Our clothes lie scattered, evidence of a crime I’m only now remembering I committed. My sweater hangs defeated from the lamp. His shirt puddles near the door where I tore it from his shoulders. My bra dangles from the nightstand, a white flag of surrender.
I should be calculating exit strategies. Instead, I’m cataloging the weight of his breathing, the way his chest risesand falls in the rhythm I once knew by heart on summer mornings when I’d peek in the boys room and find him sleeping in his bunk.
The blush starts behind my sternum and spreads outward like spilled wine, not from shame but from the treacherous warmth of remembering. How I’d arched beneath him, wordless and willing. How I’d let him unravel every careful defense with nothing but the authority in his voice and the reverence in his hands.
The way he’d commanded and I’d obeyed should terrify me. It would have, before last night. But there’s a universe of difference between choice stolen in darkness and power willingly surrendered to hands that worship rather than take.
I’ve spent years armoring myself in competence, in the cool distance that keeps patients from becoming people, touch from becoming intimacy. Last night, he stripped all of it away. And I let him. Begged him.
I inch toward the edge of the mattress, sheet clutched, when his arm hooks around my waist with the casual possessiveness of ownership.
“Don’t.” The word rumbles against my spine, roughened by sleep but absolute in its certainty.
“I need to?—”
“No.” He pulls me back against the furnace of his chest, and my bones go liquid. “You’re not running before I can memorize how you look in my bed.”
The casual certainty in his voice, as if my staying is inevitable, as if my wants and needs are secondary to his desire to keep me here, should infuriate me. Instead, it sends dangerous heat pooling low in my belly.
“If Coach sees?—”
“I’ll handle him.” His mouth finds the curve where myneck meets my shoulder, pressing a kiss that’s half benediction, half brand. “But right now, the only thing that matters is you haven’t kissed me good morning yet.”
He shifts, rolling me beneath him with the fluid grace of someone who’s spent years reading bodies and anticipating movement. The weight of him settles between my thighs, intimate and devastating, and I can feel how much he wants me. The hard length of him against my hip, the restraint coiled in every muscle.
My body responds before my mind can interfere, hips tilting upward in invitation, and I watch a dangerous flicker in his eyes. For a heartbeat, I think he might take what I’m offering, push inside and claim me with the same ruthless tenderness he used to dismantle my defenses last night.
Instead, he goes still, reading the fear that must be written across my face.
“Not yet,” he murmurs, though his voice carries the rough edge of a man denying himself. “We have time, Trouble. All the time you need.”
The gentleness undoes me more than his dominance did. I want to trust it, trust him, trust this feeling that’s too large and bright for the careful life I’ve built. But wanting something and being brave enough to take it are different creatures entirely.
“Are you protected?” The question is soft, intimate, the kind of planning that speaks to futures neither of us has acknowledged yet.
“Yes.” The word escapes on a breath. “Implant.”
He nods, satisfaction warming his features, and presses his forehead to mine. “Good. When I finally have you, really have you, I want to feel every inch.”
The promise in his voice makes my chest tight with longing and terror in equal measure. Because I want it too,want him, want this intensity that makes everything else feel irrelevant and childish.
But wanting and having are separated by a chasm I’m not sure I’m brave enough to attempt.
What if I freeze? What if, no matter how he unravels me with his hands and his mouth, I can’t let go when he finally takes me?
What if I’m still not enough?
When he finally releases me, the cold air feels punishing. He moves through his morning routine with the unconscious grace of an apex predator. He pulls on sweats that cling to his thighs and a team shirt that stretches across shoulders built for bearing weight. His hair sticks up in dark spikes that make him look younger, reminding me of the boy who used to steal my pancakes and call me Trouble as an endearment rather than accusation.
“Stay,” he says, lacing up his sneakers with economical movements. “Give it thirty minutes. Everyone will be downstairs by then.”
“And if someone notices?”
He straightens, those dark eyes holding mine with uncomfortable intensity. “Then they notice. We’re not children anymore, Eden. We don’t need permission to want each other.”
The certainty in his voice, the way he makes it sound simple when it’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever contemplated, leaves me speechless. He leans down, one hand braced beside my head, and presses a kiss to my temple that’s both a goodbye and promise.
“See you at morning skate, Trouble.”
