The Outskirts (The Outskirts Duet #1)

“I want you to see the storm for what it really is,” Finn said, his voice deep and raspy.

“What would that be?” Keeping my eyes on the storm. My heart raced as it grew closer and closer. The fear coursing through my blood, setting alarms off in my brain.

“It might be mysterious and seem threatening at first, but really it’s beautiful and it’s only coming through to water and give life to everything below it,” Finn explained in a calm but firm tone. “Look at it with new eyes. Look at it as something that heals. Not harms.”

I leaned back, pressing my body into Finn’s as his fingers found their way into my panties and brushed over the most sensitive spot on my body. A mere whisper of his touch over my delicate bundle of nerve endings.

I instinctually pressed my thighs together, trapping his hand in between.

“Now what fun is that?” Finn asked, trailing his tongue along the back of my neck and pushing my thighs apart with his hand once again.

He leaned back against his Bronco and took me with him so my body was tilted slightly toward the sky. I could watch the incoming storm as well as feel his throbbing hardness underneath me. My entire body heated. Tingles erupted from places I’d never felt them before.

Finn began to stroke me gently but firmly in a circular pattern. Each time he completed the circle and started over again it sent a jolt of pleasure between my legs. I felt myself growing wetter and wetter. He groaned in my ear and set off a new spark inside of me that begged to be released.

“You see,” Finn started, his voice a deep rasp. “At first you think it’s just this dark thing coming to take over your life or at the very least annoy the shit out of you for a while.”

I would have laughed, but my laugh died before I could get the sound out of my mouth because his fingers picked up speed. I groaned and Finn responded by pulling me tighter against him.

“But then you realize, that it’s only here to help. The rain feeds the world, giving us what we need to live. The lightning starts natural fires that burn off natural waste. The thunder is nature’s gong, reminding us that we’re alive. It’s like you.”

“How?” I asked, my brain muddied by the sensations washing over me. By the need building painfully in my lower stomach.

Finn smiled against my skin. “I just told you. You remind me I’m alive.”

With those words, he toyed with the outer lips of my sex, strumming them like guitar strings, just as a wall of rain appeared in the near distance. I wriggled in his grasp unsure of where to go or what to do as it grew closer and closer.

“Look at it, Say,” Finn demanded, turning my chin toward the incoming rain as he rotated his fingers in varying stages of slow and fast with no discernable rhythm leaving me wanting for more and wondering what was coming next.

I did what Finn said. I looked at it with new eyes. As something wondrous instead of something evil. Something here to help, not hurt. As the wall of water approached I found myself almost in awe of it. “It’s beautiful.”

“It really is,” Finn said, pulling his fingers from my panties abruptly, turning me around to face him.

“The most beautiful,” he said, looking into my eyes and licking my wetness off his fingers. He lowered his lips to mine and once again, his hand found its way up my shirt and into my panties.

As the first drops of rain fell, the tension and fear about the storm melted away and the tension of passion and desire grew and grew until I didn’t think I could take anymore.

“You’re close. I can feel it,” Finn growled. “Face it. Face the storm when you come.” He spun me around again and resumed stroking me. Faster and faster. “Tell it you’re not afraid of it,” he demanded.

“No, I can’t.” And I didn’t know if it was because of what he was doing to me or because although I could find the water beautiful, I couldn’t quite let go of the fear.

“Come on, I thought you were fearless,” Finn prodded.

“I never said that. Actually, I’ve said the opposite. Pretty much everything scares me,” I responded, tossing my head back as he increased the pressure between my legs.

“Finn, I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know…”

“You don’t have to know what I’m doing,” Finn said, “because I do.”

Finn pressed the heel of his hand against my clit, sending a jolt of pleasure through me.

When my body tensed and I felt like something was about to happen he eased up, leaving me wanting and gasping.

“All you have to do is tell the storm you’re not afraid,” he nipped the edge of my ear, “and I’ll give you what you want.”

I couldn’t even pretend to be unaffected by him. His touch, his words. His insistence in trying to cure me of one of my biggest fears.

I rocked back against his hand. “I’m not afraid of you,” I said, although as the darkest part of the clouds grew closer I did feel my pulse start to quicken and my body stiffen. “There, I did it.”

Finn paused his movement all together and I almost growled out of frustration. “Louder, much louder,” Finn said, starting his torturous stroke over my sex once again.

“I am NOT afraid of you!” I yelled. The intensity of the buildup was almost too much to bear. I needed a release. I needed Finn.

“Louder!” Finn yelled. He picked up the pace and pressed his erection firmly against the crack between my butt cheeks.

“I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOUUUUUUU!!!!!” I yelled with all my might, bucking back against him.

I expected Finn to comment, or at least laugh at how loud I was, but he again paused his fingers but didn’t withdraw. I glanced over my shoulder to find him watching me with his eyes hooded and his pupils large and dark.

“Are you afraid of ME?” Finn asked softly, rocking his hips against me. The rain came in, washing out everything around us, there was no more road. No more trees. Just me and him and this fire blazing between us that not even the rain couldn’t put out.

I could only manage to shake my head.

“Really?” Finn leaned over me, rocking against me. “Because you scare the shit out of me.”

Lightning lit up the early morning sky and thunder bellowed and shook the gravel under my feet.

And for once…I wasn’t afraid.

Finn pressed the pad of his thumb down hard on the very spot that was throbbing for him. As the next roll of thunder roared through the air so did I.

My body released what it had been holding on to in a flush of pleasure that came in spurts, one more blissful than the next. The scream that tore from my mouth rivaled the thunder itself.

I was no longer skin and flesh and bones. I was only feeling and sensation and pleasure coursing through my body over and over again, wringing every last muscle of its power until I collapsed against Finn who held me up so I wouldn’t fall.

But it was too late.

I’d already fallen.





Chapter Thirty-One





Sawyer





“You are by far one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” I said to Josh.

It had been a few days since Finn took me out to face the storm and cure my fear. Now, it was my turn to help cure him of one of his.