Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Archie
The apartment feels different without Elizabeth. Like a stage after the audience has left.
There’s no coat on the hook or penetrating gaze coming from the armchair. No one making me feel like my emotional state is being silently graded on a scale I don’t have access to.
It’s just Leo and me now.
We spend the evening doing what we always do—takeout, the detective show, arguing about whether the lead character’s deductions are scientifically plausible.
But there’s something different in the air.
An awareness that the rules have changed now that Elizabeth’s gone.
Every time our eyes meet, the question neither of us is asking gets louder.
When the episode ends, Leo switches off the TV.
“So,” he says. “Elizabeth’s gone.”
“Observant as always.” I swallow. “You can stop pretending to like me now.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
He says the words simply. Just three words, stated like a fact. Like the chemical composition of Jupiter or the correct steeping time for Earl Grey.
I blink.
I should have a response to that because I always have a response. My brain generates comebacks the way other people’s brains generate involuntary reflexes. It’s what I do.
Nothing comes.
“Well,” I manage eventually. “That’s very kind of you to say, Sergeant Twinkle.”
Leo doesn’t smile. He’s watching me with a look I’ve learned to recognize over the past few weeks. The one that says he’s seen through whatever I’ve just done and is choosing not to call me on it.
“Elizabeth being gone means you no longer have to sleep in my bed,” I say because I’ve apparently decided the best way to handle this moment is to give Leo every possible off-ramp.
His eyes don’t leave mine. “That’s true.”
“Your old room is exactly as you left it. You’re free to resume your solitary existence,” I say.
“Very considerate of you.”
“I’m a considerate person. It’s one of my many qualities.”
We’re sitting about a foot apart on the sofa. The TV is off. Neither of us is making any move to get up.
I should just say goodnight. Just stand and hobble to my room, close the door so this can stay what it’s been. Fun. Temporary. Safe.
“Or,” I hear myself say, and my voice drops in a way I didn’t authorize, “you could not.”
“Not what?”
“Not resume your solitary existence.” I can’t quite look at him. My gaze has fixed itself somewhere around his collarbone, which feels like a reasonable compromise between eye contact and fleeing the country. “If you don’t want to.”
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear my own heartbeat.
Then Leo’s hand moves to touch my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone, so gently it barely qualifies as touch.
I look up.
His eyes are dark and serious and full of an emotion I don’t have a name for. But it makes my ribs feel too small for everything inside them.
“I don’t want to,” he says.
And he kisses me.
It starts the way our kisses usually do.
His mouth on mine, warm and certain. My hands finding the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.
There’s the familiar chemical reaction that happens whenever Leo Brennan touches me, the one that bypasses my brain entirely and goes straight to every nerve ending I own.
He pulls me onto his lap in one smooth movement, and my legs settle on either side of his hips before my brain has even processed the maneuver.
“Careful,” he says. “Your ankle—”
“My ankle is fine. Stop worrying about my ankle.”
“Your ankle hasn’t completely healed yet.”
“Well, right now, it’s the least interesting part of my body, so maybe redirect your attention.”
He redirects his attention.
He lifts me like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and my arms tighten around his neck.
“Show-off,” I mutter.
“You weigh nothing.”
“I weigh a perfectly normal amount for a man of my height and bone structure, and I resent—”
He carries me down the hall and then presses me against the bedroom door and kisses me. It’s deep and unhurried. The kind of kiss that has no agenda.
Oh.
This is different from normal. Every other time we’ve done this, there’s been an element of urgency and competition. Just two people trying to wreck each other in the best possible way.
But Leo isn’t competing tonight.
After he’s kissed me thoroughly, he carries me to the bed and lays me down with the kind of care you’d give something irreplaceable. But before I can make a joke about it, his mouth is on mine again.
And once we’re both naked, his mouth gentles against mine and his hands stop gripping and start exploring. It’s unhurried, deliberate, like he’s got nowhere else to be for the rest of his life.
Being on the receiving end of such care and attention makes my stomach squirm.
I pull out all my tricks to speed things up. I run my nails down his back. I bite his lip. I roll my hips against his. I’m trying to make it our usual dynamic, where it’s only about bodies, heat, and competition.
He doesn’t take the bait.
Instead, he catches my hands and pins them gently above my head. He holds them there, looking down at me.
“Let me,” he says quietly.
It’s only two words, but something in his voice disarms me so completely that I go still beneath him.
I should pull free.
Instead, I turn my hands over and lace my fingers through his so I’m holding on rather than being held down.
His breath catches.
Fingers interlaced above my head, his weight braced on our joined hands, he starts to kiss down my jaw. His mouth traces the line of it, slow and warm, then moves down my neck and into the hollow of my throat. He presses his lips against my collarbone and stays there, breathing me in.
No one has ever just…breathed me in before.
Then his mouth continues to map me. It’s not with the urgency of someone trying to get somewhere.
Instead, it’s with the patience of someone who’s already arrived.
He kisses my sternum. The space between my ribs. A freckle on my side that I didn’t even know I had.
My throat tightens.
He gently untangles my hands from his and lifts one of them to his mouth.
Kisses my palm, and my fingers curl involuntarily.
Then the inside of my wrist, where my pulse is doing something frantic.
He continues onto the crook of my elbow, which shouldn’t be an erogenous zone but apparently is when Leo Brennan is involved.
Nobody has ever paid attention to the crook of my elbow before.
Actually, nobody has ever paid attention to any part of me like this. Like there’s no hierarchy of interesting parts, as though my wrist is as worthy of study as my mouth, like the curve of my hip matters as much as my cock.
I’m used to being consumed and devoured rather than studied.
Leo’s mouth traces the line of my hip, and my fingers tighten in his hair. He finds the soft skin below my navel, and I make a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a gasp.
He stays there, sucking gently.
I reach for him. But this time it’s not to speed things up. Instead, I cup his face in both hands and kiss him the way he’s been kissing me. Deep and slow.
Leo’s body softens against mine.
I don’t know what I’m telling him with this kiss. I just know I need him to hear it.
The kiss ends, but we don’t pull apart. We stay there, foreheads touching, breathing each other’s air.
It’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced, and we’re not even doing anything. Just existing in the same space. Breathing in the same rhythm. Being still together in a way I’ve never been still with anyone.
Then Leo presses his lips to my forehead—my forehead, not my mouth—and resumes the slow, devastating path down my body.
And I can’t make a joke because something is happening in my chest that I don’t have a quip for. Something is expanding, pressing against the inside of my ribs, making it hard to breathe.
The silence is deafening.
I hear my own breathing. I hear his. I hear the rustle of sheets and the soft sound of his mouth on my skin and nothing else.
Just me. Unnarrated. Exposed.
“Still with me?” Leo murmurs.
I nod. I don’t trust my voice right now.
He takes his time preparing me. An obscene amount of time. His mouth and his hands work together with the same focused patience he brings to everything, like he won’t cut corners, like my pleasure is the only item on his agenda tonight.
He responds to every involuntary reaction I have, adjusts to every gasp and shiver, and gives me exactly what I need before I know I need it.
When he finally enters me, it’s slow. So slow. Inch by inch.
His forehead drops against mine, eyes closed, a rough exhale against my mouth.
“Look at me,” I say.
I don’t know where the words come from. I’ve never asked anyone to look at me during this. I’ve always preferred eyes closed, the safety of darkness.
But I want to see him. I want to see what his face does when he’s inside me and not hiding anything.
Leo opens his eyes.
Oh god.
Oh god, I shouldn’t have asked.
Looking at Leo while he’s inside me, while his face is soft and open and full of something I can’t— Something I won’t—
“Archie,” he says, and the way he says my name sounds like a confession.
He begins to move. Slow rolls of his hips that send sparks up my spine. He’s watching me. Not my body, my face.
This doesn’t feel fun or light, or like a good time between two people who know the boundaries.
This feels like being unwrapped.
Leo shifts the angle and finds the spot that makes my back arch. He continues to hit the same point, relentless, his pace still controlled.
I want to say something. Anything. A joke about his technique, a rating, a quip about the headboard. Something to break the intensity, to remind us both that this is just sex, just fun, just two people who are attracted to each other and nothing more.
But when I open my mouth, what comes out is his name. Just his name. Quiet and broken.
Leo’s eyes go bright. His thumb traces my cheekbone. He kisses me—softly, so softly—and keeps moving.