“You sound ready. And awake.”
“I am.”
“If you say so,” he says. “I like how angry you get. I like when you prove me wrong. I like your thoughts, big and wild. I like your body, small and serious. I like the parts of you that you think are too much, too weird. They’re my favorite.”
“Okay, okay.”
“I like when I can tell you’re thinking, but I don’t know what about. I like when I surprise you, because I don’t think a lot of people do.”
“You’re full of surprises,” I grumble. “Sunrise rooftop breakfast, instant classic.”
“You like looking at beautiful things, and I like showing you them,” he continues, and I’m glad he agrees—whatever is going on here is painfully not fake. “My attempts to win you over hadn’t been working.”
“Attempts, plural?”
“Multiple. Many,” he says. “It was hard not to after that night at the club. When you said you were over that asshole, it was like, fuck, what am I going to do?”
I think back to that night, the bassy music and him close to me and sitting at the bar, mustering up the courage to ask him about…
“Oh my God.”
“The radio?” Arthur says, because of course he knows what I’m thinking. He’s been waiting for me to think it. Patiently, quietly waiting for me to see what’s been right in front of me. “They air what we say on the broadcast, by the way. You wouldn’t want to spill your secrets on it.”
“You lied about it being Merlin,” I whisper, thoroughly amazed at not realizing this sooner.
Arthur’s heartbeat drums against my ear. “It was you,” he says. “It’s been you. I’ve been driving myself crazy to keep your eyes on me.”
Surprise wedges between my brain and mouth, and anything intelligent I could say back to him is caught on the wrong side of that wall. It’s been me. Arthur likes me. I own a watch.
“How long would you have waited for me to figure it out?”
“Years?” He brings my knuckles to his lips, sending an effervescent chill down my arm. “But my schedule is very transparent, you see. You’d have been able to find me once you cracked the code.” He kisses my thumb. “Texas.” Another kiss. “England.” A kiss on the wrist. “Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands.” Kiss, kiss, kiss.
“I would’ve hunted you down.”
“Yeah?”
“I’d get on a plane to see you,” I say, and this feels like the biggest confession yet.
“I know. You already have.”
“Next time you understand us before I do, will you tell me?”
He goes quiet, so I don’t explain any more—that I’m only starting to understand what’s shifted inside me since we met. I don’t want to only look at him from behind the safety glass of my camera, like a piece of art, another beautiful thing. I want to go through lifewithhim, looking at the gorgeous, terrible world together. If I never saw him again after tonight, I’d always look for him in a crowd, scanning for a tall blond head. But I’d always look with him, too. I’d see the beauty in the dilapidated buildings and fast cars and interesting strangers, because I think I see the world through his eyes now, or at least a peek of it, a hazy glimpse at happily ever after where the guy gets the girl and the girl gets everything.
And that’s beautiful.
When he finally tilts my chin up for a kiss, I’m not surprised. Ifeel it coming, his quicker pulse, the way his chest tenses. “I don’t want to keep you awake,” Arthur says against my mouth.
“Keep me,” I reply, and he chuckles, his thumb sweeping across my cheekbone. “Unless you’re tired. Then good night.”
He does something very distracting with his tongue as he slips one hand beneath the hem of my shirt. “I’m not tired anymore.”
His hand closes around my entire breast as he kisses across my jaw, toward my mouth. My body aches from the sensations; he’s curious and intense and everywhere, touching me like he’s learning my language. When he runs my nipple between two of his rough fingers—calloused and hot—I press into his hips and…
Arthur exhales sharply. “Careful.”
Just this already has his own need pulsing against my stomach. And I don’t know how he’s this appealing, in the middle of the night, when sex has always been the restaurant bread basket of physical touch to me; lovely but optional. But he’s so easy to work up, so reactive, and I want to feel him against my fingers, my stomach, my mouth, notched inside me. Hear him lose the last shreds of his incredible self-control.
