Chapter 20 Manuela
MANUELA
The hallway creaks under my bare feet. The house is mostly quiet, except for the muffled sound of rain sliding down the windows and a laugh or two drifting from behind closed doors one floor below.
I clutch my phone against my chest like it’s a valid excuse for what I’m about to do, heart hammering way too fast for something as innocent as needing a charger.
Connor’s door is closed, but there’s a thin stripe of warm light from under it, and I wonder if maybe he’s asleep. I stop, turning back around to head back to my room, but then change my mind again.
Something about never being this forward with men flashes through my mind.
In Buenos Aires, dating was easy—messy, sometimes, but familiar.
Two longish relationships, a handful of casual things that burned bright and quick.
There was always someone to go out with, to laugh with, to text late at night.
But when I moved to New York, I stopped.
It never felt like I could risk the distraction when I was barely keeping my head above water.
Everything there still feels temporary, like I’m borrowing the life I’ve built and might have to give it back at any moment.
Dating means letting people see you, and I’ve never been sure I’d be staying long enough for that to matter.
And suddenly, here I am in the hallway of a Swiss villa in the middle of the night. It feels reckless. Especially so because this is someone from the friend group, and what’s the saying? Don’t shit where you eat?
Maybe I’m rusty. Maybe I don’t know how Americans do this—if this even is a thing people do outside of movies. For all I know, he’s going to laugh, hand me a charger, and send me back to bed.
I knock softly.
“Yeah?” His voice is low, rougher than usual.
I push the door a little. He’s sitting on the bed, propped against the headboard with his laptop open, shirt stretched across his chest. His hair is damp, like he showered after dinner, and a knot of nerves coils low in my stomach.
Not regret, exactly—just the sharp awareness that whatever happens next could change everything.
“Sorry to interrupt your…” I hold up my phone. “Do you—uh, have a charger?”
“Not interrupting. I was catching up on the news.” He arches a brow, mouth tilting. “That’s the excuse you’re going with?”
Heat floods my cheeks. “What, I can’t need to charge my phone?”
Before I can blink, he’s off the bed, across the room, pulling me inside. The door clicks shut softly behind me, and then my back is pressed against it with urgency. His body is close, his hand braced beside my head.
“Tell me the truth,” he says, voice softer now, eyes dark.
I can’t. Or maybe I don’t want to. Instead, I smile and lift my chin slightly, forcing all the confidence I left in the hallway. “I need a charger.”
That’s all it takes. He kisses me hard, like he’s been holding himself back since that night on the terrace.
His mouth is warm and insistent, tasting faintly of toothpaste and whatever wine they opened after dinner.
My mouth parts on a soft sound I don’t mean to make, and he swallows it like he’s been starving.
His other hand slides down my side, palms my hip, and my knees threaten to give out.
He eases the kiss slower, then slower still, like winding the dial back on purpose. A press, a pause, a drag of his lower lip. It turns me inside out, and I’m ready to climb him, drop this phone, and forget there are people outside in this same house.
“Hi,” he murmurs, barely pulling back. His forehead rests against mine. His breath ghosts my mouth.
“Hi,” I whisper, my voice not entirely reliable.
His thumb sweeps along my jaw, patient. “Can I tell you a secret?” His voice is so soft against my ear, a low grumble coming right from the center of his chest. “I hoped you needed that charger last night.”
I chuckle and look into his eyes, and he smiles in return. That feeling of uncomfortableness I had the second I knocked is swept away by the appearance of his dimple.
Connor kisses me again, slow enough to make my toes curl, and his hands are thorough like he’s finally able to learn me by touch—waist, ribs, the slope under my shoulder blades, the back of my neck.
My fingers have their own agenda; they sneak under the hem of his T-shirt to find warm skin and a steady hum of muscle.
He shivers, almost imperceptibly. I feel stupidly victorious.
“Tell me if you want to stop.”
“I don’t.” The answer finds me before the question is even finished.
“Bed,” he says against my mouth, and I nod because walking sounds complicated and very dangerous.
He guides me there with one hand at my waist, never quite breaking the kiss.
The mattress dips, sheets cool against the back of my bare knees.
He stands to push the laptop and sets it aside, then looks down at me like he’s trying to decide where to start.
“Everywhere,” I say, surprising the both of us. The honesty of it makes my cheeks heat.
His smile is small and wrecking. “Okay.”
He peels my shirt over my head, slow, careful of my hair.
The air touches my skin and tightens everything.
He doesn’t rush. He watches, like that first day on Elle’s rooftop, quiet and introspective.
His hands slide up my stomach, under the band of my lace bralette, then back down like he’s teasing himself as much as me.
When he finally unclasps it, he breathes out with a quiet, reverent “god,” and the sound shoots straight through me.
I tug his T-shirt up, and he lets me—arms raised, obliging—and then it’s tossed somewhere I don’t care about.
He’s warm under my palms, smooth. I mouth along his collarbone, taste clean skin and a hint of salt, and he mutters something that could be my name, or maybe it’s a curse word.
In any case it makes my skin break out in goosebumps and my spine tingle.
We take each other apart like this for a long time—hands, mouth, breath, that slow slide of patience that makes everything sharper. He kisses down my sternum, the center of my stomach, the sensitive place just above the waistband of my shorts where I swear I feel sparks.
“Por favor,” I hear myself say, and I don’t even know what I’m asking for. Just… more.
He slides his hand under the elastic and slowly works my pajama bottoms down with the soft scrape of his knuckles against my thighs, and then his mouth is on me through the thin cotton of my panties, deliberate.
I arch into him without meaning to. He hums, pleased, and the vibration drags a whimper out of me I try, and fail, to swallow.
“Quiet,” he whispers, not unkind. “You’ll get us caught.”
“Then don’t—” I can’t finish my sentence.
He hooks his fingers in the edge of the fabric and eases it aside, breath warm where I ache.
The first slow stroke of his tongue against my clit blanks my mind.
My hand finds his hair on instinct, fingers tangling, not pushing him but instead anchoring myself to something that isn’t floating.
He takes his time, maddening and generous.
Slowly, he tilts me backwards so I’m lying in the middle of his bed as he maps me.
He learns what makes my hips chase his mouth, what pulls a sharp breath from my lungs, what unspools me without warning.
He doesn’t rush past any of it. When he slips two fingers inside, I clamp my legs around his head, my eyes falling shut.
“Look at me,” he says, voice low.
I do. His eyes are dark and steady, and his mouth is slick with me, his hand moving in a rhythm I can’t fight.
He looks like he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Something tight coils low in my belly, and I try to hold it, and then he curls his fingers just so and I break—jaw slack, breath stuttering, the world narrowing to white noise and him in between my legs.
I come with a strangled sound into the crook of my arm, trying to remember how to breathe, how to keep quiet, how to exist in a body he’s turned upside down and backwards.
He kisses the inside of my thigh once, a soft little stamp of heat, and crawls up over me, bracing himself on his forearms so his weight is a promise, not a crush. I kiss him because I don’t know how else to say thank you. I taste myself and him, and the combination makes my head spin.
“I’ve wanted to taste you since the rooftop,” he admits into my mouth, words rough and unguarded.
Something in my chest kicks hard. I don’t let myself think too hard about what that means—not now, not with his mouth this close—but it lodges somewhere deep, humming through my body.
“Me too.” It feels like jumping and finding ground beneath my feet.
He reaches to the nightstand, finds a foil packet, pauses. “Okay?”
I blink at it, then let out a small, startled laugh. “Do you just… carry condoms with you?”
His mouth tilts, sheepish and amused all at once. “No. Jack.”
“Jack?”
He nods, sliding the packet between his fingers. “Apparently he thought I might, you know… get lucky? His words. Not mine.”
I cover my mouth with my hand to muffle the laugh that bursts out. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. What kind of cousin sets up a condom stash for you like a care package?”
“He did it for all the guys. Even though everyone’s in a committed relationship.” Connor lifts his shoulder casually, though the curve of his mouth betrays him. He leans closer, voice dropping into something conspiratorial. “You cannot tell him I am very, very grateful for his care package.”
That does me in. I laugh again, softer this time, and tug him closer by the back of his neck.
“So…”
“Yes,” I say, and it’s the easiest yes I’ve ever given.
He tears it open with his teeth, quick and practiced but not detached. When he settles between my thighs again, he doesn’t push right away. He hovers over my body and looks down at where we meet, then up at me again, like he’s giving me another chance to change my mind. I don’t.
The first press of him makes my breath catch, stretch and heat in one long, patient push. My hands fly to his shoulders, then slide up to frame his face because I need to see him. His eyes flutter shut, a curse breathed into the space between us.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says, jaw tight like he’s on a cliff edge.
“It’s perfect,” I hear and then realize it’s my voice.
He moves like he’s listening: small adjustments, a shift in angle, a deeper stroke that drags along nerves that haven’t been touched in so, so long. The bed creaks in soft protest. The rain patters against the balcony floor, but I can’t focus on anything else but Connor.
He keeps kissing me—mouth, jaw, the very corner of my lips, as if to anchor me to something. As if he needs the anchoring too.
I wrap my legs around his waist, and the change in depth rips a cry from my throat that I barely smother.
“You need to be quiet, baby,” he says, whispering in my ear. “Fuck, you’re so hot.”
He swears, lowers his forehead to mine, and the next roll of his hips is deliberate and devastating. The pleasure builds again, impossible and fast and slow all at once, and I cling to him like that will slow it down. It doesn’t.
“Manu,” he warns, a little broken, voice gravelly and low. “I’m—”
“Yeah,” I say, exhaling. “Please.”
Everything in my body tightens, dissolving once I climax and the world tilts bright and breathless.
He follows on a ragged groan, his movements stuttering as he shudders above me, buried deep.
For a second, we’re both suspended there, held up by nothing but the aftershocks and the way we’re still clinging to each other.
Silence, except for breathing and rain.
The faint, clean smell of laundry beneath us.
A soft click somewhere outside the door.
He rolls to the side, careful, and immediately drags me with him, tucking me against his chest like he’s not ready to let any part of me go.
His skin is hot under my cheek, and his heartbeat is a steady knock against my ear.
He presses his lips to my forehead once, again, a third time like a habit he’s testing.
I stare at the slope of his collarbone, the tiny constellation of freckles there I didn’t notice before. My body hums.
“Hey,” he says after a while, voice gone soft at the edges. “Are you okay?”
I nod, then realize he can’t see it. “Yeah. Yes.” My voice comes out wrecked. I clear my throat, softer. “I’m great.”
He exhales, something like relief loosening his hold.
I don’t know how long we stay like that—long enough for him to disappear into the bathroom to clean himself up, for me to go pee right after. For Connor to tuck us under the covers and wrap his hand around my waist, holding me against his chest.
I trace a line over his bicep with the tip of my finger, and it exhilarates me, a quiet thrill that comes from touching without asking permission every time.
“Connor,” I whisper, turning to face him. His hand plants against my hip, and I can feel his skin still slick with sweat.
"Yeah?” he replies, sleepy but pulling me closer to him.
“I actually do need your charger.”
A laugh slips out of him, small and surprised. “I have an extra one in my backpack.”
I smile to myself as he drifts to sleep, and a few minutes later, I sneak out of his room, charger in hand, to my room down the hall. In the morning, everything is going to feel loud, so this is the safest way for this to work. This no-pressure pact that I so foolishly suggested.