you all my secrets while you get to stay protected. It doesn’t work that way, Finn. You have to give back. You have to.”
Water sluiced over his shoulders, down his chest, trailing over the ridges and contours of his abdominal muscles, down those enticing lines that made an arrow that seemed to point to the most masculine part of him. It would be easy to forget exactly what her gripe was. Exactly why they were arguing. To simply reach out and touch him, and let them both get lost in the heat that seemed to explode between them now whenever they were alone.
“Or what?” he asked, his hard features blocked off. Shuttered.
“I’m not issuing ultimatums,” she said. “That’s a game for the desperate and the controlling, and I don’t consider myself either.” She wondered for a moment if that was true at all. Because right now she felt pretty desperate. And she had spent a good portion of her life being pretty damned controlling.
But still, she wouldn’t play games the way that her parents had. Wouldn’t hold something hostage to try and get the outcome they wanted. Their love, their support, unless she chose to give the baby up for adoption. An ultimatum that had led to a lifetime of doubts. No, she wouldn’t do that to Finn. Mostly because she didn’t want to ever wonder if that was why she had gotten what she wanted. And she didn’t want him to regret it.
“It would be a damn sight easier if you would.” He reached out, curling his fingers around her wrist and backing her up against the shower wall. He pinned her hand there, his hard body radiating even more heat than the space around them. “Then I would at least know what you wanted. Instead, you’re saying all this vague shit that doesn’t mean a damn thing to me.”
It was strange to argue with him naked. They had argued with each other a lot with clothes on. They had a long-standing friendship, so of course they’d had disagreements. But naked... Not so much.
She looked past him and noticed a shampoo bottle and a bar of soap. Next to that was a razor. They were simple things. Everyday things. Intimate things.
This was where he shaved. This was where he washed his hair and his body. Where he scrubbed away the evidence of a hard day’s work.
And this, she realized, was part of that blending. Whether or not he would easily give up information, easily show her who he was, this was part of that space between friends and lovers. Arguing naked. Being in his shower.
Loving him.
What a strange realization to have, pressed against the wall with more than six feet of angry man glaring at her. Right now, with tension as high as it had ever been, with him more than a little bit pissed at her, she was realizing that she loved him.
It wasn’t even a revelation. Not really.
That was what was so strange. It was like holding a rock in your hand for years and years, and then turning it over to discover that it was a thunder egg, and that there were multifaceted crystals where before all you had seen was that rough gray exterior.
She loved him. She had for years. But now, she was seeing the rest of that love. The depth of it. And all that it could be.
She took a deep breath, her breasts scraping against his chest hair, the slight friction sending little pinpricks of pleasure through her body. Then she rolled her hips forward, bringing the cleft between her thighs up against his hardened length.
His eyes flared with heat, his jaw tightening further. Clearly, he was determined not to enjoy this, even if he wanted it. Even if he was going to give in.
“But I don’t want to,” she said, her tone muted. “I don’t need this to be perfect. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to ask for what I want. It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to work toward what I do think is perfect.”
“So you’re going to try and badger me into giving you what you want?”
“Why not?” she asked. “You did that to me.”
He really didn’t like that. She could tell by the way that heat in his eyes sparked, just about caught fire.
Too bad.
“I’m not going to badger you. That’s what I would have done when I was just your friend. I would have rambled at you until you would tell me anything I wanted to hear to get me to shut up. But I’m not your friend anymore,” she said, the words coming out shaky, trembling. “At least, not only that. So I don’t have to go about it that way. Not when I could just do this.”
She stretched forward, kissing his lips. He growled, grabbing hold of her other wrist and drawing it up over her head and against the wall, just like the first. She arched against him, luxuriating in his dominant hold. She liked this. This very sexual facet of that rough, masculine part of him that she had seen play out in so many other ways over the years.
The way he worked the land, the way he rode a horse. The way he had dealt with a cranky and cantankerous grandfather, instituting changes at the ranch where he could, negotiating for what he wanted with unmatched skill.
Seeing it all focused like this, seeing what he could do with that when he had a naked woman at his disposal was intoxicating. And unsurprisingly, everything she had ever wanted. Even though she hadn’t quite realized it.
She had known him for a long time. And she hadn’t known anything about the way that he made love to a woman, but she had known the way he carried himself. The way he walked. Had seen the firm hand he used in his daily life.
Some part of her had known he applied those same things in the bedroom. Or the shower, as the case might be.
Rough language. Rough hands.
She didn’t mind. She didn’t mind at all.
She pulled against his hold, and he tightened his grip, pressing her more firmly against the tile, the edge of one of the squares biting into the back of her hand. “I’m not in charge—is that it?” he asked, his voice low, even. “I think I just might be, sweetheart.”
“Who are you talking to?” she asked, suddenly seized with the desire for him to find this all as unique and different as she did.
“What?”
“Sweetheart. That could be any bimbo that you brought back to your place. I need to know that I’m the bimbo you’re talking to.”
“Possessive, Lane?”
“I’ve always been possessive of you,” she admitted, fire burning in her chest. “Every woman you’ve dated has annoyed me. Just so you know.”
“Good thing none of them lasted very long.”
“Yes,” she said, “good thing. But I want to know that I’m different. So when you talk to me like that, you better make sure that you’re talking to me.”
He released her wrist, lowering his hand to brush his thumb over her bottom lip. “You think I have any other sweethearts, Lane? I don’t. I never have.”
Her heart leaped in her chest, tumbled against her breastbone. It was so close to what she wanted. So close to perfect. But his expression was still impossible to read, and she could still feel this wall between them. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe right now she would imagine that it didn’t matter at all.
Maybe right now, she would just kiss him.
She did. She tasted him long, deep, and when he said sweetheart again, the word sounding tortured, it did something to her insides that hurt.
He wasn’t holding on to her arm anymore, and she used the opportunity to plant her hands against his chest and drop slowly down to her knees. She let her fingertips trace along the paths the water drops had taken, down those perfectly delineated muscles.
She rested her palms against his thighs, looking up, eye level with his arousal.
He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the wall, looking down at her, a warning glint in his eye. But he didn’t tell her to stop. It didn’t matter if he did, she wasn’t going to.
She reached out, testing him with her hand first before she leaned in, flicking her tongue against his straining erection.
A gasp of breath seemed to catch in his chest and he reached down, grabbing hold of her hair. She closed her eyes, leaning in more determinedly, sliding her tongue all the way up and down his length. He cursed, and she gloried in the lack of control.
“Sweetheart,” he said, that rough voice of his so very Finn. Her best friend in the entire world. The man who held her heart in the palm of his hand, the man whose cock she held in the palm of hers. Oh, how she wished she had his heart. But if she didn’t, she would take this. She would take this pretty damn happily.
“Lane,” he said, and that word alone was enough to push her right up against the edge of climax, and he hadn’t even touched her.
She rose up slightly on her knees, taking him deep inside her mouth, feeling his muscles tense in his thighs, in his stomach as she continued to pleasure him that way.
“I’m not going to last,” he said.
I don’t care. But she realized she hadn’t managed to say that out loud, because her mouth was busy. And she wasn’t inclined to stop. Not at all. He tugged her hair even tighter, and that only spurred her on. Evidence of just how close to the edge he was. She craved that. Craved a crack in that wall. Some evidence that he didn’t feel nothing. Evidence that this was more to him.
That someday, she might reach him. That she wouldn’t feel like she was standing on the outside of Finn Donnelly, wondering who he was for the rest of her life.
Suddenly, frustration, anguish swamped her. This man she had known for a decade, this man she considered her best friend, felt like a stranger right now. A stranger she wanted to be closer to. A stranger who meant the world to her.
She was physically as close to him as it was possible to be, and she felt isolated.
He gripped her hair harder, urging her up, and she followed the motion, getting to her feet. When he took her mouth, it was fierce, rough. He opened the door to the shower, not bothering to turn the water off. They tangled together, and he walked her backward into the bedroom, laying her damp body down on the bed, rising over her, kissing her as he settled between her legs.
Then he hooked his arm around her waist, reversing their positions and bringing her down on top of him, his arousal pressed against the softest part of her. She rocked her hips, gasping when he came into contact with her.
At least there was this. And this made it feel simpler. Made it easy to forget. Made him feel like less of a stranger.
Even if it was fake, even if it was manufactured, a trick of the arousal coursing through her veins, she would take it. The other option was breaking apart, and she didn’t really want to break apart. Not right now.
“Take me inside you,” he said, his voice strained.
She lifted her hips, positioning herself over him and guiding him slowly inside of her. She clenched her teeth, letting her head fall back as he filled her inch by inch. She trembled, and she realized that if she had been hoping to avoid breaking apart, this was probably the worst way to go about it.
Because when he had filled her completely, when she braced her hands against his strong shoulders and looked down at his eyes, at the intensity in his expression, she felt like he could see all of her.
And she couldn’t see anything of him. Nothing but need. But heat and desire.
She knew what he didn’t want. And that was about it. It wasn’t enough. And at the same time, his body, buried deep inside of hers, was too much.
“Ride me,” he said, the command husky.
She rolled her hips, establishing a steady rhythm that was designed to torture them both. Rising up so that he was just barely inside of her, then teasing him there for a moment before taking him in deep. He gripped her hips, his blunt fingertips digging into her skin.
She couldn’t think anymore. She was lost in this. Lost in him.
Her arousal built inside of her like storm clouds, rolling in over the ocean, getting darker and darker until there was no choice but for it all to break open and rain down. When she broke, she clung to him, crying out her release, not caring if anybody heard.
She could barely acknowledge that there was anyone else in the world, let alone anyone else in the house. The only thing that mattered was the two of them. The only thing.
She was still shaking, shuddering when he turned her back over, settling between her thighs and thrusting deep, his rhythm wild, feral, as he chased his own pleasure. She was sure that she was done. That every last bit of pleasure had been wrung out of her. But she was wrong.
He froze against her, pressing right against that sensitized bundle of nerves as he pulsed deep within her, his release hitting hard and fast, and triggering another one for her.
She turned her head toward his neck, scraping that tendon there with her teeth, biting down hard. He groaned, his hips jerking forward, creating another spasm of pleasure deep inside her.
And if she’d had any doubts before, they were gone now. She loved him. And she needed to tell him.