He lifted his head to look at her.
“You were right,” she whispered. She saw him quirk up one brow slightly in query. “I should let you have the driver’s seat more often. At least when we’re not in a car.”
Esa struggled to keep her eyelids open in order to see his growing smile.
“Esa?”
“Yes,” she mumbled.
“Go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
And just like that she did.
The sun shone brightly through Finn’s floor-to-ceiling windows when Esa blinked her eyes open groggily the next morning. She stirred lazily, only to sit up when she realized Finn wasn’t in bed with her. She’d slept without dreams last night, warm and content within the circle of his arm.
At dawn she’d awakened to see his gaze on her. They’d made love again, slowly and sweetly, and in the end with a wild, intense abandon.
Afterward Esa had stared out the window as panic rose slowly in her breast. Eventually she’d joined Finn again in sleep. But this time her rest had been haunted by anxious dreams.
She was falling in love with him. Last night had signaled the treacherous moment when she crossed that line that led from cautionary infatuation to dangerous devotion.
Esa groaned softly and fell back on the bed.
She must have fallen under some kind of spell last night to let down her guard so completely. Maybe there was magic in the air on All Hallow’s Eve. Because in the blazing light of day the events of last night—the memories of their passionate, soulful lovemaking—took on the quality of a dream.
It hurt knowing that while she’d fallen for him for all his wonderful characteristics, he’d given no clear indication that he cared for anything besides the convenient mutual sexual gratification that was behind their initial hook-up, an opportunity for some self-soothing rebound sex.
But surely there was more to it than that for him. Last night—his touch, his intensity, the raw need in his tone when he’d said her name.
All things that were easily ascribable to lust, Esa reminded herself grimly.
>
She jumped when the bathroom door opened. She was surprised to see that Finn had showered and dressed. He looked thoroughly edible in a pair of faded jeans and a light blue t-shirt that highlighted his lean, muscular torso, healthy tan and brilliant blue eyes to breathtaking effect.
“Do you have to go in to work?” she murmured when he came over to the bed and sat down.
He nodded before he leaned down and gifted her with one of his slow, hot, patentable kisses.
“I don’t want to but I need to—at least for part of the day. We have a lot to do before we open that express lane for Monday morning traffic,” he said softly next to her lips a few seconds later.
“It seemed just perfect to me.”
“Monday morning traffic is a bit more complicated to consider than one red-headed speed demon in a Ferrari,” he teased her warmly. He delved his fingers in her hair and studied the way it looked in his hand for a silent moment. “You were going to tell me something about a misunderstanding last night. Remember?”
“Oh, right. I guess I forgot with everything else that happened,” Esa said, trepidation jolting through her at his unexpected words.
He met her gaze and smiled. “It’s okay. You sort of made me forget about everything else too. So what was it that you wanted to tell me?”
Esa swallowed uneasily. “It…it actually all started with that car.”
His forehead scrunched in confusion. “The car? Your Ferrari?”
“Well the thing about it is, see, it’s not really my car. Those license plates and everything—SXKITN69. As if,” Esa rolled her eyes, her nervousness increasing when Finn’s gaze narrowed on her. “And—you’ll think this part is funny,” she said, although the last thing Finn looked like doing at that moment was laughing, “I’m not really the publisher of Metro Sexy magazine.”
“Why did you tell me you were, then?”