Something broke. She felt it in his tightened jaw. Saw it in the depths of his eyes. Sensed it from the energy off his body.
‘You don’t fuck with Kelly and Finn,’ he said with the quiet determination of a solider.
‘That’s my boy,’ she said. ‘Now let’s get this done.’
***
Xavier let them keep the towels. For the time being, anyway; Kelly said she would wash and return them. Finn was pretty sure the tattoo artist would not have agreed to this request from anyone else and was just using it as an excuse to see Kelly again. He could hardly blame him for that. She had just walked into his shop and stripped naked; that’d make any man want to follow her up.
Their shoes were still drenched so they scurried barefoot back to Kelly’s car. Finn could feel the dirt and rainwater splashing up his calves. Ordinarily, it would have put him on edge until he could get to a shower and wash off the filth, but the freedom that had accompanied Kelly’s reckless abandon had infected him as well. He felt invincible, like there were no more consequences. Like nothing he could do now mattered. Only Kelly made him feel that way. And only when she had that wildfire in her eyes.
Kelly unlocked her car and threw the garbage bag of wet clothes and shoes in the back. Then Finn opened the passenger door as she opened the driver’s side door and they bundled in at the same time, simultaneously slamming the rain out and collapsing in breathless excitement.
Finn gently rubbed his wrists against the towel that was still wrapped around his waist. It was impossible to keep the transparent dressings dry, but Xavier had double wrapped them for protection. Finn stared at his new tattoos and his blood was warmed by the exhilaration of rebellion.
‘Icannotbelieve we just did that. My mum is going to lose it.’
Kelly laughed. ‘You’re eighteen now, Finley, Mummy doesn’t tell you what to do anymore.’ She dried her dressings the way Finn had done and laid her hands palms up on her towel-covered thighs.
There was an awe and wonder in her eyes that stirred something deep and primal inside Finn. Something he didn’t know was there. A desire, a need, a wickedness, a delight; it was hard to say. But it was powerful. So powerful that his breath caught in his chest at the sight of her, drenched and steaming and burning from the inside out.
‘Ceallach and Fionn,’ Kelly said, reading the cursive script on her left wrist and then her right.
‘Ceallach and Fionn,’ Finn repeated, only he read from his right wrist first.
‘Kelly and Finn. Warriors,’ Kelly said. ‘With you at my right hand and me at yours. We can never leave each other now, Finley.’
She turned to him then, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks, her nose pink with the cold, her eyes like galaxies all their own. Finn felt as if he was seeing her for the very first time. As if he wasreallyseeing her for all that she was and all that she could be.
The force of it burned in his chest and, as their eyes locked, there was nothing left in the universe. Nothing outside of them as they sat in her car, in this small, deserted laneway, the sun a distant memory behind the storm clouds and the darkness closing in. With the windows so heavily fogged, they could see nothing of the outside world, and the outside world could not see them. They were the only two left. The only two who mattered.
Kelly slowly raised her hand and stroked Finn’s cheek. Her fingers were cool and soft and gentle, yet they also choked the very breath from his lungs. He had to close his eyes to endure it. The pain, the ecstasy, the hope, the sin, the righteousness.
And then her lips. Oh, Lord, her lips. Fashioned for him alone. Gentle and warm. Inquisitive and torturous. Her bite, measured and cool, drew a groan from a place he didn’t know existed. He heard the sound as an observer does, clear in his ears but from somewhere at a distance. Or like a man being called to wake from a thousand-year sleep.
Her tongue was impatient and commanding. It was the accelerator and the brake at the same time; regulating the pace of their connection. Now fast, now slow, now teasing, now indulgent.
Every thought he’d ever had. Every action he’d ever taken. Every hope he’d ever cherished. They all vanished in that moment. For the first time in his life, Finn existed for now alone. For one more breath and then one after that; for he did not know how many he had left. It felt as if he was going to die – or at least transcend the only existence he had ever known.
But when Kelly swung her body into his lap, her towel riding up around her thighs, Finn returned in an instant to that tiny car. His entire body ached and he felt as close to the earth and the ancestors and the gods and the devils of this world as he ever would. Kelly kissed his mouth, his eyes, his cheeks, his ears and his neck. That gentle touch of her lips was sulphur to his passion.
When they became one, Finn groaned again, and Kelly whispered breathlessly in his ear: ‘It’s you and me, Finley. The warriors. Joined for now and all time.’
Finn drew her close, gripped her skin, searched for her eyes. They locked; their foreheads and the tips of their noses touching. Perfectly aligned. Nothing between them but their own breath.
When it was over, Finn buried his face in her wet hair. It was all he could do. She had rescued him, marked him and bound him to her. He had never felt so full of life and yet so close to death at the same time.
‘I could die right now, Kel,’ he whispered. ‘Die happy in your arms and want nothing more in this life.’ He meant every word.
And came to regret every single one of them with all his heart.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Just when I thought you couldn’t be any more of a fucking genius, you go and do that!’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Kelly said to Juliana.
Juliana held out her phone, the screen showing Kelly’s Instagram account. DMs and comments were flooding in. ‘You’re now a feminist icon as well. Keep this up and you’ll be a bloody saint by Easter Sunday.’
