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I shot out of the booth like a rocket, knocking my hip against the corner of the table and nearly tripping over my own feet on my way down the narrow aisle. Thankfully, I heard the faint but recognizable sound of McGee’s music pumping through the unused earbud hanging around his neck while its twin was plugged solidly into the ear closest to the center aisle of the bus.
As soon as I cleared the doorframe into the bedroom, Thatcher moved behind me and closed the door. His hands quickly rucked up my shirt before spreading out across my stomach and chest. “Your cheeks turn pink when you get flustered,” he murmured against the skin at the top of my spine as his chin scraped the collar of my shirt down. “Makes me hard. Want to see that blush streaked down your neck and chest.”
His words did nothing to cool the heat in my face or in my groin. “You fluster me.”
Thatcher let out a soft chuckle. “Don’t know why. I find you enticing and sexy as fuck, but I also enjoy your company.” He continued to kiss and suck the skin on the back of my neck. “You’re smart and funny. Irreverent and engaging. Why would that make you uncomfortable?”
His words were too kind. I didn’t want to start believing them because it would take me about half a second to knit the threads of those offhand statements into a giant happily-ever-after sweater… and Thatcher had made it clear he wasn’t interested in that. He’d had at least two serious relationships that ended poorly, which was only slightly better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than my history of zero. Still, there was something about the man—the same something that had kept me obsessing about him this whole week, even when it felt hopeless—that now made me want to imagine an impossible, permanent future with him. One where I’d close off my DMs, delete my hookup apps, and lay down roots that wrapped around his legs and ankles to keep him tied to me.
Something about the man that made me want. Need. Beg for more.
My breath came faster, but I didn’t respond.
“Reagan. Answer me.”
“Dunno.”
He turned me around and pressed me bodily against the door, grinding his dick into my hip while shoving his knee between my legs. Every time he dominated me physically, my thoughts scattered like multicolored confetti tossed into an industrial fan.
“W-what?” I breathed, unable to look away from his full lips.
The edges of those lips turned up. “Why do I fluster you?” His voice was deep and sultry, and it turned the fan speed to wind-tunnel levels.
“You make me… w-want…” I closed my eyes and swallowed. “More.”
His lips ghosted the corner of my mouth, the knife edge of my cheek, the top of my eyelid. “Reagan.”
I leaned into him, inhaling woodsmoke and sage. “You… I want… you.” Air moved in and out with my hesitation. “You. You.”
He moved me around until I was on my back on the large bed. His fingers unfastened buttons and zippers until I was laid out on the bed like a sacrificial offering on an altar.
Without taking his eyes off me, he moved his hands to his own clothes and stripped slowly. When he was finally naked, he dropped his tongue to my ankle and began tasting me, moving up my body slowly with nips, and licks, and open-mouthed kisses until my dick leaked sticky trails into the hair below my navel.
Surely this wasn’t how he was with those hookups he’d mentioned. Surely this had to mean something to him the way it did to me. With his dark eyes focused on me so fiercely, I felt like… the only fucking person in his world.
My eyes slammed closed as his mouth reached my thighs. His tongue traced the outline of my phoenix tattoo with reverent thoroughness. Then he moved to the inside of my thighs, and his nose brushed against my balls.
I sucked in a breath and reached down, tangling my fingers in his hair, guiding him further up until his tongue was right where I needed it. As soon as I felt wet suction, I opened my eyes to stare at his mouth. His eyes met mine with their usual intensity, flipping everything around in my stomach and my brain until my entire body felt like it was filled with useless, mismatched parts.
His words from the night before slid through my memory.
I want you every minute of every fucking day.
Was that just one of those overly dramatic things people said while they were thinking with their dicks? The kind you cried out while fucking and maybe even thought you meant in the moment that made you cringe when the hormones had burned themselves out?
Or was it possible that he actually meant it?
God, for the first time in my life, I really wanted someone to mean it. But why, oh why, did it have to be him?
I reached down and grabbed his hand, yanking him up until he was pressed on top of me, crushing my mouth with his. My hands clutched the back of his head like I was afraid someone would pull him off me, ending this dream and bringing us both back into the stark impossibility of our reality.
“Easy,” he murmured against my mouth. “Shh. Easy, easy…”
Oxygen sawed in and out of my lungs. I couldn’t get enough. Things were already so impossibly complicated, and once we got to Honeybridge, the complications would quadruple. Layla would arrive. My parents would be waiting with their truckloads of expectations. And then, once the festival was over, I’d be back in New York…
Without Thatcher. Forever.
I was overthinking. Panicking. Ruining the short time we had by worrying about what would come after. But it felt like this thing I’d wanted for so long was slipping through my fingers, and I didn’t know how to convince Thatcher that we could be good for more than a week any more than I knew how to convince my parents I was good for more than camera fodder, and?—
