Page 170 of Chaos

Twining one, big hand in the hair at my nape, Finn yanks until my head drops back, grunting as he kisses his way up my exposed neck. “Not gonna last long enough to get inside you. You fucking wreck me, Charlotte.”

I shiver.Fuck me.

Fumbling with his waistband, I drag it down just enough to free his cock. I fist the swollen base and he grunts, bites, does very little to stop me as I squeeze. He flexes into my grip, encouraging me. Cries, “Baby.”

“I’m so empty.” I pump him once. Twice. Feel him leak all over my palm. Believe him when he says he won’t last. Don’t care. “I need you.”

“You need me,” he repeats roughly, pulsing in my hand. “Fuck.You need me.”

I parrot the proclamation he chants like a prayer, the words he covets. “So much, Finn.”

A rasping, growling groan rumbles deep in his chest. And then one hand is yanking my shorts to the side again while the other curves over my ass cheek, dips between my thighs, and I cry out as two fingers fill my cunt from behind, not quite the stretch I wanted, but fuck, I’ll take it.

My eyes roll to the back of my head as I ride his hand. His cock slides against my bare pussy, the tip nudging my clit, and I just about leave my fucking body. He does it again, thrusting harder, adding a third finger to fuck me harder with too, and I crumple like a damn leaf as an all-consuming, head-emptying, vision-blurrying orgasm washes over me.

I scream his name, and he shouts mine. I soak our laps with a flood of wetness, and he paints my pussy white. I slump forward, boneless and breathless, and he cradles me close. I whimper as he slips out of me, and I whimper again as I watch him fucking play with the mess he made, dragging a finger through his cum before pushing that finger inside of me. He retreats and brings three gleaming digits to his mouth, licking them clean, and I think I come again, just a little.

“Fuck me.”

“Can’t,” Finn jokes,croaks, his voice raw. “You broke me.”

Leaning back as much as my trembling body will allow, I crack a lazy grin. “Wow. I’mgood.”

He smiles too. Not a grin. A smile. A real, soft smile. He hums as he brushes my hair away from my face, cupping the crown of my head tenderly. “I can’t believe you're real,” he says, and I feel like I leave my body again. I feel like I’m floating. “I can’t believe I feel like this.”

Emotion swells behind my ribcage, my eyes, deep in the cracked, healing recesses of my heart. I don’t know what to say, I can’t think of anything good, so I kiss him and hope that’s enough. And then, before I do something embarrassing like cry, I clamber off of him, feeling his eyes on me as I wobble on legs that won’t stop shaking towards the bathroom.

Hisbathroom. Because we slept in his bed, in his room. Together. Because we were watching a movie and he fell asleep, and I couldn’t bring myself to move, to take my eyes off of him, and I fell asleep too.

I make quick work of cleaning myself up, gazing longingly at the clawfoot tub I don’t have time to soak in because we’re likely already late—Alex wasveryinsistent about what time the present-opening should begin.

As I’m brushing my teeth, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I wonder when, exactly, I started looking so… different.

You look like shit, Lux said to me that day in the hospital, and I thought it was a product of the accident, but now, I’m not so sure. Now that there’s color in my cheeks that wasn't there before, now the winter sun has painted my skin a healthier shade, now new freckles have sprouted across my skin, now my bone structure isn’t quite so harshly cut, I realize how gaunt I was. Pallid.

Now, there’s life in my eyes.Lightin my eyes. An upward curve to my mouth that I can’t seem to flatten no matter howhard I try—that creeps an inch higher when a man’s reflection appears beside mine.

Finn bumps me gently with his hip as he reaches for his own toothbrush. As bare-chested as I am, he scratches his lower stomach just as lazily as he assesses me in the mirror. When his gaze lands on the reddened skin a couple inches too many above my collarbone, mine does too.

Spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste, I sigh. “You are so dead.”

“Like I said.” Smirking around his toothbrush, Finn winks. “Worth it.”

My sister-in-law eyes me like she knows exactly what my turtleneck and loose hair are hiding. Bouncing Isaac on her knees, Luna snickers, but luckily, she doesn’t say anything.

Unluckily, she’s not the only one who notices.

Unluckily, Finn took that whole ‘rest of my body’ thing very literally, and when I, in all my infinite allure, somehow made the simple act of brushing my hair seductive, he just had to have me again. Had to bend me over the sink and drop to his knees and eat me out until my knees buckled. He had to sit me on the bathroom counter too and fucking gnaw on the skin above my hip bone, the skin above my tattoo, like a rabid animal and leave a purplish-red imprint of his affection that I accidentally flash while reaching for something on a top shelf in my sister’s kitchen.

Unluckily, Jackson is the one I flash. And as he decides whether or not to burst into tears or vomit, he grunts beneath his breath, “I’m building another fucking bunkhouse.”

“No, my love,” his wife croons, covering her son’s ears as she smirks. “You just needanotherbunkhouse. You already built one for fucking.”

Something heavy presses to the top of my head—a forehead, I quickly surmise when a grumble warms my scalp. “Kill me, please.”

“Sorry, baby.” I tilt my head to the side so Finn’s falls to my shoulder, smiling against his temple when he groans. “EvenIcan’t do crime on Christmas.”

He grumbles something unintelligible, and I smile wider as I nudge him with my nose, nuzzling him the way he claims I do a lot—like a cat, he says. I see that very thought run through his mind and I snicker before he can voice it, rolling my eyes at the rough purr that skitters across my collarbone. He kisses the same patch of skin and I drop one of my own to his hairline, another just above the neckline of his festive sweater as he straightens, and I’m dropping my chin to give the hand that cups my shoulder the same attention when I realize how quiet it’s suddenly gotten.

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