Kinky Boots(48)

When he pulled away, she looked down at the mauve boots she wore almost every day. ‘I still haven’t paid for these, you know.’

He followed her gaze. ‘The accumulation of interest alone is staggering.’ The corner of his mouth twitched with a repressed smile.

‘I always try to pay my debts,’ she said.

‘It’s a big one, and long overdue.’ This time he pulled her to stand between his legs where even in the fading light she could see he was hard. They weren’t alone in the kiss he pulled her into. It was long and lingering and Eleanor was once again installed comfortably in the space between, the space that still joined them, still felt like it could be filled by no one else but them.

He pulled away breathless. ‘Let’s get out of here. I want to be alone with you.’ He held her gaze. ‘Just the three of us.’

This time they made the walk back to Kinky Boots with no groping. This time they walked hand in hand in a space that was filled with tightly controlled anticipation. Jill felt Eleanor’s presence as surely as if she once again resided in that mysterious place at her centre, and yet she felt her equally wrapped around Finn, more closely than his own skin.

Once they were inside his flat, inside his room, he unzipped her dress. It was slate blue with mauve pinstripes, sleek and sexy, fitted to the curves of her, curves he ran his hands down over before grabbing the hem of the dress and tugging it off over her uplifted arms.

He caught his breath at the sight of her, silver-grey suspenders grasping the tops of sheer stockings, a bra of matching lace barely covering the jut of her anxious nipples. ‘It wasn’t you,’ she said to Eleanor. ‘It wasn’t you making me anything I wasn’t already. It was just you giving me the courage to trust myself.’

‘It’s taken you long enough to figure that out,’ Finn said. She could tell Eleanor echoed his sentiments. ‘All you had to do was ask us. We would have told you.’

When Finn reached to undo her bra, she stopped his hands. ‘Tie me up,’ she whispered. She brushed a kiss across his stubbled jaw and guided his hands to her breasts. ‘I want you to tie me up.’

He led her to the bed, eyes locked on hers as though he were waiting for her to change her mind. When she didn’t, he laid her down on the mattress and straddled her so that, where she rested her head on the pillows, the bulge inside his jeans was tantalisingly close to her hungry mouth. With a move that was nothing less than sleight-of-hand, he unhooked her bra and slid it away, dropping a warm kiss on each nipple as he did so. That done, he raised a finger to his lips silencing her. ‘Don’t speak,’ he said. ‘Just feel. Just let it happen.’ Then he rose once again above her, crossed her hands at the wrist, bound them with her bra and secured them to the brass headboard as high as her arms would stretch.

When he was certain the knot was secure, he lingered to kiss her, and she swallowed his breath, wild, excited, chaotic breath that tasted of him, tasted of lust, tasted of Eleanor. When he pulled away, he rose, still straddling her, unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off, revealing the naked rise and fall of his chest, the hard plane of his belly sloping to his navel and to the low ride of his jeans; revealing the long solid muscles of his biceps, the blue-green pathways of the veins running along his forearms beneath smooth skin. And she wanted him like she’d never wanted anything.

Holding her gaze, he lowered a kiss onto her navel. Then he made quick work of her knickers, shimmying them down over her bottom and off, leaving her sex bare and begging, peeking from beneath the lace of the suspenders. As she shifted to get his hand closer to where she needed it, he placed a flat palm against her pubic bone and pressed her back onto the mattress, pausing for a single torturous rake of his thumb against her swelling clit. And she whimpered. But he gave her a warning glance and a finger raised to his lips.

Once she had calmed, once she lay still again, he released a stocking from its suspender and rolled it down over her thigh, down over her calf, down over her ankle, kissing and nibbling as he went. Only the fact that her hands were tied and that he secured the leg he wasn’t undressing between his own legs kept her from writhing and squirming with the delight of it, with the nasty pleasure of knowing that each time he bent to kiss her leg, he could easily glance up to admire the view between her legs, slick with the want of him.

Once the stocking was removed, he tied her ankle securely to the brass of the footboard. Then he repeated the act, securing her other leg so that she was splayed open as wide as the footboard would allow.

She was certain he had stretched her out so that she couldn’t move, and yet, when he slid out of his jeans and returned to the bed, his erection leading the way, she could see that he had given her just enough moving space for what he had in mind. Then, with one last sleight-of-hand, he removed the suspenders and dropped them to the side of the bed.