Finger Painting

We painted.

I turned on The Civil Wars, an indie duo whose music we both enjoyed, and we covered the walls with primer. The repetition of my roller-brush striking the wall was soothing, and I could feel myself relaxing with each passing minute, finding comfort in the monotony and mindlessness.

Finn began to sing along with the male vocal part and before long, I’d unconsciously picked up the female versus. We sang and painted until there were no more walls left to prime and the CD player had fallen silent after the final track.

“I didn’t know you could sing until I saw you up there on stage last night. I thought I was hallucinating at first,” Finn laughed, breaking the silence that had descended on us.

“I don’t really,” I replied, turning in a slow circle to see if we’d missed any spots with the primer. We’d have to wait awhile for it to dry before we could start covering it with the blue shades I’d picked out.

“That’s not what it sounded like last night, or just now,” Finn noted skeptically. “You’ve got talent. Why not use it?”

“Singing is something I do just for myself. I don’t do it for the applause, or the audience, or the spotlight,” I tried to explain. “It’s an outlet for me, I guess.”

Finn nodded. This, he could understand.

“Why were you there?” I asked. It hadn’t escaped my notice that he had his own band, with real fans and scheduled performances; he didn’t need to be singing at an open mic night. “It’s not exactly Styx.”

“Styx is great for when I’m playing with the guys, blowing off steam,” Finn said, walking over to lean against my draped bedframe. “But sometimes, when I need a reminder of what’s important in my life, I need to play alone and reground myself. Music’s one of the only things that can clear my mind. ”

“One of? What else works?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Sex.” One side of his mouth curled up in a dark smirk, and he waggled his eyebrows at me playfully. “Don’t suppose you want to help me out with that method?”

I glared at him, but there was no heat behind it. His smile became a full-fledged grin, complete with dimple.

“What’s all this about? The sudden urge to paint?” he asked, switching topics abruptly and gesturing at the whitewashed walls.

“I needed a change,” I said, shrugging. “I looked around this morning and realized how bare my walls were – how empty it made my life seem.”

Finn set down his brush and pulled off the paint-spackled plastic gloves covering his hands. Making his way over to my desk, which sat in the hallway just outside my bedroom door, he gently lifted up one of the canvases I’d had printed earlier – the photo of Lexi and I in costume – and examined it.

“You look happy here,” he said, smiling as he looked at the photo. Picking up the second canvas, the one of my mom on their pier, he stilled and his face grew serious. “This is your mom?” he asked quietly.

“How’d you know?”

“You look like her,” he said. “The eyes, the smile – on the rare occasion you show yours – even the hair. They’re the same.”

Warmth erupted in my chest at the thought that I might look a little like my mother. I wasn’t like her in other ways – not artistic, or forgiving, or kind. I didn’t possess her open heart or her capacity for love. But if I looked like her on the outside, maybe it meant that buried deep down beneath my cynicism, trust issues, and jaded bitchiness, I had a little of her within me after all. Maybe, if I looked for hard enough, I could find pieces of her inside myself.

Finn had moved on to examine the third picture, and he looked sad as he took in the sight of the little girl I’d once been, wrapped in my mother’s arms. His eyes shifted to me, where I leaned against my bedframe watching him.

“You don’t talk about her.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“I didn’t talk about my parents for a long time.”

“What changed?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“I met you.”

That threw me for a loop. “What do you mean, you met me?”

“You were the first person I ever really talked to about my parents’ death.”

My mind was reeling. How could it be that Finn had never discussed his parents before the other night on my rooftop? Granted, I never really talked about my mother either, but he seemed far more adjusted and normal than I ever hoped to be.

“Do you want to – need to? Talk, that is?” I asked, taking a hard swallow to calm my breathing. Jeeze, I was terrible at this. I didn’t know the first thing about properly dealing with my own grief, let alone other peoples’.

“Do you?” He turned my own question around on me, pinning me in place with the weight of his intense stare.

Did I?

“I don’t know. Sometimes, I think that if I don’t talk about her, it will be like she never existed at all. Like she’s just some figment my psyche conjured, or an imaginary friend I dreamed up during my childhood. And other times, I think I’d rather not remember anything about her at all, because then it wouldn’t hurt so damn much. I’d be free, normal, just like any other college girl. Worried about normal things like boys and homework and whether I’ll be invited to the Sig Ep party next weekend.

“But I don’t think about those things. I think about death, and loss, and heartache. I wonder why people bother to fall in love, when they know from the start that they’ll be separated one day – whether by infidelity or distance or death.” I took a deep breath, slightly shocked I’d just admitted all that out loud. “I’ve never had the luxury of being normal, Finn.”

“Normal is boring, Bee. It’s not something I’d wish for you.” He crossed the room to me, bringing one hand up to gently trace the line of my jaw. “Grief is a kick in the chest. It steals your breath, hits you so hard you think you’ll never stand back up again. And its not just because you’re grieving death or heartbreak or loss – you’re grieving change. You’re grieving the life that might have been, if it hadn’t all gotten fucked up along the way.”

His other hand joined the one holding my jaw, so he was cupping my face in his hands. I closed my eyes and turned my cheek to rest in one of his palms.

“You could spend forever thinking about the things you’ll never experience with your mother – infinity contemplating the memories she won’t ever be a part of. But at some point, you have to let the life you should’ve had go, and start living the one you’ve got,” Finn whispered.

Tears spilled out from under my lashes and he caught them with his fingertips before they could fall. Ignoring the fact that I was a paint-splattered mess, he cradled me against his chest and his lips came to rest in my hair, bringing me comfort as I trembled in his arms.

“Let go, Bee,” he whispered.

And I did.

After a time, my tears subsided and I became very aware of the fact that I’d just had a full blown meltdown in Finn’s arms. I wanted to run. A month ago, would’ve run; I’d have bolted as fast and as far away as possible. But now, I just moved a step back out of the circle of his arms and wiped the residual tears from my eyes.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not this person. I’ve cried more in the past two months than I have in the last fourteen years combined,” I said, forcing a laugh. “I’m sorry for falling apart like that.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I think the primer is dry enough for us to paint on now,” I said with a sniffle, walking over to the paint cans resting in the corner of my bedroom. Finn followed, quiet for once, and crouched down beside me as I shook up the dark blue paint. He grabbed the lighter shade of blue and, after shaking it thoroughly, he used a screwdriver to pop open the lid.

“So, I was thinking we’d paint the walls the sky blue color, and then make the ceiling the navy, dusk color,” I said, explaining what I’d envisioned when I’d picked out my color scheme. “Like the sky at nightfall.”

“Bringing the view from your rooftop inside,” Finn murmured intuitively.

“Something like that,” I said, smiling softly at him. It was weird how well he understood my messed up brain – like we were on the same wavelength all the time.

We painted the walls first. The light cerulean I’d picked was perfect, like the cloudless sky on a crisp fall afternoon. It took nearly two hours, long enough for us to listen through two more full albums. We sang together again, and I could feel the tension and residual sadness from my breakdown melting away.

Being with Finn was as natural as breathing. He didn’t demand anything of me, didn’t want me to be anyone other than myself. The time passed quickly, and I was silently grateful for his bossy insistence to help; it would have been a much longer process if I’d had to do it all on my own.

While Finn made a trip back to his house to pick up a ladder so we could paint the ceiling, I wandered into the kitchen, threw together some grilled cheese sandwiches, and grabbed a bag of corn chips. It was well past dinnertime; dusk had fallen outside, and we’d been working hard for hours. The least I could do was feed the boy, after everything he’d done for me today.

We took a dinner break when he returned with the ladder, but quickly resumed painting. Lexi had vanished, assumedly to Tyler’s apartment, and I’d never been more aware of the fact that I was completely alone with Finn, in my bedroom. Granted, it was more of a disaster site at the moment, but still – standing in an enclosed, semi-dark space with Finn Chambers and my bed was nearly more than I could take.

Don’t think about him naked.

Definitely don’t think about both of us naked.

Definitely, definitely don’t think about both of us naked in my bed.

The more time I spent with him in that room, the harder it was to focus on the task at hand. Being this near to him for hours and completely unable to touch him was torturous for me, yet he seemed completely unaffected. Maybe I was the only one who felt the growing tension between us, filling the air with unspoken promises and unvoiced desires.

He painted with a single-minded determination I couldn’t match, evidently intent on finishing the project before the day ended. My arms were aching, my feet were sore from standing all day, and I’d been ready to call it quits hours ago. Between the darkness of the room, the hours of manual labor, and the exhausting battle I was having with my inner hussy – who wanted nothing more than to tackle him and show my eternal gratitude for all he’d done – I was ready to drop.

“Take a break,” Finn suggested quietly.

“Am I that obvious?” I asked. I thought I’d been successful at hiding my growing exhaustion, but apparently he was more attuned to my body than I’d realized.

“Brooklyn, you’re swaying on your feet. The ceiling is practically done, all that’s left to do is touch up the edging. Lie down,” he ordered, yanking the drop cloth off my bed to expose my comforter. I moved toward the bed in a daze, truly exhausted. It was past ten – we’d been painting for nearly seven hours.

“Wait,” he said, dropping the edger he was holding and walking over to me. I stilled, several feet away from my bed, and watched his approach. He had a smudge of indigo paint on his forehead and another by his jawline, places he’d likely touched absentmindedly with his paint-covered hands. His dark hair was sticking up in wayward clumps and it looked slightly sweaty; for some reason, I found that incredibly sexy. He was usually so put together, so self-assured – Finn looking like a bit of a disheveled mess was a something I’d bet not many people had witnessed.

I smiled at the thought.

“You’ll ruin your bed if you get in like that,” he whispered, coming to a stop inches from me. He reached out a hand and tugged the front zipper of my coveralls, dragging it down so slowly the breath caught in my chest. I don’t know how he made stripping me of baggy painting clothes into something sensual, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was Finn, after all – he could make just about anything sexy.

Except Crocs. No one can make Crocs sexy.

When the zipper reached the end of its downward journey, Finn lifted his hands and pushed the material from my shoulders. It slid off quickly, pooling around my feet in a white and blue-splattered cloud and leaving me in only my tank top and shorts.

“Step out,” he murmured, taking one of my hands in each of his and guiding me toward him. My heart fluttered in my chest and I felt a swarm of butterflies explode into flight in my stomach. Staring up into his dark eyes, my hands found their way up to rest on his broad shoulders.

His eyes were hooded, and I immediately saw the desire that swirled in their depths. My hands slid from his shoulders around to the front of his coveralls, the residual paint on them leaving blue streaks in their wake. When my fingers found the zipper, they trembled.

Finn leaned down slowly and pressed a kiss to the hollow of my throat. My hands began to move, drifting downward and dragging the zipper along with them. As my fingers traced slowly down across his stomach, I felt the muscles there contract and an involuntary puff of air slipped out from between his lips.

When there was no more tread left in the zipper, I slid my hands lightly back up to his shoulders, taking my time to graze each taut muscle of his abs and chest as I went. His head lifted from the crook of my neck and he started down into my eyes as I gently shoved the material of his coveralls off his shoulders. His eyes darkened even further, the cobalt irises nearly disappearing into the black of his pupils.

The material dropped around his feet, revealing a tight black v-neck and faded gray jeans that looked like they’d been washed a million times and fit him like a dream. He was utterly still, watching me. Waiting to see what I’d do next.

“Step out,” I whispered, echoing his earlier command.

At my words, he took one stride forward and was on me, invading my space completely and hauling me up against his chest. His mouth crashed down against mine and I lifted up automatically onto my tiptoes, determined to meet his kiss head on. I poured all my pent up frustrations from the day into that kiss, letting my lips tell him in no uncertain terms what I’d never admit out loud – that I’d been suffering without his touch for hours and wouldn’t, couldn’t, stand another minute without his hands on my skin.

He groaned into my mouth, a sound that made me want to do cartwheels around the room because it told me he’d been suffering too – he was just better at hiding it, apparently. His hands were everywhere, skimming from my hips up my sides, just grazing the undersides of my breasts before moving away to explore the small of my back. His fingers lightly traced the exposed skin between the edge of my tank top and the elastic of my thin cotton shorts, and mine were fully ensconced in the unruly hair at the nape of his neck.

His lips were relentless, his tongue unhesitant and proprietary as it entered my mouth, like he was reclaiming something that was already his. I tugged at his hair, trying to pull him even closer – to deepen his crushing kiss.

I wanted more.

His hands slipped beneath my tank top and traced along my spine, sending shivers radiating through all my limbs. I’d never felt like this – so out of control in my need to possess someone. And I’d certainly never before wanted to be possessed in turn. But right now, I had to push all of my normal hang-ups about sex from my mind, because Finn was invading my senses completely and using up all my brainpower. When he was in my head, there was simply no room for anyone, anything, else.

I wasn’t a virgin by a long shot. I liked sex, a lot – it was my drug of choice, after tequila. But this was different. It was all-consuming. A need like I’d never experienced rushed through my veins and demanded more of him. His hands moved again, and then my tank top was on the floor and I was standing before him in just my bra and shorts.

Thank goodness I’d had foresight enough to put on my cute lace bra set from Victoria’s Secret before I got dressed this morning.

“Beautiful,” Finn whispered, gazing down at me and dragging his thumb across my bottom lip. Before he could move it away, I gave it a playful nip with my teeth and then traced my tongue lightly along the pad.

He let out another throaty groan, and pulled me against him again so my nearly bare chest aligned with his. My hands slithered down his sides and found the bottom hem of his shirt, yanking it up impatiently when I realized I was too short to lift it over his head.

He chuckled darkly and bent slightly at the waist, lifting his arms so the shirt could slide free. I carelessly tossed it next to me with no regard for my aim, and watched as the black v-neck sailed into a pan of cerulean paint.

“That’s the second shirt of mine you’ve ruined,” he grumbled in my ear, pressing kisses along my jawline.

“I’m sure I’ll think of a way to make it up to you,” I breathed, gasping as his mouth moved over a particularly sensitive spot beneath my ear.

Before I could react, I was lifted into the air, cradled in Finn’s arms as if I weighed no more than a feather, and gently laid down on one of the paint-splotched drop cloths covering my hardwood floor. I could feel the slightly tacky wetness of the paint sliding over my bare back as he laid me down, but I quickly forgot about that as he settled over me, with one arm braced on either side of my head and his legs straddling mine.

He kissed me again, and I leaned up into him so our chests were touching, skin to skin. My hands wrapped around his back and I explored the solid muscles there, tracing their fluid movements with the tips of my fingers. I used my grip on his back to leverage myself, sitting up beneath him. He rose with me, leaning back on his knees and somehow never disengaging his mouth from mine as we moved.

We kneeled eye to eye, our breathing ragged as we stared at one other. He stilled as his eyes flickered down to notice the light scar that marred my collarbone, and his eyes clouded over with more emotions than just lust; something darker, harder, scarier filled his eyes as he saw the mark my childhood had left behind, but it was tempered by a tenderness that made my heart turn over. He was angry that someone had hurt me. He didn’t know who, or what, or when it had happened, but I could tell from the storm raging behind those gorgeous cobalt eyes that he hated the idea of me bleeding for any reason.

Someone examining my imperfections so closely should have embarrassed me, and likely would have – except it was Finn. He didn’t look at me with pity or disgust; he didn’t flinch away or ask probing questions. Instead, he leaned forward and gently kissed the scar, as if tracing it with his lips would make it vanish, and take away the painful memories it was a permanent tribute to.

I wanted to cry. None of the guys I’d slept with in the past had ever even noticed my scar, let alone tried to kiss it better for me. A pang of longing lanced through my chest, one I didn’t understand and didn’t want to overanalyze at that moment – not when there was a beautiful, half-naked Finn kneeling inches away.

Taking him by surprise, I launched myself at his chest and we toppled roughly backwards. He landed on his back with me sprawled half across his body, my hands planted on his shoulders. Our shift had upset one of the paint pans we’d used earlier, and there was a sudden rush of cerulean liquid leaking across the drop cloth and onto our tangled limbs.

I laughed as Finn realized what had happened, dipping my right hand into a paint puddle near his head and then splaying my fingers wide across his bare chest. When I pulled my hand away, there was a perfect blue handprint over his heart, like some crazy tribal war paint. I giggled at the surprised look that came into his eyes, but my laughter cut off abruptly as they narrowed in a promise of retribution.

“Don’t,” I half-begged, trying to hold in more giggles as I watched him examine his decorated chest. His eyes shifted to mine and in a flash he was sitting up, with my legs straddling his lap. We were pressed close, nose-to-nose.

“Oh, you asked for it,” he said, smiling roguishly as one hand snuck around my back and unhooked my bra with a quickness that could only be achieved with years of practice.

I was so preoccupied with my disappearing bra, I hadn’t noticed what his other hand was doing until it was too late. As his right hand tugged each bra strap down the lengths of my arms and threw it to the floor beside me, his left – dripping paint – trailed across my collarbone and between the valley of my now exposed breasts.

I watched, mesmerized, as his long fingers deftly swirled the paint in blue patterns across my skin. His fingers streaked down to my stomach, circling gently and drawing a perfect blue ring around my bellybutton. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so unbelievably turned on.

This gives a whole new meaning to finger-painting.

My own fingers dipped back into the paint by my sides, and I began to paint his body in whorls of color as I explored in turn, creating a labyrinth of blue that matched my own.

His fingers felt like fire as they trailed along my skin, burning a path from my stomach down to the top of my shorts. My hands stilled on his chest and my belly fluttered as his fingertips slid under the elastic, following the band around to the small of my back. With his hands hooked half inside my shorts, he pulled me flush against him. I felt the air leave my lungs in a whoosh as the apex of my thighs brushed against his arousal for the first time – even through his jeans, I could feel how hard he was for me. A sound that might’ve been a moan escaped before I could stop it.

I’d never been this out of control before; sex had always been a well-choreographed dance, a predetermined sequence of actions with an established conclusion. This was different – it was wild, spontaneous. Finn wasn’t playing by any of my rules; he’d abandoned the steps altogether.

And I loved it.

My hands trembled as I reached for the button of his jeans, and he captured them within his own, halting their progress.

“Hey,” he whispered, using his nose to nudge my face up so we were looking into each other’s eyes. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

I waited a beat, seeing the sincerity radiating from his gaze and knowing that if I asked, he would wait as long as it took for me to be ready.

“We really do,” I said resolutely, reaching for the zipper of his jeans again.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he grinned against my mouth; I couldn’t respond because he was kissing me again.

Within seconds, he’d rid me of my shorts and panties, and I was struggling to pull his jeans and boxers down his legs. He kicked them off impatiently, and then he was on top of me again, his mouth fused to mine. With one knee, he gently nudged my legs apart and settled in the space between them.

I knew, at that moment, that my life was about to change irrevocably. I saw the change coming – I was standing in the middle of the tracks watching as the train bore down on me. I could’ve jumped the track. I even could’ve tried to outrun the damn thing, knowing it was futile but still intent on making an attempt at escape.

I did none of those things.

I looked at Finn and I knew that this would change everything, not just between us, but for me as a person. For years, I’d used sex as nothing more than an avoidance tactic – a way to shut out my grief and bury the hurt. It was an escape; with my body engaged, my mind was, for once, at rest.

This was different – I knew it in my soul, deep in the marrow of my bones, in the essence of my very self.

Finn’s words from earlier came back to me.

At some point, you have to let the life you should’ve had go, and start living the one you’ve got.

He was right.

Now, as he gently traced my face with his fingertips – no doubt leaving blue streaks along my cheekbones – I realized I was ready to start living.

I leaned up and kissed him, trying to tell him this with my lips.

He’d always been good at reading my mind.

I gasped as he slid inside me, all thoughts fleeing as I tried to acclimate to the feeling of him. As he rocked into me, eyes locked on mine, I met him thrust for thrust and spiraled slowly toward oblivion, my world going fuzzy around the edges. The only thing in focus was the paint-covered man above me, who was staring into my emerald eyes with a look of rapturous incredulity, as if he couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

My own mind swirled with the same turbulent ecstasy, reeling at the utter intimacy of the moment. I almost wanted to look away from his eyes, to break the emotional connection between us, to go back to pretending that this didn’t mean anything. But I couldn’t – Finn wouldn’t let me. And more importantly, I wouldn’t let myself.

With our eyes mirroring thoughts neither of us had ever voiced, we let the world disappear and fell utterly into one other.

We were covered in paint – a living, breathing form of art – entwined and breathless and caught up in each other. Spackled in blue from head to toe, a masterpiece of limbs, we lay tangled together on my floor and for a single moment in time, the individual creatures called Finn and Brooklyn ceased to exist. We simply weren’t them anymore – we were one form, one being, connected in the most primitive of dances. Our defenses obliterated in an elegant give and take, an equal exchange of breaths and caresses and thoughts and vulnerabilities, that would alter everything.

Afterward, we stayed wrapped around each other without speaking – as if we both feared what might come next and didn’t quite know how to break the silence. It had been intimate – shockingly so. I’d never experienced anything like this before, so I didn’t really understand the protocol. Typically by this point, my clothes would be halfway back on and I’d be edging slowly toward the door, preparing for a swift departure and leaving no forwarding address in my wake. But for now, I just let Finn hold me in the circle of his arms and tried not to tense up or bolt.

I’d never cared much about what a guy might be thinking after sex – usually, I’d simply assumed he was happy to have gotten some action and didn’t want to talk any more than I did. But in that moment, I’d have given up caffeine for a month – okay, not a month, that would be torturous… maybe a week – to know what was running through Finn’s mind.

I really didn’t want to be that girl – you know, the one who can’t even enjoy her post-orgasmic bliss because she’s so busy dissecting what the sex means, or how this changes things? The post-coital, over-analyzing, neurotic mess?

Crap. I am so becoming that girl.

And what were we supposed to do now? Cuddle? The thought was so incomprehensible, so foreign, that I didn’t know what to do with it. So, per usual, I pushed it from my mind and decided not to think anymore. I tried to force my body to relax into Finn’s chest and let my eyes drift closed.

They quickly shot back open when I felt Finn’s chest rumbling beneath my cheek. Was he laughing?

Full-blown chuckles were now escaping from him.

The bastard was laughing!

I propped myself up on an elbow and glared down into his face.

“You’re amused by this?” I accused scathingly. No guy had ever laughed after having sex with me. Left pathetic voicemails and staged ‘accidental’ run-ins at places he’d known I would be? Yes. Laughed at me? No. I was good in bed – this was unheard of.

His laughter abated somewhat, and he managed to gasp out, “Yes, the amount of overanalyzing that’s going on in that mind of yours right now is highly amusing. If your brain is about to implode or something, a warning would be nice.”

“Excuse me?” I glared at him some more. He stopped laughing and brought one hand up to graze my temple, his blue eyes tender as they met mine.

“I can literally feel you freaking out and getting ready to make a run for it,” he said, rolling over onto his side so we were lying face to face.

“How?” I didn’t like the fact that he could read me so well.

“Because every muscle in your body is tensed and your face looks exactly like mine does after I sleep with a girl and am trying to think of the most-effective, least-dramatic way to extract myself from her bed.”

I smacked him on his arm and jerked my head out of his grasp, refusing to meet his eyes after that comment. Was that really what my face looked like? Worse, was that the look on his face right now? I couldn’t look at him – I’d happily live in the dark, never knowing the answer to that question so long as it meant that particular insecurity wasn’t confirmed.

“Brooklyn,” he said, turning my reluctant face back to look at him. I tried to fight his grasp, but denying him anything was nearly impossible when those cobalt eyes were locked on you. “You wouldn’t make it two feet before I hauled you back in here with me.”

“This is ridiculous! It’s my room!” I huffed. “If anyone is leaving, it’s you.”

“Bee, do me a favor?” Finn asked, ignoring my complaints. “Stop thinking.”

I opened my mouth and prepared to ream him out. The cocky asshole had not only brought up all the other girls he’d nailed in the past when we’d just had sex – which violated just about every girl rule on the planet – but also was spot-freaking-on about my impending freak out – which violated just about every Brooklyn rule on the planet. I hated that he was right.

Before I could get out even a single word, however, he leaned in and kissed me firmly – a no-nonsense, deliberate kind of kiss that told me he knew everything that was going on in my mind and didn’t give a shit about any of it. The kiss was shorter than I’d have liked; just as I was beginning to kiss him back, he broke away and pressed a quick peck to my forehead.

“Look at us,” he murmured, eyes full of mirth as he slowly examined our paint-covered bodies. I glanced down at the smears of paint that coated our limbs and couldn’t help but laugh. Small round blue fingerprints spackled his forearms, marking the places I’d gripped; there were smudged handprints around my hips and thighs where he’d held my body against his.

“A work of art,” he whispered, tracing one blue fingertip along the curve of my breast.

My eyes met his and I suddenly couldn’t breathe, seeing the emotions his held locked away in their depths. It was remarkable how expressive they were, how rapidly they could fluctuate from playful to sensual to tender, and right now, they were full of a look so soft, so loving, I nearly had a panic attack at the sight of them.

It wasn’t a look you gave a one-night stand. It wasn’t a ‘just sex’ look. It was a ‘forever’ kind of look. Desperate to return to safer waters, I slid off his chest and began to stand up.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing his hand and trying to pull him up with me. With a sharp tug, he pulled me back down and I sprawled across his chest with a squeak of protest.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“Well, jeeze, caveman – I was going to suggest we take a shower and clean each other up…” I drifted off. “But if you’d rather stay here alone, that’s fine with me, I guess.” I grinned mischievously at him, our faces only inches apart.

He sat up faster than I would’ve thought possible and abruptly scooped me into his arms, stalking toward my bathroom door. I laughed at his impatience as he roughly yanked open my shower curtain and stepped into the tub. Within seconds the water was pouring down on us, and I gasped at both the frigid temperature and the torrents of blue paint that were pouring off our skin and swirling down the shower drain.

“Finn! Turn the lever! It’s freezing!” I ordered, shivering as the arctic water fell on us. “No turn it to the left! Jesus!”

He was laughing, cradling me to his chest with one arm and fiddling with the shower controls with the other.

“This is supposed to be sexy,” I grumbled, giggling at the ridiculous situation. “In the movies, the water is never too cold, the shower is always big enough for two, and they’re never covered in so much paint that the bathtub will have a slight blue sheen for eternity.”

Finn finally found the right lever and the water began to warm up. His other arm returned to hold me against him, and his lips grazed mine. I could feel every contour of his hard body pressed against me, and suddenly realized that we were, in fact, very naked. I stopped talking as his lips captured my mouth, and after a few tantalizing moments he pulled away to stare down at my dazed expression.

“You were saying?” he whispered, amused.

I couldn’t remember my own name, let alone whatever nonsense I’d been spouting less than a minute before. Clearly, I had no idea what I was talking about – showers with Finn could never be anything but sexy.

Putting me down to stand on my own feet, he gently scrubbed my skin clean with my apple-scented body wash, removing every trace of paint from my body in a slow, sensual perusal. After he’d shampooed my hair, painstakingly massaging each dark curl until I was nearly purring like a kitten, I forced him to bend down so I could return the favor and wash his unruly mop. We reluctantly emerged from the shower only when our skin was no longer spackled cerulean and the water had run so cold I’d started to shiver.

Finn shut off the water and grabbed one of my large fluffy green towels, swathing it around me like a shroud before scooping me up into his arms and carrying me out of the bathroom. He unceremoniously dropped me onto my bed and slid in behind me. Pulling the comforter up over us, Finn adjusted my body so we were spooning, my back pressed fully against his front and every curve of our still-wet bodies perfectly aligned.

“Are we seriously spooning right now? Finn Chambers spoons?” I teased.

Finn was silent for a full minute, breathing quietly into my damp hair, and I again found myself wishing I could know what he was thinking or even just see the expression on his face. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked with restrained emotion.

“Finn Chambers doesn’t spoon unless it’s with Bee Turner,” he whispered, so quietly I nearly didn’t hear him. I couldn’t help it – my heart turned over in my chest at his words. He made me feel special, like all of this was a first for him as well. Like he wanted me for something more than just my body.

When he said things like that, it was impossible to push him away – even though a big part of me still wanted to. Normally, I’d have put up a fight about a guy trying to spoon with me – it was far too coupley, too affectionate, for my taste. In the past, I’d never have even brought a guy back to my apartment, let alone allowed him to sleep in my bed afterward. I’d always specifically chosen to follow guys to their places for sex, rather than bringing them here.

I hadn’t wanted them to know where I lived, what my room looked like. I hadn’t wanted them to know me, in any way except that most basic, physical way two people can know one another. As a general rule, I’d done everything possible to discourage future interaction and affection.

At the moment, though, I was too tired and far too satisfied to argue with Finn about our sleeping arrangements. Silencing the small part of my brain that was shrieking about boundaries and the dangers of commitment, I smiled and closed my eyes. Melting into Finn’s warm embrace, I was asleep within minutes.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 540