“Just suffering your quarter-life crisis?” he says, smiling over at me. It’s not a mocking smile, and I put my attitude away. Apparently I look as desperate for more distraction as I feel.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t mean to sound like . . .” He pulls his hand away from me just long enough to wipe his face, leaving on my skin a cold shadow in the shape of each of his fingers. But then it’s back, and I can breathe again. “I don’t mean to sound condescending. I just remember feeling so pissed-off when I was in my early twenties, like why wasn’t everything already figured out.”
I nod, worrying my voice would come out strangled with emotion if I tried to speak.
“It’s around that time when Dad and Colt made me go on the bike trip.”
“Are you glad you went?”
He nods, but doesn’t say anything, and I guide him to turn right, down Eads Avenue. We pull into a spot in front of my building, and he reaches to turn the ignition off.
“Yeah,” he says, looking at me and handing me my keys. “I’m glad. But life is always complicated.
It just looks different from older angles.”
He follows me to the elevator in the lobby of my building, raising his eyebrows but not saying anything. His hands are shoved deep in the pocket of his jeans, his worn cap pulled low over his eyes.
“How drunk are you?”
I shrug. “Pretty drunk.”
I can tell he doesn’t like this answer, but again, he stays quiet and follows me into the elevator, watching me push the button for the fourth floor.
“This means nothing, coming back to my place,” I say. “Could just as easily have been at Oliver’s again. This was closer.”
He ignores this. “You don’t have a roommate, right?”
“Right.”
“You like what we did the other day?”
“Which?” I ask, leaning against the wall of the elevator as it slowly climbs. I swear I can feel his body heat from three feet away. “With the rope or without?”
He smiles, licking his lips. “Both. But I guess I meant with the rope.”
“You mean you couldn’t tell?”
The elevator doors open and he motions for me to get out first. From behind me he explains, “I haven’t done that with a girl in a long time.” I start to respond to this—I mean, now my curiosity is spiked; he’s got to give me more than that—but he keeps talking, “And the way you always leave right after . . . you’re not exactly easy to read.”
“Jesus, Finn.” Stopping in front of my door, I turn to look at him. “Isn’t this just hooking up?
What’s there to ‘read’?” I mean this to come out a little flippant, a little jokey, but instead my drunk voice is slurred and slow. He scowls, taking my keys from me and using them to let us into my apartment.
Inside, Finn drops the keys on the little table by the door and looks around. My apartment has two bedrooms off a large main loft area with a view over a couple of city blocks and out across the ocean.
“Wow,” he says quietly. “Nice investment.”
Laughing, I push his shoulder from behind, making him take a step forward into my living room.
“I’m going to ask something that’s going to make me sound like kind of a dick,” he warns, looking over his shoulder at me.
“For once.”
With a little smirk at this, he says, “What was it like growing up never having to worry about money?”
I smile at Finn and let him stew in what he’s just asked for a bit. Because . . . seriously? “What makes you think we always had money?”
He looks around the apartment and then back at me, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.
“When my mom first started out in television, I remember my parents really scraping by,” I tell him. “She commuted for filming. Dad was here doing, like, little indie movies and stuff in his friend’s backyard. Maybe when I was in junior high they got more comfortable.” I shrug, holding his gaze.
“When Dad won the first Oscar, it sort of took off. But that wasn’t until I was a freshman in college.”
He nods, and the silence stretches for a long, weird beat until he says, “I’m going to go use your restroom.” He looks down the hall and then back at me, gaze moving from my face down to my feet.
“You go get a big glass of water, a piece of toast, and a couple of ibuprofen or something. I’m not going to fuck you until you’re steady.”
He turns without waiting for my reaction to his bossy tone, walking down the hall and ducking his head into the bathroom before slipping fully inside, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.
Because it’s a good idea and not because Finn told me to—a fact I have to restrain myself from shouting over my shoulder—I go to the kitchen for water, food, and two ibuprofen.
I hear the faucet turn on, the bathroom door open, and then he calls from the hallway, “Where do you keep your sports and surfing shit?”
“My what?” I ask around a mouthful of toast.
“I don’t mean your board.” I hear him open the hall closet and mumble an “Ah. Got it.”
I chug my water and watch him emerge from the hallway. My heart trips. His shoulders fill the doorway and I feel oddly intimidated. It’s only odd because I like it. I like the idea of him being a little scary, a little out of control. I like the idea of him crashing into my life and pushing everything else out of frame.
He’s got a spool of bungee cord in his hand.
“How did I know you were looking for something like that?” I ask.
“It could be the subtle way I asked you about the rope, earlier.” He wraps his hand around my upper arm and leads me to the living room.
I weave a little on my feet and he studies me, pushing his hat off his head and mussing his hair with one hand. “You gonna remember this?”
It’s troubling how his voice affects me. It’s raspy, and reminds me of a good rich whiskey, the scratch of it in my throat, its warmth in my blood. I don’t think I can pretend anymore that I’m not completely obsessed with Finn Roberts.
“Probably,” I whisper, stretching to kiss his jawline.
“I can’t wait for you to beg me to come.” He lifts his chin the tiniest bit, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “And I can’t wait for you to beg me to let you stop.”
I have the sense of sobering up just so I can get high off the feeling of him inside.
Nodding at my clothes, he murmurs, “Take them off.”
I pull my T-shirt off, slip out of my shoes and jeans. He watches every move, absently unwrapping the new roll of bungee cord. I bought it a couple of weeks ago to transport my surfboard after my last cord started to fray, but hell. This works, too.
“This won’t be as soft,” he says, motioning to the cord, but I sort of hope he’s also talking about how he’s going to fuck me.
Once I’m naked, he steps closer, bending to kiss me. I love his taste—tonight it’s the faint taste of beer mixed with mint—and he hums quietly. “Tell me you want this.”
“I definitely want it.”
Carefully, he wraps the cord around my chest, above my breasts, then behind my back. Pulling it up over my shoulder, and down across my breastbone, he wraps it around my back. After he’s framed both breasts, he guides my hands behind my back so I’m holding my opposite elbow in each palm, and he binds my upper arms before tying the entire length of the cord together near my spine, just below my shoulder blades.
My breasts are framed by the cord crisscrossing over my sternum, and my arms are pinned at my back. The way Finn looks at me . . .
I feel like a fucking queen.
He presses his hand to my chest, each finger splayed so that I register just how big his hands are. I feel carved out, and now I’m famished. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to feel someone as untethered as I want him to be with me.
He runs the tip of his tongue across my lower lip. As if reading my mind, he says, “You like it when I’m a little rough, don’t you?”
I nod. I have so much need. I crave the edge, the point just before I fall where I know the relief comes and he gives my body everything. But I know he’ll make me wait for it, and the anticipation has me shaking.
“You want me just a little rough?” he asks, hands shaking where he cups my face. “Or you want me fucking wild?”
“Wild.”
He inhales, his flaring nostrils and scent making me feel as urgent as fire.
Finn reaches behind him, pulling his shirt over his head and then quickly unfastening his pants, pushing them and his boxers down his hips. He’s watching my face, my breasts, gauging my reaction as he undresses in front of me. Taking a step back, he lowers himself until he’s sitting on my couch, and curls his index finger.
“Come sit on my lap.”