"It's a compromise."
"It's barely a compromise."
"It's the best you're getting tonight." He pulls back, and I can see the effort it takes him to release me. "If I get under those covers with you, I won't be able to stop myself."
"And if I don't want you to stop?"
His jaw clenches. "Then we wait. Until my back isn't fucked up and I can give you everything you deserve."
It's such an RJ answer—self-sacrificing even in the face of something he clearly wants.
But I understand.
He wants our first time to be right.
Not desperate and pained on a borrowed bed in my father's clubhouse.
"Fine," I agree. "Top of the covers. For now."
"For now," he echoes, and the promise in those two words makes my stomach flip.
I grab the plates of shepherd's pie from his dresser.
Miraculously, they're still warm.
"Come on," I say, heading for the door. "Let's eat. Then you can help me change the sheets on my bed."
He follows me out, and I feel his eyes on my back—different now.
Heated. Possessive.
Something has shifted between us. Something irrevocable.
I should probably be terrified.
Instead, I'm smiling.
Later—much later—I lie in the dark and listen to him breathe.
He's on top of the covers, true to his word.
Still dressed in sweats and a t-shirt.
Still maintaining that last fragile barrier between us.
But he's here, in my bed.
His warmth radiating through the blankets, his presence solid and real beside me.
We ate, sitting on the floor of the room, passing the plates back and forth and pretending our hands weren't shaking.
Pretending the air between us wasn't still charged with everything we'd said and done and almost done.
After, we changed the sheets on my bed together.
A strangely domestic act that felt more intimate than the kissing.
He smoothed the corners with military precision.
