Dirty Rowdy Thing

I DON’T REALLY KNOW how I would feel three days after having both of my breasts removed, but given what an important part of my body they are, I can imagine I’d be doing the exact same thing my mother has done since Monday: sleep, and cry.

And there is nothing, literally nothing any of us can do to make her feel better. Mom has never been particularly vain, but her career was obviously dependent on her body. So even though at forty-five she would be unlikely to get a bikini-­dependent film role, anyway, and the newsmagazines are highlighting her bravery and strength, she really just hates no longer having what was admittedly an awesome pair of boobs. Plus—and Mom is tougher than nails—I can tell how painful her recovery from surgery is.

She’s released from the hospital on Wednesday morning, and Dad, Bellamy, and I spend most of the day sitting in bed with her, watching reruns of Law & Order while she sleeps. By Thursday afternoon, we’re all restless, unshowered, and picking at each other.

I now know what would go down if the four of us were ever trapped together in a bomb shelter: murder. The incessant chirping of Bellamy’s cell phone is making Dad homicidal. Bellamy keeps talking about how hot the room is. And Mom tells me, “If you offer me food one more time I’m going to throw this remote at your head. Sorry, sweetie.”

For the family that never really fights, we sure are a testy bunch.

Finally, Dad pulls us both aside in the hall. “Girls, I love you,” he says, laying a hand on each of our shoulders. “But please get out of my house. Just go get back to your lives for a couple of days. I’ll call you with any updates.”

The problem is it’s not really that easy. I detest the morbid, niggling sense I have after talking to Finn at lunch on Tuesday that my mother is going to die. I can’t talk about it with anyone, and even if I could, giving voice to it would only make me feel like I was validating the possibility or—worse—turning it into reality, somehow. I have too much free time to think; my part-time job isn’t nearly absorbing enough, I can only run or spend so many hours at the beach, and my friends have packed schedules from morning to night. All of them, that is, except Finn.

Once Bellamy has driven away, I stand on my parents’ driveway and forcibly pull myself together. It feels literal: Pick up the pieces and put them where they belong. Pull the spine straight. Tie my still-wet hair back in a messy bun. Smooth my hands down the rumpled front of my T-shirt and jeans. Slap on a smile.

I’m making everyone join me at Fred’s, and I won’t take no for an answer.

“NO,” LOLA SAYS, and then I hear a loud clang in the background. “I can’t tonight. I need to finish these panels. And Mia said she and Ansel are staying in, since he’s leaving tomorrow and won’t be back for a few weeks.”

“I’m barely keeping my shit together, Lorelei Louise Castle.”

“You’re going to bust out my full name?”

“I didn’t brush my hair after I showered, I’m wearing one of Bellamy’s Hello Kitty titty shirts because I forgot all my clothes at home, and the Latin Love Machine”—Lola and Mia have a bit of a thing for my dad—“kicked me out of the house until further notice. Get your ass to the Regal Beagle.”

She sighs. “Fine.”

Fred Furley opened Fred’s Bar in 1969, when he was only twenty-seven. Now he’s seventy-two, has been married (and divorced) six times, and loves my mother maybe only a fraction less than my father does. I celebrated my twenty-first birthday here, and Mr. Furley only let me have two shots. Perhaps relatedly, I went home sober and alone. He’s loosened up somewhat, but he still likes to play the role of father figure, which is probably why I’m so comfortable being here. Besides, it’s a way better regular hangout than a coffee shop because, hello, booze.

It took him about seven years to understand why my dad called the bar the Regal Beagle, but the name stuck even if Mr. Furley is nothing like the guy from Three’s Company. He’s calm, tanned, and fit and gives me almost anything I want.

Like Thursday Ladies Nights.

Ansel and Mia picked up Lola and Finn on their way over here, and they arrive around the same time Not-Joe stumbles from his beach cruiser, parking it haphazardly against the side of the building.

“Where’s Olls, Ollie, Olzifer?” I ask with a silly grin.

Lola pulls back, studying me. “Are you already drunk?”

“No. Just . . . in a weird mood.” And it’s true. I feel a little unsteady, like if I stop moving I’ll crack and the crazy will spill out onto the street like a pool of oil. “I’ll probably be better once I’m drunk, actually.”

“Oliver’s meeting us here,” Ansel says. He’s the only one who isn’t looking at me like my hair’s on fire and I’m full of nitroglycerin.

Finn is watching me, his eyes hidden by the brim of his hat. “You okay, Ginger Snap?”

I nod. “No.” I take his arm and use the opportunity to grope his bulgy-hot bicep. “Yes? I guess. Weird day?”

“I hear that,” he says, leading me inside.

Mr. Furley renovated the interior of Fred’s a few years back, but at my mother’s insistence he kept the décor almost exactly the same and just brought in new tables, chairs and booths, fresh paint, and flooring. Like I said, Fred loves Mom. Yet another reason to love this place: We have our own booth in the back corner with a RESERVED card keeping people out whenever we’re not here. The truth is, Fred’s is rarely busy enough for someone to try to snag our table, but the gesture still makes me feel like a bit of a badass.

We greet Mr. Furley, order our drinks, and head to the booth en masse. Finn follows, unsure.

“This seems very ritualistic,” he says, opting to lean against the side of the booth rather than sit next to me.

“You stay here long enough and you’ll get the routine down. It’s a little complicated, though.” I hold up my fingers and count off the steps for him: “You walk into the bar. You order whatever you want as you pass Fred over there. You then walk to this table.”

He nods slowly. “Walk, order, walk.”

“Good puppy.”

Finn surprises me by touching his thumb and forefinger to my chin and gazing down at me sweetly before turning to Ansel.

Our drinks show up, and we decide to order some food, and then Lola and I spend some time catching up in the comfort of the booth. She recently signed a contract with Dark Horse for a comic book series, and my first response, pre-Google, was “I’m so happy for you!”

My second response, post-Google, was to nearly crap myself. Although this happened almost as soon as we got back from Vegas, I still sometimes can’t get over what a big change this is going to be for her life. In only a few months, the press will start: She has some interviews, a couple of trips to little boutique shops, and then her baby, Razor Fish—for which she’s been drawing characters since she could hold a crayon—will be launched into the wild.

While we talk, Finn wanders back over, leaning against the booth and listening to the tail end of our catch-up.

I peek over his shoulder. “Your drink is empty.”

He shakes his glass, looking at the liquid sloshing over the ice. “No, I have a little left.”

“Oh, just mine is empty, then.” I hand it to him, eyes wide and innocent.

He laughs, taking the glass.

“Tell them to put it on my tab,” I call to him as he heads over to the bar.

Finn throws me a dirty look over his shoulder. “I got it.”

“Smooth, Mistress Vega,” Lola says, her eyebrows raised.

“Harlow Vega?” Not-Joe asks, blond brow quirked.

I nod, popping an olive into my mouth and repeating, “Harlow Vega,” around it.

“Did your parents ever want you to go to college, or did they plan for you to go straight to the pole?”

I cluck my tongue at him, licking my fingers. “Careful, Not-Joe. Your boner is showing.”

“Oh!” Not-Joe says, turning to Lola. “Speaking of boners. I’m excited for your book to be out and selling like crazy, and then at Comic Con it will be unreal. You’ll be in your chick author getup, strutting around. Wearing a sexy mask, and spand—”

“Are you high?” Lola asks.

I realize it’s rhetorical so it cracks me up when Not-Joe answers, “Well . . . yeah.”

“I’m not going to deep-throat a corn dog and then go make out with a bunch of chesty girls in Catwoman costumes just to show I can hang with the comic guys.”

Oliver chose this moment to arrive and looks a little stunned, eyes wide behind his thick frames. He stares at her, gaze softening with what clearly appears to be admiration. His speechless reaction makes me do a slight double take. Is quiet, sweet Oliver beginning to fancy Lola? I meet Mia’s wide eyes and can tell she’s wondering the exact same thing. Swear to God, if my head weren’t so fucked-up right now, I’d be all over getting these two together.

“But would you let a comic book guy make out with you if he wore a Catwoman costume and deep-throated a corn dog?” Ansel asks, tilting his head to Oliver. “Theoretically speaking.”

“Reckon the fanboys will be gobsmacked regardless,” Oliver deflects, collecting himself. “Corn dog deep-throating or not.”

Mia scrunches her nose, shaking her head at Oliver. She almost never understands his thick Aussie accent, which is ironic considering she’s married to someone who speaks English as a second language.

“Happy fanboys no matter what,” Lola translates in shorthand.

I remember the first night we hung out with Oliver—after Mia and Ansel disappeared down the hall and it was just me and Lola, way drunker than the two strangers in front of us. After closer inspection, we realized Oliver had a black Sharpie flower drawn on his cheek.

“I’m curious about the flower,” Lola said when he’d settled onto the seat next to her. He wore his usual thick-rimmed glasses, black straight jeans, dark T-shirt. I was almost positive it wasn’t a face tattoo . . . almost.

“Loss a bit,” he said cryptically, and then returned to silence. It took several beats for me to recognize that he’d said, “Lost a bet.”

“Details,” Lola said.

And Finn supplied them happily. Apparently they’d just done an abbreviated version of the biking trip across the States that brought them together six years earlier. “The deal was, whoever went through the most tire tubes had to get a Sharpie face tattoo. Oliver here can’t help but treat a road bike like a mountain bike. I’m surprised his tire rims don’t look like tacos.”

Oliver shrugged, and it was clear to me he couldn’t care less that he had a flower drawn on his face. He was definitely not there to impress anyone.

“Do people call you Ollie?” Lola asked.

Oliver looked at her, completely dumbfounded by the possibility of this nickname. She may as well have asked him if people call him Garth, or Andrew, or Timothy.

“No,” he said flatly, and the only thing charming about him was the way his accent seemed to run through every vowel with one syllable. Lola’s eyebrow twitched in her single tell—mildly annoyed—and she lifted her flashing LED drink cup to her lips.

Lola wears mostly black, including her glossy dark hair, and has a tiny diamond pierced into her lip, but, even still, she’s never been able to pull off the full physical manifestation of the angry Riot Grrrl. With her perfect porcelain skin and the longest eyelashes in the world, she’s simply too delicate. But once she decides you’re an asshole, it no longer matters to her what you think. She gives good glare.

“The flower suits you,” she said, tilting her head to study him. “And you have pretty hands, kind of soft. Maybe we should call you Olive.”

He grunted out a dry laugh.

“And a really beautiful mouth,” I added. “Gentle. Like a woman’s.”

“Aw fuck off.” He was laughing outright by then.

Somehow we all went from tipsy strangers to hammered best friends to spouses that night. But Lola and Oliver were the only couple that didn’t consummate anything, and, even at the time, Lola was pretty convinced Oliver wasn’t interested at all.

Now I’m pretty sure she was wrong.

“Where’s Finn?” Oliver asks, sliding into the booth, then saying, “Hey, Joe,” to Not-Joe.

“Driving Miss Harlow,” I say.

He stares at me, confused.

“Getting Harlow a drink,” Lola translates again.

Oliver nods once, satisfied, glancing over at the bar and then back to me. “Be nice to my boy,” he says, giving me a wink, but his tone tells me he’s serious.

“Because he’s delicate? Please,” I scoff. “I’m just using him for his enormous penis and surprising skills with rope. Don’t worry about his finespun man feelings.”

Oliver groans, covering his face. “More than I needed to know,” he says, at the exact same moment Lola shouts, “Overshare alert!”

“That’ll teach you to lecture me,” I tell them with a grin. “How’s the store?”

“Good. Really busy. I reckon it’ll be right if it keeps up like this, yeah?”

I see Mia lean to Ansel, who laughs as he repeats more slowly what Oliver has just said.

“Do I need to speak slowly, Mee-ahh?” Oliver drawls in his exaggerated version of an American accent.

“Yes!” she yells.

“How’s the front reading nook?” I ask. “Bringing in lots of newbies?”

“I think so?” he says, stealing Mia’s untouched beer. “I need to get a feel for who my regulars will be.”

“How long until you bang someone up there after hours?” I ask, leaning my chin on my hands.

He laughs, shaking his head. “That front window is pretty enormous. Reckon never.”

“Some girls are into that.”

He shrugs, grinning down at the coaster he’s playing with, not glancing at Lola even once. I will break this boy if it kills me.

“Maybe Oliver’s first go-round there will be in the stockroom,” Ansel joins in and oh, he is my favorite.

Mia leans into Ansel’s side, and he bends to say something near her ear. Her happiness is the best distraction from my own worries. Maybe the alcohol helps, too. I’m so happy for her that her guy’s here for more than just the usual day and a half. He seems to come visit every couple of weeks, but it’s a mix of giddiness when he arrives and the constant dread of another goodbye when he leaves.

“You guys look so good together,” I say, leaning halfway across the curved bench to kiss Mia’s cheek.

“Imagine what we look like when we’re having sex!” Ansel yells across the table. “It’s unreal!”

I ball up my cocktail napkin and hurl it at him. “Too far.”

“It’s my superpower.”

“What’s mine?” I ask.

Ansel cups his hands around his mouth, calling out over the music, “Doing shots?”

He nods to the shot that Finn apparently snuck in front of me. Despite our wild night at Lola and London’s, and my spectacular drunkenness in Vegas, I rarely drink more than a couple of cocktails. But I guess Ansel is right: When I do it, I really commit. I toss back the drink in front of me, tasting sweet and sour and then the burn of vodka as it warms a path to my stomach.

Letting out a roar, I stand, announcing, “I’m drunk and I’m going to dance.” Pointing to Finn, I say, “You. Follow.”

He shakes his head.

“Oh, come on,” I groan, running my hands up his chest. God he feels good—so sturdy and hard, his pectorals tensing under my touch—and now I’m on fire for him.

Thursday night at Fred’s is Ladies Night, and they play music for dancing because we ladies like to dance. Also? I like Drunk Me. Drunk Me doesn’t have any problems, and Sober Harlow might be too proud to turn on the coy, begging female act. But put a little liquor in her? Showtime.

“Please?” I whisper, stretching to kiss his neck. “Pretty please, with Harlow naked on top?”

“Is she always like this?” Finn asks my girlfriends without taking his eyes off me. He’s watching my mouth, looking at me like he might throw me over his shoulder and carry me the five miles to Oliver’s house.

“With almost every damn guy she meets,” Lola lies. “It’s exhausting tracking her down in seedy Tijuana motel rooms.”

Finn’s brows draw together. I scratch my nails down his chest the way I think he likes, and I can feel him shiver once beneath my hands. He blinks away, to the dance floor. “Then I’m sure there’s another guy out there who’ll dance with you.”

I study him for a beat, hoping my disappointment doesn’t show too plainly on my face. “I’m sure there is.”

I lift my chin to Mia and she pulls Ansel out of the booth with her. The three of us head to the mostly empty dance floor, where—despite Finn’s prediction—there’s only a half dozen other people: an older couple slow-sex-dancing to a fast song and a small group of girls whose IDs I would seriously like to check.

I love everything about this bar—the worn velvet seats, the cheesy chandeliers, the strong pours—but I especially love the music. When we get out there, the DJ, who happens to be Fred’s newly minted twenty-one-year-old grandson, Kyle, cranks the bass-heavy song, nodding at me.

I don’t need someone to dance with, I just need to move. I raise my hands in the air, bouncing to the beat and closing my eyes. I fucking love this song, love the pulsing bass and the obscenely sexual lyrics. Ansel and Mia try to dance with me as a group, but maybe they can tell that I don’t care if I’m alone or surrounded, because they turn into each other and move in this perfect pair of rolling hips, weaving arms, and smiles.

God, they look so good together. Of course Mia is an amazing dancer because she was born for it, but Ansel moves like someone who has control over every single cell in his body. I’m so happy and so miserable. I’m not a miserable person. My life has been easy, wild, filled with adventure after adventure. Why do I feel like my chest is slowly filling with cold water?

Warm hands slide around my hips and to my stomach, pulling me back against a broad, solid body. “Hey,” Finn growls quietly.

Like he’s pulled a plug, the cold feeling drains from beneath my ribs and I’m surrounded with nothing but Finn’s unreal heat. He presses into me, barely swaying to the music. Turning in his arms, I dance against him, let him hold on to me. I feel the most basic need to fuck. To couple. To have him inside.

“You’re driving me crazy, dancing out here.” He bends, ghosting his lips across my ear. “Goddamn you look good.”

I stretch to reach his ear with my lips, hearing my voice crack on the first word: “Come home with me.”

LUCKILY FINN IS sober and can drive my car. I direct him back to my place, but otherwise we just stare out the windshield, not really speaking. I’m glad we’re not speaking. It would distract me from the feel of his hand on my thigh, the heel of his hand pressed firmly near my hip, his fingertips touching what feels like the softest, most intimate inner part of my leg. It’s as if he’s thrown his anchor overboard, grounding me here.

“You okay, Ginger Snap?”

I like that he calls me that, like he’s branded some part of me all his own.

I nod, managing a “Fine, just . . .”

“Just suffering your quarter-life crisis?” he says, smiling over at me. It’s not a mocking smile, and I put my attitude away. Apparently I look as desperate for more distraction as I feel.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t mean to sound like . . .” He pulls his hand away from me just long enough to wipe his face, leaving on my skin a cold shadow in the shape of each of his fingers. But then it’s back, and I can breathe again. “I don’t mean to sound condescending. I just remember feeling so pissed-off when I was in my early twenties, like why wasn’t everything already figured out.”

I nod, worrying my voice would come out strangled with emotion if I tried to speak.

“It’s around that time when Dad and Colt made me go on the bike trip.”

“Are you glad you went?”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, and I guide him to turn right, down Eads Avenue. We pull into a spot in front of my building, and he reaches to turn the ignition off.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at me and handing me my keys. “I’m glad. But life is always complicated. It just looks different from older angles.”

He follows me to the elevator in the lobby of my building, raising his eyebrows but not saying anything. His hands are shoved deep in the pocket of his jeans, his worn cap pulled low over his eyes. “How drunk are you?”

I shrug. “Pretty drunk.”

I can tell he doesn’t like this answer, but again, he stays quiet and follows me into the elevator, watching me push the button for the fourth floor.

“This means nothing, coming back to my place,” I say. “Could just as easily have been at Oliver’s again. This was closer.”

He ignores this. “You don’t have a roommate, right?”

“Right.”

“You like what we did the other day?”

“Which?” I ask, leaning against the wall of the elevator as it slowly climbs. I swear I can feel his body heat from three feet away. “With the rope or without?”

He smiles, licking his lips. “Both. But I guess I meant with the rope.”

“You mean you couldn’t tell?”

The elevator doors open and he motions for me to get out first. From behind me he explains, “I haven’t done that with a girl in a long time.” I start to respond to this—I mean, now my curiosity is spiked; he’s got to give me more than that—but he keeps talking, “And the way you always leave right after . . . you’re not exactly easy to read.”

“Jesus, Finn.” Stopping in front of my door, I turn to look at him. “Isn’t this just hooking up? What’s there to ‘read’?” I mean this to come out a little flippant, a little jokey, but instead my drunk voice is slurred and slow. He scowls, taking my keys from me and using them to let us into my apartment.

Inside, Finn drops the keys on the little table by the door and looks around. My apartment has two bedrooms off a large main loft area with a view over a couple of city blocks and out across the ocean.

“Wow,” he says quietly. “Nice investment.”

Laughing, I push his shoulder from behind, making him take a step forward into my living room.

“I’m going to ask something that’s going to make me sound like kind of a dick,” he warns, looking over his shoulder at me.

“For once.”

With a little smirk at this, he says, “What was it like growing up never having to worry about money?”

I smile at Finn and let him stew in what he’s just asked for a bit. Because . . . seriously? “What makes you think we always had money?”

He looks around the apartment and then back at me, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

“When my mom first started out in television, I remember my parents really scraping by,” I tell him. “She commuted for filming. Dad was here doing, like, little indie movies and stuff in his friend’s backyard. Maybe when I was in junior high they got more comfortable.” I shrug, holding his gaze. “When Dad won the first Oscar, it sort of took off. But that wasn’t until I was a freshman in college.”

He nods, and the silence stretches for a long, weird beat until he says, “I’m going to go use your restroom.” He looks down the hall and then back at me, gaze moving from my face down to my feet. “You go get a big glass of water, a piece of toast, and a couple of ibuprofen or something. I’m not going to fuck you until you’re steady.”

He turns without waiting for my reaction to his bossy tone, walking down the hall and ducking his head into the bathroom before slipping fully inside, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

Because it’s a good idea and not because Finn told me to—a fact I have to restrain myself from shouting over my shoulder—I go to the kitchen for water, food, and two ibuprofen.

I hear the faucet turn on, the bathroom door open, and then he calls from the hallway, “Where do you keep your sports and surfing shit?”

“My what?” I ask around a mouthful of toast.

“I don’t mean your board.” I hear him open the hall closet and mumble an “Ah. Got it.”

I chug my water and watch him emerge from the hallway. My heart trips. His shoulders fill the doorway and I feel oddly intimidated. It’s only odd because I like it. I like the idea of him being a little scary, a little out of control. I like the idea of him crashing into my life and pushing everything else out of frame.

He’s got a spool of bungee cord in his hand.

“How did I know you were looking for something like that?” I ask.

“It could be the subtle way I asked you about the rope, earlier.” He wraps his hand around my upper arm and leads me to the living room.

I weave a little on my feet and he studies me, pushing his hat off his head and mussing his hair with one hand. “You gonna remember this?”

It’s troubling how his voice affects me. It’s raspy, and reminds me of a good rich whiskey, the scratch of it in my throat, its warmth in my blood. I don’t think I can pretend anymore that I’m not completely obsessed with Finn Roberts.

“Probably,” I whisper, stretching to kiss his jawline.

“I can’t wait for you to beg me to come.” He lifts his chin the tiniest bit, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “And I can’t wait for you to beg me to let you stop.”

I have the sense of sobering up just so I can get high off the feeling of him inside.

Nodding at my clothes, he murmurs, “Take them off.”

I pull my T-shirt off, slip out of my shoes and jeans. He watches every move, absently unwrapping the new roll of bungee cord. I bought it a couple of weeks ago to transport my surfboard after my last cord started to fray, but hell. This works, too.

“This won’t be as soft,” he says, motioning to the cord, but I sort of hope he’s also talking about how he’s going to fuck me.

Once I’m naked, he steps closer, bending to kiss me. I love his taste—tonight it’s the faint taste of beer mixed with mint—and he hums quietly. “Tell me you want this.”

“I definitely want it.”

Carefully, he wraps the cord around my chest, above my breasts, then behind my back. Pulling it up over my shoulder, and down across my breastbone, he wraps it around my back. After he’s framed both breasts, he guides my hands behind my back so I’m holding my opposite elbow in each palm, and he binds my upper arms before tying the entire length of the cord together near my spine, just below my shoulder blades.

My breasts are framed by the cord crisscrossing over my sternum, and my arms are pinned at my back. The way Finn looks at me . . .

I feel like a fucking queen.

He presses his hand to my chest, each finger splayed so that I register just how big his hands are. I feel carved out, and now I’m famished. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to feel someone as untethered as I want him to be with me.

He runs the tip of his tongue across my lower lip. As if reading my mind, he says, “You like it when I’m a little rough, don’t you?”

I nod. I have so much need. I crave the edge, the point just before I fall where I know the relief comes and he gives my body everything. But I know he’ll make me wait for it, and the anticipation has me shaking.

“You want me just a little rough?” he asks, hands shaking where he cups my face. “Or you want me fucking wild?”

“Wild.”

He inhales, his flaring nostrils and scent making me feel as urgent as fire.

Finn reaches behind him, pulling his shirt over his head and then quickly unfastening his pants, pushing them and his boxers down his hips. He’s watching my face, my breasts, gauging my reaction as he undresses in front of me. Taking a step back, he lowers himself until he’s sitting on my couch, and curls his index finger.

“Come sit on my lap.”

I walk to him, straddling his thighs, and he steadies me with his hands on my waist.

“You good?” he asks in a quiet rasp.

When I nod, his hands slide up my sides and he grips my breasts, eyes on me as he sucks and licks, fingers moving up and over my chest, cupping me. Tongue flat, teasing.

With my arms bound, he pulls me up his body as he turns and lies on the couch, resting his head on the arm, legs stretched out behind me. Finn positions me with my legs spread over his mouth, rocking me there, and moaning, grunting against my skin. He keeps talking while he licks me, telling me he likes it, I taste good. Telling me I like it, that he can tell I’m going to come. I’m flushed, I’m shaking. He barely moves at all, just whispering and kissing and licking and somehow . . . somehow just his breath and the heat, the press of his tongue against my clit . . . I’m starting to sweat from the effort of holding my body upright. His eyes flame, hands reaching away from my breasts to grip the cord behind my back, somehow both holding me upright and pulling me farther onto him.

I can’t grip the sofa. I can’t grip him. I can’t focus on anything, anything at all, and it feels so good to just let go. To hand it all over. I’m writhing against the intense pleasure, legs wide, body so hungry I want more pressure and more wet and more of him. All of my weight is on him or held up by his arms and I’m coming so hard my legs are shaking, my back curling sharply away as I cry out. Maybe I scream—I don’t have any idea other than I feel like I’ve exploded, melted, been put back together and he’s still talking, saying,

Good girl

Oh so fucking good

You like that?

You like it?

You’re candy on my mouth, fucking sweet

Wet, so ready

You wanna get fucked now?

Somehow, the last question presses into my thoughts and pulls a “Yes, please . . . now” from me. His hands wrap around my hips, mouth sliding along my belly, my breasts, over my neck as he sits up and backs me onto his lap.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he groans when his cock slides between my legs. I whimper, wanting him inside, wanting to feel him tear loose and pound up into me.

Whispering, “Shh, shh, almost ready, almost,” Finn reaches to grab the condom at his hip and quickly tears it open. I’m gasping, feeling the sweat run down my neck and between my breasts. Feeling the cool air on my forehead, my stomach. I’m trembling against him, trying to focus on one thing, but it’s impossible. Finn is gorgeous, his chest broad, every muscle tense, skin slick with sweat as he rolls the condom on.

“Oh God,” I gasp, when he kisses my breast, sucking the peak and groaning.

I’ve never felt this desperation—I’m bound, he’s huge, he could do anything he wants but . . . look—look how careful and focused he is, look how he makes me come and talks to me and praises me. A tiny pulsing suspicion at the back of my mind tells me this urgency isn’t about escaping reality right now.

It’s about him.

“Hurry,” I whimper.

He steadies me with a hand on my thigh, holding his cock with the other hand, and whispers, “Okay, shh, shh, I’m ready, I’m ready. Here. Come here.”

I lower my body with his help, taking him in and oh God. It takes forever to feel the length of him ease into me. I’m shaking and a little wild, wanting to ride him, but he’s holding me down on him with one fist curled around the cord at my back, the other knotted in my hair. He’s so deep, so deep inside—and I swear I can feel his pulse, can taste his need to buck up into me.

He groans, rocking his hips just the slightest bit. “Don’t make any sounds,” he murmurs into my neck. “Your little sounds will make me come before I’m ready.”

I have to bite my lip to stay quiet, and he praises me for the effort with a kiss. With his hands spread wide on my hips and across my ass, he raises me, and lowers me, and when he raises me again, he holds me there, and then starts a fast, relentless rhythm up into me. He speaks the whole time, and it isn’t even really about what he’s saying, because half the time I’m lost and can’t process anyway. It’s the sound of his voice. The richness of it, the reassurance of it. Words like pretty and good and strong and lose it, oh fuck I’m gonna lose it filter in through the haze of pleasure.

It’s so good. It’s so good.

This is the only thing I can think, over and over. He’s making me stare right into his eyes—at least it feels that way, though I don’t think he’s actually told me to. But the way he’s looking at me . . . it’s intense and obsessed and tender and adoring. I can’t look away, I don’t want to.

I don’t remember ever coming like this, where I can’t localize the sensation, can’t pinpoint where it starts, or even how long it lasts. I’m trying to be quiet, trying so hard, but my cries slip out even as I taste blood on my lip. I give up, screaming and pulling against the binding as the wild bliss tears through me.

Finn growls, thrusting up hard and fast—and then he bellows, pulling at the cord behind my back and shoving so deep in me as he comes that I feel bent in two.

He slows, and then stills, wrapping his arms around me and grunting into my neck with every quiet exhale—fuck, fuck, fuck—long after he’s already come. Around me, his big arms are shaking from exertion, wet with sweat, and I’ve never felt more overwhelmed by someone in my entire life.

I realize I’m going to cry only a split second before I feel the tears spill and run down my cheeks.

But his face is still pressed to my neck, his breaths slowly evening out. “Harlow. Don’t move. I can’t . . . just give me a second.”

I don’t think I could even if I wanted. I don’t ever want to move off him.

His mouth slides over my shoulder, and he begins to slowly massage my thighs, my ass, my lower back. Lifting me carefully, he reaches between us and takes off the condom, quickly tying it and dropping it somewhere on the couch next to us.

And then he’s loosening the knot at my back.

“No,” I choke.

He looks at me, sees the tears on my cheeks and maybe thinks I’m crying because I don’t want him to free me. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I’m just spent, and if he can’t be inside me anymore I need to be tied up, and if I can’t be tied up I need another way to know that, right now, I’m his and he’ll take care of me. That he’ll take over and fix everything because I’m not sure I know how.

Finn swipes at my face with his thumbs. “I have to, sweetheart, you can’t be bound up any longer.”

It just feels like it’s the only thing holding me together.

“I know,” he says.

Oh God. I said it out loud.

“Shh, shh, come here.” He unwraps me like a gift, running a gentle fingertip along every groove the bungee cord left in my skin, and then he picks me up like I weigh ­nothing—I have no bones, no muscles, only skin and lust and blood—and carries me to my bedroom.

“This one?” he asks at the end of the hall.

I nod and he ducks in, pulling back the covers with one hand and sliding me under. I’m terrified he’s going to leave, but he doesn’t. He climbs in behind me, spooning me, running a reassuring hand down my side, over my hip, up my stomach, until he’s soothing the cord lines around my breasts with his tender, rough hands and kissing my neck.

“I need to hear you’re okay,” he rasps. “Tell me you don’t hurt.”

“I’m okay.” I take a deep breath but it chokes halfway through. “But don’t leave.”

“I don’t think I could. I’m . . . it’s intense for me, too. I . . . forgot.”

I’M A LIGHT sleeper, but I don’t wake once in the middle of the night. Not for water, not to go to the bathroom, not even to roll over and find a cool section of the sheets. When my eyes do open, the sun is high in the sky, and Finn and I are in exactly the same position we were in when we fell asleep.

He’s not awake yet, but his body is. It takes about a hundred promises to myself—new shoes, ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner, an afternoon swim—to get out of bed and not roll him onto his back and take him inside my body just to see if he’ll look at me again the way he did last night.

I do get out of bed, though, because it terrifies me that the first thought I have isn’t about my mother, or whether she still needs me to drive her to her appointment later today, or how she slept last night. But it should be. Not forever, but God, for at least the first few weeks when my family—my center, my universe—needs me.

I have coffee brewing and am pacing the kitchen when Finn pads in, wearing the boxers he must have retrieved from the living room floor. I haven’t even peeked around that corner, not sure I can handle seeing the loop of bungee cord discarded so casually on the carpet.

He rubs his eyes, walks over to me, and kisses my neck. Because I’m trying not to melt, I stiffen instead and I can feel his little laugh against my skin.

“I’m freaking out a little, too,” he admits.

“It’s just that I have . . .” I start explaining. He pulls back and looks at me, those complicated eyes growing unreadable as he listens. “It’s one thing to want distraction, but I don’t need another obsession.”

Way too honest, Harlow.

But he’s already nodding. He even looks a little relieved. “I can respect that,” he says, pulling his hands from my hips and stepping away. This is exactly how I needed this conversation to go, and yet . . . it stings a little. Finn softens it by adding, “I’m in the same boat, so to speak. And last night, you stopped being an easy fuck.”

I pour us both a cup of coffee and smile over the rim as I take a sip. Lying to us both, I say, “We’ll have no problem falling back into our antagonistic ex-spouse routine.”

His eyebrow twitches. “Right.”