She doesn’t like where this is going, but she keeps quiet, watching his face darken and his eyes take on a faraway look as he continues.
“One day, he tells me he’s shutting down half of that division, and I had to go there in person and let everyone know they were fired. Hundred and twelve people, all trying to make the world a better place, and I stood there like an asshole and let them all go.”
“Theo…it wasn’t your—“
“That wasn’t even the straw, though. Not by itself. Maybe it should have been, but I’ve never known anything else. It is who we are…who I was. And then he kicked the bucket soon after, and I read the will. It was always his plan for me and Oliver to fight each other one last time for control of the company.”
Her eyes widen. “In the wilderness again?”
He nods. “Yep. Set the whole thing up in writing, legal and binding. And I just remember wondering what the hell I would be fighting for? Why did I want a company rooted in so much pain and suffering? I wouldn’t even have a chance at turning anything around or making any real changes if I won. The board approved of my father’s cruelty. They didn’t protest the firing of all those people in the children’s division when they could have. They would hold the tradition. It is the nature of the beast. Icouldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t watch these things happen, or participate in them, so I forfeited the competition and donated the vast majority of whatever inheritance was left when it came through and bought a fucking goat farm. I was never strong enough to bear the burden of the life I was born into.”
“That isn’t true,” she leans forward, resting her hand on his knee. “You were strong enough to walk away and follow a different path. Very few people could have done that.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I should have stayed and fought. Kept trying to make things better. In some ways, it was selfish of me to leave.”
“You are one person, Theo. Swimming against the current in an ocean full of sharks. It wasn’t on you to fix a system your father built. Your happiness is important, too.”
“Happy might be overstating the effect that leaving actually had. Relief was more like it.” His reply is slightly flippant until he meets her eyes, and honey drips off his next words. “I don’t think I’ve felt happy until right now. Here with you.”
She looks away, a blush heating her cheeks as quickly as her smile lifts them. “Too bad it took a whole apocalypse for us to find each other.”
He gets up from his chair, standing between her legs to run gentle hands up her bare thighs. “Maybe you would have stopped to buy peaches from me one day. You’d show up in a pretty yellow dress with little flowers on it, and I’d poorly flirt with you while bagging your produce at the farmers market.”
She laughs, “Oh, you’ve thought about this.”
“Nah, not at all. Only a little bit…”
She scoots further to the edge of the desk, hooking her legs around his thighs and running a hand up his chest. “I’d come back every weekend until I had more fruit and goat cheese than one person could possibly consume, waiting for you to make a move.”
“You’d have a pantry full then, because I would be terrified to ask you out.”
She tilts her head, genuine curiosity flitting across her face as she looks up at him. “Why?”
“Because you’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen. You gave me butterflies the very first time I saw you.”
“I guess it’s a good thing fate shoved us together. Otherwise, I’d probably have botulism by now from all the expired goods I’d be hoarding while waiting for you,” she jokes, if only to cover the emotion catching in her throat. Her next words puff along his collarbone, holding only sincerity. “But I would have waited.”
Chapter 18
It must be a cruel joke to find his soulmate at the edge of a global disaster. Theo is pretty damn sure that whatever is going on here is on its way to circling the globe.
It would be simple to get lost in the horror of that, but it feels disconnected from them somehow, like it can’t possibly be real yet, while they’re trapped up here in the snow, days from civilization. He grabs onto that denial with both hands and allows himself to indulge in who’s in front of him instead.
Every moment he has with Nora is a gift. He won’t waste them.
He isn’t skilled at intimacy, never has been. His tendency to avoid attachments has kept his partners limited, but she makes it all feel so natural. The way she leans into the touch of his hand at her neck, exposing the opposite side so he can nestle his face there and sear his lips to her pulse, may as well be a reflex for how quickly it happens.
She is responsive in a way he’s not used to, and that encourages him to venture into new territory where he takes the lead. The desk is empty from their earlier efforts, and wide enough to be a temporary, if hard, bed. He pushes Nora back with the pressure of his kiss until she’s flat on the wood, and his shirt that she stole hangs open on either side of her body. Maybe it’s the trust he sees reflected in her blue eyes that boosts his confidence. The way she gazes up at him with dark hairfanning out around her, chest heaving in anticipation, offers the encouragement he needs because he has no greater desire than to fulfill all of hers.
Her underwear is long gone already, leaving her exposed, but he doesn’t move to taste her yet. Instead, he maps her out with a gentle hand, following every dip and curve, chasing his fingertips with his lips to drop lazy kisses along her skin. He takes a pink nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue across the goosebumps forming on the most delicate parts of her. When her hands run through his hair, curling around his head and shoulders as if to hold him close, he can’t resist releasing her breast to lay his face against her, hearing the frantic beating of her heart rise up against his ear.
He did that. He’s the one who has her pulse racing and her skin pebbling with anticipation. A flush of pride blushes his cheeks and twitches his cock, and then he can’t wait any longer, can’t hold onto any thread of self-control he might have possessed before she held him like they couldn’t get close enough.
Over-eagerness gets the best of him and lets it. He dips his body low enough to lick a firm tongue between her legs, and she nearly comes off the desk in surprise, a gasp leaving her throat as she grips the edge with one hand. He is exactly where he wants to be. It’s a struggle to slow down and ease her into it when she’s the best fucking thing to ever touch his tongue. He wants to taste her like he’ll never get another chance, and hell, with everything falling apart around them, they have no way of knowing exactly how many of those they’ll get.
She’s slightly swollen from what they already did. The remnants of his release coat her entrance, and a growl vibrates in his throat at finding it there. He’s never been possessive a day in his life, yet a small whisper of that feeling teases his subconscious and lifts his lips in a smirk before he gently runsthe tip of his tongue where she is soaking and needy, pushing it up into her where his cock has already been.
A few strokes is all it takes to have her rotating her hips, trying to ride his face, and he wonders briefly how she took all of him before when she’s so snug now. When her hand flails for purchase, he reaches up to take it in his own, lacing their fingers together, rubbing his thumb softly along her knuckles as his mouth offers that same caress in more sensitive areas.
