Page 100 of Tessa and Nash

I do.

My hands find his shoulders, trying to calm myself, but the desk is slippery with looseleaf and the room tilts in slow, dizzy spirals. His stubble grazes the insides of my thighs. He runs his nose along the lace of my panties, inhales like he’s been starved for air, and I’m the only source left.

The cold is something I’ve stopped noticing, except where it heightens every raw, exposed nerve.

When his mouth finds me, through the lace, at first, it nearly buckles my knees, makes my hips jerk, and my hands go clumsy on his shoulders. He slides his hands under me, palms cupping my ass, lifting me toward him, and now we’re not even pretending we can wait for anything anymore.

He slides my underwear down, a single smooth motion, and the groan he makes is almost a purr.

I grab at his hair, his fisted shirt, his strong, broad shoulders, anything to keep myself from floating right off the goddamn desk. There’s a fire, then a cold sweat breaking out, as if my body forgot how to regulate temperature, forgot language, forgot the last two weeks, and every regret that was supposed to stay between us.

"Oh, fuck.”

Maybe I’m loud, maybe I’m whispering. Doesn’t matter.

He closes his eyes, like he’s in pain, or maybe just somewhere else entirely in this moment with me.

I want to say his name, want to warn him away, want to confess every molecule of want that’s ever burned a hole through me. I do none of those things because I’m frozen, completely out of my body, and then I’m gathering myself back up in the rising storm.

My hands are buried in his hair, and he doesn’t let up, doesn’t stop until I’m gasping, forehead slicked with sweat.

When I finally can’t take it anymore, or maybe when he decides I can’t, he stands and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His smile is a punch to the gut.

“You okay?” he asks, almost shy, like he didn’t just detonate every neuron in my skull.

“No,” I pant, and laugh, and yank him by the shirt front until his mouth covers mine again.

It should be awkward, but it’s not. It’s desperate, pawing through the wreck of your own house for survivors instead of possessions.

I want to drag him down to the floor and stay there until sunrise, but I settle for digging my knees around his waist and holding him so tight I hear the air leave his lungs.

He’s already hard, and I’m not subtle. My hands go for his jeans, yank at the belt until it clatters free, and he lets me.

There’s a want in his face so sharp it could wound. “Tessa…”

I cut him off with my mouth, both hands busy tearing open the buttons on his shirt, chasing the old half-healed scars and smooth patches of his skin.

I’m already gone, and he knows it. He shoves my notebooks out of the way and lays me flat among the debris, my hair fanned out, paper sticking to my back. The windows have frosted over. Maybe from the weather, maybe the humidity inside me, impossible to tell.

He leans in, one arm bracing beside my head as the other pushes my knee up and aside. He lines up, waits a second, long enough for me to see the tremble in his forearm, the animal tautness in his jaw, and then slides into me.

We fit like we were cut for it.

The stretch is a sweet ache, and he goes slow, so slow, because I want to feel all of it, want him to have to watch my face and the way I come apart for him.

He holds my gaze as he moves, and the eye contact unravels me even faster than the pulse between my thighs. I dig my heels into his hips and buck up to meet every thrust.

The desk creaks under us, but I can’t stop moving. I never want to stop, not when the way he’s looking at me makes my chest punch against my ribs, makes my voice bubble over.

I want to drink the sound of his gasps. I want to remember, in my bones and blood, every impossible second of this.

I wrap my arms around his neck, yanking him down to me, teeth grazing his jaw, nails raking down the line of his back. He hisses out a curse and goes deeper, just a little, just enough to make my head kick back and eyes squeeze shut against the white noise of sensation.

There’s nothing left in the world except the flex of his thighs, the wet heat sliding between us, the sharp, perfect friction.

He says my name like a question, and I answer by moving my hips faster, meeting him stroke for stroke. I’m electric, frayed and trembling, my whole body tuned to the impossible tempo of his body and the way the world is liquefying into heat and want.

I lose track of who is holding who, who is giving in, who is going to break open first. Then I feel the flood racing through me, a spark leaping the synapse, and I can’t hold it back.