8
Ryan
My suitcase had been open on the bed for forty minutes, and somehow I had managed to pack three T-shirts, two pairs of jeans, and enough resentment toward Flint to make the two-hour drive feel personal.
I had taken road trips since I was a teenager.
Hockey meant leaving. Hotels, buses, unfamiliar locker rooms, shitty mattresses, and protein bars for breakfast because nobody had found a restaurant yet.
None of it bothered me. I liked the movement, liked arriving somewhere with one purpose and leaving after the final horn with an answer about whether we had done our jobs.
This time, I kept looking at my phone.
Charm had texted twice since I left her apartment the night before. The first message came ten minutes after I got home because I told her to let me know when she got into bed, which she complained about even while doing exactly what I asked.
Charm: In bed. Walter has been denied access because he’s too large, and I refuse to be suffocated by a panda you forced upon me.
I had laughed hard enough that the empty apartment felt less empty.
Ryan: You begged for Walter.
Charm: I admired him.
Ryan: Sleep, mi hada.
The second text came that morning.
Charm: Drive safe today.
Nothing followed it.
There was no complaint about Professor Brown, no picture of her coffee, no dramatic report about Walter taking up too much of her couch, and no argument over whether vuelve sounded better when she said it now.
That bothered me more than I wanted it to.
Last night bothered me too.
I had replayed the parking lot enough times to know exactly when she changed beneath my hands. One second, Charm had been kissing me like she wanted to climb inside my skin. Then a pair of headlights crossed us, and her entire body tightened.
It lasted maybe a second.
She kissed me harder afterward like she could erase the reaction if she gave me enough enthusiasm, but I felt it. I felt her fingers loosen when the girls looked at us too. I heard the distance she forced between us when Evan asked whether we were together and she reduced the night to hanging out.
Then, upstairs, she did it again in a different way. Nobody had been watching that time, but something inside her went somewhere I couldn’t reach. She smiled too carefully, told me I should leave, then looked almost panicked when I agreed.
I understood fear and instinctive reactions better than most people. What I didn’t understand was where I fit inside hers.
That question had followed me home and stayed beside me all night.
Charm wanted me when we were alone. I had no doubts about that. I felt it every time she kissed me, every time her hands slid beneath my shirt, and every time her body softened against mine before I forced myself to stop.
Being desired had never scared me.
Desire was easy. It lasted as long as the fantasy did.
Being chosen required someone to see the entire man and stay once the exciting pieces became inconvenient.
Charm’s hesitation in that parking lot had reached the place inside me that remembered foster families smiling during introductions and changing their minds once I became too much work.
It touched every room where I had learned to keep my belongings packed because wanting me temporarily never meant anyone planned to keep me.
Charm was already deeper than anyone had been allowed to get in years. I had put my mother’s words in her notebook, given her a dictionary that survived foster care with me, and let pieces of her spread through my apartment until the space no longer looked like it belonged entirely to me.
I had done all of it before realizing how badly she could hurt me.
I folded another shirt and laid it inside the suitcase before reaching for the Frost hoodie tossed over the back of the desk chair.
My apartment looked like Charm had spent half the summer slowly invading it.
One of her hair ties lived around the base of my lamp.
A fashion magazine sat beneath a copy of Tennyson because she apparently decided my coffee table required cultural balance.
Her favorite mug was drying beside the sink, and a pale pink pen had somehow ended up inside the ceramic cup where I kept black ones.
I was going to miss all of it.
The admission irritated me enough that I shoved the hoodie into the suitcase harder than necessary.
A knock sounded from the front door. I looked toward the bedroom as another came immediately after the first.
Nobody I knew knocked twice like the building was on fire unless they were pissed, drunk, or Briggs.
I crossed the apartment and opened the door.
Charm stood on the other side, and for half a second, I forgot how language worked.
Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, softer than she usually wore it when she planned to go anywhere. She had put on enough makeup to make it obvious she wanted me looking at her without crossing into the polished version she wore around her parents.
A cropped black jacket covered most of whatever she had underneath, but her bare legs disappeared into heeled boots that violated every complaint I had made about her practical footwear the night before.
Her eyes were bright with something she was holding too tightly, and her breathing came faster than it should have. She watched me like she spent the drive rehearsing something and lost every prepared word when I opened the door.
“Hey.”
Charm stepped forward, grabbed the front of my shirt, and kissed me.
Any question I had disappeared.
My hand caught the door before it swung back into the wall while the other went around her waist automatically. She kissed me hard enough to shove me one step backward, and before I recovered, she kicked the door closed behind her and came at me again.
“Okay,” I breathed against her mouth, half laughing because I had never seen Charm do anything with so little hesitation. “That kind of hello.”
“Stop talking.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She kissed me again, and the laugh died in my chest.
Whatever this was, she had come here determined.
Her hands slid beneath the hem of my shirt, palms hot against my stomach while mine traveled over the jacket and found the curve of her waist. I had wanted her since the first time I saw her trying not to look at me. During the last six weeks, wanting had turned into something fucking brutal.
I knew the taste of her now. I knew the little sound she made when my mouth found the place beneath her ear, how easily she fit against me, and how much restraint it took every time I felt her body go soft inside my hands.
I wanted to fuck this woman so badly I could taste the thought of it.
Charm pulled back enough to drag my shirt over my head, and I let her.
My control had apparently decided it could take the evening off.
She tossed the shirt somewhere behind her and went straight for my mouth again. I backed her toward the wall, one hand spreading over her hip while the other slid into her hair. Her body hit the plaster softly, and she made a breathless sound that went directly through me.
“Fuck, mi hada.”
Her fingers moved to the opening of her jacket.
Then she smiled.
Something about that smile warned me a second before she pulled the zipper down.
Black lace.
My brain stopped.
The jacket fell open enough to reveal a black lace bra that had never been designed with modesty in mind. When Charm shrugged the denim off her shoulders and let it drop, I saw the tiny black underwear disappearing beneath a garter belt, the stockings, and those fucking boots.
Every intelligent thought I possessed packed its own suitcase and left for Flint without me.
Charm watched my face. For the first time since she arrived, uncertainty flickered through all that determination.
“You hate it?”
I stared at her. “Hate it?”
Her fingers shifted against her thighs.
I stepped closer until she had to tilt her head back to look at me. “If you ever ask me something that stupid again while wearing that, I’m charging you for emotional damages.”
Her mouth twitched. “So you like it.”
“I’m trying not to have a medical event.”
That earned the laugh I wanted, and I caught her waist before she could finish it.
Charm wrapped her legs around me with a surprised gasp. I kissed her while carrying her toward the kitchen because the bedroom felt like a terrible fucking idea, and apparently the counter was somehow better.
I set her on the edge, stepped between her knees, and lost another piece of whatever self-control I had left when she pulled me closer with both legs.
Her mouth found my neck.
My hands slid over lace and warm skin while she kissed beneath my jaw, and every part of me screamed to stop thinking.
She had come here for me, dressed for me, and made it impossible to misunderstand what she wanted. The knowledge hit somewhere primal because I had spent weeks wanting exactly this.
Charm reached for me first. She made a choice without waiting for permission and looked at me like there wasn’t another man in the room or the world worth considering.
I loved knowing she desired me. I loved it enough that, for a few dangerous seconds, I stopped caring about every reason I had for holding back.
Then her mouth moved against my throat.
“You leave in the morning.”
The words cut through the heat more effectively than anything else could have. My hands tightened around her waist before going still, and Charm felt the change immediately.
Instead of pulling away, she kissed higher along my neck, almost like she thought she could drag me back into the moment before I had time to understand what she had said.
“So don’t think about tomorrow.”
That snapped the last of my restraint into place.
I eased away enough to see her face, and the change in Charm was immediate. The heat remained flushed across her cheeks and bright in her eyes, but fear had already started bleeding through it.
She felt me hesitate and turned that second of distance into something worse before I opened my mouth.
“Ryan?”