“Shh,” he hisses, and the tips of his fingers land gently on my mouth. I freeze, and don’t allow myself to breathe.
Ellis’s body is all but pressed to mine in this tight little space. When he breathes, some amount of grazing occurs. That weird glowy liquid still dripping off him is all over my winter coat, and while I’m not upset about that per se, there are other reasons. I hope that’s just the knot of his towel pressed against my hip.
A deep voice calls out from the hallway as someone comes into the room. “Ellis? I’ll let you out if you stop singing along to the radio...oh, he left. Fucker didn’t even close the base door behind him.”
Ellis lets out a slow, suppressed breath that sounds like the ghost of a protest.
Through the narrow slits in the grate, I see the shape of another mutant in the doorway. He looks a lot like Ellis, but without wings or tail. He sets down a bag of takeout and pushes some of the control board keys, and I just barely manage to hold back my frustration when he pulls up a chair. He starts watching videos on his phone at full volume, leaning back and putting his clawed blue feet up on the panel.
Waiting as quietly as I can leaves a lot of room for thinking about just how close Ellis is. The bare amount of light isn’t really enough to see details, even when my eyes adjust. I can see the vague hint of a furrowed brow, the tension in his cheek as he tries to fit himself better in this space. He reaches past me, planting a hand on the wall just over my head, clearing up a sliver of space between our bodies.
I can tell he’s turning some kind of bolt on the wall behind me, but I can’t turn my head enough to see. His tensed bicep, shoulder, and pectoral take up almost the entire left half of my vision. A tender ache curls low from my middle.
Don’t think about biting his arm. Don’t.
While my heartrate is spiking with the anxiety of being discovered by one of the less friendly henchmen in the supervillain’s hideout, my body seems otherwise preoccupied. I don’t like what I’m learning about myself.
For several moments, I succeed at focusing on slowly breathing in and out as quietly as I can, until I feel something else pressing against me, a little harder with each passing moment. I take in a sharp breath, and Ellis stills.
That definitely was the towel knot before.
Looking up at him, he doesn’t meet my eyes, but he makes a face like he also wishes we were in different circumstances.
“Hold on, just let me—” he mutters, and a moment later, the textured panel my back is against shifts out of the way. I nearly fall backward, throwing my hands out to the sides to catch myself on the walls.
Slowly, I steady myself, and glimpse the pitch dark, narrow tunnel that he’s revealed.
“This vent leads out. You should be able to pop the filter out on the other side easy enough,” he offers quietly. I’m not really sure why I feel so disappointed all of a sudden. The moment that I thought would stretch on forever is over.
There’s a bit of a ledge I need to get up on, so I nod, and I put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself as he helps me up into the large vent. He does most of the lifting, his large handscupping my ass, digging in briefly before he sits me on the edge. It’s over too quickly for my liking.
“Don’t think you can sneak back in this way later,” he murmurs, brows drawing in together. Every word he says has a purposeful tone, like he knows no matter how clearly he says it, I’m not actually going to listen. “You can’t come back here.”
I swallow, all too aware of my tongue in my mouth, the damp between my legs, and the barely lit outline of his face. All of it just a little too close to me. I can feel the heat coming off his body at this distance.
I’m so achingly near him, I forget everything else.
“Or consider this: You could leave it open for me,” I whisper, a little breathier than I mean to, watching the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. It’s not on purpose. Not entirely. “And we—”
Ellis pulls my attention back to his eyes with a light touch under my chin.
My heart thuds in my chest. Everything slows down and narrows in on his knuckle, steering my gaze to his in this tiny, intimate space.
“Lacey,” he sighs, brushing a thumb against my cheek, tucking some of my hair behind my ear. “For real. I don’t want you to get hurt. I mean, at least ring the doorbell like a normal person, ok?”
I blink then, staring back at him: his golden eyes, his dark blue eyelashes, the way his floppy hair falls around his face.
I’m struck by how genuine and caring the concern in his expression feels, and I just want to bask in the warmth of it. I want to live in that feeling, to throw myself headfirst into howgood it is. It’s been so long since I felt this way, and I can feel the seconds of this moment trickling away like the last grains of sand in an hourglass.
I want to kiss him. I want it so badly that I don’t let myself think about whether I should.
In an act that couldn’t possibly have any future negative consequences, I wrap my arms around his neck, and I lean out of the vent, brushing my lips to his.
Nose to nose, Ellis blinks at me, and I nearly giggle out loud. Instead, I catch my teeth against his lower lip, dragging them against the softness of his skin as I pull it between mine, and release.
In another breath, he leans into me, deepening the kiss without hesitation. I thread my fingers through his hair, raking back that floppy bit that falls over his forehead in a consistently distracting way.
It’s a good kiss. And not just because I wanted to make it a good kiss—I think he has me beat there. He cups my face with both his hands and catches my lower lip between his teeth, worrying them gently and nipping me. His tail grazes up my leg from my ankle to my knee. It makes me pull back with a gasp. It’s a tentative, reverent caress, but the hope of it doing something more to me sends my cheeks scalding.
