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Chapter Two

Chapter Two

ANNIE

The cacophony

of voices had died down before I realized that most of the wedding guests had gone inside. I hadn’t noticed anything or anyone outside of our bubble because talking to Finn was actually… fun.

We meandered inside stood next to each other when Nikki and Chris had their first dance, and he obliged as my dance partner when the wedding party was invited to join them on the floor. Finn was a good dancer. A really good dancer. He moved with ease, he knew how to lead, and holy crap, he had moves.

“I like your dress,” he said, his hand trailing down my arm to where he rested it on my hip. “Doesn’t look like the usual bridesmaid fare.” He’d put his jacket back on and the effect of the full suit made him look even better.

“Spoken like a man who’s danced with a lot of bridesmaids.” I draped both hands around his neck. It seemed appropriate and not overly familiar, though the feel of his hand on my hip elicited all kinds of other desires that I needed to keep at bay for the sake of decorum on a dancefloor.

“I’ve danced with a few.” He didn’t elaborate. I wasn’t used to men of few words. Most of the people I worked with at my now-former law firm couldn’t get enough of hearing themselves talk.

Finn was a relief.

The song was slow and romantic, and he wrapped one hand around my waist while taking my hand in the other. I had to look up to see his face. What I saw was a mask of stoic good looks which he seemed to wear when he looked around the room, but his gaze immediately softened when he looked at me. I liked the way it felt.

The way his expression shifted reminded me of the way I sometimes felt when I was in court arguing a case. I became a different person, putting on a mask to keep my inner self safe from the hard-edged litigator who made enemies if necessary. Starting over at a new firm added even more reasons to wear that mask until I found my comfort zone. I’d been wearing it since I arrived in LA, a fact I only realized because Finn made me feel like I didn’t need it.

“What’re you thinking about?” he asked, rubbing his hand lightly up my back and combing his fingers down through my hair. Then he did it again, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks and a wild flutter in my stomach. His touch was intimate considering we’d just met an hour earlier, but I didn’t want him to stop. I edged my body a little closer to his and ran my fingernails through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Oh, just the real world creeping in for a moment. I had an unwelcome thought about the work I have to do tomorrow.”

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I train sea otters.” It was the first thing that came to my mind, and it rolled out before I could stop it.

“Really. Is there a big market for otter trainers?” He moved his hand lower, back to my waist. The song was still slow—something by Marvin Gaye—and everyone on the dance floor was moving at a lazy pace.

“Everywhere, really. They’re unruly, so…”

“You don’t want to talk about work either.” He shrugged, and I relaxed.

“I’d just as soon avoid thinking about it as long as possible. It’s bad enough I have to spend all day tomorrow on it,” I said. It was a lie. I was perfectly content to spend my weekends working, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Do you mind working on a Sunday?” He tilted his head, watching me. I didn’t feel like he was judging.

“Honestly, not really.”

We danced until the song ended, and the band launched into a set of pop cover songs. I pulled my hand back from around his neck, and we each took a step back, but he didn’t let go of my other hand. We looked at each other, assessing whether the other wanted to keep dancing. I shook my head and he led me out of the room and back out to the garden where we’d been before. It felt unnecessary to verbalize that we both wanted to leave the crush of people and the loud music.

The sudden quiet on the lawn immediately washed over me. I was no longer thinking about work or trials or whether my drink needed refilling because I’d already finished two and I was pleasantly buzzed.

Finn wordlessly dropped my hand and took off his suit jacket, which he draped around my shoulders. “You’ll freeze out here,” he said, explaining the gesture.

“I was okay, but thanks.” I wasn’t used to kind gestures from men. I was good at taking care of myself, so I didn’t look too hard for people to lighten my load. But it was sweet, and I liked that he did it without asking.

“Come.” He led me through the garden and down some winding pathways between bungalows, some of which were larger than my San Francisco apartment. Finally, we arrived at what seemed to be our destination—the pool.

No one was sitting on the lounge chairs at that hour, but the tiny twinkling lights made the setting look like it had been designed for a midnight tryst. Finn grabbed a stack of plush towels and spread them out on the cushion of a lounge chair and tilted it to full recline.

“Wow, you get right to it,” I said, sort of impressed that he was moving right to writhe-around-on-a-lounge-chair-and-make-out mode. He looked at me quizzically and proceeded to put towels on the lounge next to it. He tilted that one back as well. With an extended hand, he gestured for me to sit on one of the chaises, before taking the other one a couple feet away. Slightly confused, I looked over at him as he picked up my hand again.

He lay all the way back and after some momentary hesitation, I did the same, still unnerved because I’d thought we were on the same page. Didn’t most normal single people hook up at weddings? Wasn’t that where he was leading with his sultry stroking of my back and all the hand holding? And now we appeared to be gearing up to take naps at a great distance.

The thick cushions were comfortable, and I supposed I could think of worse ideas. Still, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Had I read all his signals wrong? I’d felt sure he understood the rules.

“So, I take it from your comment you were expecting me to have my hand up your skirt by now?” he said.

“Oh. I mean, not really, but I guess… well, yeah.”

He laughed. “Noted. And then, by corollary, I guess you wouldn’t object.”

“Um, yeah, sure. And who says, ‘by corollary’ in ordinary conversation? Are you on the debate team or something?”

“Or something,” he said.

“Right. No talking about work. Fine.”

“You seem disappointed in how this is going,” he said, an amused smirk on his lips.

“No, not at all. I was hoping for a moon tan and lots of sober conversation during my best friend’s wedding reception.”

“I can always get you another drink. Don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed. I’m fine. And so… we’re not making out, then. Just to be clear.”

He turned toward me, and those green eyes burned into mine. “I’m not ruling it out.” He yanked hard on my lounge chair and pulled it right up against his. The movement made a scraping noise on the patio and added to the brute strength of the gesture. It also sent a jolt of wanting straight between my legs.

“I’d be a damned fool if I got you alone and didn’t do this,” he said, leaning into me.

I leaned forward, feeling a magnetic pull toward him and whatever his instinct directed him to do. He reached toward me and cupped my cheek in his hand. His movements were slow and deliberate, and he locked onto my eyes as his thumb caressed my cheek. When he ran his fingers through the hair at my temple, I shuddered. Waves of intense craving shot through me at his touch. I scooted a little closer to him, still on my own lounge chair, still too far away, according to the urges of my body.

Then he tilted my chin up so I was looking directly into his eyes. I couldn’t look away and I didn’t want to. My lips were perfectly positioned just inches from his. I expected a tentative pass of his mouth against mine, but Finn was not a man who abided expectations. He kissed me hard with his delectably soft lips claiming mine in a generous, commanding sweep that had my heart pounding and my breath in my throat. He kissed me like it was necessary—like if he didn’t give in to the impulse, he’d perish.

His tongue tamed mine into a sensual rhythm, just like his body had led me seamlessly on the dancefloor. He wasn’t hurried or desperate, but he knew what he wanted and his lips melded with mine until I reached a state of fiery bliss I could barely manage. This was what a kiss was supposed to feel like. It put all the JV kissers in my past to shame.

My pulse was racing, and at the same time, I couldn’t breathe, which I knew would lead to a backlog of some kind in my heart. Maybe I would die. If it was possible to kill someone with a kiss, Finn could murder. He brushed his lips away from mine and lingered near my ear, breathing heat and fire that sent shivers down my spine and pooled low in my belly.

“But I also wanted to do this.” He rolled away and onto his back and looked straight up at the sky. With the hope of more kisses like that on the table, I reluctantly looked up as well.

“Oh, wow.” We had an unobstructed view of the sky, and it was a perfect, clear night. The moon was full and hung directly above us like a big, smiling grandpa face. And around it, I saw stars, tiny points of light in a dark sky that would never go black under the refracting lights of the city. “I didn’t think it was possible to see a real night sky in LA,” I said.

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t think much of LA. Or who’s from out of town?”

“Ten years in San Francisco,” I said, planning to tell him about my recent move, but he interrupted my train of thought with a cool fact about the night sky.

“We’re in a waxing gibbous, so the sky appears darker and the stars brighter.” He leaned toward me, so our heads were practically touching, and guided my gaze to where he was looking. “Do you see that area that looks blurry? It’s a star cluster, the Orion Nebula. Are you familiar with nebulae?” Ah, so he was an astronomer.

“A little. I think I’ve seen one."

He backed away, looking skeptical. “Not in San Francisco. It’s too foggy, for one thing. And when it’s clear in the city, it’s generally too bright. LA is usually too bright as well, especially with the full moon and the inversion layer, but this time of year there can be decent visibility.”

“I

have

left the city on occasion, taken some camping trips in the mountains. But this is… it’s pretty magnificent.” I stared up until the brightness of the moon started to hurt my eyes.

When I turned to look at Finn, I saw him studying me with a serious expression. I wondered how long he’d been doing that. He pulled me a little closer and I scooted toward the edge of my chaise. He did the same until we were pressed up against each other.

Neither one of us spoke. We just lay there, side by side, holding hands under the bright, white moon for a long time.

The intimacy of lying next to him in the dark, feeling his thumb trace circles on the back of my hand, made me feel connected to him in a way I hadn’t planned on feeling, especially with a nameless hookup. It was unwise to think this nerdy astronomer seduction was anything more than his particular prelude to a kiss.

I pushed down the odd, swirling thoughts I was having about him in which I imagined what could happen after tonight. No, this was a wedding one-night stand. It didn’t matter that my love-starved brain was working in matchmaker overdrive—“kiss him again, take him home, bear his children, engage in wifely duties.”

I had to admit, my yenta brain had a point. In a matter of hours, he had me wanting things I’d never considered with a man before. I was fantasizing about seeing him again—about getting to know him—and feeling untapped emotions about where that might lead. This felt mature and real. It was as though all the brute force making out and perfunctory sex with okay guys since I was a teenager had been missing the point.

Finn made the folly of all my previous relationships clear: how could polite, perfunctory sex and good enough conversation have ever been enough? How could it possibly qualify as a relationship? Of course it didn’t. I’d just never allowed myself to believe there was more.

And… maybe there wasn’t.

Finn had backed away so completely after his initial torrid claim on my lips that I didn’t know what to think. My mind whipsawed between desperate need for his tongue and his delicious lips to wondering if I’d just imagined the whole thing.

Maybe this was his game—giving and taking away. I wasn’t in the mood for games, and I started to think that he’d only kissed me because it’s what he thought I wanted. He was throwing me a bone.

I was not one to beg.

That’s why I wasn’t expecting it when he brought my hand to his lips and kissed each finger. And when he turned on his side to face me, I wasn’t expecting him to do anything more than talk more about the sky or propose another arcane activity that no one did at a wedding reception ever.

I decided I could be good with that. Despite my initial shallow intentions, I liked him. He was different. And interesting. And not the kind of guy who was just looking for a piece of ass on a chaise. But he was still so reticent, I wasn’t sure

what

he was looking for exactly.

“You’d be crazy to think I haven’t been wanting to do this for the past two hours,” he said, pressing closer to me, which had the effect of moving me over so both of us were facing each other on my lounge chair and the distance between us disappeared. Then his lips swept across mine, hinting at what I’d loved earlier but withholding it. He nipped at my bottom lip and sucked it gently before backing away. “I just didn’t want you to think it was

all

I wanted.”

“What else do you want?” I asked, surprised at how breathless I sounded after his kiss.

“Ah, babe, the list is long.” He kissed me again, deeper this time, and I felt every part of my body shudder at his touch. I tugged his dress shirt free from his pants and ran my hands over his abs, which felt like they were etched from marble.

His tongue tangled with mine, and his hands were in my hair, brushing loose strands away from my face. But there was nothing frantic or hurried about his pace. He wasn’t trying to get to a finish line. He was the frustrating sort who wanted to admire the view.

That had never been my priority. I was all about the accomplishment, the checking of a box, even when it came to sex. I wanted to know where we were headed, so much so that my body had gone stiff as my brain tried to exert control.

“Hey,” he said, pulling away and focusing his eyes on mine. “Relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

He laughed and rolled his eyes. “You’re not relaxed. The question I have,” he said, running a finger over the contours of my cheek until the skin tingled with goosebumps, “is what it will take to get you there?” He followed the path of his finger with a row of kisses which ended at my neck. He followed that with his tongue.

“I… I could maybe get there,” I mumbled, my brains scrambling and willing to agree with whatever he proposed. His breath was hot on my skin. His lips followed. He held my cheek in his palm and kissed my forehead, my nose, my chin. Finally, my lips.

He kissed with the same unhurried intensity that he employed when he talked about space. The passion behind his words—and now, his mouth—eclipsed reality.

“You are getting there. But you’re still struggling a little bit.” He kissed me again slowly, raking his teeth across my bottom lip and following with his tongue. My lips parted because I wanted more of him, and I was starting not to care how slowly he wanted to go and how long he wanted to kiss me before we did anything else.

I finally gave in to the idea that the kissing was enough. This, here, now. I lost my power to think about anything else.

“Yes, now you’re relaxed,” he said against my lips, not backing away enough for me to answer with words. I couldn’t have, even if I wanted to. His kiss—the way he moved his tongue languidly against mine, the way his lips connected with mine like he was committing every contour to memory—reduced me to the most basic human drives.

Need. Want. Desire.

His lips traveled over the curve of my chin. I felt his tongue sweep along my neck and his breath caress my ear.

And I was gone.

Then I was back.

“Shit.” Finn pulled away from me and shoved a hand in his pocket. I assumed it was a panicked attempt to check for condoms.

“It’s okay I have one in my—”

“Shit,” he said again, only this time he’d pulled out the sexy nerd glasses and his phone. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Shit, shit, shit. I can’t believe I have to do this, but… I have to go. I didn’t realize how late it’d gotten.” He seemed perturbed and more ruffled than I’d imagined possible from a man who’d seemed so calm and thoughtful all night.

“It’s okay. Can I do something?”

“No, no. It’s fine,” he said, backing away from me. “I’m so sorry. This was lovely. You’re… enjoy your night.”

He was starting to put on his jacket, then he apparently decided to abandon that instinct and grabbed it in his fist as he moved a few paces away.

Enjoy my night?

I wasn’t used to being confused by men and Finn… he confused the hell out of me. That made me want to chase him for answers, but I didn’t get the chance. He doubled back and pulled me to him. His lips crashed onto mine once more, and he kissed me like it was his last night on earth.

Then he turned and jogged—almost ran, actually—down the pathway and out of sight.

I could still feel his lips on mine, and a part of me felt so whiplashed by his abrupt departure that I had to do a double take to make sure we weren’t still kissing. My fingers went to my lips in a futile effort to connect. They were still wet. I could still smell his aftershave on my skin.

I looked to where he’d been a moment earlier on the garden path. One last-ditch hope that he’d made a mistake. But he was gone.

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