He looks at me with that careful, steady focus that is the most attractive thing about him and the most exhausting thing about him in equal measure, and he decides to sit a polite distance away from me.
I give him a small smile. “You can come closer than that.”
Suddenly, all mirth is gone, and he’s serious. “The last time you trusted someone with something serious, you got hurt, so I would rather you tell me twice than not at all.”
God.
God.
My chest goes warm, my eyes sting, and I cannot afford to start crying right now because if I start, I will not stop, and that will totally ruin the cute-underwear reveal, so instead I lift the corner of the blanket and hold it open.
“Get in.”
He hesitates for a second, holding my gaze, then scoots under the blanket. His arm goes around my back, and I tuck myself into his side, his thigh warm against mine. I press my forehead into the side of his neck.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say into his collar.
“Me neither.”
“I kept thinking about the library.”
“Me too.”
He’s quiet for a long second, and then his hand finds my waist over the sweater. And it’s… nice. Like it belongs, like he belongs. But I can still feel the held breath in him, the way he’s holding still on purpose, because he’s worried I’ll flinch and flee if he moves too fast.
I sit back enough to see his face. “I don’t want to get hurt again.”
“You won’t.” His thumb moves against my waist. “Ivy would kill me.”
I let out an ugly laugh, but this time I don’t bother trying to hide it. “Okay. Good.”
Then we’re on each other. It’s not the library kiss. This is… different. My hand is on his jaw and my mouth is open against his, and I don’t have to wait for the feeling. It’s already here, the thing that never came before with Mason.
For one full second I feel him holding back, that careful Rowan check-in,is she sure, and I bite his lower lip and tug, and the holding back stops. His hand at my waist tightens, and we drag the kiss deeper, and whatever caution I walked in with goes with it.
The blanket slides off my shoulder, but the room is warm enough without it.
The room is warm because he is.
I climb on top of him. Well… sort of. More like I get one knee onto the sofa, awkward, my jeans pulling tight, and he catches my hip and helps and the next thing I know I’m in his lap. My hands are on either side of his face, and his are on my back, and we’re looking at each other.
“You okay?” he says against my mouth.
“If you ask me one more time?—”
“Got it.”
I shimmy out of the jeans without getting off him, which requires a brief graceless negotiation with the denim that he has the decency not to comment on, and his eyes are on me as much as his hands are, hungry and curious.
He kisses me again, slower, deliberate, his hand drifting down my spine and pulling me to him. And I let out a little gasp when I feel him press against me through the sweatpants, hard and obvious.
I’m already wet — I’ve been wet since before I left Sterling, if I’m being honest — and through the thin lace and the cottonthere is almost nothing between us. I rock my hips once, and I feel exactly how much he wants this.
He makes a sound.
It is a very good sound.
“Sloane.”
