Chapter 8 #2
The drive back to the villa is a blur—streetlights, empty roads, and Nora’s hand in mine like she’s afraid to let go. Or maybe I’m the one afraid. Hard to tell.
‘All Kinds of Time’ plays through the speakers, and for a second it hits me how stupidly right this feels.
Her hand.
Her laugh still lingering in the air. The way she keeps glancing over at me like she’s working something out.
I keep telling myself to be responsible.
We should get back, go inside, say goodnight and act like two adults who understand boundaries.
But there’s another part of me—the part that hasn’t touched her in eight months—that doesn’t give a shit about boundaries. I'm already imagining what happens if I pull the car over and kiss her.
How one kiss would turn into another.
How fast all our carefully built distance would disappear.
The Greeks had two kinds of time, I remember reading that somewhere. One was chronos—normal time, the predictable kind that tells you to slow down and think.
The other was kairos—the right moment.
The one that doesn’t come around twice.
Right now, chronos is telling me to keep my head straight.
Kairos is telling me this might be it.
The last moment before she gets back on a plane and goes back to a life I’m not part of. And I don’t know which one I’m supposed to listen to.
All I know is her hand is still in mine, and letting go feels impossible.
By the time we pull into the driveway it's 1AM, my heart is hammering against my ribs like it's trying to escape this moment, this inevitability.
Eight fucking months of wanting, of thinking I'd lost my chance, of believing I wasn't good enough for someone like her, and now she's here, choosing me one last time before reality catches up and this all just becomes another memory shared between us.
I barely get the front door closed before she's kissing me again, so I back her up against the wood with desperation.
Her hands are everywhere—clawing at my shirt, gripping my hair hard enough to hurt, tracing my jaw like she's trying to burn the memory into her fingertips. I can't get close enough.
"Upstairs," I grit out between kisses, my voice cracking like my control is hanging on by a thread.
She nods against my mouth, and I grab her—fuck, I need her—her legs instinctively wrapping around my waist as I take the stairs two at a time.
Her lips are everywhere, her hands in my hair, her breath hot against my neck.
She’s kissing me like she’s trying to memorize me, like she already knows this moment has an expiration date.
And I match her, all of it—her urgency, her desperation—because I know the same truth she does: this might be the only night we ever get.
When her back hits the bed, she arches, gasping, and the sound punches straight through my chest. It settles somewhere deep—somewhere I thought was long dead—and ignites.
She’s sprawled across my pillow, hair like dark silk, lips swollen from kissing me, eyes blown wide with want and fuck, I’m ruined.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Not in a delicate way—beautiful in a way that wrecks you, in a way that brands itself into your bloodstream and stays there.
My eyes don’t know where to land first, but they always—always—end up on hers. Those impossible green eyes that have lived in the corners of my mind for years. Eyes that could gut me with one look. Eyes that have seen every fucked-up part of me and never flinched.
I drag my gaze to her mouth—kiss-bruised, parted, breathing my name without sound. Then her neck, where her pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it from here.
I lower myself, kissing down her throat slowly, savoring every inch. When my mouth finds the hollow there, she gasps, her nails sinking into my shoulders.
I want the marks.
I want the evidence.
I want to look in the mirror tomorrow and see her written all over my skin.
I trail kisses lower, finding that spot at the curve of her neck, and she shivers—full body, instinctive, like she can’t help it. Her pulse stutters under my tongue, and I swear I could live off the taste of her.
My hand slides along her collarbone, tracing the faint scar—that scar. The one that still haunts my nightmares. The one that makes my chest tighten every time I see it.
Before the guilt can drag me under, she reaches up, threads her fingers in my hair, and pulls my face back to hers.
"I'm okay," she whispers, and those two words level me. They feel like forgiveness.
Like permission to stay in this moment and not the past.
I nod, because I can’t trust my voice, and press a slow kiss to the scar. Then I keep going—down, down—until my mouth finds her collarbone. I nip gently, and she arches with a sound that hits me straight in the core, molten and uncontrollable.
And all I can think is: If this is the last time I ever get to touch her… I’m going to remember every second.
"Nate," she breathes, and my name on her lips sounds like a plea and damnation all in one.
I kiss my way down her body slowly, mostly because if I rush this, I’ll lose my mind. My hands trace every curve like I’m relearning her, like my fingers are trying to catch up on all the months I’ve gone without touching her.
When I come back up to her chest, she’s breathing hard, her back lifting off the mattress with every exhale. I look up at her—just for a second—and the sight of her like this almost knocks the air out of me.
When I take her nipple into my mouth, she lets out a sound that feels like it hits straight in my spine.
I suck gently, then harder when she claws at my hair, not knowing whether she wants to pull me closer or slow me down.
Every twitch of her body, every shaky breath—it's all too much and not enough.
“Please,” she whispers, and fuck if I know what she means, but whatever it is, I’ll give it.
I keep moving down, kissing the soft skin of her stomach, feeling her muscles jump under my mouth. When I reach the edge of her panties, I pause—half asking, half warning.
She nods.
No hesitation.
I slide them off her legs slowly, trying to play it cool, but the second she’s bare in front of me, my brain just blanks.
She’s beautiful, not in some dramatic, poetic way. Just in the real, visceral way that makes something inside me break wide open.
I settle between her thighs and kiss the inside of them first, just to feel her shiver. And when I finally taste her, her whole body reacts—hips jerking, fingers gripping the sheets. I hold her steady, take my time, work her with slow, deliberate strokes until she’s shaking.
“Nate—oh my god—” she gasps, and hearing my name like that? That alone could finish me.
I keep going until she comes undone, crying out, thighs trembling around my head. I don’t stop until she’s completely gone, completely wrecked.
When I look up, she’s staring at me with something I’m not sure either of us is ready for—something real, something that scares the shit out of me.
“If we do this,” I say, voice rough and honest, “there’s no going back. We don’t get to pretend tomorrow, that this didn’t happen.”
She reaches for my hair, tugging gently.
“I don’t want to go back,” she whispers. “Only forward. With you.”
That hits harder than any orgasm could.
I run my hands over her waist, memorizing the feel of her—the softness, the warmth, the way she fits in my palms. She gasps, arching into me like her body already knows mine.
She tugs me down until we’re skin to skin, and the heat between us steals whatever’s left of my restraint. Her hands move over my chest and then lower, fingers brushing the waistband of my jeans. I help her push them down, and when her hand wraps around me, I almost lose it right there.
“I need you,” she breathes into my ear, her voice wrecked. “All of you.”
My hands are shaking as I reach for the drawer. The condom feels like the last thin line between sanity and whatever this night is pulling us into. My fingers fumble the wrapper, and she watches me—really watches me—seeing exactly how much I’m holding together by a thread.
I settle between her thighs again, positioning myself, but I stop. I have to.
“Are you sure?” I ask, my voice quieter than I mean it to be. “We don’t have to—”
She looks right at me, steady and certain.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
My heart is going insane in my chest, pounding so hard I swear she can hear it.
“I need you to tell me if anything feels like too much, okay?” My voice comes out rough, closer to a plea than I meant it to be.
She nods, and the second I push into her, we both gasp—like our bodies have been waiting eight months to breathe again. She’s so tight I have to clamp down on every goddamn instinct in my body just to stay still for a second. One wrong move and I’m gone.
“For the record,” I manage, my forehead pressed to hers, “I’ve never been more sure of anything either.”
“Move,” she whispers, nails digging into my back. “Please, Nate.”
There’s no universe where I could deny her that.
I start slow, trying to find a rhythm that won’t break me in half.
But she meets every thrust with this desperate, needy pull of her hips, and my control starts slipping fast. Her legs tighten around my waist, dragging me deeper, and my brain short-circuits.
The sounds—hers, mine, ours—they hit me harder than anything. She says my name like it’s the only one that’s ever mattered, and I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to walk away from this tomorrow.
“Harder.”
One word and I give her everything.
The bed knocks against the wall, our movements messy and unrestrained, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except her—her breath against my throat, her fingers gripping my shoulders like she’s afraid I’ll disappear. I feel her getting close, her body tightening around me, breath breaking apart.
“Come for me,” I whisper into her ear, because I need it—I need to feel her let go with me.
She does.
God, she does.