Chapter 44
WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO BE LESS METHODICAL?
BILLIE
He’s making pasta. Something simple, with garlic and lemon and whatever herbs he has in his little makeshift garden.
I sit on the counter—my spot, always the counter—and drink a Caesar and watch him cook, but the domesticity of it is different tonight.
Charged. Like the air before a storm, when everything goes still and electric, and you can feel the pressure dropping against your skin.
He knows I’m staying. I know I’m staying. The knowing is a living thing between us, pulsing quietly under every look and accidental touch and sentence that trails off into loaded silence.
“You’re staring.” He doesn’t look up from the cutting board.
“I’m supervising.”
“You’re staring, and it’s distracting.”
“Good.”
He glances up, and the expression on his face—half amused, half something darker and hungrier—sends heat down my spine. I take a sip of my drink and hold his gaze, the moment stretching until the air between us is so taut, I can practically hear it humming.
“Dinner first,” he says, and it sounds like a warning. To me or to himself, I’m not sure.
“Obviously.” I cross my legs on the counter and take another sip. “I’m only interested in dinner.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar,” I jest. “You just happen to be annoyingly perceptive.” That part is true.
He goes back to chopping, but there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his lips, and his ears are pink. I file that away in the growing collection of things about Peter Darcy that make me feel unhinged.
We eat at the table like civilized people.
The conversation is easy—his parents, the marina, a story about Leo and Neve’s increasingly absurd and adorable use of the term babe—but beneath it, there’s a current.
Early on, his foot finds mine under the table and stays there.
His eyes drop to my mouth when I’m talking and linger a beat too long before snapping back up.
I push my sleeves to my elbows while reaching for the bread and catch him tracking the movement of the fabric against my skin as if it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened all evening.
We’re winding each other up without touching, and we both know it, and that makes it worse. Better.
I set my fork down. “I think I’m done eating.”
“You’ve barely had any.”
It’s not true. I’ve had a full serving, but he knows I could go for another.
“I’ve eaten enough. And I don’t want abbiocco, you know? That carb-coma after eating too much?”
His eyes meet mine across the table, and whatever restraint he’s been holding onto—the dinner first, the casual conversation, the careful distance—snaps.
It’s in his jaw, how it tightens. In his hands going still on either side of his plate.
In his breathing, which shifts from steady to deeper and more deliberate.
“Come here,” he says, low, and the roughness goes straight through me.
I don’t go to him. Instead, I stand slowly, holding his gaze, and take a step back. Away from the table. Toward the hallway.
His chair scrapes against the floor.
I make it four steps before his hand catches my wrist—not hard, just enough to stop me, to turn me. Then his mouth is on mine, and everything I’ve been holding at arm’s length comes rushing in.
This isn’t new. We’ve done this before—his hands, my skin, our bodies always speaking a language our mouths are too careful to use.
But it’s different tonight, and we both feel it.
I can tell by his kiss. It’s slower than usual, deeper, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth.
Like this isn’t just want anymore. Like this is something he’s terrified of losing.
His hands frame my face, thumbs tracing my jaw. When he pulls back far enough to look at me, his eyes are so bright and so open that I feel exposed, and it has nothing to do with clothing.
“Hi,” he whispers.
“Hi.” My reply is barely there.
“You’re staying.”
“I’m staying.”
He kisses me again, and this time there’s no restraint left.
His hands slide from my face to my waist, pulling me flush against him.
The sound I make when our hips connect is one I’ll be embarrassed about later, but can’t bring myself to care about now.
My fingers find the hem of his shirt and pull.
He breaks the kiss long enough for me to drag it over his head before his mouth is on my neck, my collarbone, the spot below my ear he discovered weeks ago and has been weaponizing ever since.
“Upstairs,” I manage, and my hands are already at his belt.
“Upstairs,” he agrees, but neither of us moves. His teeth graze my shoulder where my shirt has slipped, and my back hits the hallway wall, and his thigh pushes between mine, and the pressure—God, the pressure—makes my hips roll involuntarily.
“Peter.” His name falls out of me on a breath, making his grip tighten on my hips, fingers branding the skin above my waistband.
His forehead drops to my shoulder. “If you say my name like that, we’re not making it upstairs.”
“Then don’t make it upstairs.” I pull his face to mine and kiss him hard, pouring into it every single thing I’ve been too scared to say—I love you.
I think I’ve loved you for a while. I’m terrified of how much I need you.
Please don’t go back to Toronto, please stay, please, please, please—and he groans against my mouth and lifts me.
My legs wrap around his waist, my back is still against the wall, and his hands are under my thighs, holding me like I weigh nothing. The strength of it, the ease… I will never not be destroyed by the ease with which this man handles my body.
“Changed my mind,” he breathes. “Upstairs. I want you in my bed. All night.”
The way he says it, my bed. All night, it’s not about logistics. It’s a statement. A claim. Not of ownership, but of belonging. He wants me in his space, in his sheets, in the place where he sleeps and wakes up and exists most privately.
“Then take me there.”
He carries me upstairs while I’m kissing his neck, tasting the salt on his skin, feeling the muscles in his shoulders work as he holds me. When he sets me down at the foot of the bed, we’re both breathing hard, and there’s a moment, a single, suspended moment, where we just look at each other.
His chest is bare, and his hair is mussed from my hands, and his mouth is swollen, and he’s looking at me like I’m the answer to a question he’s been asking his whole life.
And I think—with a clarity that cuts through every defense I’ve ever built—I want you to see all of me.
Not the version I’ve curated. Not the version that’s palatable. All of me.
I pull my shirt over my head. No performance, no tease. It’s the simple act of removing a barrier, and his expression shifts from want to reverent and almost pained, telling me he understands what this is.
“You’re so beautiful.” His voice cracks, just barely, and I feel it in my ribs.
“Shut up and come here.”
He closes the distance in one step. We’re skin-to-skin, his chest warm against mine, his hands sliding up my back with a gentleness that contradicts the urgency of his breathing. He unclasps my bra with a deftness that makes me huff a laugh against his mouth.
“You’ve gotten good at that.”
“I’m a fast learner.” He drags the straps down my arms slowly, watching them fall, and then his hands are on me, and my laugh dies in my throat, replaced by something raw and needy.
He lowers me onto the bed. The sheets are cool against my back, and he’s above me, braced on his forearms. And the weight of him—the solid, grounding realness of him—makes my eyes burn.
What if he does leave?
What if he comes back and doesn’t want me anymore?
What if he meets someone else? Would he bring her here?
“Hey.” He brushes the hair away from my face, and his thumb traces the line of my cheekbone. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m here.” I pull him down, wrapping my arms around his neck and forcing myself to focus on this moment, not on the what-ifs. “I’m right here.”
He kisses me slowly. Thoroughly. Like we have all night, which we do.
That’s the whole point, that’s what’s different, there’s no clock running down, no need to leave before the intimacy becomes too real.
I am staying in this bed, in this house, in this man’s arms, and the freedom of that decision is so overwhelming, I arch into him to feel more of his skin against mine.
My hands go to his belt again, and this time I get it open.
He lifts his hips to help me push his jeans down.
Then it’s just his boxers and my shorts and too much fabric between us.
He solves the problem with an efficiency I deeply appreciate—button, zip, down my legs, gone—and then his mouth is on my stomach, trailing lower.
My fingers are in his hair, and the sound that comes out of me is not one I’m capable of controlling.
“I’ve been thinking about this for days,” he murmurs against my hip. “Been thinking about the night I came back early. You were wearing my sweatshirt. It took everything in me not to—”
“Peter. Less talking.”
He laughs softly against my skin, sending shivers across my entire body.
His fingers hook into the waistband of my underwear, and he peels them down slowly—torturously slowly—pressing his mouth to every inch of skin he reveals.
My inner thigh. The crease where my hip meets my leg.
The spot below my navel that makes my abs clench.
When his mouth finally reaches where I need him most, my back bows off the mattress.
His hands flatten against my hips, holding me down—not roughly, but firmly enough for me to feel the controlled strength in his fingers—and his tongue moves against me with a focus and precision that reminds me of the way he does everything.
Deliberate. Attentive. Like my pleasure is a problem he’s determined to solve, and he’s got all the data he needs.