Dirty Rowdy Thing Read online

  “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?”

  “Ri
ght.”

  “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.”