Flirting in Traffic (19 page)

Esa stood quickly when the door to the trailer opened an hour and a half later and Finn clambered up the steps, snow flurrying around him as he entered. The wind howled outside, catching the trailer door and flinging it wide. He shut it forcefully behind him and locked it into place before he staggered into the cluttered room. She not only saw him shivering but actually felt the cold coming off his body when he came closer.

“God, you’re freezing,” she said as she inspected his rigid features. She saw through the dim light provided by the gas heater that crystals of ice had frozen on his eyebrows and the dark gold whiskers on his angular jaw. He leaned over and held his hands to the heat appreciatively.

“The ambulance only got stuck twice. Didn’t have as much of an opportunity to work up a sweat this time. We saw some Red Cross volunteers setting up shop along the way. You can get a free cup of coffee if you walk down a half mile.”

Esa laughed ruefully. “Great. Just what people need.”

He cast an amused glance her way. “Better than nothing, I guess. We’re in it for the long haul. The Chicago Transit Authority officials are stopping people from trying to get on the ‘L’. I’m betting that IDOT or the Illinois State Police are behind it. Getting the roads cleared is going to be impossible if everyone abandons their vehicle.”

Esa shook her head incredulously. “New definition of a traffic nightmare.”

“It’s not all bad.”

Esa met his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“At least the storm made it possible for me to see you again.”

Esa looked away, unsure how to interpret his expression and tone. Wasn’t he still angry at her for lying to him? And if so, wasn’t it starkly at odds with the heat in his blue eyes?

“It wasn’t so bad waiting. I found a copy of
Metro Sexy
on the desk and read it cover to cover. You know what?” she asked, striving for a light tone in her increasing anxiety about being alone with Finn. “I’ve been maligning my little sister. It’s really a good magazine. Another thing I realized while you were gone. I understand now why your condo is so neat. Apparently this trailer is the place where you can express your slovenliness at full volume.”

Finn straightened and glanced around the dim nine-by-fifteen-foot room. Over half of the floor space was covered by tables stacked high with files, tubes of blueprints and paper.

“This trailer has been like this for as long as I can remember. I didn’t have the heart to change it after Dad died.”

She looked up into his shadowed, handsome face. The ice crystals in his whiskers had started to melt in the warmth generated by the portable heater. It suddenly struck her how small the space seemed with Finn it, how dim the lighting was, how intimate it seemed.

She cleared her throat uncomfortably.

“I’m glad I ran into you tonight,” she said.

His eyebrows went up. “You are?”

She nodded. “I never really got to tell you why I misrepresented myself to you. Do you want me to try and explain more fully?”

He examined her before he nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah I do. But hold on just a second…”

He went around to the front of the ancient, sturdy wooden desk and opened one of the drawers. He pulled a bottle of liquor out and hooked his finger in the handle of an empty coffee cup on his desk. The wheels of the chair that he rolled into position next to Esa clacked loudly on the tile flooring. He poured two fingers of the amber liquid from the bottle into the glass and handed it to her.

“What’s this for? Courage?” she asked, her lips curving in amusement even as nervousness made her voice tremble slightly.

“If that’s what you need it for,” he said softly. “Personally, I need it to thaw out.”

Esa smiled at him and was heartened to see that he returned it. The whiskey scored her throat as it went down but it didn’t warm her anywhere near the way Finn’s steady gaze did.

The words started to pour out of her mouth as though they’d been crowding eagerly on the back of her tongue for weeks now—which they had, she supposed. He never spoke, only listened with focused attention and took a sip of whiskey now and again.

“Finn, I want you to know that I absolutely forbade my sister Rachel to print anything in
Metro Sexy
about Julia and you,” Esa said passionately once she’d reached the end of her story. “I don’t know how Julia got her information but she was mistaken. Rachel would never have run that story in her column once I specifically asked her not to. Rachel may have her faults but she and I are very loyal to one another.”

Finn stared thoughtfully at the flickering blue flames at the bottom of the gas heater. After a moment he roused himself, running his long fingers through his wind-tousled hair.

“I know it,” he said.

Esa’s eyebrows went up in surprise at the matter-of-factness of his statement. He gave a small smile and shrugged.

“I overheard part of your conversation with her on Halloween in my mom’s kitchen. I’d been calling Rachel all week long, hadn’t I?”

Esa nodded.

“I didn’t get it at the time I heard the two of you talking but now that I know the truth it all makes sense. You were scolding her into not running the story.” His small smile faded as she continued so study her in the fire-lit room.

“What I don’t get is why you felt compelled to continue to lie to me about your identity after my initial error in calling you ‘Kitten’.”

Heat rushed into her cheeks. She looked into the fire to avoid his piercing stare. “It was stupid, I know… An impulsive, spur-of-the moment decision. Carla and Kitten—
Rachel,
I mean—had been getting on me recently for being so boring and lame. I’d started to realize they might have a point. I specialize in the care of older adults. I really enjoy spending time with my patients but lately I’d begun to realize that I’d been hanging around them so much in my free time because they were…I don’t know. Safe? Nonthreatening companions for someone who had been burned in the romance department a few times too many and was going into early retirement?”

“And the night at One Life? What made you decide to take a walk on the wild side?” Finn asked gruffly.

“You did. I-I wanted you so much that I was willing to do anything, including pretending to be something that I thought you wanted—just so that I could be with you.”

She’d spoken so softly that for a moment, when he didn’t move or speak, she’d thought he hadn’t heard her. The thought of having to repeat such an intimate confession made her panic momentarily.

But then she glanced up cautiously into his gleaming eyes and she knew.

He’d heard her.

He set the cup down on the desk and turned back to her. “Come here,” he said, his voice rough and gentle at once as he reached for her hands. Esa’s mouth still hung open in pleasant surprise by the time he pulled her into his lap and burrowed his long fingers through her hair. The whiskey and the gas heater had chased the chill out of him. He felt hard and warm beneath her bottom and thighs.

She moaned softly when he tightened his hold in her hair, bringing her mouth to his. He kissed her hard and masterfully, as though he wanted to stamp her with himself, stake some kind of primitive claim on her. Once she’d melted into him however, he softened his manner, lightly caressing her jaw and neck while his tongue plundered her mouth and his lips shaped and sipped at her own in a sinuous, erotic caress.

Esa’s body seemed to erupt with heat as she luxuriated in Finn’s taste, scent and touch. She’d missed him so much. It had been a constant pain that grew more and more sensitive over the last two weeks, every time the thought struck her that she’d likely never see him again.

A powerful need swamped her. She was distantly aware that not only did she claw at the buttons of his insulated shirt, his hands had also lowered and were hastily unfastening her blouse.

They broke apart a few seconds later and swiftly pulled the sleeves off each other’s arms.

“I want you so much,” Esa mumbled unevenly.

“I told myself it was best to forget you,” Finn whispered next to her lips. “You were supposed to be a rebound fling. I tried like crazy to stop thinking about you but I couldn’t.
God,
I’ve never known a woman who smelled half as good as you.”

Her head fell back, giving his talented mouth full access. She shivered in excitement when he traced her spine with his warm fingertips and opened his hand over her waist. “Or who felt half so soft,” he added between hot kisses on the front of her throat and chest.

Esa made a strangled sound when he lowered his face and nuzzled her satin-covered breasts from the valley between them with his nose and lips.

“You’re so beautiful,” he praised before he peeled back the cup of her bra from one breast and pressed light kisses on the curving flesh. He slipped a stiffened nipple into his warm mouth at the same moment that he shaped her other breast to his palm. Esa whimpered in pleasure while he drew on her so sweetly, making the throb between her legs escalate to a stabbing ache of stark need.

“Oh God, Finn,” Esa groaned a moment later. Her hips shifted restlessly in his lap. His cock excited her almost unbearably as it pressed against her bottom, feeling large and deliciously erect. “Stop torturing me, please.”

His head came up slowly from where he’d been inflicting said torture on her helpless breast. Esa bit her lip to stifle a moan when she saw how erect he’d drawn the taut, glistening crest. She squirmed in his lap but he stilled her with a hand on her hip.

“I wasn’t torturing you, honey. I was in the process of making love to you.”

“I know,” she said shakily. Heat burned in her cheeks. “But Finn—
Oh
!”

Esa was temporarily left speechless at the sensation of him sliding his hand beneath her skirt and poking two long fingers beneath the elastic of her panties.

“How’s that? Does that help matters?” he asked. He watched her through narrowed eyelids as he glided and pressed against her most sensitive flesh. Esa just stared up at him in mute desire as his fingers moved so deftly between her thighs. “It does help, from the look of things. And the feel of them,” he added huskily. His nostrils flared in arousal. “You’re very wet, Esa. Are you that wet for me?”

A groan of sheer desire broke free from her throat. “Yes. You know I am. I told you how much I want you.”

“Enough to lie? Enough to pretend to be a wanton woman in order to have your sexual wishes fulfilled?”

“Oooh,
yes
!” she admitted. Her hips shifted up in hungry little gyrations against the erotic press of his fingers.

Finn smiled as he watched her, his expression tinged with wonder. “Maybe it wasn’t a lie. You really are the most exciting, uninhibited woman I’ve ever met. You’re like a package of dynamite. All I have to do is touch you and you’re sizzling.”

Esa grabbed at his shoulders desperately. Her eyes went wide. “Only for
your
touch, Finn,” she whispered. She clenched her eyelids shut and cried out sharply as she exploded.

“Are you okay to stand?” she heard Finn say a moment later. Her eyes blinked open when she registered how rough with desire his voice sounded. She nodded and stood up. He came up behind her, pressing his belly to her back. She bent over the desk and put her hands on it when he exerted a gentle pressure. A soft moan of awakened desire vibrated her throat when she felt his hands slide her panties down to her thighs.

“Spread your thighs,” he ordered tautly.

Esa stared sightlessly at the paper-strewn desk a moment later as Finn slid his cock into her. The sensation was so overwhelming, so powerful, that she began to tremble in uncontrollable excitement and raw need.

He must have sensed it because he paused and rubbed her hips, bottom and back soothingly. “Try to relax,” he whispered hoarsely.

But the last thing on Esa’s mind was relaxing as he resumed moving in her, his strokes long, sensual and slow. Much to her amazement she became aware that tears wetted her cheeks. He sank his flesh fully into hers and groaned.

The burn in her sex bordered on the untenable.

“God, you feel good,” he said in a half-crazed tone. He leaned over her. “Give me your mouth, honey.”

Esa twisted her neck and met him. Their tongues tangled erotically. His cock throbbed inside her, the sensation making her whimper into Finn’s mouth. He nipped at her lips with his front teeth.

“I’m glad you’re not a promiscuous sex kitten, Esa. It nearly drove me right over the edge to think of another man touching you.”

“There is no other man,” she whispered back. His eyes gleamed at her from the near darkness. He flexed his hips, stroking her with short, sensual thrusts.

“I like the sound of that.”

“I do too,” she said softly. “Oh Finn…I
know
I like the
feel
of that.”

He chuckled and then groaned, the noises barely audible between the increasingly frequent sound of flesh slapping against flesh. Esa pressed back with her hands and moved her hips in synchrony with Finn’s, craving the delicious friction that built and built and built until she thought she’d go mad from the intense pleasure.

“I can’t take any more,” Finn muttered wildly. His fingers found her clitoris. He rubbed as he crashed into her and growled like a feral animal.