Finally Finn (Los Rancheros #4) (8 page)

“Excuse me?”

“You’re full of sand and mud, plus the water.
Strip and I’ll grab you a towel. You aren’t dragging all of that in
with you.” I close the door in his face and swear I hear him
growl.

I quickly put towels around the girls and
grab one from the closet for the angry man. He stalks right up to
me, his anger bright, his scent a little fishy, and grey eyes
blazing.

“You know I seem to recall a night of
swimming on your beach when you weren’t too worried about puddles,
Sadie,” he says quietly, scraping his five o’clock shadow on my
cheek, making goose bumps explode down my arm.

“Your house gets a lot messier than mine.
It’s a lot more work.” I pull away from him so that I can look him
in the eyes. “And I have a maid. Here, I’m the maid. Make sure you
pick up your clothes in the garage after your shower.”

I move past him and grab a popsicle. My back
is to the girls when I suck it into my mouth. “Woman,” he says in
warning. My eyes drop to his towel and he follows to where the
front is rising steadily. He looks to the girls then glares as he
leaves quickly.

I shiver. Batty’s home.

When the minions are fed, bathed and in bed,
I close the door to the bedroom softly. Batty is sitting on the
side that I’ve adopted as my own with a laptop in his lap. He
doesn’t look up so I take a t-shirt from the dresser and head for
the bathroom.

As I wash my face and brush my teeth, my
stomach flips. Does he not trust me with these kids? Why would he
leave them with me? Even if I was a last resort, I wasn’t really
the last resort. He has enough money to find a qualified nanny to
watch them.

This is what I know: He loved a woman who
married his brother. He’s now raising their children. And he won’t
talk about any of it.

Looking in the mirror, I see a redhead in an
oversized white shirt that barely covers her ass. Her hair shines
in the fluorescent light, her cheeks are pink from the sun, and
clear of makeup. She looks young, and determined as hell.

I put my shoulders back and enter the
bedroom. Batty doesn’t look at me until I’m crawling across the
mattress and slamming the top on his computer, barely missing his
fingers.

“What the hell, Sadie? I have a shit storm I
have to handle.”

“Not tonight,” I mumble, throwing a leg over
his lap and grabbing his head. His hands go to my forearms to pull
my hands away, so I dig my fingers into his hair.

“Sadie.”

“Shut up.” I slap my mouth into his, parting
his mouth with my tongue and diving in. It takes him excruciating
seconds to react. Seconds that I think he’s about to throw me
across the bed and reach for his laptop again. Seconds that my
heart pounds and my head gets dizzy with the mixture of his taste
in my mouth and the lack of oxygen in my lungs since I don’t
breathe.

Batty uses his hands on my arms to pull me
closer and I lose my balance to fall against him. Our noses glance
off each other’s, our foreheads knocking together, but our lips
never part.

He lets go of my forearms to pull at my
biceps, then my shoulders, finally yanking in my hair, like he
wants me closer, but we’re plastered against each other and can’t
get any closer than this.

I roll my hips and my skin breaks out in
goose bumps when he groans. I hum in my throat when he bites my
lip. His hands in my hair direct my head where he wants me, our
tongues waging war, until he yanks back, exposing my neck.

I moan at the feel of his teeth sinking into
flesh, sighing when his tongue sooths the pain.

One hand leaves my hair to skate up my thigh,
taking the shirt with it until it’s over my head and gone.

I push his head down to my breast. Maybe
that’s where he was going anyway, but I don’t give him time to find
out. He pushes into me so that I’m leaning back so far I would fall
if not for my grip on him. His mouth opens and he sucks me in,
making me rock against him, back and forth, with only his pants in
the way.

I move my legs until I can get my feet flat
on the bed and push him back against the headboard. He takes me
with him with hands on my back and I have to move my head to the
side before it hits the hard wood.

When Batty goes for my other nipple, I wiggle
a hand between us and move his soft cotton pajama pants down to
free his erection. The material is damp from my naked grinding.

His hands are pulling at the skin on my back
and I know that if he had any kind of nails there would be welts
there. It spurs me on.

Grabbing his hair in one hand, the other goes
to the top of the headboard, and I pull myself up to sink down with
him inside of me. I watch his eyes turn to steel as my flesh
stretches to make room for his cock.

Batty bares his teeth. The tendons in his
neck pull taut. His hands fall to my ass, squeezing tight. And his
eyes stay on mine.

I tell him with my eyes to let me in. I ask
nicely. I beg. Then I get mad and demand it.

I drag my hands down his face, pulling his
skin, stretching his lip as he stays frozen, his only movement the
pulsing inside of me. Down, I move past his collar bone. That’s
when I dig in. I do have nails and I do leave welts. I grit my
teeth, nostrils flaring and glare as I drag my nails down his chest
and over the ridges of his stomach.

“FUCK!” The sound explodes from his soul.
It’s pain, and rage, and love, and relief.

I gasp when he thrusts into me, violently
pulling me down, before immediately lifting again. My hands leave
his skin to reach for the headboard above our heads. I pull myself
up with my arms and feet on the mattress, and know I can go
forever. I will go forever like this, until he gives me what I
want.

He moves a leg to try to flip up and I lean
away from it. “No.” I’m doing this. I’m in control, and he won’t
take it away from me.

“What do you want?” he asks, his breathing
labored as I start to move again.

I put my forehead to his, our noses gliding
against each other’s and whisper against his lips,
“Everything.”

Batty’s fingers clench on my ass, and he
pumps his hips hard into me. When I move my head back, I pick up
the pace, grinding when I need it, slamming down when he does,
becoming drenched in sweat. My hair stretches between us, like even
that is trying to pull him into me.

Batty’s eyes skim over my body, his hand
glides on my skin, his forehead beads with sweat that I watch move
down his chest.

I go forever. I have to stop moving when he
gets close, or I do, but neither of us goes over the edge. I work
us up to that line and ruthlessly push us back. More than once
Batty tries to take charge, but I’m prepared.

There is no other option. I’ve taken this on,
chosen to do it this way, and if I fail I know his defenses will go
back up and I’ll never get a chance again. I will break this
man.

“Sadie . . . you have to . . . I can’t do
this . . .” he pants. I take his hands in mine up to the headboard.
They slide with sweat, but we grip hard, our skin turning white at
the knuckles.

I’m not deluding myself, if he really, really
wanted me off of him, he could move my bony ass, but I will do
everything in my power to make him move past this. Sex is our
thing. We have always said everything we couldn’t bear to vocalize
with our bodies, and right now he’s vibrating with words that have
to come out.

“Give it to me, baby. Please, Batty. Please,”
I gasp. His eyes roll back and his head falls.

“Say it again,” he whispers. What? Say
what?

“Batty.”

“Again.”

“Batty, I think I love you.” I suck in a
shocked breath. Fuck. His eyes open and his breathing stops.

“What?”

“I’m . . . I didn’t . . .” I panic and do the
only thing I can think to do. I bring us back to that ledge, and we
jump together.

Our hands have slid from the headboard and
Batty pushes them behind my back to hold me without letting them
go. Our bodies fuse together and we don’t speak.

My head is shouting every curse word I can
possibly come up with. I meant to break him, but have a fucking
epiphany at the worst possible time imaginable. I want to run. My
mission was to get him to talk about his past love, not throw mine
at him. Jesus Christ.

“Sadie.” Our bodies aren’t cooling. They’re
radiating heat in waves like the sun on hot cement. Still, I don’t
move. “Babe, I’m in a fucking puddle. We need to move,” he says
quietly.

“I can’t.” My words are barely a sound, I’m
so exhausted. “I can’t move my legs.” Batty moves his head down and
fuses his mouth to my bare shoulder, then lets go of my hands.

He lays me back before getting out of the
bed. I whimper when he leaves my body and get a kiss on a shaking
knee. My legs are jelly, the muscles so overused they spasm over
and over.

Batty grabs things around the room, putting
them in a bag, then picks me up.

“What the hell?”

“Shh. We have to be quiet.” Batty opens the
door and walks past the kids’ room and out the front door with me
in his arms. I watch him in the moonlight, his face highlighted and
shadowed as we walk through the trees.

Batty walks right into the water. He lets my
legs drop and tosses the bag onto the floating dock before wading
in. When we’re up to his shoulders, he lets me go gently. I sink
into the water placidly, then push my hair back and rise up to
float.

When Batty surfaces from his own dunk in the
cool water, he moves me with his hands so that I don’t float away
as I stare at the stars. I feel his fingers skim down one side of
my body, catching a nipple and back up to the other. It makes me
shiver and my nipples get tight enough to hurt.

“You’re so beautiful, Sadie.” He moves my
body until my head drifts close to his chest and he leans forward
to touch his lips to mine in a whisper of a kiss. “Come with me,
baby.”

I sink in the water to put my feet back into
the soil below. “Where?” I watch as he leaves the lake, his body so
beautiful I would follow him into a burning building, anywhere
really.

We get to the bag on the dock and he pulls
out towels then takes it and my hand down to the water. With our
legs over the side, I silently wrap my hair into a wet bun on the
top of my head and use the band around my wrist to keep it
there.

I don’t have anything to say. I’ve done
everything I know how to do. If it didn’t work, there’s nothing
else in me. It’s silent for a long time, every second, every minute
that passes my heart beats a little harder until I fear that it
will stop beating all together.

“Her name was Annie and she was the prettiest
girl I had ever seen. She was a new transfer into my class, and I
fell in love with her instantly. We were seven, my brother was ten.
From the day she walked into my class, I was stuck to her. I played
on the playground with her, then invited her over after school.
Aiden didn’t like a girl playing with us. He didn’t want anything
to do with her until she was about thirteen. Annie and I were
always together, she loved to fish, and swim in the lakes. We did
that a lot, and one day Aiden realized what I had known the whole
time. Annie developed pretty early on, but when she did, Aiden
started to want to fish more, and swim. I didn’t even realize, not
really, until I saw them kiss for the first time that anything
changed. Annie was always mine, had been for years. But he came
along and took her away.

“Aiden knew how I felt, my dad knew, everyone
knew except her until I blew up one night. She wanted me to cover
with her parents so that she could spend the night with him. It was
our senior prom and I couldn’t take it anymore.

“She smiled, so pretty. And she said that I
was her best friend, her first friend, and nothing would change
that. Then she said that she had had a crush on Aiden forever.”
Batty swallows so loud I can hear the sound over the frogs and
crickets.

“Broke my fucking heart. Aiden was so wrapped
up in her he couldn’t see straight. She wanted to be a singer, and
since we lived so close to Los Angeles, he would take her to
auditions when he wasn’t in school. Then when no one would sign
her, he started his own fucking record label. That’s just how he
is. All consuming. Always. So she finally had a record contract,
but no one was playing the song. So he signed more kids, up and
coming bands from all over. Kids no one else would listen to.

“Annie had a great voice, but it was more old
school than anything on the radio. Now you have Lana Del Ray and
Meghan Trainor, but that wasn’t hot at the time.

“When her parents wanted to move back to the
city and sell the house, Annie didn’t want to go. She loved the
lakes. So Aiden bought the house with every dollar he had and some
of mine. They got married at the back of the property. There’s a
cabin right next to the lake and they spent their honeymoon
there.

“I never stopped being her friend, but she
didn’t want anything more from me. I took what she offered, because
anything less wasn’t bearable. I had girlfriends, but would watch
her. She didn’t care, she was happy for me. I couldn’t feel that
happiness for her. She had never even kissed me and I was so
jealous I could barely be around them at all.” Batty sighs and
shakes his head. I’ve barely breathed, not moving a muscle since he
started for fear that he would realize I was there and stop
talking.

“I got trashed one night. Drunk enough to
kiss Annie.” He laughs without humor. “It was horrible. I had been
dreaming about her forever, but that kiss was not what it was
supposed to be. I thought heaven would open up and angels sing. I
realized about seven years too late that she wasn’t for me. She
cried, and told me she was pregnant.

“It didn’t hurt as bad as I thought, you
know? Before the kiss it would have killed me. After it was an
ache, but I was happy for them.” Batty sniffs.