31. The Night Before
The Night Before
SLOANE
I stood in the center of Cooper’s living room, my coat still clutched around me like a suit of armor I wasn't quite ready to shed.
The apartment smelled like him—cedarwood, high-end espresso, and that clean, rain-on-pavement scent that always made my brain short-circuit.
It was a space that felt offensively safe, all soft textures and warm lighting, a direct contradiction to the jagged edges of my life right now.
Cooper was leaning against the kitchen island, watching me with an expression that was too steady, too knowing. He’d already discarded his shoes and his watch, looking like a man who had accepted the coming storm and decided to enjoy the calm before it made landfall.
"You’re vibrating, Sloane," he said, his voice low and grounding. "I can hear your brain from here. It’s loud."
"It’s the sound of twenty years of work being prepared for a woodchipper," I replied, my voice sounding thinner than I wanted. "It’s a very specific frequency. Very high, very irritating."
He moved toward me, not stopping until he was well within my personal perimeter. Usually, this was the part where I’d take a sharp step back, deploy a razor-edged comment about boundaries, and retreat into my internal bunker. Tonight, I stayed. I leaned into the heat-shimmer distance between us.
"The woodchipper doesn't have the receipts, Sloane. We do," he reminded me, his hand reaching out to catch the edge of my coat sleeve. "Inez has the logs. We have the original files. Tomorrow isn't the end. It's the counter-offensive."
"It doesn't feel like a counter-offensive," I whispered, finally looking up at him. "It feels like freefall."
"Then let's stop falling for a minute." He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing mine. "No NovaWave. No Graham. No countdown. Just us. Right now."
The air in the room suddenly felt heavy, charged with the kind of static that precedes a lightning strike.
I looked at the line of his jaw, the slight roughness of his stubble, and the way his eyes darkened as they searched mine.
For months, I had categorized him as a threat—a sunshine-drenched intruder meant to hollow out my brand.
Now, he was the only person who made the world feel like it wasn't made of glass and sharp corners.
"I don't know how to do that," I admitted, my hands finally letting go of my coat. "I don't know how to turn it off."
"I'll help you," he said, and then his mouth was on mine.
It wasn't the desperate, frantic kiss from the lodge.
This was a slow, deliberate claim. It tasted like coffee and resolve, a deep, pulling heat that started in my chest and radiated outward until my fingers were trembling.
I moved my hands to his neck, fisting my fingers in his hair, pulling him closer because the space between us felt like a mile of wasted time.
He groaned into my mouth, a low, visceral sound that made my knees go weak. His hands came up to frame my face, his thumbs brushing over my cheekbones with a tenderness that hurt more than any of Graham’s insults. It was the kind of touch that didn't just want me; it saw me.
"Cooper," I gasped against his lips, my breath hitching as he trailed his mouth down my jaw to the sensitive skin just below my ear. "If we do this..."
"We're already doing it, Sloane," he murmured, his breath hot against my skin. "I’m not your co-host right now. I’m just the guy who’s been falling for you since you told me to go to hell in the green room."
I laughed, a small, broken sound, and pulled his head back down to mine.
He swung me up into his arms, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, my coat falling forgotten to the floor.
He carried me toward the bedroom, his movements sure and steady, as if he’d been practicing this walk in his head for weeks.
He set me down on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under our combined weight.
The room was dim, lit only by the amber glow of a streetlamp filtering through the blinds.
He stripped off his shirt in one fluid motion, and I watched the play of muscle across his shoulders, the sheer, solid reality of him.
It was a beautiful sight—athletic, grounded, and entirely mine in this moment.
My hands were shaky as I reached for the buttons of my blouse, but he brushed them away, his fingers taking over the task.
He moved slowly, his eyes locked on mine, as if he wanted to memorize every inch of me as I was revealed to him.
When the silk finally slid off my shoulders, he took a ragged breath.
"You are so beautiful, Sloane. It’s actually unfair."
"Stop talking," I whispered, reaching for his belt. "The sunshine persona is great for the mic, Ellis, but I need the man right now."
He smirked, a dark, hungry expression that made my blood hum. "You've got him."
He pushed me back onto the pillows, his body following mine down.
The contact was electric—skin on skin, heat on heat.
He kissed me with a newfound urgency, his tongue tangling with mine as his hand slid down my side, over the curve of my hip, to the lace of my underwear.
I arched into him, a soft moan escaping me as he found the wet heat between my legs.
"God, Sloane. You're already so wet for me," he groaned against my neck, his fingers sliding inside my pussy with a slow, agonizing precision.
He began to pump his fingers in and out, his thumb circling my clit in a rhythm that had me clawing at the sheets.
I was soaked, my body clenching around him as the tension coiled tighter and tighter.
I reached down, fumbling with his boxers until I could finally touch him. His cock was thick and rock-hard, pulsing with a life of its own in my hand. I stroked him from base to tip, feeling the bead of pre-cum at the head, and he hissed through his teeth, his head falling back against my shoulder.
"Now," I commanded, my voice sounding like a stranger's. "I need you inside me. Right now."
He didn't make me wait. He reached into the nightstand for a condom, his movements fast and efficient, and then he was hovering over me, his eyes dark with a desperate, focused hunger.
He guided his cock to my entrance, the head glancing off my swollen, slick folds before he pushed inside, inch by thick, agonizing inch.
He was massive, stretching me until I felt like I might break, and then he was fully seated, his weight pinning me to the mattress in the most perfect way imaginable.
I gasped, my eyes flying open as he filled me. It was a physical weight, a stretching fullness that made me feel like I was finally anchored to something real. He paused, waiting for me to adjust, his forehead resting against mine as we both breathed through the intensity of it.
"You okay?" he whispered, his voice strained.
"Don't stop," I said, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him deeper. "Don't you dare stop."
He began to move, a slow, grinding rhythm that hit every nerve ending I possessed.
He fucked me with a steady, relentless power, each thrust driving deeper than the last. I watched him as he moved, the way his muscles bunched and shifted, the way his eyes stayed fixed on mine as if he were trying to see right through to my soul.
"Look at me," he urged, his voice a gravelly command. "Stay with me, Sloane."
I couldn't have looked away if I wanted to.
The friction was building, a white-hot spark that was rapidly turning into a forest fire.
I felt my pussy clenching around him in rhythmic, desperate pulses, my internal walls clamping down on his thick length as the first tremors of the orgasm hit.
I was soaking wet, the sounds of our bodies colliding wet and primal in the quiet room.
He felt it too, his pace quickening, his thrusts becoming harder, more primal.
"That's it," he groaned, his hands fisting in the sheets on either side of my head. "Fuck, you feel incredible. So tight. So perfect."
The pleasure peaked, a sharp, shattering crescendo that broke over me like a wave.
I screamed his name, my body shaking as the orgasm tore through me, wave after wave of pulsing heat radiating from where we were joined.
I felt his own body lock up, his back arching as he exploded inside me, his release hitting me in hot, rhythmic spurts.
We stayed like that for a long time, tangled together in the dark, the only sound the frantic thrumming of our hearts and the ragged sound of our breathing. The countdown clock in the other room felt like it belonged to another universe, a problem for a woman I didn't recognize anymore.
Cooper shifted, rolling to his side but keeping me pulled tight against him. He tucked a strand of damp hair behind my ear, his touch light and reverent.
"I love you, Sloane," he said, the words falling into the silence like a confession. "I think I've loved you since the third time you threatened to fire me."
The breath caught in my throat. This was the moment where I was supposed to deploy a defensive joke, to point out the statistical improbability of love in a corporate war zone. But the words wouldn't come. Instead, something softer took their place.
"I love you too," I whispered, the truth of it feeling like a weight lifting off my chest. "Which is incredibly inconvenient for my brand, Cooper."
He laughed, a warm, genuine sound that vibrated against my skin. "We'll start a new brand. Something with less cynicism and more... this."
"Hot Mic Media?" I teased, tracing the line of his collarbone.
"If it means I get to wake up next to you every morning, we can call it whatever you want," he said, kissing my forehead. "But for tonight, we're not co-hosts. We're just us."
I closed my eyes, drifting into a sleep that felt, for the first time in years, completely safe. Tomorrow, the world would wake up and try to tear us apart. But tonight, the only thing that mattered was the steady rhythm of his heart against mine.
We didn't talk about the files again. We didn't check our phones. We just held on to each other in the quiet dark, two people who had found something worth more than any rating or metric.
I did not dream of the countdown.