31. Salem
SALEM
The elevator doors closed, and the quiet was immediate.
He had his hand in mine, our shoulders brushing, and I kept my eyes on the numbers above the door and told myself to breathe normally.
The doors opened. The hallway was dim, carpeted, and silent. His hand rested on the small of my back as we walked—light, steady. I felt his touch through the fabric of my dress and focused on putting one foot in front of the other like a normal person.
He stopped at a door. Key card. Step back.
I went in first.
The room was lit low—just the lamp by the bed and the wide bank of windows looking out over Seattle, the city spread below in deep blues and scattered gold. I walked toward the window and stood there for a second, arms crossed, heart doing something completely unreasonable behind my ribs.
The door clicked shut, and I turned.
He was near the door. Tie loosened. His expression held that focused patience that had been taking years off my life for a month. He reached into the inside pocket of his pants, set his wallet on the nightstand, and rolled his sleeves to his forearms. Slowly. Deliberately.
I was going to lose my mind before he crossed the room.
“You’re nervous,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Okay. A little.”
He crossed the room, and I met him halfway—because that was the only thing that made sense, that was the only direction available.
He held my face, and I wove my fingers into his collar.
The kiss was urgent and tasted like the month catching up to itself at once.
Something in my chest unlocked, something I hadn’t realized I’d been holding shut.
His hands slid to my shoulders, and he peeled his jacket off me and let it fall. It made a soft thump against the floor.
He found the zipper at my back, and his hands stilled there. Asking.
"Yes," I whispered.
The fabric loosened, and his palms spread flat and warm against my bare skin. I exhaled at the contact like I'd been holding that breath since the balcony.
He guided the straps off my shoulders, and the gown fell to the floor. I hadn’t been wearing a bra—Alba’s doing, the dress hadn’t allowed for it—and the cool air of the room hit my skin. The look on his face made me forget to be self-conscious about anything.
He exhaled something quiet against my collarbone that might have been "beautiful, and I had never felt so wanted in my life. He looked at me like he was looking at his favorite painting. I felt so seen. So beautiful.
He unbuttoned his shirt, button by painstaking button.
I was staring. I did not care. The man was built like someone had designed him specifically to be unfair about it, and I had been standing next to him for a month without access to this information. That felt like an oversight on someone’s part.
His shirt went.
I reached for him, and he caught my hands. Gently. He held them against his warm chest and looked at me. Being held like that, looked at like that, cracked something open behind my sternum.
“Come here.” He walked me back to the bed and lowered me down with care. I undid his belt and pulled him toward me by the waistband. He resisted a little.
“Now,” I demanded playfully.
“Not yet.”
“Ethan. I have been waiting for this.”
His expression shifted—warm and certain and unbothered—and I would do criminal things to see that look on his face regularly. Federal prison-type things. Absolutely worth it.
“Not yet,” he said again, softer, breathless.
It occurred to me he was slowing himself down, too. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear again, his gaze moving between my eyes and my body like he was deciding where to start, and then he kissed me slowly and deeply until I stopped moving beneath him.
Which took approximately four seconds.
He left a trail of hot kisses that led to my collarbone, the curve of my breast, lower—and I stopped being able to track where I was in the room or what I had been planning to say. His hands were calloused, strong, and weighted with intention.
His palms moved along my inner thighs and pushed them apart with a quiet certainty that made my breath catch before I could manage it. He nuzzled the skin of my inner thigh.
“Ethan.”
“Yeah?” Without looking up, he dragged my underwear down and off, and then his mouth was on me. I made a sound I was absolutely going to think about later. His tongue connected to my center and moved in slow circles, and my mind went blank.
He gripped my hips, holding me where he wanted me, and my fingers curled into his hair. I held on; it was that or come completely apart in under sixty seconds, and I was failing.
He worked me like he had been paying attention this whole time, which he had—watching and listening and filing things away for a month and now applying all of it directly—and I was defenseless against it.
My hips rose to meet his mouth. My grip in his hair tightened.
More. My body was just the word more on repeat.
He slid two fingers inside me without breaking rhythm, and I gasped at the way he curled them and found something that made my spine go electric. The sound I made was embarrassing.
I did not care. I had stopped caring minutes ago and had no plans to start again.
When I came, it was with his name in my mouth, both hands fisted in his hair, and my whole body arching off the bed. The orgasm moved through me in long waves that didn’t stop when I expected them to and left me panting and undone and staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to be composed.
Ethan slid back up. His eyes were dark. His mouth curved into something more certain than a smirk—quiet, knowing. Like he had confirmed something he already suspected.
I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him with everything I had left, relishing the taste of myself on his lips.
He reached back to the nightstand and opened his wallet, produced a small foil packet with the quiet efficiency of a man who had more foresight about this evening than I had.
I felt a wave of completely inappropriate affection for his preparedness.
Responsibility was, it turned out, extremely attractive. New information.
He looked at me.
I looked back at him.
No joke rose to the surface. No deflection. Just me, in this room, wanting this—wanting him—and letting him see it plainly for once without putting anything in front of it.
He kissed me once, slow and certain when he was finished with his task.
“Now?” he whispered.
“Now.”
He settled between my thighs, and my entire body went electric. I gasped at the fullness of him. His forehead dropped to mine, and our gazes locked. I fought every instinct to close my eyes; I wanted to be there—fully, completely present.
He moved.
Slow at first. Deep and unhurried. Each push was deliberate, like he was making a point about patience that I had lost the capacity to appreciate. Did I have thoughts? Unclear. Did I have toes? Unknown.
“God.” It wasn’t a complete thought, but it was all I had.
“Yeah.” His cheek pressed against my jaw.
I held his back and pulled him closer, urging him deeper. Words were gone, and language was gone, and there was nothing left except the weight of him and the warmth of the room and the city below the windows that didn’t know or care what was happening up here.
The pace changed.
Desperation won. His grip on my hips tightened, and I pulled him closer with my legs. There was no other direction that made sense.
“Salem—” Low. My name in his mouth is like a whole different word.
“I know. I know, I know—”
It broke through all at once—sudden and consuming, pulling the breath from my lungs, my fingers curling hard into his shoulders, a sound coming out of me uncontrollably.
He followed close behind—his whole body shuddering, a low sound against my throat, grunting my name through his pinnacle.
His muscles finally relaxed, and his weight dropped on me.
We stayed exactly like that, suspended in the aftermath, both of us panting, both of us undone.
A smile painted his lips. I nuzzled myself into the crook of his neck, feeling the burn of his facial hair against my cheek.
The room settled. Our breathing slowed.
“Hi,” he said into my hair.
“Hi. That was—”
“Yeah.” He kissed my temple and rolled us to the side, holding my thigh. I was going to be in serious trouble for a very long time.
The room was quiet.
Neither of us moved. Somewhere in the building, a pipe hummed. Outside, a siren wound its way down a street that had nothing to do with us. His thumb traced a slow, absent line along my thigh like he was signing his name there.
I lay in his arms, breathing him in—soap and salt and something warm, that I was starting to think of as his—and let the silence be what it was.
He pulled the blanket over us, tucking it around my shoulder with the same quiet care as the foil packet, the same maddening preparedness, like taking care of me was an item on a list he'd written a long time ago and had been waiting to get to.
"Stay," he said into the dark. Not a question.
"I wasn't going anywhere." I meant it.
His heartbeat was slow and steady, the city glittering indifferently below us.
Serious trouble.