Kinky Boots(42)

‘Jesus!’ he whispered, moving closer, his fingers taking over in their manoeuvring toward the warm wet of her.

She grabbed his face and kissed him again, finding her rhythm against his fingers. Then she pulled back enough to speak. ‘Eleanor has nothing to do with what I want, Finn Masters. I have to do with what I want. I make the choices, goddamn it. I’m not so feeble-brained that I don’t know my own mind.’

She heard his fly open and felt the smooth hot skin of his erection against the inside of her thigh. She felt the brick at her back abrade her elbows as he lifted her onto him, pushing into her hard and rough and angry. And she took him that way. Her insides, still tender from Meinrad’s attention the night before, gripped and bit at him as though she would never let him go. Her booted feet dug into his kidneys, her nails clawed at his back through his shirt.

It was over almost before it began. She flooded him and he returned the favour, grunting and straining as though each thrust wounded him, as though each breath he drew was agony, agony that she let bloom inside her until she gave it back to him transformed and they both came like the world would end.

He didn’t settle her back on her feet when they’d finished. He held her there between himself and the wall, whispering her name against the nape of her neck between hot wet kisses. And Eleanor, well, Eleanor seemed somewhere in between. She was not really lodged at Jill’s centre where Jill had grown used to her being, but she hadn’t completely migrated to Finn’s either. She was like ribbon, similar to those in Jill’s boots, somehow holding the two of them together and tying strange, demon-shaped knots not unlike Meinrad’s handiwork.

When Finn put Jill back on her feet, she found tissues in her bag and they both did their best to clean themselves. He held her possessively on the short bus ride to her house, and she held him back. Neither of them spoke. Eleanor still hadn’t moved from her position somewhere in between. Jill would ask Finn about that when she felt like talking again. At the moment, she just felt like being held.

When they finally arrived at her flat, she opened the door to find a dozen red roses on the coffee table, beside a bottle of champagne resting in a bucket of melting ice. Next to that there was a board with cheese and biscuits and ripe fruit. And her eyes misted. ‘You did this?’

He nodded. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, Jill. And I’m sorry I was such an arsehole.’ Then his ocean-deep eyes were suddenly dark and steamy. ‘I hope you’ll let me make that up to you.’ He raked her with a gaze that she could swear she felt against the tips of her nipples, as though he had sought them out with his lips and tongue. ‘I can be very good at apologising properly when given a chance.’

He led her into her room and undressed her slowly, lingering to caress her breasts and her buttocks and stroke the tight nest of curls between her thighs. He took his time to kiss the instep and heel of each foot as he removed her lovely boots. Then he wrapped round her the red silk robe that had been lying across the foot of her bed and led her back into the lounge.

She fed him fat juicy grapes from between the heavy folds of her, which he drizzled with champagne. He tongued and nipped at the fruit bathed in effervescent bubbles, and when he’d extricated each grape he slid up her body and shared it with her, fragrant and juicy with the taste of both of them. When they’d eaten and drunk their fill, they lay spread out naked on the floor. His head rested against her belly, his fingers lazily stroked her pout. ‘Why does Eleanor feel like she’s halfway between us, not really in either of us?’ Jill asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, planting a kiss on her navel and sliding up next to her, his fingers still working between her legs. ‘Eleanor and I have always been close. She speaks to me, she listens to me, she makes love to me in a way she never really has with Meinrad or Chelsea, though she seems to like them well enough. But I’ve never shared her with anyone.’ He forced an embarrassed chuckle. ‘Most of the time I’m too busy just trying to keep her under control.’

‘Why?’

He rose on his elbow and looked down into her eyes. ‘So she won’t hurt anyone, that’s why, so she won’t … I don’t know. So she won’t …’

‘So she won’t leave you?’

Finn didn’t respond. But it didn’t matter. Suddenly the world was clear in a way it seldom was. Suddenly the mysterious Eleanor was not quite so complicated, and the knowing, the seeing, the understanding sent warm shivers down Jill’s spine to pulsate against her clit.