“I overheard part of your conversation with her on Halloween in my mom’s kitchen. I’d been calling Rachel all week long, hadn’t I?”
Esa nodded.
“I didn’t get it at the time I heard the two of you talking but now that I know the truth it all makes sense. You were scolding her into not running the story.” His small smile faded as she continued so study her in the fire-lit room.
“What I don’t get is why you felt compelled to continue to lie to me about your identity after my initial error in calling you ‘Kitten’.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. She looked into the fire to avoid his piercing stare. “It was stupid, I know… An impulsive, spur-of-the moment decision. Carla and Kitten—Rachel, I mean—had been getting on me recently for being so boring and lame. I’d started to realize they might have a point. I specialize in the care of older adults. I really enjoy spending time with my patients but lately I’d begun to realize that I’d been hanging around them so much in my free time because they were…I don’t know. Safe? Nonthreatening companions for someone who had been burned in the romance department a few times too many and was going into early retirement?”
“And the night at One Life? What made you decide to take a walk on the wild side?” Finn asked gruffly.
“You did. I-I wanted you so much that I was willing to do anything, including pretending to be something t
hat I thought you wanted—just so that I could be with you.”
She’d spoken so softly that for a moment, when he didn’t move or speak, she’d thought he hadn’t heard her. The thought of having to repeat such an intimate confession made her panic momentarily.
But then she glanced up cautiously into his gleaming eyes and she knew.
He’d heard her.
He set the cup down on the desk and turned back to her. “Come here,” he said, his voice rough and gentle at once as he reached for her hands. Esa’s mouth still hung open in pleasant surprise by the time he pulled her into his lap and burrowed his long fingers through her hair. The whiskey and the gas heater had chased the chill out of him. He felt hard and warm beneath her bottom and thighs.
She moaned softly when he tightened his hold in her hair, bringing her mouth to his. He kissed her hard and masterfully, as though he wanted to stamp her with himself, stake some kind of primitive claim on her. Once she’d melted into him however, he softened his manner, lightly caressing her jaw and neck while his tongue plundered her mouth and his lips shaped and sipped at her own in a sinuous, erotic caress.
Esa’s body seemed to erupt with heat as she luxuriated in Finn’s taste, scent and touch. She’d missed him so much. It had been a constant pain that grew more and more sensitive over the last two weeks, every time the thought struck her that she’d likely never see him again.
A powerful need swamped her. She was distantly aware that not only did she claw at the buttons of his insulated shirt, his hands had also lowered and were hastily unfastening her blouse.
They broke apart a few seconds later and swiftly pulled the sleeves off each other’s arms.
“I want you so much,” Esa mumbled unevenly.
“I told myself it was best to forget you,” Finn whispered next to her lips. “You were supposed to be a rebound fling. I tried like crazy to stop thinking about you but I couldn’t. God, I’ve never known a woman who smelled half as good as you.”
Her head fell back, giving his talented mouth full access. She shivered in excitement when he traced her spine with his warm fingertips and opened his hand over her waist. “Or who felt half so soft,” he added between hot kisses on the front of her throat and chest.
Esa made a strangled sound when he lowered his face and nuzzled her satin-covered breasts from the valley between them with his nose and lips.
“You’re so beautiful,” he praised before he peeled back the cup of her bra from one breast and pressed light kisses on the curving flesh. He slipped a stiffened nipple into his warm mouth at the same moment that he shaped her other breast to his palm. Esa whimpered in pleasure while he drew on her so sweetly, making the throb between her legs escalate to a stabbing ache of stark need.
“Oh God, Finn,” Esa groaned a moment later. Her hips shifted restlessly in his lap. His cock excited her almost unbearably as it pressed against her bottom, feeling large and deliciously erect. “Stop torturing me, please.”
His head came up slowly from where he’d been inflicting said torture on her helpless breast. Esa bit her lip to stifle a moan when she saw how erect he’d drawn the taut, glistening crest. She squirmed in his lap but he stilled her with a hand on her hip.
“I wasn’t torturing you, honey. I was in the process of making love to you.”
“I know,” she said shakily. Heat burned in her cheeks. “But Finn— Oh!”
Esa was temporarily left speechless at the sensation of him sliding his hand beneath her skirt and poking two long fingers beneath the elastic of her panties.
“How’s that? Does that help matters?” he asked. He watched her through narrowed eyelids as he glided and pressed against her most sensitive flesh. Esa just stared up at him in mute desire as his fingers moved so deftly between her thighs. “It does help, from the look of things. And the feel of them,” he added huskily. His nostrils flared in arousal. “You’re very wet, Esa. Are you that wet for me?”
A groan of sheer desire broke free from her throat. “Yes. You know I am. I told you how much I want you.”
“Enough to lie? Enough to pretend to be a wanton woman in order to have your sexual wishes fulfilled?”
“Oooh, yes!” she admitted. Her hips shifted up in hungry little gyrations against the erotic press of his fingers.