His eyes flick open, dark and conflicted. “Don’t—don’t make me promises.”
The words hit sharper than I expect.Promises. Like that’s the danger here, not the kissing, not the fact that he’s bent down to meet me in this sliver of night. It makes sense, though. Promises are permanent, public. Promises get you tied down, caught, and exposed. He’s not asking me to stop; he’s warning me not to make this bigger than it is.
I don’t argue. I don’t push. I just kiss him again, quick, enough to taste the warning on his lips and the want underneath.
When we finally pull apart again, he looks wrecked and steady all at once. Like a guy who’s held too tight for too long and just let something slip.
The air between us is thin. His breath stutters against my mouth, and mine shoves back in return. His fingers flex at the back of my neck, like he’s not sure if he wants to drag me closer or shove me away before this goes somewhere he can’t take back.
I don’t give him the choice. I press in close, my hand sliding under the hem of his shirt until my fingertips graze warm skin. The sound he makes is small but sharp, and it shoots straight through me, hardening my cock, making me jerk toward him.
A moan spills from his lips, and we kiss again, rougher now, teeth scraping, like we’re both trying to bite down on something unsayable. My hand at his waist tightens, memorizing the hard lines beneath cotton and denim. He’s solid everywhere, but there’s a tremor under it—as if he’s fighting himself as much as me.
His forehead drops to mine when we break again, both of us panting. “This is…” He swallows hard, eyes shut tight. “This is—we shouldn’t.”
“Then why are you still holding me?” My voice comes out low, ragged, a dare.
His grip tightens. That’s my answer.
My lips find the edge of his jaw. He tilts his head just enough that I can taste the salt of his skin.
I slide lower, kiss his throat, and his breath catches. His free hand fists at my shoulder, not pushing me back, not pulling me closer, just caught.
And it’s there—right there—that the thought claws through me:I could keep going. Sink lower. Kneel. Take this all the way.The idea burns hot and reckless, a fuse already lit.
I pull back just enough to meet his eyes. They’re dark, stormy, undone. His lips part like he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out.
The space between us is charged and so fucking dangerous. We’re a single breath away from breaking open.
The room feels too small for the heat between us. I notice it first in the way the air hums—like summer powerlines—then in the way the walls seem to inch closer, as if they’re watching for the moment one of us breaks. It could be the lamplight, it could be the cheap AC doing nothing, but the truth is simpler: I’m burning from the inside out, and Ollie is the match.
I don’t let myself think anymore. Thought is where I’ve always lost him, where I’ve told myself the rules, the reasons, the tight little speeches about good sense and not ruining a life that isn’t mine to ruin. If I let sense speak now, I’ll be silent again for years. So I let gravity do what it’s been trying to do to me since the first time I saw him and imagined a hundred impossible futures.
My knees hit the floor. The sound is too loud in this small room, a clean clap that ricochets up my spine. Pain blooms, sharp and bright, and I welcome it because it makes me certain this is real. I’m not dreaming. I’m here, the breath moving in and out of me like I earned it.
“I want to taste you,” I say before I can tuck the truth away. My voice comes out heavy and deep; there’s a scrape in it. I’m not performing—God, I couldn’t perform if I tried. This is me with the lid off. “I want to see you come undone.”
Above me, he’s still, and… not. His body reads like sheet music I’ve been dying to play: the set of his shoulders, tight and squared; the tense lock of his jaw; the faint tremor that runs through his thighs as if every muscle is arguing with the next. “Ra-fe—” The word breaks. That warning note fractures on my name as if the syllable is too sharp to hold.
He could step back. He could sit down and bury his face in his hands and give me a speech about what we are and what we aren’t, about closed doors and how safe the dark is if you never reach for the handle. He’s good at speeches on the court, for the press, no doubt the careful ones he’s practiced in his head. But he doesn’t move. He stands there like a cliff I’ve decided to dive from, his hands fisted at his sides, his eyes bright in a way I’ve only ever seen when he thinks no one is looking. I’ve spent too many hours looking in just a few short weeks.
My palms find him—through denim, through the stubborn layers of his life—and I hold on. The heat of him seeps into my hands until I’m sure I’ll bruise from wanting. “You don’t have to hide from me,” I tell him. I don’t mean it as a sermon. I mean… keep standing. Keep breathing. Keep letting me be here.
He swallows hard enough for me to see the movement in his throat. I feel something loosen at the sight. He’s human. He’s not a wall or a rumor or a measurement of everything I’ve been yearning for. He’s a man, shivering with his own storm.
I tilt my head back and look up from the floor. From here, I can’t pretend about power. There’s no angle to fake this from. He can see everything: my hunger, the wobble in my breath, the way I’m not asking for permission so much as begging for a chance to earn it. There’s a sliver of fear in me—pure, thin fear that I’vemistaken a look or a moment or a kindness for an invitation. I carry that fear like a stone in my mouth and choose not to swallow.
“Let me—” I start, but the words tangle, so I try again. “Let me show you how good and right this can be.” It’s not a tactic. It’s not meant to be beautiful. It’s simply the truth, and I say it like an offering.
He looks at me as if the ground is shifting. He looks like someone listening for their name in a language they’ve refused to learn. Then something in him creaks—like a door easing on ancient hinges—and his hand comes down.
It isn’t tentative. His fingers slide into my hair with a fierce, shaky certainty that makes black fireworks go off behind my eyes. The pressure at my scalp steadies me more than anything else could. There’s a kind of claim in it, and I hate that the word spins me open, but I’ve been waiting too long to pretend otherwise.
Claim me. Please.
“Rafe,” he says again, but it’s not a warning now. It’s the sound a man makes when he’s done out-arguing his body.
I undo his jeans with unsteady hands, nerves and desperation threatening to unravel me. One flick of my eyes up to his and I wrap my fingers around his cock. His breath stutters, eyes widening as his lips part.
