Beyond Addiction (16 page)

“Shh.” He clamped his free hand over her mouth, muffling her needy, approving cry as he worked a second finger deep. She squirmed, grinding back against his dick, and he had to bite back his own noise as he worked the heel of his hand against her clit, driving her toward a quick, hard climax.

“What the
fuck
?”

The words were the only warning before a fist twisted in the back of his borrowed shirt, dragging him back so fast pain exploded through his face before he got his hand out of Trix’s pants.

His lip split against his teeth from the punch, and instinct took over. He swung back, trying to make room to get between the attacker and Trix, but he was too slow, his brain still sluggishly shifting gears. His face hit the wall, the brick scraping one cheek as the barrel of a gun dug into the other.

“You son of a bitch.” Low words, vicious and deadly. “I should fucking shoot you right—”

“
Jasper
.” Trix squeezed between them and shoved the other man back. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Jasper’s arm shook, but he lowered the gun. “The bastard was hurting you.”

“No, he wasn’t.” She turned to Finn and winced as she reached up to gingerly prod at his lip. “Jesus Christ.”

Finn steeled himself against the urge to laugh. The worry in Trix’s gaze was real, so she wasn’t likely to appreciate it. But Jasper’s fist crashing into his face was the first thing that had made sense in days, the realest, most comprehensible thing that had happened to him.

He had legitimately had it coming. For so many reasons.

Trix’s thumb touched the split in his lip, and he hid a flinch and caught her hands. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“This is horse shit.” She tossed a glare over her shoulder at Jasper as she dug a lace-edged handkerchief from her pocket. “The next time you’re giving it to Noelle in some dark corner somewhere, I’m going to come kick you in the balls. See how you like the interruption.”

Jasper tucked away his gun and snorted. “I’m sorry, Trix. It looked fucking bad, okay? I didn’t think to stop and ask about safe words.”

It was perversely reassuring, knowing that Jasper McCray would eagerly blow a hole in anyone who laid a rough hand on Trix. Maybe he and Jas had something in common after all. “Leave him alone, doll. I get it. Better safe than sorry.”

She grimaced, shook her head, and dabbed at the blood on his face. “Don’t you start, too.”

“Sorry.” He turned his head enough to spit the taste of blood out of his mouth—and didn’t even aim at Jasper’s boots.

“You’re both impossible.” Trix pushed the handkerchief into his hand, buttoned her pants, and snatched up the fallen bag. “Fucking impossible.”

She pivoted and stalked away before he could come up with a damn thing to say, leaving him in the alley with a bleeding mouth, an uncomfortable hard-on, and the man who’d tried to shove a gun barrel through his cheek.

Jasper pressed his lips into a thin line. “She’s pissed.”

“Sure seems that way.” Finn stared after her, even after she vanished into the crowd. “I get it, McCray. I’m a sick SOB capable of damn near anything. But the one sure thing you can count on is that I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe. Even let you assholes beat the shit out of me daily until you get it out of your systems.”

“I don’t know you, that’s all.” He relented with a half shrug. “But Trix does, and that should be enough. Under any other circumstances, it would be.”

“These circumstances are pretty fucked up,” Finn agreed. “I didn’t expect you all to greet me with hugs and cuddles. Maybe she did.”

“Or she wanted to, because it’s that important to her.” Jasper held out his hand. “Reason enough to try, right?”

His cheek still throbbed, and he hadn’t managed to clear his mouth of the metallic taste of blood. If it had just been him, he would have shrugged off the gesture. He didn’t need approval, especially from a man so ready to assume the worst about him.

He didn’t need it—but Trix did. So Finn slapped his palm against Jasper’s and resisted the urge to turn their clasped hands into a pissing contest by crushing the other man’s fingers.

She had to go looking for Finn.

Trix checked the likeliest places first—his room, the bar, even the courtyard in the middle of the compound. She finally spotted lights burning in the garage and found him, alone, bent over the engine Bren had ripped out of one of his pet projects. He was bared to the waist, his skin smudged with engine grease and sweat. She watched, her mouth dry, as he tightened something deep inside the tangle of metal, the muscles in his arm and back bulging.

She leaned against the workbench. “You’re working late.”

He glanced up just long enough to flash her a smile. “Turns out I’m no good at sitting on my ass, twiddling my thumbs.”

There was plenty of work, and Finn could do it all—if Dallas and the others ever learned to trust him. She shoved the thought away. “I went back to the market this afternoon and picked up some things for you. My way of apologizing for this morning.”

“I thought I was the one who needed to apologize.” He hefted a clean cylinder head and set it on the engine block before carefully nudging it into place.

“I lost my temper,” she explained. “Jas overreacted because he doesn’t trust you, and that made me angry.”

For a silent moment Finn concentrated on his work, starting to bolt the head to the engine block. “Jas doesn’t trust me,” he said finally. “That means he didn’t overreact. In his place, I might have pulled the trigger.”

Her chest ached. “What does that mean for us?”

Finn tossed the wrench aside and reached for a rag, wiping one hand clean before touching her cheek. “For starters, we don’t play that game again without a locked door between us and the world.”

She hadn’t been talking about sex, but about the rampant distrust. She understood the sentiment from her friends—even expected it, in some ways—but from Finn himself... It sliced at her a little more every time he spoke of himself in that damning way, as if he wouldn’t blame any of the O’Kanes for leaving him to die in an alley.

She swallowed past the pain and nodded. “I put your new clothes in my room, but I didn’t ask if you still wanted to be there.”

His thumb made a slow circle, tracing along her cheekbone and back down, so close to her lips. “Take me home, Trix.”

She almost bit his thumb—but he was right. Not out in the open, where anyone could stumble across them and jump to the wrong damn conclusions again.

So she pushed off the workbench and took his hand. They made the walk in silence, through the shivery night air of the courtyard, into the other building and up the stairs, all the way to her apartment.

She hadn’t expected to feel so nervous, but he’d never been here before. He filled the space as he took a few steps inside, his gaze sliding over the furniture and decorations, over all the little things she’d collected that made it the first real home she’d ever had.

“I’m on the list for a bigger one,” she said, anything to break the silence. “I was up next, but then Flash and Amira had their baby, and they needed the space more than me.”

“It’s still nice.” He stopped next to her four-poster bed and ran a hand up one of the columns. “Really nice.”

It was impossible to see him that close and not imagine him on her bed,
in
her bed. Waiting for her. Watching as she stripped off her clothes, piece by piece—a private version of the shows she put on downstairs, and all the more gripping because of it.

Here, it was just the two of them, in orbit around each other, with nothing else in the universe.

Trix gave in to the magnetic pull and reached out, brushing the backs of her fingers over his hip.

He sucked in a breath, the muscles of his hard abdomen flexing in a hypnotic dance. “Have you got a shower? I’m dirty.”

Goose bumps rose on her arms. “It’s big enough for two.” She slipped two fingers through one of his belt loops and tugged him toward the bathroom. “I’ll show you.”

Finn smiled as he followed her, a smile that lingered as she reached into the shower and he bent to haul off his first boot. “You gonna wash my back, doll?”

She pulled the decorative pin out of her hair and turned so he could get her zipper. “Is that really your best request?”

His other boot hit the floor with a
thud
followed by a tug on her zipper. The teeth parted with soft clicks, baring her spine to the heat of his breath. “Not my best. Just my first.”

Steam began to fill the shower and billow out into the bathroom. “How filthy do these requests get?”

Instead of answering, he left her dress half undone and slid a hand down her thigh. “You changed. I love these damn dresses.”

“It’s too cold to wear them outside right now, but they’re fine for shifts at the bar.” When she moved, his hand rubbed the satin of her slip against her bare skin, and she moaned.

“Do you want to get dirty before we get clean?” he murmured, stroking the back of her leg. “I could finish what I started.”

Temptation almost overwhelmed her. But she couldn’t keep letting things happen to her, even things like delicious orgasms at Finn’s beautiful hands. So she shook her head and turned in his arms. “No. Not yet.”

Still smiling that dark, hungry smile, he reached for his pants. “Then get naked with me.”

A pulse of hunger left her wet and aching as she dropped her dress down over her hips and stripped her slip over her head. Finn was naked by the time it hit the floor, and he twisted a hand in her panties and ripped them off one hip with a satisfied noise that weakened her knees.

It didn’t matter. Once they’d stumbled into the shower, Finn pressed her against the tile and claimed her mouth, kissing her hard and deep as the water splashed against his back and ricocheted to cling to her cheeks.

Here, shrouded in steam, it was safe to take what she wanted. Trix stroked his slick, wet skin, every inch she could reach. Up to his shoulders, down his sides, to the hard swell of his ass. She dug her fingernails into his clenching muscles, delivering on the teasing promise from that morning.

Then she gentled her hands again and slid them around to where his cock nestled between them.

Finn broke from her mouth with a groan and pressed his lips to her ear. “Is that what you want, baby?”

“Your dick?” A helpless laugh escaped her as she wrapped her fingers around him. “Hell, yes. All the time. Any way I can get it.”

He braced his palms on the tile on either side of her head and pushed back just enough to block the spray. “Show me.”

She released him and reached for the soap instead, turning it over and over in her hands before smoothing the suds across his chest.

His eyelids drooped. Closed. His chest heaved with his sharp inhalation, but he let it out on a long sigh of pleasure. She let her hands follow the lines of his body, massaging lightly as she moved up to his neck and shoulders, then down to his stomach.

But the silence made it seem too much like a dream. “Talk to me,” she murmured.

“Let’s forget the rest of the world for a while,” he whispered. “Just stay here. In your shower. In your bed. I never thought I’d see you again, and now I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

Left to her own devices, she’d take it even further. She’d pretend they’d never met before his arrival in Sector Four, that every touch, every whisper, was brand new. That none of it had to be second-guessed or framed with the baggage of the past.

That he could be
hers
, without doubt or reservation. “I could stay here.” Water sluiced down over his skin, washing away the soap, and she followed it with her fingertips. “Or here.”

Barely a touch, and every inch of his powerful body shuddered. “Or lower.”

“Horny bastard.” She teased him with the soft brush of her palm over the head of his cock. “Tell me what you want.”

Another shudder. And a moan this time, a low, hungry sound that felt like triumph. Even more when he spoke. “I want your mouth on me again. And this time, I don’t want you to stop.”

She slid down the tile, all the way to her knees, and stared up at him as he loomed above her, blocking the water but not the light, not entirely. It cast one side of his face in shadow, but his eyes...

He was watching her like she could bring him to
his
knees with a single touch, and she never wanted it to stop.

She touched his thighs, drawing her fingernails lightly over his skin, relishing the answering flex of muscle. A scar cut across one leg, thin and raised, and he hissed as her fingers traced over it. “If I’d known I’d see you again, I wouldn’t have gotten so banged up.”

“Do I look disappointed?”

“You look perfect.”

The words shivered through her as she wrapped her hand around the base of his cock, and she held his gaze as she stroked him. Slowly, up to the head and down again, alternating a light tease with a firm grip.

His jaw clenched. His hips flexed, thrusting his shaft into her hand. “You don’t take orders, do you?”

She’d learned this from him—how to draw out the moment until it sharpened into the finest knife’s edge of anticipation, just before it tipped over into frustration. “I take pleasure,” she whispered, then leaned in and traced her tongue over the tip of his cock.

He groaned, one hand slipping on the tile. And then it was in her hair, his fingers twisting through the damp strands to cup the back of her head, a warning but not a demand. Not yet. “Take more of it. Take
me
.”

She did, licking him one more time before parting her lips. He trembled with restraint, and she drew him in gently, slowly.

At first. But the moment he tightened his fingers—just a little, and probably not on purpose—she sucked him deep into her mouth. Hard.

“
Fuck
.” His fingers dug in, holding her in place as he panted. “Just like that. Don’t fucking stop.”

She obeyed, keeping up the same pressure even as she deepened the caress. But her hand was in the way, so she dropped it and clutched at the back of his calf.

“I remember this,” he said hoarsely, rocking back and returning, fucking her mouth in slow, careful strokes. “I remember trying to pull you back so I wouldn’t hurt you. And you’d take all of me.”