Chapter 11
ARCHIE
Idon’t think people talked enough about how fast it happened—the moment something shifted so completely your body just moved, aligning itself before your mind caught up.
Every instinct I’d had ruthlessly rearranged itself around one person like they’d been lying in wait.
There was zero warning, and I was fucked.
Royally.
Because it wasn’t that he was brilliant or composed or criminally handsome—it was the way his attention settled on me and didn’t move. The way his hands found places on my body like they belonged there. The way being near him made me safe enough to close my eyes.
God.
Existing inside Henry Rothwell’s attention was… addicting. My lungs loosened like they’d been tight for years without me realizing it, skin buzzing with something restless.
The rest of the world didn’t disappear.
It just stopped mattering.
“Rabbit,” he hummed.
My head shifted against his hand without thinking, pressing deeper into his palm, chasing the warmth there. I needed to prove he was still real and not something I’d made up to survive the last ten minutes.
My fingers twitched, sliding down the front of his shirt until they caught on the line of buttons.
I traced them slowly, not undoing them so much as testing them—feeling the way the fabric gave under the slightest pressure.
One slipped just enough to open the smallest space. It wasn’t intentional. Or maybe it was.
I didn’t know anymore.
My knuckles brushed the skin beneath before I could talk myself out of it.
The shift in him was undeniable. His chest expanded a fraction deeper. The air between us grew dense.
I probably should’ve pulled back, but fuck, I didn’t want to.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?”
“I’m exploring, Professor. For research.”
“Jesus Christ, Rabbit…”
The words dragged out of him, low and strained. Something in my stomach rolled at the sound of it. Not fear or regret—just the sharp, undeniable awareness that I was affecting him in a way I didn’t fully understand yet.
“What the hell are you doing to me?”
The grip he had on my hair tightened, holding me prisoner as the space between us reduced to mere inches. His choked breath coasted across my cheekbones, and if I wasn’t so attuned to him, I might not have felt the subtle vibrations coursing through his muscles.
Maybe it was because he’d been holding himself in place for too long, or maybe it was me.
That did something to me.
For once, I wasn’t the only one trying to keep it together.
“Professor…” The word barely made it out, my mouth brushing his as I said it. “You can kiss me now.”
“Rabbit.” A growl built low in his chest. “I need you to be sure.”
“Please.”
I needed him to kiss me.
Not soft.
Not careful.
I wanted him to take my mouth like he’d already decided I was his.
“Henry, please.”
That was it.
Teeth grazed first—just enough to steal the breath I’d barely managed to hold—before his lips pressed in fully, claiming space instead of asking for it.
A sound tore loose from somewhere low in my throat, swallowed instantly as he deepened the kiss.
Impatient fingers wrapped around the strands of my hair, tugging just enough to tilt my head exactly where he wanted it.
Heat flooded through me so fast, every nerve woke at once, every thought dissolved into the way his mouth moved against mine—slow at first, like he was learning the shape of me.
Then deeper.
Hungrier.
“Goddamn it, Rabbit.”
The words broke against my mouth, half-lost as I pushed closer, hands catching at his shirt, fingers slipping between buttons.
One arm locked around me, and he lifted me without warning. My legs tightened instinctively around his waist, pulling myself closer as his mouth found mine again, like the space between us wasn’t something he was willing to tolerate.
Not anymore.
The edge of the desk met the back of my thighs a second before he did, setting me down without breaking the kiss, hands firm at my waist to keep me from going anywhere.
As if I fucking would.
The quiet restraint he normally favored was gone in favor of something darker, something that made my pulse spike every time his grip tightened just a fraction more.
“Do you have any idea—” His forehead pressed briefly to mine. “—what you’re doing to me?”
My hands shook as they slid higher, finding his shoulders, fingers curling into the muscle there. Harsh breaths slipped out against his mouth when he kissed me again.
“More,” I panted, and he chuckled against my mouth, dragging his tongue along my bottom lip.
“Do you like the way I taste, sweetheart?”
“Like it?” I made an incredulous noise. “I want you to drown me.”
His eyes darkened—brown sinking into blown pupils until there was nothing left but me reflected back at him.
Me. Me. Me.
“Careful what you ask for, Rabbit,” he tsked, fingers hooking beneath my thighs and pulling me closer.
His mouth came back hard, lips parting mine as his tongue pushed in, slow at first, like he was testing how much I would give.
Everything.
A sound tore out of me before I could stop it, my back arching off the desk as the pressure of him dragged something electric straight through my spine.
Shoving my fingers into his hair, I gripped tight, holding him against me.
“Christ,” he breathed. “You’re going to ruin me.”
“You should be so lucky.”
His mouth curved. “There’s my rabbit.”
The words barely settled before his mouth found mine again. His hand slid higher along my thigh, thumb brushing absent strokes that made my breath hitch back into his mouth.
I chased it without thinking, lips parting again. My hands slipped from his hair to his jaw, then back again, unable to settle anywhere for long.
A sharp, insistent vibration tore through the room.
I froze for a beat, eyes closed, while I prayed I’d only imagined it.
Nope.
The buzzing started again almost as soon as it stopped, dragging something cold straight through everything we’d just built.
“No,” I breathed, already shaking my head, already turning away from it.
A quiet, frustrated sound slipped out of me as I dropped forward, pressing my face into the side of his neck, breath hot and uneven against his skin.
“Make it stop,” I muttered, voice muffled there, fingers tightening in his shirt like I could hold the moment in place if I just didn’t look at it.
“Rabbit.” His hand stilled on my thigh. “Do you want me to turn it off?”
I shook my head against him. “She won’t stop. She never stops.”
“I could throw it out the window,” he said quietly, voice low against my temple. “Might even enjoy it.”
A soft breath of laughter slipped out of me before I could stop it, the sound catching somewhere between tired and fond as my fingers loosened in his shirt.
“Don’t.” I turned my face just enough that my cheek brushed his jaw. “I love my mom. It’s just hard living in her grief and my own guilt at the same time. There’s no space in it.”
My fingers shifted faintly against his chest.
“It’s the not knowing. That’s the part that doesn’t let up. If there was something—anything—you could point to, it would be different. You could put it somewhere. But this just eats through everything. Her from one side. Me from the other.”
The phone buzzed again against the desk.
This time I didn’t flinch.
“I would do anything,” I whispered, my fingers pressed flat against his chest. “I would do anything to know what happened to him.”
His hand shifted against my back, tracing once along my spine.
“Even if it’s bad. Even if it’s the worst thing I can think of. I just… need it to be something. Not this open space that never closes.”
My cheek dragged faintly against his shirt. “I think about it all the time. If he was scared. If he thought I left him.”
A shaky breath slipped out, and I pressed closer without meaning to. “If he waited for me to come back.”
His hand spread between my shoulders like he could hold me together by force alone.
“We’re going to find out,” he vowed.
And I almost believed him.