Chapter 9 #3
He frowned as if he still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Then he pursed his mouth and looked at me. “Maybe. What about you, then? Seattle to the bone, you said? Like… it’s home for you.”
“Pretty much.” I pushed rice around my plate.
“It suits me. Or maybe it’s the other way around, I’m not sure.
I mean, yeah, there’s the ferries, the rain, the overpriced coffee that passes for self-care.
But mostly, the city’s good at letting you do your thing, you know?
You can be a little too in your head, dress a little too nicely for no good reason. Nobody really blinks.”
His eyes held mine. “That’s why you like it? Because you can disappear if you want to?”
Christ. Another one of his bone-deep questions.
I pushed my plate away and propped an elbow on the counter. “There’s an element of that, maybe. I don’t know. You can be whoever you want to be here, and mostly people mind their own business.”
He made a thoughtful noise and set his own fork down. “Yeah, I think I can see that.”
A quiet beat opened up between us. It didn’t feel empty, just there, the kind that could go either way. Dark windows and the city humming below, something buzzing in my bones that wasn’t nerves anymore, not quite.
Then his mouth curved into a smile. He got up and rounded the island, suddenly in my space. “Still hungry?” he asked.
Here we go.
I inhaled through a flutter of warmth and turned on the stool, spreading my thighs so he could fit between them.
Then I remembered where we were and who he was. That at night, this was an aquarium—no matter how private it felt, high above traffic and noise and people. It wasn’t private, not if someone looked too closely at the wrong moment.
“Turn off the light,” I told him.
He flashed me a small, pleased grin. “Why?”
“Because I’m still hungry.”
He gave a quiet laugh at that. “God, that’s such a line.”
I let my lips tilt up at the corners, head tipping back just slightly as I held his gaze. “Is it working, though?”
“Yeah. I guess it is.” He looked a moment away from reaching out for me, from stepping right between my legs. Instead, he took a couple of steps away and flicked a switch that plunged us into darkness, brightened slightly by the city glow outside the windows.
“Better,” I said softly.
“Not just yet,” he said, then stepped between my legs and got a hand around my forearm. “Okay. Now it’s better.”
I curled a hand into his hair and tugged him down for a kiss.
Not sure how we’d moved from the kitchen into the hallway, half our clothes lost somewhere to the shadows.
He crowded me against the wall, one hand curved around my hip, breath and skin and the wet slide of his mouth against mine.
Good, fuck. So good I wasn’t sure how I’d recover from this, from him, once it ended.
He ducked his head for a light scrape of teeth along my throat. “Come here.”
My laugh came out too low and rough. “I’m already here.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Then maybe you should work on your communication, captain.”
His fingers closed around my wrists, just firm enough to make a point. “Bedroom.”.
Yeah.
“Strong plan,” I told him.
He led the way on bare feet while I followed in socks and half-unzipped work pants that rode low on my hips.
The apartment changed as we moved, the glass and orchids falling away into something less public.
A doorway that led into a dark room—the outline of a bed, a bench at its foot, and then a long window seat against Seattle’s nightly glow.
The city looked almost unreal, a little magical, the Space Needle lit white in the distance.
Built-in closet and one wall that seemed…
like a massive canvas? Colors gone gray in the night.
I waved a hand at it. “Modern art?”
Matt watched me for a beat before he said, “Sort of. You wanna see it?”
“Sure.”
He reached for the light switch. Gentle brightness flooded the space, and I blinked against it, momentarily thrown because there was linen bedding in restrained neutrals, upholstered headboard, tidy surfaces—and then there was that wall.
Color like a summer storm. Thick strokes and broad sweeps, some areas dragged rough and sharp, others softer where one shade bled into the next. Deep blue in one corner, red cut through with something close to rust, a slash of yellow half-buried under newer paint.
It smelled faintly of acrylic, so subtle I hadn’t really noticed it before. A low rolling cart was tucked into a corner of the room—painters’ tape and brushes, rags, a whole array of paint, a plastic drop cloth.
Okay. Wow.
I took a step toward it, voice dropping to a hush. “You did that?”
“Creative outlet.” His expression shifted into something close to embarrassment, but not entirely. A little raw and unsure, like this was truly personal. “Used to like drawing and messing around with color when I was a kid.”
From up close, I could see the ghosts of previous paint jobs, faint outlines that hadn’t fully disappeared, one decision painted over by another. Near the baseboard, a tiny dried fleck of green caught the low light. I glanced at his profile. “For when you need to think?” I asked. “Or can’t sleep?”
His eyes sharpened. “What makes you say that?”
“Because it doesn’t look like décor.” I paused. “More like you do it when there’s noise in your head and you’d rather hit a wall with paint than with your fist.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “You charge for this sort of psychoanalysis?”
I turned, smiled. “Am I wrong?”
“No.” He sounded reluctant about it, as if he hadn’t meant to show me quite this much, and yeah, I got that.
“I sketch clothes,” I offered, unprompted. “Designs, outfits, colors. Nothing that’s really good, nothing that belongs on a runway. But that’s not the point anyway. It’s just… a way to deal with the noise.”
“Yes,” Matt said, almost too quiet. “Exactly that.”
He flicked the light back off, and the room dropped into darkness, eased only by the city glow that filtered through the windows. It took a second for my eyes to adjust. I weighed a joke, something about hiding the evidence, but—no.
“You gonna kiss me again?” I asked instead, and he laughed, already moving.
His mouth found mine in the dark—different now, less the hot, immediate relief of earlier. Slower instead, like he’d made up his mind about something and simply hadn’t told me yet.
I got my fingers into his hair, and he made a low noise that went straight to my bloodstream. I shoved at his shoulder. “Bed?”
“Yeah,” he said, only he wasn’t actually moving, just stopped right there and looked at me, features shadowed.
“What?” I asked.
He slid a hand up my arm. “I want to fuck you. If you want.”
Oh. Hell, yes.
Heat hit low at the way he’d said it, blunt and sure—about this, me, wanting to fuck a guy. The difference mattered, but not enough to risk the moment. I inhaled a breath and tilted closer. “Okay.”
“Yeah?” He sounded a little surprised, as if he’d expected hesitation. It made me smile.
“More than okay.”
“Oh.” He paused. “Good. Yeah.”
Clearly eager, and it pulled a grin from me. “So, hey.” I let my fingers brush along his cheek. Stubble, warm skin. “First time with a guy, right? Going all the way, I mean. Big milestone. You should be extremely nervous. Pressure is on.”
That got a real smile out of him, brief and bright even in the shadowed room. “Good. I’m all about performing under pressure.”
I huffed a laugh that he kissed right out of my mouth.
Time went a little loose in my mind, minutes slipping away between us. Lips and warm breath. I pushed his sweatpants down his hips, and he helped me step out of my work pants, waited while I draped them over the window seat before he reached for me again, the city glittering outside.
“I want to make it good for you, though,” he murmured eventually, voice gone rough. “Not just about me.”
God. I liked him.
No problem. I’d liked guys before. This was fine.
“I’d expected nothing less from you.” My thumb brushed under his jaw, light against the pulse point. Fast, not frantic. “First off, we go slow. You tell me if you’re unsure about anything, I tell you what I need. Deal?”
“Deal.” He nodded and turned his head to kiss my finger. Jesus Christ.
“Condom?” I asked. “Lube?”
My eyes had adjusted to the low light just enough to catch the way his mouth curved. “Yeah. Two kinds of lube, even—one of them flavored. When I came out to Reid, he brought a gift basket.”
It caught me so off guard that I barked out a laugh. “Oh my God.”
“Are you surprised?” Matt sounded long-suffering and fond at once.
“Not really.” I drew a breath to add something, speculate about what else would’ve been in that basket, maybe. Matt kissed me before I could keep going, and that—yes. Good idea. He got a hand down the back of my boxer briefs, and I shivered.
“Okay,” I said. “Give me a minute, okay? I—shower. Been on my feet all day and didn’t exactly plan for this.”
“En-suite. Help yourself to whatever.” He didn’t immediately release me, though, eyes heavy. “Mind if I join?”
Electricity zipped up my spine. “It’s your place.”
“That’s not how I meant it.”
I smiled through a buzz of something that almost felt like nerves—not bad, just… a lot. “Please do.”
His mouth tipped like a secret.
The bathroom was roughly the size of a football field, all stone and glass.
He switched on a dim light that turned the marble honey-colored and left the mirrors mostly dark.
We stripped off the rest of our clothes, then he leaned in to start the water, and I lost a second to admiring the hard line of his back.
Steam already fogged the glass by the time I joined him.
God, yes. Water hit my skin and loosened something at the back of my neck—shop smell and the weight of hours on my feet. His hands grasped my waist before he kissed me once, wet and slow. “Turn around.”
“Might need a little more prep than this,” I told him even as I did, and he laughed against the back of my neck.
“I’m not an idiot.”