“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.