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.”