12. Maren
MAREN
I had been reading the same paragraph for twenty minutes.
Not because the book was bad. It was fine, better than fine, a slow-burn romance Paige had sent me with a voice note that said you need this right now and a string of emojis I had chosen to interpret generously.
The problem was that I kept hitting the same line about the hero’s hands and then thinking about different hands entirely, and then I’d lose the page and have to find it again, and the third time it happened I put the book face-down on the cushion beside me and stared at the ceiling.
I’d cleaned up from dinner, answered two work emails, watered the succulent on my windowsill that I kept meaning to name.
Normal Wednesday. Except I’d had a phone call two hours ago that had left me lying in the dark for forty-five minutes before I gave up and made tea, and the tea had gone cold while I stared at nothing, and now I was on my couch with a romance novel I couldn’t focus on and the restless edge of waiting for something I’d already been told was coming.
Think of me, he’d said, and hung up.
I was thinking about him. I had been thinking about him since the parking lot outside Bound, if I was being exact, and before that since a pool party kitchen in September, and if I went all the way back I’d been thinking about him since the corridor on my first day when he’d caught my elbow and held it a beat too long.
I hadn’t known the half of it.
I gave up on the book around ten-thirty. Made more tea I didn’t drink. Checked my phone and found nothing useful, nothing from Ryan, nothing from Griffin, a meme from Paige that made me snort, and was composing a response when someone knocked on my door.
I set my phone down. Almost eleven on a Wednesday. I wasn’t expecting anyone.
I went to the door and checked the peephole.
Ryan Lindqvist was standing on my porch with a duffel bag on his shoulder.
Still in his travel clothes. White button down, slacks, and a plain black silk tie.
He was holding the jacket I’d seen him wear getting off planes since September.
He’d come directly from the airport without stopping anywhere first, which the bag confirmed, and I also knew was impossible because the team wasn’t supposed to land until tomorrow afternoon.
I opened the door.
“We landed early,” he said.
He stepped across the threshold and pushed the door shut behind him.
Then he stopped in his tracks and it seemed like he forgot what he came to say.
His eyes dropped to the sweatshirt—to the faded gold lettering, the worn fabric—and came back up to my face, and then he grinned.
Wide and real and completely unguarded, a grin that meant he’d just gotten the answer he already knew but needed to see confirmed.
He knew exactly how old that sweatshirt was. He knew exactly where it came from.
My face went warm. It was what I wore on couch nights, curled up with a book and nowhere to be—had been for years.
And now he was standing in my doorway at eleven o’clock and I was taking him in—the dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, his tie loosened and pulled to one side like he’d done it somewhere on the drive over and never thought about it again.
No bag checked. No text. He’d come straight here, rumpled and deliberate, because apparently tomorrow had been too long to wait.
He was looking at me like seeing me tonight had answered a question he’d hoped to answer after nine years, like maybe he did notice I took it back then.
His grin shifted, the delight of confirmation giving way to pure intention, and heat flooded through me as I recognized exactly what I was looking at.
Nine years ago we’d sat in the bed of his truck and walked away like responsible young adults.
We weren’t walking away tonight. His eyes had gone dark and focused and entirely predatory, and my body had already made its decision—if I was being honest, the decision had been made somewhere around the third time he’d said my name on the phone from Nashville and my body lit up.
We were adults. Nobody was going to walk in here.
And I was done pretending I didn’t want every single thing he was about to do.
“That’s my sweatshirt, isn’t it?” he asked.
I glanced down at it again, then met his stare. “It’s my favorite,” I said quietly.
He watched me for one more second. Then his mouth was on mine. Another version of us; hungrier for each other. Feral. The hottest kiss I’d ever had in my life.
I had one second where I could have stepped back.
Made it a question, put some air around it, given myself the out I’d been carefully maintaining for three months.
I knew the answer. I registered it the way I a door closed behind me—not with dread, just with the clear-eyed understanding that this was a choice I was making, and it was mine to make.
He lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around him without hesitating and met his energy with everything in me. Every fantasy I’d ever had about him coming true in this very moment in front of my door.
He pressed me back against the wall and I exhaled against his mouth and he made a low sound I felt more than heard as our tongues tangled and he pressed himself against me.
“Bedroom?” I asked on a breath, and he nodded before carrying me down the hall. Oh my god, this is happening. Ryan Lindqvist is taking me to my bedroom. Holy shit.
He set me down on the floor at the side of my bed and stepped back, and I understood he was watching me, taking me in exactly the way he’d described on the phone, so I let him.
An old Minnesota State sweatshirt that hit me mid-thigh, soft from years of washing, the lettering cracked and faded.
Hair down, not expecting company. I waited for the self-consciousness and it didn’t come.
The way he was watching me made it impossible.
“Come here,” I said.
He closed the distance and kissed me slower this time, one hand moving into my hair.
I got my palms flat against his chest, warm skin, the solid weight of him, and undid his tie, before tossing it behind me, and started unbuttoning his shirt.
Taking a breather, I focused my attention on the muscles I was uncovering beneath his shirt, and my heart pounded impossibly hard while I ran my fingertips over the hard ridges of his abs.
“You’re staring,” he said, watching me.
“I’ve had my hands on you professionally for three months,” I said as I turned my face up to meet his eyes. “This is different.”
His expression shifted, amused and a little undone. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“Can I take this off?” he asked. His hands found the hem of my sweatshirt.
Well, his sweatshirt technically. Though, I was pretty sure the statute of limitations was up and it was legally mine now.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he said, “since the parking lot. Since Cole’s kitchen.
” When I nodded, he slid his hands up my ribs, dragging the fabric with them.
“Since the first time you put your hands on me and called it work.”
“It was work,” I said.
“Maren.” He growled my name as he inhaled deeply at my neck before licking and kissing me there.
“Mostly work,” I amended, and he pulled the sweatshirt over my head and dropped it to the floor, leaving me in my short, and a bralette.
I reached for him but he grabbed my hips and pushed me gently back against the mattress. Crawling backward, I made room for him to join me, and he lowered himself to the bed, following me.
His shirt was still half buttoned, and I moved to finish the job I’d started. “Not yet.” Low. Certain. “I’ve been waiting nine years and nine months for this. You’re going to let me take my time.”
My breath caught. “Oh…Oh, okay.” It was all I had. His warm body was covering mine, and his lips pressed to my collarbone while my legs instinctively opened wider, making room for him while I played with his hair, running my fingertips along his scalp.
He braced above me and stopped.
His forearm was by my head and his mouth an inch from mine and he did not move, and he waited until I opened my eyes and looked at him.
"Is this what you want? I need you to be sure." His voice had dropped somewhere I'd never heard it go and it was hot. Was I sure? I was now.
I nodded, staring into his eyes.
“I need your words, baby.”
Baby? Jesus Christ, I just melted right into the mattress. I am deceased. This man.
“I want you, Ryan. I want…this,” I replied.
“I need to taste every fucking inch of you, Maren.”
He worked his way down slowly. His mouth at my throat, the curve of my shoulder, the soft skin below my collarbone.
He took his time on my breasts, his thumb dragging down the cup of my bra and over one nipple while his mouth was on the other, and I stopped trying to stay quiet about it.
When he unclasped it and gave them his full attention, he raised his eyes to me when I gasped, satisfied with what he found there, and kept going, licking and sucking.
I was writhing under him, desperate for more.
For all of him. The burning ache for him to fuck me was driving me out of my mind.
“Tell me what you want,” he said against my skin as he slipped a finger into the waistband of my shorts.
“Everything,” I said. It came out more honest than I’d intended. “I want everything with you.”
He raised his eyes to me from where he was, unhurried and a Cheshire smile formed. “Good girl,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to give you.” His intense gaze bore into me as he dragged my shorts down, taking my panties with them.
He kissed the inside of my thigh. Then the other one. Then the crease of my hip. He was doing it on purpose, kissing me everywhere but where I wanted that tongue, and my patience dissolved somewhere around the third time he got close and didn’t.
“Ryan.” A breathy whine.
“I know.” His mouth moved warm against my inner thigh sending shockwaves through me. “Ask me.”