Chapter 18
Ava
Katie’s spare room is too quiet. Every time I close my eyes, my brain replays the studio. The way he crowded me against the studio wall. I’ve been lying here for an hour. My nerves won’t settle. I squeeze my thighs, but the ache between my legs is insistent.
Shush. Back in the box. Go to sleep.
My palm drifts over my stomach. I slip beneath the waistband and imagine his hands instead of mine.
Those rough knuckles he busted open defending me.
I circle my nub in slow, tight spirals. My hips leave the sheets.
My breathing turns to helpless pants. I’m close, so close, teetering on the verge of release—
I stop.
My arm flops to the mattress. The need flares, but I don’t finish. How could it be enough?
My head is on a pillow that isn’t mine. I’m in a house full of people who have absorbed me into their cosy madness, and the person I crave is two doors down.
So close.
This is reckless and insane. His family is here. You just left Nevin.
Except I didn’t leave him two days ago. I left him a hundred times – and the night I saved Scottie’s number under ‘Bear’. The night with the bathroom door was the last formality.
The thrum in my veins turns thick and feverish.
Fuck the box.
I throw off the duvet, get up, and plant my feet.
The air in the room is cool, but my skin is too hot to care.
I kick off my briefs and leave them on the rug.
The draught against my bare thighs immediately triggers a spike of panic – exposure, vulnerability, danger – my nervous system screaming at me to armour up.
I ignore it. If I’m doing this, I’m leaping without a parachute.
The hallway is dark. Every creak of the floorboards makes my shoulders flinch, bracing for a reprimand that isn’t coming.
His door is closed, but a thin strip of light bleeds underneath.
He’s awake.
Any other door, and my body would lock. But this isn’t any old door. It’s the only safe place in a world that’s spinning off its axis. I’ve been walking toward it since November.
If I take this step, there is no returning to the friend zone.
I knock and turn the door handle. Every nerve in my body goes taut as I slip inside. The light from the hallway cuts a golden slice across the floor before I close the door.
Scottie sits up, and a book slides off his chest. ‘What the fuck are you doing here? We said…the box.’
I don’t hover by the door. No, I walk straight to the bed. ‘Burn the silly box.’
‘Ava—’
‘I don’t just want the friend, Scottie.’ My knees bump against the mattress. ‘I want the man. I want both. I want you to be my friend, and I want to sleep with you. A lot, actually.’
Every rational objection – timing, consequences, the smouldering wreckage of my life – goes up in flames.
But he tries one last time. ‘For fuck’s sake. Ava, think about this.’ He catches my hands, trying to create distance, but all it does is tether me to him. ‘We’re friends.’
‘We are. And as it turns out, I want to sleep with my friend.’ I lean forward. ‘I’m extremely sure about that.’
He’s losing the argument with himself. I notice the shift in his eyes. There’s a sudden, dark intensity.
‘If you climb into this bed right now, I’m going to put my mouth on every inch of you. You understand that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll have to mean it. All of it. I can’t do halfway. I can’t touch you and then pretend it didn’t happen.’
‘Neither can I.’ I swing one leg over his hips, settle into his lap, and cradle his chiselled jaw. ‘Now stop blethering and kiss me.’
He surges up and crushes my mouth to his, pulling me down against him, and the sound he makes – a soft groan – sets fire to everything that kept us apart.
The box is ash. There’s only him.
His mouth slants over mine, and I melt down into him, knees bracketing his hips. He sweeps his palms up bare skin, and seats me flush against his impressive bulge. The thin cotton of his boxers soaks through. If he can’t feel how desperate I am for him, he is not paying attention.
‘Fuck.’ He pulls away enough for his eyes to clash with mine. ‘You’re not wearing anything under that shirt, are you?’
‘Astute observation.’
‘Jesus Christ, Ava. Please tell me you didn’t walk down my mum’s hallway with your pussy bare.’
‘Okay. I won’t tell you that.’ I keep kissing his neck, over the tendon where his pulse batters, tasting salt and clean sweat.
He lets out a harsh breath. ‘I’m trying to be a gentleman, but you’re making it very fucking difficult.’
‘Good. I didn’t come here for a gentleman.’
‘What did you come here for?’
‘You, of course.’ I lean in, raking his ear with my open mouth. ‘Doing ungentlemanly things to me.’
I rock into his lap. The damp friction wrenches a gut-deep sound out of him; one I feel in my deep tissue.
‘These were clean this morning, Ava.’
‘I’ll buy you a new multipack.’
He grounds out a laugh that turns into a growl.
Then he flips us, and the world inverts.
I’m on my back; he’s settled over me. For a fraction of a second, my muscles brace.
Part of me anticipates the breathless panic of being trapped.
But the panic never comes. His weight isn’t a cage; it’s an enveloping heat that silences the buzzing in my head.
Scottie’s forearms cage my head, and his steely girth settles hard against my core through his boxers. A promise I need him to keep.
I bridge up to meet him, but he pins me to the mattress.
‘Patience.’ He shimmies the hem of my shirt up, baring my stomach, then higher over the curve of my chest. ‘Are you sure you want to go there with me?’
‘First of all,’ my palms frame his stubbled jaw, ‘we’re already halfway.
’ I pull him in for a slow kiss because I can’t get enough of him.
‘And if you ask me that one more time, I’m going to scream.
I don’t care if it wakes up your family.
’ My bare heels shift up the sheets, dropping my knees wide.
‘Stop being noble and put your mouth on me.’
‘Where?’
‘Wherever you like.’
‘Jesus, woman.’
His broad hands catch the hem of my T-shirt. I lift my arms, and he peels the fabric over my shoulders. Cool air hits me, but his eyes lick over my skin like fire, keeping the blood running hot.
He goes quiet. ’You’re so fucking beautiful it actually hurts to look at you.’
‘Good that it’s dark in here then. I don’t want you to be in pain right now.’
He lets out a chuckle. ‘Shut up, Ava. I mean it.’
The sincerity in his voice obliterates my sarcastic shield. Under his stare, I don’t feel scrutinised for flaws. I want to cover myself, to hide the messy, broken parts of me he is looking at as if they are gold. But I don’t. Not with him.
He skims up my body, the rasp of hair and muscle against my flesh, and captures one nipple.
The suction arrows deep, and I fall open wider.
He flicks, and I arch so hard I nearly buck him off.
His hand finds the other stiff peak, tugging it gently until my clit throbs in sync, untouched and furious about it.
‘More.’ The word comes out strangled. ‘Please.’
He lifts his head. ‘Please what?’
‘Touch me. Touch me where I need you.’
He drags a single finger along my inner crease, close enough that my hips hitch toward his hand. ‘Here?’
‘You know where. Don’t be a tease.’
The first brush against my centre has us both hold our breath.
‘You’re so wet.’ He rubs me exactly right, a hungry slide that makes my spine bow.
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about… I tried to get myself off earlier. I couldn’t. Wasn’t enough. I want you, Scottie. I need—’
The broad pads of his fingers glide over where I’m swollen and aching for him. ‘You tried to come thinking of me?’
‘Yes. And I couldn’t. Not enough. I-I need…you.’
His breath shudders out of him. ‘You’re going to destroy me. And I’m going to let you.’
And then he guides one testing finger inside me, bringing more wetness out and swirling it around my pussy. He keeps going, massaging tender circles as he builds a rhythm until I’m clawing at his shoulders.
‘Scottie.’ My voice frays. ‘Please. I’m so close. Please.’
He smirks into my neck. ‘I haven’t even started.’ He crooks deep, curling forward, searching until—
My whole body seizes. A choked sob lurches from my chest as stars burst at the edges of my vision.
‘There.’ His words are a low growl of satisfaction. ‘Right fucking there.’
‘Ah! God. Yes. Don’t stop. Yes!’
He works me open, the heel of his palm rubbing my sweet spot with every stroke. ‘Would you like me to use my tongue on your pussy?’
‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes!’
He trails open-mouthed kisses down my stomach, hooks his hands under my knees, and scoops me toward him until my legs drop over his broad shoulders.
He drags his tongue from my hole straight to my clit, closing over the swollen bud.
The sound I make is almost humiliating. He spreads me wider and looks up with pure hunger.
Then he devours me.
He licks into me with single-minded greed. Wet sweeps as he gorges on my pussy.
‘Scottie.’ My voice is shredded. ‘Oh god. Oh yes. That feels so… I-I can’t—’
He hums against my sensitive flesh, and it fires straight up my spine. Then he pushes a thick knuckle along my slipping wetness while his lips seal and suck down hard. My calves lock around his neck.
‘Oh! Ohhh god… I’m going to… Scottie, I’m… Ah—’
The climax seizes me, fast and blinding.
I shove my face into the pillows to muffle the noise scraping out of my lungs.
Scottie doesn’t stop. He follows the ebbing waves with soft kisses, kneading my inner thighs until I fall back.
When I finally go limp, he comes back up for air and looks incredibly pleased with himself.
‘That was nice.’ He kisses me. I taste myself on him, salt and want, and my fists tangle in his hair and hold him there because he has rewired my brain. Scottie has branded himself onto me with his mouth.
The words trip over themselves as they fall from my lips. ‘I need… inside me. Now. I can’t… I need you now.’