Chapter 5 #2
Silence hovered for a beat. Ivy slid the hand mirror back into its slot and cut me a look that wasn’t angry but wasn’t thrilled either. Eyebrow lifted, mouth tight, and an expression that mixed exasperation with a flicker of something like amusement.
She rolled her eyes as if to say really? and reached for her broom. I shrugged unapologetically. I didn’t have to explain myself. She knew exactly what that had been. I drifted back toward the front to give her room while she finished sweeping with quick, efficient strokes.
Missy passed me with a sandwich in each hand and a thanks for lunch that I waved off. Lorna caught my eye and mouthed, “Salted caramel?” as she walked by, not bothering to hide her grin. She giggled when I didn’t take the bait.
I waited near the window until Ivy closed out her last appointment.
Then I drove her home again because there was no version of this where I didn’t.
The hour didn’t seem long enough. I listened to her voice like always, letting details of her day file into the same quiet drawer in my head where her other details lived.
When we parked, I got out with her, but this time, I walked with her inside.
I followed as she moseyed down the narrow hallway to the elevator, where the old brass doors were the kind that needed a firm push.
She turned toward me with that small smile she used when she didn’t want to show too much.
I didn’t give her time to decide between more banter and a goodbye.
I set my hand at the side of her throat, my thumb swiping along the hinge of her jaw, and kissed her like I’d been thinking about for twenty-four hours straight.
She met me like she’d been waiting just as long, settling some of the restless energy pulsing through me. Her mouth opened under mine, soft and hot, and the sound she made when my tongue slid against hers nearly snapped the control I’d been wrestling into place since we left the SUV.
I backed her toward the wall beside the button panel, one arm braced above her head so I didn’t press all my weight into her and the other hand spanning her hip to feel the heat through her denim.
She fit against me like she’d been made for me.
The hard line of my body locked to the soft, greedy shape of hers.
Her fingers hooked into the front of my coat, tugging me closer, and then they were in my hair, pulling harder, and everything in me answered with a surge that felt primal—take, claim, keep.
I chased the taste of the candy bar she’d nibbled on earlier, swallowing her little gasp when I angled her head and set a deeper rhythm. Slow at first, then I was deliberately rougher, until she rose onto her toes, silently begging for more.
The need in my chest slid lower, sharpened, and the ache in my cock turned into a throb that bordered on pain.
But I was almost grateful for it because it kept my head from getting stupid.
I pressed my palm down along her waist, gliding around to the small of her back, and drawing her in tight against me, pressing the hard ridge between her thighs.
She felt me—there was no fucking way she didn’t—and the way her breath hitched told me she liked it.
I bit her lower lip, gentle but with a warning of what I was holding back.
I soothed it with my tongue, and she answered with a soft moan that went straight through me like a live wire.
“Careful,” I warned against her mouth, the word rough because I could taste how close I was to not tossing all my good intentions. “You keep making sounds like that, and I’m going to forget we’re in a hallway.”
She smiled against my lips, and when she opened her eyes, they were bright and reckless, issuing a challenge. “Maybe I want you to forget.”
That sentence had every nerve I owned sizzling with heat. I pressed my forehead against hers for a breath, trying to remember the reasons I’d promised myself I’d go slow. This wasn’t a meaningless fling. Ivy mattered. There was nothing more important to me than her.
I dropped my mouth to her throat and kissed the soft spot below her ear.
She shivered, then a slow drag of my lips and teeth that made her arch against me and her nails bit my shoulders.
I breathed her in, picturing the things I wanted to do—lifting her onto a counter, spreading her thighs with my hands, tasting her until that sweet husky voice of hers turned raw, and pressing inside her and holding her there as I filled her over and over until she’d learned the shape of me from the inside out.
The images hit in rapid succession, fraying my tenuous grip on my control.
Using everything I had, I reined them in like a horse that wanted to bolt.
“Not here,” I rasped. I felt her shiver at the restraint in my voice, like the promise of more inside the denial turned her on as much as the kiss.
“Coward,” she whispered, eyes dancing merrily.
I huffed out something that might have been a laugh and kissed her again, quick and firm, just to wipe that grin off her mouth.
“You’ll learn I’m a lot of things.” I pulled back an inch so I could watch her face when I added, “But I don’t run. And I don’t fucking share. Your pleasure is for my eyes only, sunshine.”
Her expression softened without losing any of the heat blazing in her brown orbs. She looked like she wanted to argue just for the sport of it but also liked where this was headed enough to let me call the pace. That mix did something good to my chest, happiness wrapping around my heart.
Though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I forced myself to release her. My hand stayed a second longer at her waist than it probably should have, my thumb sweeping one last stroke along the strip of skin that had warmed where her sweater had ridden up.
We both flinched when the elevator dinged on a floor above us as a reminder that the world still existed.
My hands clenched into fists as I stepped back far enough to let air between us and watched her pull herself together, sweater tugged into place, hair smoothed, kiss-bruised lips swollen in a way that turned my head all over again.
“Go.” I tried for a gentle tone despite clenching my teeth. “Before I change my mind.”
She licked her lower lip and looked up at me from under those dark lashes. If I hadn’t already decided to wait, that would have ended the deliberation. “Night, Saxon.”
“Night, sunshine.”
The elevator doors slid open with a tired sigh, the car empty and a single fluorescent bulb humming on the ceiling.
I stayed put when they closed, swallowing her up, and the light blinked to show she was moving.
Only when I heard the lift hum upward and the hallway settled back into the ordinary building sounds did I finally move.
I walked out into the biting cold and hunched into my coat all the way to my SUV.
I sat in the driver’s seat with my hands on the wheel and replayed the look in her eyes when I told her I wasn’t going anywhere.
There are games where you win on a single deep ball, and there are games you win with method—first downs, clock control, and field position.
This wasn’t a bomb down the sideline. This was territory, claimed and held.
I wasn’t in a hurry because I didn’t have to be.
I knew she’d felt it, and that this wasn’t a passing interest. It was a trajectory.
It was a plan. And tomorrow, I’d be exactly where I needed to be to prove it.