“I’ll tell you,” I promise, and the truth is I already am, wordless and greedy and soft all at once. I guide his hands higher, then lower, mapping where old comfort meets new caution. My T-shirt slides; cool air licks skin; his breath hitches like reverence.
We move to the bedroom because the island counter is for lists and we have none left for the next part. The rain keeps up its patient metronome on the window. The room smells like laundry detergent and the smallest hint of his cologne, the one that makes me embarrass myself in elevators.
He pauses when I tug my shirt over my head, eyes flicking to the mirror like he’s checking for stray cameras out of reflex. There aren’t any. It’s just us and the version of me I’m still learning to love in softer light.
“Hey,” he says, seeing the flash of doubt I didn’t mean to let cross my face. His hands come up, not to cover, to cradle. “You’re beautiful,” he says, simple, without the sales pitch men use when they’re trying to talk your clothes off. “Tell me how to hold you.”
Like this, I think, and then I show him—where to anchor, where to avoid, what pressure soothes the ache I haven’t admitted to, what angle makes me forget the morning exists. He follows with the kind of focus that wins games: patient, curious, present. Awe is not a word I ever thought I’d associate with Jason Maddox in a bedroom. It fits anyway.
When I climb into his lap, he breathes a word that might be my name or a prayer. His hands settle at the backs of my thighs, broad and reverent, as if he’s holding a future and not just a woman who’s decided to let herself be held. He asks again, a low rumble at my throat—“Okay?”—and I nod, yes, because yes is the safest word I’ve ever said with him.
Time gets strange the way it does when the rink lights drop and you’re the only two people on the ice. I set the rhythm; he matches it. The world stays outside because we told it to. The fear doesn’t vanish, but it loosens its teeth. In its place: warmth, steadiness, the bright flare of wanting that feels less like a risk than a homecoming.
“You’re teasing me,” he growls, pulling me closer.
“Maybe I am,” I replied, my lips brushing his, my breath hot against his skin. “What are you going to do about it?”
His response is immediate, his mouth captures mine in a kiss that is both hungry and tender. His hands move to my hips, lifting me, pressing me against the wall as his tongue delvedeeper, tasting me, claiming me. I wrap my legs around him, my nails dig into his shoulders, my body aches for him.
“I want you,” I gasp, my lips trail down his neck, my teeth nip at his skin. “Now.”
He groans, his hands slides down to my thighs, his fingers brush the edge of my panties. “You’re so wet,” he murmurs, his voice rough with need. “Always ready for me.”
I shiver at his words, my core throbbing with anticipation. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my panties, sliding them down my legs, his eyes never leave mine. “Spread your legs for me, Riley,” he commands, his voice a low growl. “Let me see how much you want this.”
I obey, my cheeks flaming as I open for him, my thighs tremble with desire. He kneels, his lips brushing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, his breath hot against my core. “So fucking perfect,” he murmurs, his tongue dips into my folds, his mouth devours me.
I cry out, my head falls back, my hands tangling in his hair as he eats me out with a hunger that leaves me breathless. “Jason—please,” I beg, my body arching off the wall, my orgasm building like a storm.
When the world comes back into focus, it’s smaller and softer than I left it. The bedroom is twilight-dark; the rain has shifted to a hush, the city dimmed to the far-off hiss of tires and a siren that can’t quite find us. My cheek is tucked under Jason’s chin, my palm splayed over his sternum where his heartbeat has finally decided it can keep time without sprinting.
I didn’t know quiet could feel like this—like a room exhaling around us. The list on the kitchen island might as well be a continent away. Here there’s only breath and the warmth of hischest and the smug, grateful ache of being wanted in a way that didn’t ask me to disappear.
He strokes a slow line from my shoulder to my elbow, absent and reverent, as if he’s still memorizing a map he means to carry in his wallet. “You okay?” he murmurs into my hair, the words a vibration against my skull.
“Yeah,” I say, surprised at how true it is. “Better than okay.”
“Tell me where it hurts,” he says out of habit, trainer-cadence turned back on me. It makes me smile in the dark.
“Everywhere in the good way,” I say. “The other kind…I’ll let you know.” I shift, and the duvet slides; his hand stills automatically like he’s ready to brace whatever part of me needs it. It’s ridiculous and tender and makes my throat tight.
“Thank you,” I add, a beat later, because not saying it would feel like withholding oxygen. “For letting me set the pace.”
He huffs a soft laugh. “I was following the captain,” he says. “Happy to stay on your line.”
“Don’t ever say that in the locker room.”
“God, no,” he agrees, mock-horrified. “They’d never let me forget it.” He kisses my hairline, then my temple, then just…rests, like he could live in the afterglow without asking it to be anything else.
The calm that settles is fragile and new and mine. I catalog it like vitals: shoulders down, jaw unclenched, breath even. The fear isn’t gone, but it’s not driving; it’s buckled in the back seat where it can grumble and be ignored.
“Do you want water?” he asks after a while. “Food? I can attempt toast. I can definitely order you the best soup this city can make in under thirty minutes.”
I shake my head against his chest. “Just—this,” I say. The word stretches to fit the moment: his arm around my waist, his breath in my hair, the way our legs are a loose knot under theduvet. I will myself to remember it later when the lights are too bright and someone uses my name like it’s theirs.
We lie there long enough for the rain to change pitch again. I watch the streetlight smear across the ceiling and think about names we haven’t said out loud. About paint chips. About the ocean of decisions ahead. The thought should make me dizzy. Instead it’s a horizon line I can hold without listing.
Somewhere in the apartment, a phone hums.
