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Which was why in the next moment, still so soft and sad over everything Aster had endured, she pulled him in for a kiss.

His response was instant; there was little reverence in this kiss, only relief from the strictness of a schedule designed to keep them focused on Molly’s recovery and not the conflagration they were capable of.

Molly barely noticed when her back made contact with the wall; she didn’t mind a little frenzy. She felt it too.

Aster jerked back, breathing shakily. He reached out, his hand finding her neck, his fingers trailing a white-hot path across her throat, over her clavicle, stopping above her heart. An earlier echo of such a motion ripped its way through her shattered synapses, a memory she now had. Context she now knew, because he’d done the same thing right before kissing her against their apartment door. He sometimes liked touching her neck, her heart, right before kissing her senseless.

But his hand didn’t stop above her heart as it had that first night they kissed. It dipped lower, pausing at her blouse buttons.

He watched her carefully, hunger seeping from the wavering edges of his control.

“May I?” he asked, thumb and forefinger poised on a button. The question barreled through her: an ignition seeking fuel.

Molly nodded, her own hands reaching for his belt loops to pull him closer. She heard his satisfied puff of breath as his mouth found her neck, several of her buttons already undone in an expert display of dexterity.

Her breath came in shallow pants as his fingers traced the edges of her bra with a near-criminal level of restraint. She pulled his hips even closer, a small whine escaping her.

“It’s alarming,” he began between the tiny fireworks he set against her neck with his mouth. “How quickly you unravel me.”

Molly bit her bottom lip, lightheaded. She tracked Aster’s movements with a resolute fixation. Each moment a finger slipped, infinitesimally so, beneath the edge of her bra, arson against her skin, she sucked in a tiny breath of anticipation.

“How quickly I unravel you?” Molly choked out on a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve been”—a breath—“raveled, is that even a word?”—another breath, closer to a gasp—“in weeks.”

“Good,” he murmured as his lips dropped to her clavicle at the same time his hand swept upward, shrugging the neck of her blouse and the strap of her bra off her right shoulder, exposing a whole new expanse of skin. Molly had to brace herself on his shoulders, needing contact of her own as her head fell back against the wall.

He began mapping her skin with his mouth, trailing kisses and nips and fleeting breaths of praise as his lips dipped lower. With a little caution thrown to the wind, or perhaps an insistent nudge from a wandering mouth, they could easily slip into the unknown.

“Oh, God, someone bleach my eyes,” came Roy’s horrified voice from the stairs.

Aster froze, lips still pressed to the skin just above her breast. Molly’s eyes popped open, spotting her oldest friend facing away from them, forcibly pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.

Aster kept Molly pressed against the wall, leisurely in his disengagement. As he pulled himself straighter, his mouth dragged a path against her skin, all the way up to her ear. “This isn’t finished,” came his harsh, hot whisper as he righted her bra and blouse with a surprisingly gentle hand despite the frustration emanating from him.

“Alannah had to have known this is what you’d be up to,” Roy said, sounding far away and like he was talking mostly to himself. “I’ve been used. I bet we don’t even need more ice.”

“Will you make it, Waters?” Aster asked, sliding an arm around Molly’s waist as she steadied herself. Her legs felt remarkably gelatinous.

“It’s like walking in on my sister,” Roy said, sounding like he meant to speak to them this time. “Molly, I hope you won’t mind me saying, but it was nice. For a while. Not having to worry about interrupting this every time you two disappear.” He shook his head. “I’m going to let Alannah know she was right. And guilt her for using me this way. Please don’t have sex in my kids’ rooms.”

As Roy walked back up the stairs at a startlingly brisk pace, Molly released a giggle, bordering on hysteria, and clutched Aster for support.

“Does he—has that—” She fought for her words between giggles. “I get the sense that’s not the first time Roy’s witnessed something like that.”

“It’s his own fault. I’ve told him if he’d stop wondering where everyone is and what everyone is doing all the time, he’d live a much more peaceful life. Or at the very least, he and Eli ought to start a support group,” Aster said, still looking at her with a predatory pull at the edges of his mouth. “He doesn’t seem interested in taking me up on it though. Apparently if I’d stop kissing you all the time that would also solve his problems.”

Molly’s face scrunched. “I don’t like that idea.”

“Neither do I. Besides, this time it was you who kissed me.”

“Important technicality, is it?”

“Momentous.”

“Are you hungover?”

Molly looked up, wincing as her eyes transitioned from her computer screen to the harsh fluorescents in her small office at the bookshop.

Her Monday had been Monday-ing fairly hard with some serious grogginess impeding her ability to focus, and that sensation was only worsened by Justine standing in the doorway looking intimidatingly well-styled in her sleek business casual sheath dress. She looked ready for a board meeting, not eight hours of admin at an independent bookstore.