“About sleeping arrangements.” His voice cuts through my thoughts. “You take the bed.”
“I can take the couch?—”
“You take the bed.” No room for argument in his tone. “I’ll be out here.”
“That’s not necessary?—”
“It is.” He meets my eyes, and something electric passes between us. “Trust me, it’s necessary.”
He knows. He knows that if we share that bed, all his pragmatic analysis about want and chemistry will combust into something neither of us is ready for. Well, he’s probably ready. I’m definitely not brave enough for something more, no matter how much my body is begging for it.
“Goodnight, Talia.”
“It’s only seven-thirty.”
“Long day tomorrow. Get some sleep.”
I retreat to the bedroom, closing the door between us. The bed stretches out before me, too big, too empty. All I can thinkabout is him on the other side of that door. Lying on that couch. Maybe still hard. Maybe still thinking about me.
I press my fingers to my wrist where he held me during training, where faint marks still linger. Tomorrow we’ll pretend none of this happened. The wall. The shower. The way my name sounded when he came.
But tonight, I lie awake knowing he’s out there, just as awake as I am.
Both of us burning.
Both of us waiting.
Both of us pretending we don’t know exactly how this ends.
NINE
Jackson
SLEEPLESS
The couch is too short.My feet hang off the end, and the cushions smell like dust and old fabric softener. But that’s not why I can’t sleep.
It’s her.
In the bedroom, twenty feet away. Probably overthinking every word from our twenty-questions game. Every loaded look. The way I had her against that wall. Christ knows I can’t stop replaying it in my mind.
The training session was supposed to be practical. Show her basic defense moves. Keep it professional. Instead, I pinned her against that wall and nearly lost control. The way her body melted into mine, pupils blown wide, breath catching?—
I’ve had women against walls before. Anonymous encounters in dark corners of bars. Always the same script—my control, their pleasure, no reciprocation beyond what I allow. Touch without being touched. Release without risk. No names, no stories, no twenty fucking questions about dead siblings and Syria and fathers who died fighting fires. Just bodies and release and forgetting.
But Talia …
She got more out of me in an hour than anyone has in three years. Analyzing my responses like she’s defusing a bomb, finding all my triggers and trip wires. When I couldn’t answer about Syria, she didn’t push with sympathy or platitudes. Just accepted the wall and moved on.
Most people want to fix me or fuck me. She just wants to understand me.
That’s dangerous.
The shower didn’t help. Coming with her name on my lips, picturing her against that wall with less clothes, imagining those analytical eyes going dark with need—it just made things worse. Because she heard everything. The way she scrambled for that book, pretended to be reading, even though she held it upside down, and her cheeks were flushed. She knows exactly what I was doing in there.
It should have scared her, and she should have demanded I leave.
Instead, she looked at me like she wanted to be the reason for those sounds.
