CHAPTER 1 #3
We stood close. Closer than we’d ever stood outside the controlled chaos of the bar, closer than the time he’d helped me carry a case of wine up the stairs, closer than the moment five years ago when his hands had braced my neck against the backboard and his voice had cut through my panic like a blade. Stay with me. Breathe.
“Leo,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
I reached up and put my hand on the back of his neck, and he leaned down at the same moment I rose onto my toes. The first press of his mouth was tentative—a question asked in silence—but then his hands found my hips and he pulled me in, and the answer was yes, yes, obviously yes, the whole time.
His lips were warm, faintly sweet from the bourbon, and when I opened my mouth he made a sound low in his chest that I felt all the way down my spine.
His tongue swept against mine, slow and searching, and one of his hands slid up to the small of my back, pressing me against the solid length of him.
“We should—” he started, but I cut him off with another kiss, deeper this time, my fingers tangling in the short hair above his collar.
“Downstairs,” I said against his mouth.
“Beckett.”
“Leo.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me—really look, the way he’d looked at me across the bar a hundred times, only now there was nothing between us. No register, no job title, no ninety-day countdown. Just this. Just the two of us and the quiet hum of the building around us.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’ve been sure for three months.” I kissed the corner of his mouth, the side of his jaw. “Maybe longer.”
“How much longer?”
“Since the night you taught me how to muddle and I realized you were watching my hands instead of the mint.”
A breath, shaky and warm. “I was.”
“There. Confession’s good for the soul.” I pulled back and looked at him. “Now take me back to the panic room before I lose my nerve.”
He laughed—actually laughed, the sound low and surprised—and took my hand.
We walked through the door behind the stairs and down the spiral staircase, and this time when we reached the bottom, he didn’t punch in a code and step aside.
He turned to me, one hand on my waist, the other cupping the back of my head, and kissed me until my back hit the steel door and his body pressed against mine.
“I’ve thought about this,” he said, his mouth moving along my jaw.
“What?”
“You. Here. In this room.” He pulled my t-shirt up, just enough to touch the bare skin of my stomach, and I inhaled sharply. “When I was setting it up, I kept thinking about what the light would do to you. How it would catch your hair.”
“That’s a very detailed fantasy for a man who buys medical tinctures.”
“I’m a man who appreciates planning.”
His hand slid higher, and the door was cold against my back even through the fabric. I arched into his touch, and he took the invitation, pushing my shirt up over my breasts and bending his head to kiss the hollow of my throat.
“The fern is watching,” I breathed.
“Let it.”
His mouth found my nipple—warm, insistent—and I made a sound I didn’t recognize. Somewhere between a gasp and a plea. His tongue circled, and then he was sucking, and my hands fumbled for his belt buckle, for the waistband of his jeans, for anything to anchor myself.
“The code,” I managed. “Open the door.”
He did—one hand still on my hip, the other punching the keypad behind me—and the door swung open.
We stumbled through, locked together, and I caught a glimpse of the bed, the green walls, the fern still standing sentinel on the nightstand, before Leo picked me up and carried me across the room like I weighed nothing.
He laid me down on the quilt and stood over me, breathing hard, his chest rising and falling under his shirt. In the low lamplight, he looked like something out of a dream—the kind of dream I’d been having for months, the kind I’d been too exhausted to admit to myself.
“I want to watch you,” he said.
“You’re already watching me.”
“Not like this.” He dragged a hand down his face, and for the first time I saw something like nerves underneath the control. “I want to make sure this is real.”
“It’s real.” I reached for him, and he came down to me, bracing himself on his forearms, his face hovering just above mine. “Leo. It’s real.”
He kissed me again, and this time it was different—hungrier, less careful, his hips pressing into mine so I could feel exactly how much he wanted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and ground up against him, and he groaned into my mouth, a desperate sound that made me shiver.
“Get undressed,” I said.
He pulled back, wrenching his shirt over his head, and I finally saw all of him—the scar across his ribs, the burn mark on his left shoulder, the trail of dark hair leading down to the waistband of his jeans. His body was a map of everything he’d survived, and I wanted to trace every line.
My shirt was next—I peeled it off and let it fall, and then his hands were on me, cupping my breasts, pushing me back against the mattress. I arched up into his touch, and when his thumb grazed my nipple, I cried out.
“I’ve wanted to hear that,” he said, his voice rough. “For months.”
“You’re going to hear more if you keep doing that.”
“Good.”
He lowered his head and took my other nipple into his mouth, and I buried my hands in his hair, holding him there. His teeth grazed the sensitive peak, then his tongue soothed it, and all the while his hand was working lower, trailing down my stomach to the button of my jeans.
“Can I?” he asked, his fingers hovering at my waist.
“Yes. God, yes.”
The button came undone, then the zipper. He dragged my jeans down over my hips, my thighs, and I kicked them off. The air of the room was cool against my heated skin, and I felt the ventilation system’s breath move across the wetness between my legs.
“You’re soaked,” he said, and the way he said it—like a man discovering something precious—made me clench around nothing.
“Told you. Three months.”