Forty-Eight
Sienna
The zipper on my suitcase hums through the quiet room, finalizing what I’ve been avoiding for the last two hours. I keep my head down, focused on the last of my things, refusing to look at the man standing in the other room. The man who is fully dressed. The man who is leaving.
We already agreed that I’d ride home with my parents since Nathan needs to catch his flight. It made sense. Logical.
That’s all this was supposed to be, a temporary arrangement. A deal. One week. Then real life.
I swallow past the lump in my throat and smooth my hands over the fabric of my suitcase, like if I concentrate hard enough on something tangible, I can avoid the ache in my chest. But it’s not the luggage that doesn’t feel real. It’s him. It’s that I let myself get tangled up in something I was never supposed to touch. I broke my own damn contract: no post fake-dating emotions, no getting attached, no wondering what it’d be like to stretch this out beyond the flimsy boundaries of our napkin deal.
I exhale slowly, forcing my shoulders to relax before I do something stupid, like cry.
Then I feel the weight of his stare.
I look up. He’s standing in the doorway, back in his signature suit, composed and put together. Every inch of him a man who already has one foot out the door.
But his eyes? His eyes aren’t leaving, not yet. He’s just watching me, hands in his pockets, his bag by the sofa, packed and waiting.
That’s when it really hits me. It’s coming. The goodbye we’ve been tiptoeing around.
I have no idea how to say it.
The air between us is suffocating. He hasn’t spoken a word, but I sense the unspoken tension pressing down on both of us. I grip the handle of my suitcase, my knuckles going white. It’s stupid, it’s meaningless, right? Just like this was supposed to be.
But it wasn’t. We blurred the lines, and now we’re paying for it.
“We never should have complicated things.”
His words slice through me like a blade. Sharp and unforgiving. I swallow, ignoring the tightness in my throat and the crack forming in my chest.
“Right,”
I say, forcing my voice to stay even. “This was just a contract, after all.”
His jaw tics, and for a split second, I think he might say something else. Something that isn’t ripping a bandage off a wound still bleeding.
“I have to fly to Chicago.”
Like I don’t already know. Like I don’t know he will be gone for a month, maybe two. Like the number matters.
It doesn’t. He’s leaving, and when he goes back to New York, it won’t be for me.
I nod.
He shifts forward, closing some of the space between us, and my stupid body betrays me. I want to lean in, want to reach for him, grip his suit jacket and see if maybe he’d hold on.
But he won’t.
He can’t.
His voice is quieter, edged with raw honesty. “I can’t be that guy, Sienna. The one who makes you wait, who makes you wonder where I am all the time.”
My chest clenches. I never asked him to be that. I wasn’t supposed to want him to be that.
I force a small smile, ignoring the burn behind my eyes. “That would be ridiculous. Waiting for you? Sounds like a nightmare.”
He huffs a humorless laugh, but there’s no real mirth behind it. There’s just this thing between us that never should’ve existed.
Then he moves, turning toward the door, his shoulders stiff, his steps measured, like every part of him is fighting something. I bite my lip, forcing myself to stay still.
I need to let him go.
When his hand lands on the doorknob, he stops. His head tilts like he’s rethinking everything.
There’s no warning when he spins back around, dark eyes brimming with torment, crossing the room in three long strides. Before I can breathe or process, his hands grab me. One moment, I’m standing next to my suitcase; the next, I’m in his arms, his palms framing my face, his mouth crashing into mine in a kiss that’s desperate and punishing, like he’s mad at himself, mad at me.
I gasp against his lips, my fingers flying to his chest, gripping his suit like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. If I hold on tight enough, maybe this doesn’t have to end.
I let him consume me. I let his mouth take what it wants, let his fingers press me against the wall like he needs me closer, like he hates how close still isn’t enough.
A raw sound tears from his throat. His thigh wedges between my legs, his hands sliding down to my hips, hooking around me. In one swift motion, he lifts me, my back against the wall, my legs instinctively locking around his waist.
My chest heaves against his, and I can’t stop my hands from roaming, yanking his belt free, the leather slipping through the loops. I tug at his zipper, my palm brushing against his cock, hot and rigid. He drops his forehead to my neck, teeth scraping my skin as I free him from his pants.
“Fuck,”
he growls, hands tightening on my thighs.
He finds the lace of my panties and yanks them aside. His cock slides against me, and my breath stutters. Holy shit, there’s no preamble. No courtesy. Just raw need. He thrusts inside in one savage stroke, and I let out a ragged cry, nails biting into his shoulders through the fabric of his suit.
He’s fully dressed, while I’m half-naked, pinned against the wall. It shouldn’t be so unbearably erotic, but it is because this isn’t gentle or playful. It’s desperate. It’s punishment for both of us.
He pounds into me with a brutal rhythm, forehead pressed to mine, panting into my mouth, swallowing my gasps.
He doesn’t speak, and I can’t form a coherent sentence. We just breathe against each other, letting the friction obliterate the truth that, in a few hours, he’ll be on a plane.
Tears prick at my eyes, and I hate it, hate that I’m so close to falling apart. My body is drowning in pleasure, tension coiling tight in my belly.
It hurts, too, this knowledge that we’re fucking each other goodbye.
He groans, rolling his hips, thrusting deeper, hitting a spot that sparks another wave of pleasure that robs me of breath. I’m close. Too close. Everything is too intense—the scrape of his suit, the rough push of him inside me, the raw expression on his face as he teeters on the edge.
I can’t do this. Not when I already know how it ends, not when I feel the heartbreak thrumming in my chest. I grit my teeth, blinking back tears, but I can’t stop the orgasm building. My toes curl, fingers clinging to his shoulders as I snap, body clenching around him in a dizzying rush of pleasure that steals my voice. I let out a broken sob, an orgasm and heartbreak colliding in one.
Nathan curses, stuttering into one last thrust as he finds his own release. His hands bruise my hips as he shudders, groaning my name, face twisted in a mixture of agony and bliss. For a second, we freeze, sweaty and panting, the air thick with sex and the ache of goodbye.
He breathes my name softly, like he wants to say something else, something big, and that’s when I know I can’t take it. I can’t hear whatever might leave his mouth. I can’t hear an apology, a regret, a plea, anything. It’ll break me.
So I do the only thing I can.
I pull the ripcord.
The safe word.
My voice trembles with unshed tears as I force the single, final word: “Blackjack.”
He goes still. We stay locked together for a single beat until he finally releases me, sliding out, lowering my feet to the floor with a mechanical stiffness. My knees wobble, my entire body drained and shaking, but I manage to stand.
He stares at me for a moment before he dips his chin. It’s a wordless acknowledgment that I’m calling the end, that this scene is over.
He sets me carefully aside, gathers his bag, and without a single look back, walks out the door.
The click of it shutting behind him is deafening.
I can’t move or breathe as tears finally spill over. My soul feels hollow, like something precious has been ripped away, and I have no right to chase it.
Because this was never supposed to be real, and yet it feels more real than anything I’ve ever known.