Chapter 6
six
. . .
Practical Men with Questionable Piercings
HALSTON
I watch him take in my place, his eyes landing on the mattress on the floor.
“It’s just temporary,” I say, almost embarrassed.
“It’s a nice place,” he lies. Then he adds, “You should text Oliver.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“He asked you to.”
“I’m sorry, are you trying to seduce me or help Oliver safety-parent me?”
“I’m not trying to seduce you.”
That should not be disappointing.
My eyebrows lift. “No?”
He takes a step closer. Slowly. My pulse reacts like a woman who has never seen a large man move with intention.
“I’m succeeding,” he says.
Oh.
A laugh slips out of me, too breathless to be casual, and his eyes drop to my mouth.
The laugh dies immediately.
For a second, we just look at each other across the small distance between us.
Then, my phone buzzes in my purse.
I jump before digging it out with clumsy fingers.
OLIVER
Alive?
Yes.
A second later:
Upstairs?
I look at the man whose name I still haven’t gotten, and part of me wants to ask him again.
The other half wants to continue not knowing. He doesn’t know my name. I don’t know his.
So in my head, I decide his name is Roman after the mafia leader in the romance book I just finished.
I look at him. He’s still watching me.
Yes.
With him?
I huff a laugh.
You know the answer.
I hate that answer.
I’m okay.
The dots appear, and then disappear, before appearing again a few seconds later.
Door locked, drink water, phone on.
My throat tightens.
Yes, dad.
Say that again and I’ll change the locks.
Love you too.
No answer to that.
Then,
Alive.
I smile down at the screen before locking my phone.
“Good?” mystery man—Roman—asks.
“Yes.”
“You have really good friends.”
“The best.”
It comes out softer than I mean it to.
He looks around my room again, and his gaze stops on my sketchbook, open to a map. He stops there. “What is that?”
I glance over. My fictional kingdom stares back at me in blue ink and golden paint. A spoon-shaped river, crooked mountains, and a tiny bakery in the capital with a ridiculous flag and an even more ridiculous name.
“My map.”
“You drew it?”
“Yeah.”
He steps closer, his eyes narrowing as I brace myself. For a question or maybe even the word adorable.
Instead, Roman says, “Your eastern road should curve further inland.”
I stare at him.
He points, not touching the paper. “If the coast floods, this trade route is useless. Unless the city has elevated roads.”
My mouth parts. “Are you criticizing the infrastructure of my imaginary kingdom?”
“Yes.”
I stare at him for another second, and then laugh so hard I have to slap my hand over my mouth.
Roman turns from the map, expression serious. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
“No, it’s just…” I shake my head. “Most people ask if I’m twelve when they find out I draw these.”
His face changes. “Most people lack imagination.”
I have been kissed before. Kissed well, even. I have been touched, wanted, and proposed to under restaurant lights with a ring I did not pick, but I smiled anyway because that was what sweet women do.
And still, that sentence nearly knocks my knees out from under me.
Most people lack imagination.
He doesn’t say I’m cute or silly or childish at all.
I look away first because the tenderness that blooms in my chest has absolutely no business being here. I did not invite tenderness. Tenderness needs to wait outside with hazards on.
He steps toward me, and the floor creaks.
“Don’t judge what’s up here,” I feel the need to say.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were silently assessing.”
He shrugs. “It may need a little work.”
“It has character.”
“There’s a tiny bit of liability here.”
“So does dating.”
“I thought we weren’t dating.”
I go quiet. “We’re not,” I say.
The apartment gets smaller, and all I want to know is how his hands feel under my cardigan. What his mouth feels like pressed against my inner thigh. What it would take for him to stop sounding so calm.
His eyes sharpen.
I toe off one boot, and when I go for the other, my balance wobbles. Before I can catch myself, Roman’s hand closes around my elbow.
It’s warm and steady.
I look down at his fingers against my cardigan, and he immediately lets go. “Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be.”
His jaw tightens, and I decide then that my cause of death will be his restraint.
I used to think restraint meant coldness. Grant was restrained. Polished and controlled in public. He knew what to say, when to smile, and how to make every unpleasant thing sound manageable.
But Grant’s restraint was image. Roman’s restraint feels different. Like he’s holding himself back because he knows exactly what he could do if he doesn’t.
Because he cares whether I can breathe beneath it.
I step closer, and his body stills. I can see his pulse at the side of his throat, and it makes me smile. He’s not unaffected, then.
“Are you going to kiss me?” I ask.
His eyes move over my face. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
My breath catches. I swallow. “Kiss me,” I say softly.
And he does.
He crosses the last inch between us, one hand sliding to the side of my neck while the other finds my waist, and he kisses me like he’s been patient for exactly as long as he can stand. It’s neither sweet nor polite.
The shock of it runs right through me.
His mouth is firm and hot, and he kisses me like he’s certain. He kisses with the same control he brought into the room with him, except now I can feel the edge of what’s under it. His fingers move across my waist, not rough enough to hurt, but sure enough to hold.
Sure enough to remind me that he is big, and that I am choosing him.
That I have a choice in this.
I make a sound into his mouth, and he freezes for half a heartbeat. Then, his grip tightens.
The kiss deepens.
His tongue strokes mine, and my entire body wakes up like someone flipped every breaker in the building.
Heat blooms low in my stomach, sharp and sudden.
I push up onto my toes, fisting one hand in the front of his henley and the other in the hair at the nape of his neck where his bun has started to loosen.
He makes a low sound. Barely there. But I feel it.
Victory blooms in my chest.
I do it again.
His mouth leaves mine, his hand at my jaw. He’s breathing through his nose when he says, “Careful.”
I blink up at him. “Of what?”
His blue eyes are dark. “Of me.”
The word rolls down my spine and settles between my thighs.
“I’m not fragile.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating me like I am.”
His thumb moves along my jaw. “I’m treating you like you matter.”
His words strike me in the heart.
I kiss him this time. Harder and messier.
A little desperate, because if I think about what he said for too long, I will start to cry, and that’s the last thing I want to do when I have a man in my shitty apartment.
A man whose name I don’t even know. I can’t cry.
Not with his hand at my waist and his mouth opening under mine and my body remembering there are reasons to be alive that have nothing to do with surviving the day.
He lets me push him back one step. Then another, until his back meets the wall beside the window.
His body feels good. Too good.
This stranger, huge and controlled and quiet, pinned underneath my hands because I want him and because he’s letting me.
I drag my mouth from his and kiss his jaw. His beard scrapes my lips, and his hand flexes on my hip.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice rough.
I pull back and glare at him. “Ask me that one more time and I’ll start charging you per question.”
His mouth twitches.
“Answer me.”
God. That should not work.
It absolutely works.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure I want this. I want you. I don’t want to talk about my ex. I don’t want to be pitied. I don’t want to be careful for one night. I want to feel good, and I want you to be the one to make me feel good.”
He stares at me.
Every word seems to settle into him.
He nods once. “Okay.”
Then his hands are on me. Not tentative or distant. He kisses me again, turning us so my back hits the wall instead of his. One hand slides into my hair, careful of the bow at first and then much less careful when I make an impatient sound against his mouth.
His lips move to my jaw. To my throat. To the sensitive spot beneath my ear that makes my fingers dig into his shoulders.
“Oh God,” I moan.
I shove my cardigan off my shoulders and feel it drop to the ground in a soft blue heap.
He lifts his head, his eyes moving over me.
White tank, gold necklace, bare shoulders. Pink bow coming loose in my hair. A body that has lifted flour bags, sheet pans, and mixers and somehow gets cruelly evaluated by my brain at the worst times.
He looks at me as if he has nowhere else to be. Like there’s not a single thing he wants to miss.
My stomach flutters.
“You look at people intensely,” I say.
“You’re not people.”
I forget how to breathe.
His words are unfair.
They’re too much.
They are exactly enough.
I grab the hem of his henley, and he catches my wrist.
“What?”
“Light.”
I blink. “What?”
He nods toward the lamp by the mattress. I had left it off, only the city glow filtering through the window.
“You want it off or on?”
“Your choice,” he says, but I know what he would prefer, or else he wouldn’t have pointed it out.
“On,” I say, flipping the switch. “I want to see you.”
His jaw tightens.
“Your turn,” I say.
His eyes lift to mine.
For a second, I think he’s going to say no. Then, he reaches back, grips the collar of his shirt, and pulls it over his head.
Oh.
My brain is already operating with limited staff, and it shuts down completely.
Because he’s not just large, he’s built in a way that feels personally directed at me.
Broad shoulders, thick chest, heavy arms, a solid stomach that is not some fitness-ad fantasy but is powerful, real, and deeply rude. His skin is covered in ink, far more than I expected. Tattoos wrap both arms and move over his shoulders, down his chest, and across his ribs.
Dark lines. Detailed work.