Spin (13 page)

Because maybe…maybe this thing wasn’t even
broken.

I WOKE ON his sofa after the night had come, my legs
hooked over his lap, my brain half asleep. Finn sat watching a
baseball game, his hand on my belly. I felt his erection against my
hips, but he never said a word, never tried to move on me all
night, not during dinner, not when we tumbled down onto the couch
after, not when he put on one of the
Lord of the Rings
movies after my eyes lit up when it came up in conversation. I
loved other people’s epic adventures.

The movie was over now and the Red Sox were
quietly winning on the screen.

I was so perfectly tired and rested and
happy and content he could have put on big bass fishing and it
would have been fine. I was pretty sure I should have mentioned
that, in case he liked bass fishing, but I’d dozed off and was just
coming to.

“The movie?” I asked groggily.

“There was a cave troll. Big, scary thing. I
had to shut it off.”

I laughed and glanced at the television.
“What’s the score?”

His hand made gentle swirling motions over
my belly as he replayed for me all scoring opportunities held and
squandered over last few innings. His legs beneath mine, his half
smile, his baseball storytelling, arguing about whether a fake to
third constitutes a balk (it does), his hand on my stomach—it was
all pretty…perfect. Such little things. Such perfect, little
things.

“So,” he wrapped up, “it’s twelve nothing in
the eighth. Someone sucks today.”

“Aw, you’re not so bad.”

He smiled faintly, his eyes still on the TV.
“You don’t think?”

“No,” I said in a comforting way. “You did
okay this morning.”

His eyes slid down.

I smiled. “I’d say we’re tied.”

His eyebrows went up, then he started
unbuttoning my jeans. “Your math is way off, sister. I let you win
this morning.”

“Let me see what I can do about that,” I
replied, and for a minute, it was a tangle of hands and mouths
until we got situated, me facing him on his lap. “So what’s this
about ginger?” I asked very innocently.

He pulled his head back, his eyes searching
mine, then he smiled faintly and shook his head. “We’re not ready
for ginger, babe.”

Whatever that meant. The rush of fear and
excitement that went through me told me he was absolutely right,
though.

“It’s just that if we wait for me, Finn, we
might never be ready,” I said, leaning down to kiss his chin. “You
might have to push a little.”

He just lifted his eyebrows. No, he was
right. Ginger was clearly out of my boundaries. Better to leave it
be.

It’s just that I loved ginger so much.

He got me up and into the bedroom. He laid
me out on the bed and came over me. This was my favorite view of
Finn, his body stretched over mine, propped on his elbows, his
muscles hard, kissing me or smiling at me or just looking down at
me.

I guess I wasn’t too particular about how I
got my Finn.

~ Jane ~

SUNLIGHT, MILKY GOLDEN and soft, unfurled into the
bedroom. It drifted over my face. I pulled the sheets over my head
and stretched out a hand. Rumpled sheets, fluffed pillows and lots
of them. The scent of sex and Finn.

I smiled into the pillow.

Something nudged my arm. Something rubbery
and insistent. It nudged again.

I slowly tugged the sheets off my head and
craned me head around to peer over the side of the bed.

A dog smiled back at me. He sat very
politely beside the bed, very German Shepherd-y, with a long
black-and-tan muzzle, his mouth open, his eyes half-shut, tongue
lolling out.

“Max,” I whispered. “Hey there.”

He got up, tail wagging, and sniffed me from
head to tail, probably because he was so good at that sort of
thing. Then he gave me a lick and sat back down, his mouth open in
an expectant doggy-smile.

“You know about the steak, don’t you?” I
whispered.

“Max.” Finn’s voice drifted in, quietly
calling. Max hopped up and trotted out of the room without a
backward glance. On three legs.

I sat up and watched him go, wondering what
had happened to his fourth leg and when it had happened, and if
Finn had gotten him before or after.

All this thinking must have clicked my mind
into gear pre-caffeine, because I suddenly remembered I had to go
to work.

I leapt up and hurried into the bathroom.
After a quick shower, I stepped out into the steamy bathroom and
found a thick, folded towel there with a fresh toothbrush on top,
along with a comb and a small hairdryer.

“Is this all for me?” I called out.

“No,” came a call from the other room. “It’s
for the woman I have coming over later.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m going to stick the
toothbrush in the toilet, so don’t tell her.”

“Will do.”

I touched the comb. “I brought my own stuff
from the hotel.”

“I didn’t know what you had.”

I smiled—that’s what I’d said last night
about his kitchen—and touched the toothbrush. It was bright red.
“Why do you have a supply of extra toothbrushes? Do you have a lot
of girlfriends?”

“No, I have a Costco membership.”

I laughed and my eye fell on a charger. A
phone charger. One that would fit my phone. It had not been here
yesterday.

I touched it with my fingertips, then closed
my eyes.

Then, because he’d gone to all this work, I
used everything he’d brought me, even the stuff I didn’t need. I
even ran back to the bedroom and grabbed my phone out of my bag and
plugged it in. I smiled at it sitting there on the back of his
toilet.

Then I went into the kitchen.

He was sitting on the long built-in bench
beside the table. His hair rumpled, his face unshaved, his eyes
dark and gorgeous, watching me. I smiled a bit tentatively, and he
held out hand.

As I went, I saw Max romping out on the
green grass. Finn took my fingers and tugged me forward into his
lap. Then he kissed me. It was a pretty good way to wake up. Even
if I was running late.

“I met Max,” I told him.

“Good.”

“He sniffed me out under the covers.”

“He’s very good at what he does.”

“Can I ask what happened to his leg?” I said
softly, even though I should have left it alone, because I got a
bad feeling inside me. I’d already known this was going to be bad
for Max, but now I knew it was going to be bad for Finn as well. I
knew by the way his whole body got still, excerpt for his eyes,
which got dead.

“Sure.”

“What happened to his leg?”

“It got blown off by a bomb in
Afghanistan.”

As if the words were cut onion, my eyes
filled with hot, stinging tears. I looked out the window at Max,
who was nosing through the tall grass. I couldn’t even picture that
moment, the bomb blowing up. But a bigger, blacker fear pounded in
my chest.

“Jesus, Finn,” I said softly.

He shrugged. “Could have been worse. It
could have been all of him.”

“Or you,” I said, my voice weirdly
shaky.

“Or me,” he agreed. “But all we left behind
that day was Max’s leg, and you get to considering that a success,”
he said. His eyes were going remote.

I gripped his shoulders and put my face in
front of his, the tips of our noses almost touching. “I brought
something for him,” I said, matching my low voice to his.

His distant eyes shifted to me. “You brought
something for Max?”

I nodded. “Steak.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. His eyes seemed
to refocus, and he became more present. “You brought my dog a
steak?”

“Do you think he’ll like it?”

“Are you insane?” he said, and now he was
all back, here in the room with me. “He’ll love it. And you. I’ll
have to push him out of the way whenever you get home. A line will
form. I’ll have to fight my way through to you.”

Did he say
home
?

“I hope you win,” I murmured, touching my
lips to his, taken aback by how good it felt to help Finn, to bring
him back from whatever dark place he’d started going to. All with a
steak for his dog.

I made a mental note to bring home pork
next. Then bacon. I’d work my way through the slaughterhouse if
needed, just to make that going-away look in Finn’s eyes stop.

As we talked, he’d been spreading his legs
apart, and I slipped down between them, my bottom on the bench, my
head back in the crook of his elbow. I draped my legs over his. The
whole thing probably seemed like an invitation, and Finn took it,
pushing his hand down between my thighs.

“I don’t think… I can’t….” I gestured
between my legs. “I’m done in. I came a lot last night.”

“A real lot.”

I lifted my brows. He slid his hand up a
little farther.

“Finn, I don’t know….” I curled my fingers
around his bicep. “I’m all hot and ragged and swollen.”

His gaze was dark and unflinching. “I want
some of that.” He brushed the silk shirt to the side, slid it off a
breast, and ran his palm over my cool skin. Regardless of what I’d
said and what was true, a shiver of pleasure moved through me and
my nipple hardened.

He arched an eyebrow at me.

I returned a sheepish smile. “Okay
then.”

He bent to kiss my lips, a soft, gentle
brush, then down he went, sliding me off his lap, onto the cushions
of the bench, kissing down my chest, my belly, until I was
stretched out on the bench, one leg dangling off, Finn between my
thighs, pushing up my skirt, moving that endless kiss to the hot
place between my thighs.

A rumbling reverberation bounced the kitchen
table. I jumped, then a muffled, tinny jazz song started playing.
It was Finn’s phone.

Finn didn’t lift his head, just pulled my
underwear to the side and bent to me.

I tapped on his head. “Your phone is
ringing,” I told him after three rings and no movement.

He tipped his head up. “And you care
why?”

“I just, I don’t
care
, I mean, it
just…might be important. It’s eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.
I mean, who’d be calling you at this hour—”

He reached out and grabbed the phone.

“Yeah?”

“Dude!” came the tinny reply. It got garbled
after that, partly because it was a phone and partly because Finn
had gone back to touching me with his thumb, soft sweeps over my
clitoris, the phone to his ear, his eyes on me.

“Ohh,” I whispered, not wanting to be heard.
I leaned my head back against the bench and closed my eyes and
listened to his side of the conversation.

“I was busy,” he said into the phone. I felt
his body shift, then his breath was on my belly, then lower.

“No,” he said to the phone.

He put his hand on my thigh, pushed it to
the side, and leaned down.

“Yeah, I get it.”

His tongue slipped lazily across my
sensitive clitoris, slow and coaxing soft, making my body stretch
out, long and relaxed. I lifted my arms over my head, dropped my
hands off the end of the bench, and arched up for him. If he wanted
to talk on the phone this way, who was I to argue?

He curled an arm around the small of my back
and sank his tongue deep inside me. Then his teeth grazed me. I
froze.

He tilted the phone away from his mouth and
nipped me.

My hips shot into the air. I shoved the heel
of my hand into my mouth to silence my whimpering cry.

Then he said, “So?” into the phone, and I
dropped back onto the bench, ready and vibrating for whatever he
decided to do next.

He swirled a finger around the heated
entryway to my vagina. I circled my hips restlessly.

“She’s special.”

My eyes popped open. I peered down the
length of my body. One leg was tumbling off the bench, the other
was bent, knee up, Finn’s gorgeous body tucked between them, his
fingers in my wetness, his tongue making sweeps of me as he talked
on the phone.