Finding Faith (32 page)

His words slid down my throat, past
my stomach, and straight to the sensitive part of me he was
stimulating.

My body tensed up, on the verge of
release, when suddenly he pulled his hands away from me. I opened
my eyes and looked up at him. He stared down at me with aqua irises
and ran his nose across mine.

“
I’ve wanted this for so long,” he
said as he unzipped his jeans.

My conscience was kicking in, but
the sinner inside me pushed it away. The crackle of his condom
wrapper echoed into the bathroom. The sounds of our heated breaths
muffled it a bit.

My mind was going a hundred miles
per hour. He’d worn a condom before, too, but that obviously didn’t
work. I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve said no and walked away,
but once I felt the tip of him pushing inside me, every thought I
had crashed and burned.

I threw my head back as his hips
began to thrust over and over again. My palms held me up enough so
my back didn’t touch the cold mirror behind me.

“
I want you to think of this
moment the next time you touch yourself,” he said as he moved hard
and fast against me.

The room around me faded away and
my body began to tingle. A rush of heat moved through my core and
dropped down into my thighs. My release was just out of reach, but
it was definitely there.

The sound of our bodies coming
together echoed throughout the room. It was an exotic sound that
intensified everything I was feeling.

He pushed his fingers into my hair
and forced me to look at him. His mouth slammed against mine and
his tongue worked with the rhythm of his hips—fast and hard—nothing
like that the last time we’d had sex. I didn’t hate it.

I tried to close my eyes again, but
he wasn’t having it.

“
Look at me. I want you to look at
me when you come.”

His words sent me over the edge.
Every nerve in my body climbed high before crashing and colliding
where our two bodies met. I kept my eyes on him like he’d asked as
I moaned and cried out my release. It felt like nothing I’d ever
known.

Within seconds, he threw his head
back and growled before slamming his body into mine one final hard
time.

His breathing was hard against my
neck as he trembled between my legs. I leaned up and wrapped my
arms around his neck, holding him close to me. Residual shivers
went through my body and caused me a jerk a little every now and
again.

I expected him to look up at me and
smile. I somehow thought things might be different since we’d come
together so beautifully again, but when he pulled back and looked
down at me, it wasn’t happiness I saw on his face. It was
anger.

“
What did you do to me?” he said
as he pulled away. I slid down from the countertop and collected my
towel. I wrapped it around myself and followed behind him as he
left the bathroom and righted his clothes.

“
Finn? Is everything okay?” I
asked.

I couldn’t believe what we’d done.
We hated each other, but apparently the attraction was still there
for both of us. A lot of things were still there for me when it
came to Finn, although I’d never admit it.

“
No! Things are definitely not
okay. We shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake,” he
said.

His words slammed into my chest and
broke my heart all over again. He thought I was a mistake. He was
looking at me like I was disgusting. Maybe he wasn’t so attracted
to me after all.

A mistake. The word burned through
my brain and spiked my anger. I went to his dresser and pulled out
one of his T-shirts and a pair of his boxers. I folded them; I knew
where they were.

“
What the hell do you think you’re
doing?” he said loudly.

I looked over at the clock and knew
I was running late to get Jimmy from the daycare. I’d been playing
around with someone who obviously never gave two shits about me. I
couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. How could I have fallen for
his games again?

“
My clothes are wet and I need to
get out of here.”

I almost let it slip that my son
was waiting for me. I had to be more careful around
Finn.

I tugged on his T-shirt and pulled
the boxers up over my hips. He stood beside his bed and watched me
like a hawk—a really angry hawk.

“
I can’t believe I fell for that
again,” I said clearly as I walked around him and left the
room.

I heard him behind me and then I
felt his hand wrap around the top of my arm before he swung me
around to face him.

“
You? I can’t
believe I fell for
your
shit again. You’re not the victim here, Faith. I
am! And you know what I say to that? I say fuck it! And fuck you
for even thinking for a second that you could slide your pretty
little ass back into my life and all would be right with the world.
The world ain’t got shit on a man with a past like
mine.”

I flinched at his words and I felt
the tears coming. I tried to pull away again. I was sick of crying
for him, and I was determined he’d never see them fall
again.

All I could think about was Jimmy
and how I’d almost died giving birth to him—the pain that I went
through all alone because Finn was such a jerk. The beatings I took
just to be with him even for an hour to two. I’d bled for him and
this was how he was going to treat me again? I was done.

Everything I’d felt over the last
four years of my life came together in that moment and filled me
with so much hurt that I thought I’d fall to the floor and curl up
in the fetal position. Tears slipped from my eyes against my will,
and I swiped at them.

“
You asshole! I bled for you!” I
yelled as I pushed against his chest and tried to get
away.

His cheeks flushed red in anger;
his nostrils flared as he breathed out hard. Then he was in my
face, staring down at me with red-hot eyes. All signs of the heated
moment we’d just had in the bathroom were gone.

I gasped when his fingers dug hard
into my arms and he tugged me closer to him. His nails burrowed
into my skin as he held me close. He was all heat and fury, wrapped
around me, scorching my skin in the all the places that we touched.
I couldn’t decide if I should run like I did before or stay and
face the consequences for my past actions. Somehow that didn’t seem
fair since he still hadn’t paid for his.

I decided to stay and face him.
Looking up at him, blue orbs swirled back at me, his eyes leaving
no part of my face untouched. I couldn’t breathe. His hard chest
was like a brick wall squeezing the oxygen from my
lungs.

“
You
bled
for me? Well, I
didn’t bleed for you, Faith. I
died
for you. There’s a big fucking difference. You
didn’t wound me; you killed me. You murdered the boy I used to be
in his sleep and he’s never coming back. All that’s left of that
boy is me, and all you’ll ever get from
me
is a quickie and a door in your
face.”

He released me and the spot where
his fingers were digging ached. Wrapping my arms around myself, I
rubbed at the sore areas. He looked down at my arms and closed his
eyes hard as if he were feeling my pain.

When he opened them, his expression
had softened. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.” He reached out and ran a
finger down my arm. “Even now the thought of hurting you hurts me.
It’s a bad habit I can’t seem to break.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I had
to get away from him and I had to stay away. I turned and walked
away. I snatched up my keys and walked out his front door and out
of his life again.

It wasn’t until I was about to
climb into bed later that I realized I’d forgotten my
purse.

Twenty-Six

Finn

“
Fuck!” I yelled out loud as I
punched a hole through my bedroom wall.

I’d fucked up a lot in my life, but
having sex with Faith was by far the worse and best thing I’d done
in a long time. It was amazing—beyond amazing. It was everything
I’d fantasized about for the last four years of my life. And while
I’d experienced a release like I hadn’t since the last time I was
with her, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d just royally fucked
myself.

After years of dealing with the
loss of Faith in my own way, I’d taken one big step back. The only
way it didn’t hurt to be without her was to hate her, and I’d
definitely done the opposite of that in my bathroom. The worst part
was all the emotions I’d spent the last four years burying had
resurfaced just that quickly and I didn’t know what to do with
them. After going so long not feeling, it was scary to feel again.
The way I saw it was emotion was a bad thing and Faith brought out
entirely too many damn emotions.

It wasn’t like when I fucked a
random girl, which is what I’d been doing for the last four years.
It was so much more. There’d been eye contact and touching. I
actually cared about how she felt and whether or not she got off.
It felt so wrong and so right all at the same time.

I could hardly believe my eyes when
I walked into my bathroom and found her naked in my bathtub. I
watched her as she bathed. The way the light reflected off of her
moist skin and the way she’d rubbed the water and soap onto her
body. I thought for a second I was going to come in my pants right
then.

It had been so long since I’d been
with a woman, and when she told me she touched herself with
thoughts of me, I was done. There was no way I would’ve been able
to control what happened next.

How was she able to pull me back in
that way? And why wasn’t I able to just blow it off as a fuck like
I usually did? It was as if she’d weaved some crazy web of innocent
seduction all around me and I was stuck and couldn’t get out. I was
thoroughly tangled in her snare and I fucking hated it.

When I turned around, Zeke was
standing there staring back at me.

“
You okay, man?” he asked
calmly.

Nothing shocked Zeke and he was
always so chill about everything.

“
Yeah, I’m good. Just need to blow
off some steam,” I said as I rubbed my busted knuckles.

“
Want to talk? There’s some beers
in the fridge.” He started toward the kitchen.

I followed behind him. He tossed me
a beer over the counter and I popped it open and sucked down half
of it.

Zeke and I weren’t big on
heart-to-heart talks, but I guessed if anyone understood
relationships, it would be him. And while the rest of the guys
would have ragged me about it, Zeke would understand since he was
in a relationship.

I spent the next hour telling Zeke
all about Faith. He listened carefully and shook his head from time
to time. He almost spewed beer on himself when I told him that our
new maid was the Faith I was talking about.

“
Damn, man. That’s fucked up,” he
said. “So what are you going to do about her?”

“
I don’ t know. She makes me
fucking crazy,” I said as I took another swig from my third
beer.

He chuckled softly to himself.
“That’s all women. They’re nuts, but love makes you that way. Don’t
let the past get in the way of your future, dude. If you love her,
you have to try. Pride’s a bitch, but it’s not worth losing the
girl you love.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze as he
stood up from his stool and walked by me. “If you need to talk
again, you know where I am.”

I watched him walk away. His words
moved around in my head while I finished my beer.

I spent the rest of the night
mentally kicking my own ass. I felt bad for the things I’d said to
Faith, and even when I pulled out her letter and read it, it still
didn’t anger me enough to not worry about whether or not I’d hurt
her. I clutched her cross in my palm until I was sure it would
puncture my skin and I’d bleed all over—bleed for her the way she
swore she bled for me.

I drowned myself in vodka with Chet
and Tiny when they got home and smoked so much cush that I went
into my room and passed out. I had dreams of her face in pleasure.
I could practically hear her moaning in my sleep. I had dreams of
her body as she took me in and held me like no other woman ever
had.