Chapter 9 Theo
Theo
The apartment was quiet.
Not the peaceful kind. Just still and sharp, like the silence was holding its breath with him.
Theo lay on his back in bed, sheets kicked halfway down, one arm flung over his eyes like that might block out the memory of Maya standing over him: full hips cocked, lips glossy, and her spine straight in a fuck-you stance that was more intimidating when he was younger.
The image didn’t help his body settle.
He had been hard for hours. Ever since she opened her mouth in his booth and read her own orgasm like she was offering it to him personally.
And now that she was gone, his skin still burned. Partly from lust; partly from embarrassment. He was this close to leaning closer to her. He’d foolishly hoped for a kiss before she sprang from the couch.
For a moment, he must have thought he could slip into Paul’s character and try on his swagger. He thought he could run his tongue along the hollow of her throat and she’d melt into him with the same sigh she’d given his microphone.
He could still hear her voice in his headphones. Still see the way her lips moved around his lines—Paul’s lines. Lines he hadn’t written, but now knew by heart.
“‘Tell me to stop.’”
She’d said fuck in a way that nearly broke him.
Theo ran a hand down his chest, over his stomach, and stopped just short of anything more. He exhaled slowly, shifted under the sheets, trying to will the burning sensation away. He wasn’t going to touch himself. Not yet.
He didn’t want this to be about release.
He wanted her.
And that made this worse.
Because he wasn’t a teenager anymore. He couldn’t pretend it was just an adolescent crush. Not after being so lucky to be near her again. Not after the way he was able to talk to her about her work and his own.
He groaned softly into the dark.
His dick pulsed like it was waiting for permission.
Theo lay there as long as he could, jaw tight, hands fisted in the sheets.
He tried.
God, he tried.
He turned over. Flipped the pillow. Tried breathing exercises. Thought about horror scripts. Haunted dolls peering over the foot of his bed. Scratching from inside his closet. Anything terrifying.
But every time he closed his eyes, she was there.
Low-voiced. Breathless. Needy.
And finally, he broke.
Theo reached for his phone on the nightstand, unlocked it with the kind of guilt usually reserved for something worse, and scrolled to the folder he shouldn’t have had.
Maya Brooks – Early Reads – Sweat Demo.mp3
He swiftly connected his headphones like he was afraid of being caught. Laid back against the pillows and pressed play.
And there she was.
Smooth, measured, and intimate. That soft, confident tone she used when she wasn’t being funny or defensive or polite.
“He was waiting for me,” her voice whispered. “Shirtless again. Leaning back like he hadn’t been pacing the floor moments before.”
Theo’s hand drifted beneath the sheet without conscious thought.
His dick still ached, leaking and straining against his boxer briefs like it knew who he was listening to.
He kept listening.
“His mouth curled at the edges when he saw me.
“Not a smile. Not quite. Just the kind of look that said:
“‘I already know what you sound like when you fall apart.’”
Theo groaned softly, breath catching in his chest. He pulled his boxers down just enough and wrapped his hand around himself, slow and tight. It felt too good. Too much.
But he didn’t stop.
He listened to her read a sex scene she’d written, not for him, and it still felt like sin. Like she had her mouth pressed to his ear and was telling him every filthy thought she ever had.
“He knelt between my legs and whispered something I didn’t catch, because his mouth was already there, and my brain stopped working.”
Theo’s grip tightened.
He stroked slower, dragging his thumb over the tip with practiced pressure, jaw clenched as if that could contain the sound threatening to escape him. His heartbeat thundered against the inside of his ribs like it wanted out.
“I couldn’t speak.
“Couldn’t breathe.
“I just held on and let myself break.”
Maya’s voice poured through his headphones like sin, dipping low on a line he knew he’d never get out of his head. She hadn’t meant it like that, her words weren’t for him, but his body didn’t know the difference.
And then she whimpered.
Theo’s hips jerked into his fist as he picked up speed, chasing the edge with gritted teeth.
His best friend’s sister.
The woman whose words he was supposed to recite, not moan into her mouth.
“Fuck—Maya—”
Her name slipped out, broken and raw, just as he came. His head bowed, chest heaving, and shame already flooding in behind the heat.
Her voice kept playing, but he pulled his earbuds out before the guilt could spiral.
He lay there, breathing hard with a raw throat and a sticky hand.
“Shit,” he whispered to the darkness.
He’d just jerked off to Nate’s big sister.
The one Nate once said was off-limits in a “not that you’d even have a shot” kind of way. And that was after Theo had made the mistake of telling him how beautiful Maya was when she came to visit them. He never made that mistake again.
But now he had her voice on a loop. Her moans in his memory. He’d come in his own goddamn bed with her name in his mouth like a prayer. And for what?
A fake sex scene? A moment when she was working?
He was being such a fucking idiot.
Because he couldn’t lie to himself anymore.
This wasn’t some passing crush or professional admiration.
This was full-blown, catastrophic longing that stemmed from years of creeping on her writing career and online presence.
And she didn’t owe him shit. Not her body or her time. Nor a role in her life just because he wanted it. She had a job to do and he was supposed to help her.
And worst of all?
He had no idea what he’d say to Nate if it ever got out.
God.
Theo dragged a hand down his face, disgust curling in his stomach now.
He didn’t regret wanting her.
What he did regret was pretending he could hold it together. That he could be casual.
He rolled out of bed and headed to his bathroom. Not even glancing at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands.
He’d told himself he could handle it. Told himself he could keep it professional.
But the truth was that he was in way over his head.
And if he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose more than just his mind.