Then the nod. The same silent bargain I've seen a hundred times.
She goes to her desk—yeah, alright, she has more than a toothbrush at my place—and tears a sheet of paper from the stack. Then she starts writing like her life depends on it. Her hair falls forward, curtaining her face. She doesn't bother to push it back, so I do. I tuck a strand behind her ear, kiss the crown of her head, my palm on her shoulder.
She's gone again. That place she goes when the words take her. People out there buy her books, love her work, adore the storm she puts on paper—but they don't see this. Don't see how fragile she is when the stories come for her. She'd signed a deal with the other side, and when the ink starts to flow, she isn't mine anymore.
I hate that feeling.
When she finally drops the pen, she looks at me and smiles. And I smile back—the only woman who'd ever earned that from me without trying. Then she folds into my chest, and my ribs feel too small to hold the thing she makes me feel.
"Bed?" I ask.
"Balcony," she says.
A cigarette run. Probably the whole pack.
I pull on my grey sweatpants, skip the shirt—no sense walking all the way to the closet now. She wears my hoodie and nothing else, bare legs pale against the dark carpet. She doesn't care about the cold.
The balcony door opens to a knife of night air. Her bare feet touch the stone and she flinches. I scoop her up without thinking, settling her on my lap once we reach the chair. Barelegs over mine, my hoodie riding up just enough to show the edge of lace underneath. She doesn't fix it. I forget how to breathe.
It's second nature by now. I think it started back when we were still flirting—back when it could still be a game. Now it's just ours. She'd curl up, fold her legs over me, move without watching her balance—because she knows I'd never let her fall.
I reach into the mini fridge I'd had installed out here just for her, pull two beers. I light two cigarettes, pass her one.
God, I hate that she smokes. Every drag feels like another reminder that one day I might be standing in a hospital, deciding if I want to go on without her. I wouldn't. The answer's always going to be no.
I push her hair back again, fingers lingering at her neck longer than necessary—skin cold from the air, pulse rabbit-fast under my thumb. My thumb brushes the side of her throat, feeling her pulse jump. She tilts her head just enough to give me more skin.
Neither of us acknowledges it.
We sit like that for a while—her sideways on my lap, smoking, drinking, the city lights blurred below us.
Then she shifts.
Not just a small adjustment—she moves, swinging her other leg over mine, and suddenly she's straddling my lap. Facing me. Shit.
My hands go to her hips on instinct, steadying her. My brain short-circuits.
"Babe," I manage, voice rough. "Not like this. You know—"
My dick is already getting hard under her. Traitor. She must feel it pressing against her through my sweatpants.
"Oh, come on," she says, settling her weight fully onto me like it's nothing. Like she's not sitting directly on my cock with only two thin layers of fabric between us. "I know your dick by heart. It's fine."
It's not fine. Nothing about this is fine. And fuck, it's more than fine.
She adjusts, getting comfortable, and I feel every movement like a brand.
Her thighs bracket mine, heat seeping through lace and cotton. I grip harder, fighting the urge to flip her under me and finally take what's been mine for seventeen years.
I grip her hips tighter, knuckles white, trying to keep her still. Trying to keep myself from doing something we can't take back.
"Alena—"
She takes a drag of her cigarette, exhales smoke to the side, casual as anything. "What? I'm just sitting."
Just sitting. Right on my hard cock. In nothing but my hoodie and black lace panties. On my lap. Facing me.
I close my eyes. Count backwards from a thousand. It doesn't help.
