Page 102 of Love Overboard
Together.
Flash of light.His wide beamed smile.Saxophone riff.Me straddling his lap.Whip of cool sea breeze.Him inside me for the first time, shaking.
His warm breath on my neck brought me back to the present, to a moment so wrong it somehow made it all the way to the other side and felt nothing but right. He was so close I heard him swallow even over the music, like my mind was tuned into only him and had blocked out every other noise and possible distraction. I wanted to ask him what he was doing but I was too afraid to speak, too scared I’d shatter the fragile, illicit moment.
Finn was barely touching me and yet his cock was hard against my backside, like being near me at all was his undoing. That’s how it was for me, too.
One touch, one look, one breath from him had me ready to risk it all.
His lips parted, brushing my neck as he nosed the shell of my ear and sent electric tingles cascading down my body like a waterfall.
I angled my chin toward him.
His eyes caught mine — too close and out of focus.
Our breaths hitched, mouths just an inch apart.
And I covered his hand with mine, sliding it under the fabric of my suit and over until he was palming my breast, until I could find relief for the insatiable ache within, until I was sure he could feel how hard my heart was beating from his touch.
His eyes slammed shut, a deep, guttural groan ripping from him as he squeezed and I arched and we crashed through the gates of Hell, unrepentant.
“Em…” he groaned.
I could have come right there, right then, just from that sound, from that touch. One more flick of his palm over my nipple and I was going to surrender.
But in an instant, all his warmth was gone, the absence of him sweeping over me like a frigid whip of wind.
Somehow, I knew without looking to confirm that it was because someone was coming. And so I played it off, acting like I was dancing and my heart wasn’t about to kick its way out of my chest. I swayed and lifted my hands into the air, smiling despite how I could barely manage my next breath.
Suddenly, Eli was at my side, throwing his arm around me with a goofy, blitzed grin. He smelled like cigarette smoke and rum, and I instantly missed the scent from before. Finn’s scent. Vetiver and black pepper and fresh ocean air.
“Had a quick chat with some of the brus at the bar and we all agreed — you and me? Way overdue for a date.”
I blinked my eyes open, hoping no one could see the heated flush of my skin under the lights strung above. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, and then he bopped my nose with his finger, swaying us side to side a little too quickly for the current beat.
I laughed and tried to blend into the new moment, leaving the heavy one behind me, but it felt like a fish trying to fit in with a pack of wild horses.
When I chanced a glance over my shoulder, I found Gisella with her arms around Finn’s neck. He had a lazy smile on his face as he listened to whatever she was saying. She laughed and threw her head back.
And then she kissed him.
And I wanted to die.
The sight of them together was a rope around my neck and a boot kicked against my back, pummeling me forward no matter how I tried to resist.
I knew Finn well enough to recognize the hollowness behind his smile, the stiffness in the way he held her, the resistance in his share of the kiss. But it didn’t matter. Because it still happened.
She kissed him, and he didn’t stop her.
He’d had his hands on me, his breath in my ear, both of us on the edge of something I couldn’t even attempt to reach for now, it was so far gone.
And now he was letting Gisella press her mouth to his like none of it had happened.
I turned away too fast, the world blurring at the edges as I laughed at something Eli said without hearing a word of it. I forced my body to move, to dance, to pretend like I wasn’t clinging to the phantom sensation of Finn’s hand on my skin,like I didn’t still feel his lips at my ear, like I wasn’t aching so fiercely it felt like every nerve ending had been exposed.
I was so stupid.
