Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
The limo pulls away with a soft thud of doors and laughter still echoing inside, the kind that spills out of people who’ve had too much champagne and not enough sense.
Through the tinted glass, I can see Eli’s grin, Drew waving some crumpled napkin like a flag, Miles shaking his head the way he does when chaos wins.
Then the car slides into the Strip’s glittering bloodstream and they’re gone.
It’s just me and the night. And him.
Ollie’s hand brushes mine as we stand under the portico.
The lights from the hotel canopy wash his skin in gold and shadow; I swear I can feel the pulse at his wrist even though we’re not quite touching.
My pocket is heavy with a piece of paper that says we did something impossible. My husband. The word burns.
He booked a room here. Not a suite, but nice. Glass elevators. Polished marble floors. The kind of place where the air smells like money and disinfectant, and where the clerk smiles too brightly when two men check in together after midnight wearing wedding bands.
The elevator hums as we ride up, mirror walls reflecting versions of us that look too calm for what’s happening inside. Ollie leans against the railing, hoodie off, T-shirt tight and showing his perfect physique. His eyes find me in the mirrored glass, steady and unsure all at once.
Neither of us speaks until the doors open with a soft chime.
The hallway is hushed, the carpet swallowing sound. Room 1908 waits at the end like a secret. He slides the key card in; the green light flickers; the lock clicks. When the door closes behind us, it feels like a line being drawn. The silence is thick enough to breathe.
The room glows in warm amber light, highlighting the king bed and crisp sheets. A view of the city where every window burns like a star frames the room.
Ollie sets his hoodie over a chair. He doesn’t undress further. His shoulders are still in captain mode, straight and composed, but the rhythm of his breath gives him away.
I drop my wallet and phone on the dresser and turn toward him. For a moment, we just look.
All the noise from the chapel, the drive, the laughter—it falls away. What’s left is the impossible quiet of realization: We did it.
I break first. “You good?”
He huffs a breath, not quite a laugh. “I keep waiting for it to feel fake.”
“Does it?”
He meets my eyes. “No.” A pause. “That’s what scares me.”
I cross to him before I can think too much. The floor feels soft under my boots, the air too thin. Up close, his eyes are dark honey, reflecting every bit of light in the room. I reach for his hand. He lets me. The makeshift ring glints, thin and new, catching between our fingers.
“Hey,” I say softly. “We’re sober enough to know what we did.”
He nods, slow. “That’s the problem. I remember every second.”
“Good.” I smile. “Then you’ll remember this too.”
He exhales, and the sound is almost a tremor.
For a heartbeat, I expect him to pull back, to armor up. But he doesn’t. His thumb drifts across my knuckles, small, absent, like he’s testing the weight of touch.
“I can’t stop looking at you,” he says quietly. “Like I’m trying to make sure you’re real.”
I want to tell him I feel the same—that since the ceremony, my brain has been a static roar of disbelief and hunger—but the words get lost somewhere between my ribs. Instead, I step closer until the space between us disappears.
“Then look,” I whisper.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
The first kiss is careful, almost polite, the way you touch something fragile. Then it deepens—slow, unhurried, the kind of kiss that starts as a question and turns into an answer you didn’t know you needed. His hand slides to the back of my neck, and I swear I can feel his pulse against my skin.
When we break, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine.
I brush my thumb along his jaw; he turns his head and kisses the heel of my hand.
The room feels smaller now, warmer.
We end up by the window without realizing how we got there. The city sprawls below us—neon rivers, pulsing signs, and a thousand people chasing the next thrill. Up here, it’s just us, caught between reflection and glass.
“Do you regret it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. The silence stretches, filled with the hum of air-conditioning and our uneven breathing.
Then he says, “No.” A beat later, he adds, “But I don’t know how we’ll make it work.”
“We will.”
He looks at me, eyes sharp with something like fear. “You sound sure.”
“I have to be,” I say. “One of us has to start.”
He lets out a breath that sounds like surrender. “You always do that.”
“What?”
“Talk like a song you already know the ending to.”
“Maybe I just believe in bridges,” I say, and he shakes his head, smiling faintly despite himself.
For a moment, we just stand here, close enough that our shoulders touch, watching Vegas pulse through the window. Down below, people stumble in and out of love every five minutes. Up here, we’ve already gone too far.
He turns to me again, voice quieter now. “I want this to be real,” he says. “Even if it has to stay hidden. I want tonight to feel like… proof.”
“It is,” I tell him.
“Then—” His words falter. He swallows, jaw tight. “Then stay.”
“I wasn’t planning to leave.”
He smiles, small, almost shy. “Good.”
When he kisses me again, it’s different. There’s no hesitation, no map. Just need, layered with disbelief, wrapped in something deeper.
Clothes start to blur—buttons, fabric, warmth—more suggestion than detail. Every motion feels both slow and desperate, like time is bending around us.
He whispers my name once, and it lands like a vow.
I don’t know who pulls whom toward the bed, only the soft thud of the headboard against the wall and the way his hands tremble when they find my face.
I’ve wanted him for months, but wanting is nothing like this. This is gravity. This is every lyric I’ve written catching fire.
We pause only once more, his breath ragged against my ear.
“Rafe,” he says, voice breaking a little. “I want to remember this as mine.”
“You will.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him he can have anything he wants, anything at all. But words feel too small for what’s inside me. The room hums with quiet electricity as he settles back against the sheets.
“Let me take care of you,” I say. “I love you. I want to make you feel so good, baby.”
Something shifts in his eyes—a flicker, a soft unraveling.
Under the gentle spill of light, Ollie is a vision of strength and surrender, stillness and heat. I can’t look away. The sight of him steals the breath from my chest and fills it with something fierce and reverent.
When I move, the world narrows to our heartbeats and choppy breaths.
My gaze travels over him, slow and deliberate, remembering every hard-worked muscle, every freckle, every place I’ve already learned by heart.
We’ve been here before, but this feels different—deeper.
Not a search for pleasure, but a way to prove we’re real, that this is a night we’ll never forget.
My dick pulses, but my focus is on him. I reach down and slide my finger over the drop of precum gathered on the head of his cock. “I can use a condom.”
He swallows hard, the sound loud in this room of fast pulses and heavy breathing. “No. I’ve swallowed your cum, and fuck if I don’t want that buried deep inside me.”
Fuck. An honest-to-God whimper escapes me, and I wrap my hand around my cock, determined not to blow at the thought of shooting my load inside him. Hell, maybe I can watch it seep out of him. Taste it as it spills out.
Ollie’s pupils dilate, and he drops his attention to my desperate cock.
Like he can hear the direction of my dirty thoughts, he licks his bottom lip before saying, “Do you want that? To fill me up?”
My control vanishes with a needy, desperate groan. I press my lips to his, plunging my tongue into his mouth. He tastes of beer and sin and mine.
He kisses me with a kind of certainty that leaves no room for doubt. It’s not tentative or questioning. Fuck no, it’s a claim written in breath and heartbeat and a promise.
Every nerve in my body wakes up at once. The world tilts. All I can taste is him, all I can feel is the press of his mouth, the way his fingers anchor me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
It’s dizzying—how easily he unravels me, how I meet him without hesitation. Each touch feels like a spark catching, feeding on everything we’ve been holding back.
Ollie knows how to find the part of me that hides behind noise and bravado. With him, there’s nowhere to hide. He doesn’t just touch me—he undoes me, until all that’s left is this bright, breathless need.
When our mouths break apart, it’s only for air. He exhales against my lips, a sound that trembles somewhere between a laugh and a plea. I catch it, hold it there, and let it become the only sound that matters.
“Fuck me, Rafe. Please.” He points toward his bag. “Get the lube.”
“Okay, baby,” I say, voice low.
A faint smile tugs at his mouth, still soft from our last kiss, and my pulse stumbles.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” I breathe.
Before he can argue, I lean in and silence him with another kiss. It’s quick and certain. I pull back just enough to move and get the lube, the world narrowing to him and the steady drum of my heartbeat.
Back between his legs, I keep my focus on his face, on the way he’s watching me. My hand trails down, tracing slow patterns along his thigh, mapping him like I’m committing him to memory.
“You okay like this?” I ask quietly.
He nods, and that small, trusting gesture almost makes me lose control.