Damn, did it show that much? He decided sticking close to the truth was better than fabricating a whole bunch of lies that he might struggle to remember.
“I spent some time visiting a good friend in the hospital. It was hard to see them so unwell.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Tamsyn said softly, her voice filled with genuine sympathy.
“Thanks.”
Finn took a long drink of his sparkling wine. It served as a good way to stop himself from giving her any more details about exactly who he’d been seeing. As if sensing he didn’t want to talk about it further, Tamsyn shifted the conversation to what she’d been doing the past couple of days while he’d been gone. He felt a tug of relief when he heard she had gotten no further in her search for Ellen, but that tug was tempered with a powerful sense of guilt over her very evident disappointment.
She worked her way past it though and the conversation soon shifted to books they’d recently read. She had a very sharp wit and they enjoyed many of the same authors. By the time she served cheese and crackers and fruit back in the sitting room after dinner, Finn was feeling very relaxed. Due in part to the glasses of wine they’d shared, but mostly due to her company. He’d enjoyed entertaining her at his house a couple of nights ago, but he loved watching her in this environment too. She was more in control here, adapting this place to her own patch. Now, as they sat side by side on the sofa, he was looking forward to seeing more.
“You never mentioned you were such a great cook,” Finn said, slicing a sliver of ripe Brie and placing it on a lightly flavored rice cracker.
“That was the sum total of my expertise. Ooh, could you pass me one of those, please?” she said with a cheeky smile, and leaned forward to accept it from him as he changed its trajectory from his lips to hers.
Her teeth bit into the cracker, her lips brushing the tips of his fingers just as he started to pull away. The butterfly-soft sensation of her skin on his set up a chain reaction through his body and he suddenly found himself craving the feel of her lips everywhere.
“More?” he asked, his eyes fixed on her face as she clearly relished the morsel he’d fed her.
“Yes, please,” she answered. “More.”
A tremor rippled through him. He hoped she meant what he was thinking she meant. He went through the motions again, spreading some of the ripe cheese on a cracker and taking it to her mouth. This time she lightly grasped his wrist, held his hand in front of her parted lips. When she took the cracker she lingered over the action. Her lips, this time, deliberately grazing his thumb and forefinger.
Finn’s body went from semi-aroused and languidly comfortable, to rock hard and aching in a nanosecond. A crumb from the cracker fell to the top of the curve of her breast. All night he’d been treated to the enticing shadow of her décolletage, but now he had fair reason to explore further. Without wasting a moment, he bent his head and licked up the crumb. Beneath his mouth her skin contracted and a flush of color spread across its surface.
She tasted like more. Like sunshine and heat and warmth and woman. He was starving—for her. He traced his tongue on her skin again, heard her moan, felt her drop her head onto the back of the sofa, exposing the tantalizing line of her throat. He welcomed the invitation and nuzzled the point where her shoulder curved up to the side of her neck and pressed his mouth into the hollow just above her collarbone.
Her gasp of pleasure urged him on and he continued his journey up, to the fine contour of her jaw, to the corner of her lush lips. Then, finally, to capture those lips with his once more. She was no quiescent participant this time around, instead she was heat and fire all focused on that point where their bodies fused and melded.