“That may still be true,” he says, kissing along my jaw. “I might just take a little longer.”

What he’s doing feels so good, just his lips on my throat and his fingers slyly sliding my dress up over my hips. “Take all the time you need,” I mumble.

He talks as he undresses me. “You liked watching me at that party tonight?”

One of my shoes, and then the other, hits the floor.

“Yeah.” In fact, I loved it. He didn’t seem completely in his element, but he was happy enough to try, for me. It’s what we’ll do for each other, I can tell. We’ll try to find that common ground and live there.

“Did you refer to me as your boyfriend to the Kardashian look-alikes in the kitchen?”

His hands slide up under my dress, hands spread across my hips before he grabs and pulls my underwear down my legs. Way, way too slowly for my mood.

I push up into his touch. “I didn’t refer to you that way, but your fangirls seemed disappointed that it might be true.”

He rolls me slightly to reach behind me and unzip my dress. “Did you confirm I’m taken?”

“They knew,” I say, arching so he can slide my dress down my body. When I’m completely naked, and he’s staring at me like I’m Thanksgiving dinner and the Crown Jewels and a Playboy centerfold all rolled into one naked body, I add, “They could tell from the way you looked at me.”

He snorts, unbuttoning his dress shirt. “The way I looked at you?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugs out of his shirt and leans back over me, immense. “And how do I look at you?”

His arms strain against the cotton of his undershirt and it seems somehow to barely contain his biceps, the width of his chest. The way the T-shirt is smoothly tucked into the flat front of his black dress pants . . . sweet Jesus.

He runs a warm palm up my stomach and spreads his giant hand across my ribs. “Snap?”

“Shh, Poodle. I’m having a Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing moment right now.”

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” he asks, bending to lick up my neck.

“I carried a watermelon.”

He pulls back and looks at me before ducking to sniff my breath. “How drunk are you?”

“For the love of God, man, I’m not drunk. Get naked or put that mouth between my legs.”

I expect him to be a good boy and comply—he’s been so good tonight—but he disappoints.

Standing, he reaches for my hand and pulls me up, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I’m not fucking you on the floor,” he says.

“Then why did you put me there?”

“Impatient. Maybe clumsy.”

I laugh. There is not a clumsy bone in Finn’s body, but there are definitely 206 impatient ones.

He leads me down the hall to my bedroom, passing the hall closet without a second glance.

“You’re not going to tie me up tonight?”

He shakes his head.

“But I like it.”

I hear his quiet laugh. “I like it, too. I just don’t want to do it every time we’re together.”

“I’ll put my hands all over you,” I say, as if it’s a threat.

“That’s the point.” He turns, bending to kiss my neck and inhales slowly, smelling me.

Reaching down, I pull his shirt free from his pants. “So the rope isn’t really for bondage, it’s—”

“Sometimes it is,” he admits quietly, sucking on my pulse point. “I like the freedom it gives me to touch you any way I want. I think we both know I’m a controlling type.”

I laugh and it turns into a moan when he runs his hand down my shoulder and across my breast.

“But I also just like the evidence of it.”

I bite my lip, grinning as I unbuckle his belt, unfasten his pants, and push them down his hips. “ ‘The evidence?’ ”

He watches my mouth, stepping out of his clothes. “I like leaving marks. I like seeing you wet, and watching you walk differently in the morning because I fucked you so good your legs aren’t working right.” Finn swipes his tongue over my throat, making me shiver. “How you looked the morning I saw you at Starbucks? You’ll never look like that after a night with me.”

I exhale a jagged breath when he sucks hard against my shoulder, pulling a mark to the surface. “I like seeing what I do to you,” he says, “especially you, because I can tell how much you trust me—and seeing how good I can make you feel makes me insane. Rope is just something I’m very, very . . .” He lifts his head from my neck and kisses my mouth, my jaw, my cheek, and hovers near my ear, whispering, “Very comfortable handling.”

“Oh.” Oh sweet lord. I’m aching, my skin flushed. I swear if he touches me between my legs once I will go off like a bomb. “So possessive,” I mumble, arching my neck to give him better access.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “That’s exactly it.” Studying me, he guides me to lie on the bed and crawls over me. He’s massive in the dark room, a planet looming over my bed. Slowly bending his head to my chest, he licks my nipple, sucking and playing with my breasts until the tips are swollen and aching, flushed and hot. “Like this,” he whispers, bending to lick, and suck, and pull the peak between his lips some more until my skin glistens in the shadowed room. “I like these wet and hard . . .”

He bends again, biting just beneath my nipple. His teeth press in harder and sharper until the only sensation I’m aware of is the sharp line of them, the pressure and the delicious sting, sting, sting—

“Ah!” I cry out, and just before I think he’ll draw blood he pulls back, running his tongue over the bite mark, kissing it sweetly.

“Feel good?” he purrs into my skin.

I’m about to answer, “Hell no,” but the pain is gone and in its place is a feeling unlike anything I’ve experienced before: throbbing heat and intense pleasure commingle. His bite has created a tiny spot of insatiable hunger on my chest. I want his mouth back there, sucking and soothing and biting me more.

“More,” I manage.

Finn’s eyes seem to gleam with victory at my reaction—my hands pulling his face to my chest, back arched off the bed—and very carefully he bites deep grooves into an intricate pattern all over my breasts. Around my nipples and in the full curve below. Along the sides, and at the smooth slope of them just above the swollen peaks.