When The Rain Falls

22. Say My Name, Say My Name

22 SAY MY NAME, SAY MY NAME

FINN

“Ta-da!” Aimee pulls a bottle of wine from a paper bag like it’s a rabbit out of a hat.

The analogy is not too far off. She’s magically eroded all the self-control I’ve built up over the past three years. But everything feels so right with her. And that’s why I took her hand. It just felt right. And I was burning to feel her skin against mine. When our hands joined and when I wrapped my hands around hers, she quickly reciprocated. It felt like a yes. I don’t even know the question. But a yes felt pretty damn good all the same.

"Please tell me it's not pumpkin flavored?" I glance at her skeptically.

"Sadly, no," she says. "But the label is really cute, see?" She turns the wine bottle so the labels face me. It's a sasquatch drinking out of a wine glass.

"I should have known. Of course you pick your wine based on the label." I shake my head as I rummage through the kitchen drawers trying to remember where I last put the wine opener. I side-eye the wine label again and shake my head. Laurel was a wine snob. Just seeing that bottle on this property would cause an uproar.

"Don't be ridiculous," she says. "First I go by shelf height and then I go by label."

"Shelf height?" I repeat, confused, as I open and shut another drawer, unsuccessfully.

"Yeah. The middle shelf."

"Why the middle?"

"Because that's where the best wine is. The bottom shelf is college garbage. The top shelf is pretentious. The middle shelf is the sweet spot. It's the Goldilocks of wine," she explains. I can’t help but think that pretentious was Laurel’s style.

"Is this a hard and fast rule?" I ask her. "What if there was a really cute label on the top shelf?"

"How cute?" she asks, seriously.

"I don't know." I shrug.

"Bear. Wine is too serious a topic to leave to hypotheticals. You need to be specific."

"A mommy otter hugging a baby otter," I suggest.

Aimee considers. But she doesn't seem convinced.

"Sliding down a rainbow," I add. I gauge her reaction, but she still seems unconvinced. "In an upside-down umbrella."

"Ok. Fine,” she says with exasperation. “You got me.” I press my lips together to stop the smile creeping up my cheek.

"Why do you always do that?" she asks. "Why don't you smile? Is smiling so horrible?"

"First of all. Why do you care what my face does?” I ask pointedly. I’m pretty sure she would care if she knew what I wanted to do with my face right now. Which is part her long, shapely legs. “Second, do you have to ask so many questions?"

"Yeah. I do. I'm naturally curious. It's my best feature."

"I disagree," I tell her. I disagree because her actual best feature is the ability to make me want to keep smiling. Now that she mentions it, I don’t know why I keep stopping myself. I just didn’t have many reasons to smile until she came into the picture. And I wasn’t ready for it. For the way she gives me something to smile about. I was caught completely off guard.

I finally locate the corkscrew and bring down a wine glass. Aimee makes her way to the couch and starts some horrible movie. Something called Chainsaw Zombie Murders .

I pour a glass of wine and scan the table where the girls are handling sharp, pointy objects as they carve pumpkins. Who decided this was an excellent child activity? Taking candy from strangers. Giving kids knives. Movies about murders. There is something seriously wrong with the people who invented Halloween.

I walk past the table and head toward the couch, where I set the glass of wine on the side table. I stand awkwardly, facing the TV. Aimee’s, of course, sitting in the middle couch cushion. Should I sit next to her? Is that too close? In front of the kids? Would that be weird?

"Are you going to have a glass?" Aimee asks, reaching over and taking the glass of wine from the table.

"I don't really drink."

"You don't? Like at all?"

"Not really. I kind of quit," I confess. This isn’t something I hide. But it’s not something I share, either. The fact that I don’t drink because it only intensifies the anger. Not even my family knows the extent of it. They just know that I had a drinking problem for a while. And then one day I didn’t. It wasn’t an addiction. Just a crutch.

For some reason I can’t explain, I’m telling her.

"Oh.” She suddenly looks embarrassed. “I don’t have to drink, either. I’m sorry, I don’t know the etiquette.”

"Nah.” I wave her off. “Enjoy your wine."

"Well, did you also quit sitting?” Now she’s smirking. That sinful, full-lipped smirk of hers.

When I raise an eyebrow in confusion, she waves her hand over my body. "You're not sitting."

"Oh. Right." I take a seat at the edge of the couch right as a woman on TV gets decapitated by a zombie wielding a giant chainsaw. Aimee jumps as she clutches her chest and screams. Then she laughs at herself and it reminds me how easily she laughs and how much I’ve come to love the sound.

She turns her gaze back to me. "You don't have to practically sit on the arm rest. I'm not going to?—”

"Bite?" I offer. She laughs again and I feel the corner of my mouth tug upwards. I rub my nose with the back of my hand to conceal the smile. When Aimee raises her eyebrow at me, I know I’m not fooling her.

She rests her wine glass in her lap. Her slender fingers twining around the stem. The movement causes the neck of her sweater to loosen and fall off her shoulder. I can see the thin strap of a black bra. Suddenly, I'm fifteen and want to snap it. I force my gaze back to the TV, trying to not wonder if she’s wearing those blue panties.

On the screen, a woman approaches a dark house and knocks. The front door swings open on creaky hinges. The soundtrack grows eerie and suspenseful as the woman on the screen walks down a long hallway and slowly descends dark basement stairs. Frankly, she should know better.

"Oh, come on." I gesture at the TV in frustration.

"Bear! Shhhhh." Aimee nudges me in the arm.

"Like you need to hear all the tantalizing dialogue." I throw an arm casually over the back of the couch and, almost instinctively, she fills the space where my arm used to be. The heat of her body is flicking faintly against mine. It’s a heat I haven’t known in a long time. A heat I thought I’d never know again. And I’m suddenly ravenous for more. Ravenous to run my fingers along the column of her neck. To slide my hand along her thigh. But I don’t.

Instead, I lower my face. Stealthily brush my lips against the fly away wisps of hair crowning her head. And I steal. Each and every faint touch that can be siphoned away without her noticing.

"I'm never watching a movie with you again," Aimee says, breaking the spell of lust consuming my brain.

"Please tell me that's a promise," I say, teasing the top of her hair with my breath. I suddenly want her to make other promises. Promises to let me taste her. Touch her. Spread her wide.

Then I’m bludgeoned by a club. By one sentiment pounding away at my brain. I like her. I want her. She is everything I’ve ever needed since Laurel’s death. And it’s a tragedy of cosmic proportions that I can’t do the things necessary to keep her. That if she knew the truth about me, she’d up and leave.

“Excuse me,” Aimee scolds, her tone is sass, with a hint of something potent. “Why on earth would you not want to watch movies with me?” I love the fire in her tone. The spike of fever in her eyes.

"For one,” I raise my eyebrows at her to suggest that the list could fill a book, “your hair smells like lavender. It’s distracting.”

Aimee scoffs at me and a cute wrinkle appears across her nose. "And?" she humors me.

"And you sit too close." I nudge her and my body screams to press closer. “Also distracting.”

I steal a glance over my shoulder to the girls chatting away behind us. As if I could will them to leave the room with the power of my mind. But they should stay. Things are safer if they stay.

“Too close?” Offended, she starts to scoot away from me, but I reach down and snake a finger in her belt loop. As her hips squirm and wiggle against my pull, something hot and feral explodes in my chest. I lower my face to hers.

“You’re not fucking going anywhere,” I whisper quietly as I tug her back into me. “I didn’t say that I didn’t enjoy it.” Aimee’s mouth falls open in shock. I have to clench my teeth to avoid the same fate. Because I don’t recognize the man speaking for me right now.

“And,” the sex-starved man occupying my body whispers, “you better close this pretty mouth before I’m tempted to fill it.”

No, Finn. Goddamnit. I’m just thinking with my cock now. And that bastard’s determined to destroy me.

Aimee’s face is washed in delight. And there, with the widening of her eyes and the hungry curve of her smile, I feel a thrill that both drops my stomach off a cliff and causes my heart to take flight.

“My God ,” Aimee breathes out, slow and heavy. “What has gotten into you today. You are so,” she turns her head toward the girls and then back to me before lowering her voice in her own whisper, “ so in trouble when the coast is clear.” She slips a hand across my thigh and I take a meditative breath to keep my pants from tenting on the spot. And I’m now living with all the consequences of my poor decisions. Because I spend the next several minutes coaxing my dick to stay soft while also imagining all the ways that I might be in trouble.

After what feels like an excessively long time, the chatter at the kitchen table dies and three sets of feet wander upstairs. Someone on TV is chainsawed in half in a growing pool of blood and guts when our heads swivel and our eyes meet.

And what a difference mere minutes can make. Because I suddenly realize how exposed I am. How easily Aimee’s battered down my resolve. My protections. My walls. And I might be the world’s most reckless motherfucker right now, because I don’t even care.

Somewhere along the way, in the past week, a small seed of hope has been planted. It’s starting to take root. And I find myself clinging to it for dear life. Because I need to touch her.

Aimee turns to me, expectantly. Her cardigan still hanging loose off her shoulder. I reach out and slide one end off, revealing a bare shoulder and a thin strip of a milky white tan line. It reminds me just how tiny that orange bikini of hers is.

“You better have a move up your sleeve, bear,” Aimee says, her voice low and sultry. “Because all that talk has made me wet and I expect you to do something about it.” Goddamn. That’s all it took to make her wet. And I wasn’t even trying.

“Baby, if you want me to do something about that, then get on my fucking lap.” I slide lower into the couch and brashly splay my legs as I caress her arm, waiting.

She puts her wineglass on the coffee table and grabs the band of my jeans, using that to steady herself as she slings one fleshy leg over my thigh. She straddles me and it’s the very weight of her body against mine that has me biting my cheek and swallowing back the groans rising in my throat. I focus on her shoulder, pulling her body closer until my lips find its gentle curve. I plant one kiss. Just one at first. Then I slip the strap of her tank top and her bra down and plant a second kiss along the top of her collar bone. Aimee moans in satisfaction as her head tips back and her throat elongates before my eyes.

“Is this what you wanted, Aimee? My mouth all over you?” She nods and I grab her thighs and roll her over my groin. Pleasure rips through me. She curls her body over me to plant a kiss on my jaw. But I pull her mouth to mine. There's the faintest taste of wine on her lips. Spicy pepper, sweet blackberry, and hard iron. And there's also hunger, and need, and desperation.

Aimee moans into my mouth and I take that moment to slip my tongue lightly across the opening of her lips. She angles her head and grips my face with her hand as she presses fervently against my mouth. There's a hint of teeth, and a brush of tongue, and her breath falls heavy against my face. She’s fucking starved.

“Goddamn, Aimee,” I murmur into her mouth as she’s still plying me hungrily with her lips. “Fuck. I didn’t know you could kiss like this .”

“You’ve had plenty of chances to find out,” she pants as she rolls desperately over my cock. The friction is hot and demanding. I’m at risk of losing whatever control I keep telling myself that I have.

“I couldn’t take those chances, “ I confess. “Because they’d have never been enough. I’d just want more.”

“Do you want more now?” Aimee’s hands reach for my zipper and a flutter of nerves nests in my rib cage. I grab her hands and bring them to my chest. I don’t want to test my luck. Not today. Not when this is going so damn well.

“Baby, what I want is for you to keep grinding your sweet little body against me.” My voice is low and husky now as my teeth clench. She rolls across my lap and the pleasure threatens to unravel me. I run the palms of my hand up her back in an attempt to distract myself from the fire growing steadily between our bodies. The fire that’s about to tip me over the edge.

Aimee stops grinding. Her hands fly off my chest and snake behind her back. And I already know what she’s doing. Fuck, Finn. Be a goddamn gentleman. I come in for the assist, squeezing the fabric of her bra together until the clasps release. Our kisses grow distracted as Aimee slips her straps out from her armhole and pulls the entire thing out of her shirt with one quick movement. And I can’t help but wonder how many times she’s done that before.

I pull away, just for a moment, so I can drink in the sight of her. Her small breasts are full, hanging deliciously free under the thin fabric of her tank top. Peaked nipples tease the fabric. Aimee arches her back and rolls her head back, her tits begging for attention. To be touched. And they don’t have to tell me twice. As I lift the hem of her top, revealing her milky white stomach, the indent of her belly button, my groin strains harder. As I slip it higher still, it rolls over the swell of one breast. Exposing a perfect, perky handful. My heart pounds in my chest, roaring like a hundred wild horses galloping across an open prairie.

“My fucking God,” I mutter between clenched teeth as I flick a nipple with my thumb. “Baby, you’re a fucking vision.” I flick again. I just can’t stop touching her. “I’ve tried to picture these beautiful tits all week. Now I’ll never get them out of my head.” I’m so hard and my need so urgent that my dick actually begins to ache.

Aimee smiles greedily at my compliment. She cups herself, lifting her breast, teasing a nipple, and then letting it fall. Her breast swings perfectly in front of my face. I catch her nipple between my lips and pull it between my teeth.

“Bear,” she whimpers.

“No, Aimee,” I whisper, bringing her all the way into my mouth and sucking gently. “Say. My. Name.” I punctuate each word.

" Finn ." The sound is airy as it escapes from her soft throat and rises to the ceiling.

"Again," I tell her, grabbing her ass and pressing it harder against me. Because fuck. I love the sound of my name on her lips when she’s like this.

She arches her back and gives a quiet throaty cry. "Finn," she moans again.

I wrap a fist around her hair and give it a gentle tug as I continue to kiss and caress her nipple. I faintly recognize that I'm inching closer and closer to an abyss. An abyss where everything is uncertain. Where the future is unclear. But in this moment, everything that’s not Aimee’s body, heaving and arching before me, is just a distant rumble. Aimee rolls over my dick once more and it's all I can do to keep my eyes from rolling back into my head as pleasure cascades up my spine.

The sound of a whirring chainsaw and a woman's blood curdling scream causes me to jump. I bump Aimee's head as I nearly jerk out of my skin. Shit. The movie.

Aimee

When we pull apart, my chest is heaving, my breaths are shallow and quick, and every nerve in my body is ignited by fire.

Finn’s hand falls on my head and he flicks his thumb across my forehead where we collided. He pulls me by the back of my neck to his face and plants a kiss on my forehead. This kiss is tender and gentle. Not the frantic hungry kisses from earlier.

He’s panting, too. His strong chest clamoring for oxygen at each inhale. I want to push him. To the edge. I want to hear him groan again.

I bring my hand to my breast and tease it. My nipples are swollen, peaked, and wet from where he teased them with his mouth. I'm so turned on. So desperate for him.

Why did he stop touching me?

“That’s as far as we go,” Finn says softly, his head falling as his gaze shifts to the floor behind me.

Why did he stop looking at me?

He smooths my shirt back down over my chest.

As far as we go? What does that mean? I’ve been slowly filling with desire for him all day. And he all but worked me to the point of no return. The way he held my hand. The way he kissed me. The way he demanded that I say his name. It feels like there’s a bird trying to take flight against my chest. So, why are we stopping? I’ve been with plenty of men. And it’s never ended like this.

Then I remember his trembling hand from last night. Maybe he’s worried about something. "What are you afraid of?" I ask, studying the way his face is growing dark. His breath falls against my skin in waves.

“That you’re going to start something that I can’t finish,” he mumbles as he pushes me off his lap and stands up.

I’m about to question that statement when the sound of feet thumping on the stairs interrupts my thoughts. I grab my bra off the floor and quickly adjust my sweater, holding it closed across my chest.

Finn walks quickly into the kitchen, putting distance between us and running a hand through his hair. He paces back and forth a couple steps. He walks to the counter, looks across the surface, then turns on his heel and walks some more.

Footsteps draw nearer until Vivian enters the kitchen. "Hey," Finn says casually to her.

"I can't find my charger," Vivian whines. Finn moves a stack of mail, grabs a charger, and tosses it in the air towards her.

"Thanks," she says, catching it. " She spins on her heels and marches down the hallway with just as much vigor as she entered.

I stand from the couch and take a step towards the kitchen. Finn turns his back to me and tousles his hair again.

"Hey," I say, testing the waters.

“It's late." His tone suggests that the conversation is over. He grabs a box of pizza off the counter and shoves it into the fridge. I notice that his hand is trembling again. Like it did the other day. "I'm going to bed. I can send Julie home in a bit."

He closes the fridge and walks down the hallway. Leaving me standing alone and confused in his kitchen.