“Yeah?” I breathe.
“You’re fidgeting.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t realized I was moving my feet beneath the blankets, an anxious habit, but I force them to still. “Sorry.”
He makes a deep noise, somewhere between a sigh and a grunt, and my stomach tightens in response. I mean, really. Doesn’t he know he’s not allowed to make sounds like that? It takes effort to make my body remain motionless.
Blinking into the dark room, my eyes start to adjust, and I realize sleep is far out of my reach. I roll onto my back and listen for the sound of his steady breathing. I don’t hear it.
“Landon?” I try.
“Violet.”
“Are you asleep?”
“Clearly, no.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Bite my lip. Work up the nerve.
“I saw the way you looked at me when I came out of the bathroom,” I say, before I can stop myself.
I hear his short intake of breath, and I hold mine, awaiting his response while my heart does summersaults in my chest.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says. His words are slow. Carefully chosen. I don’t let them stop me.
“You do. You looked at me like you wanted me. Like you wanted to touch me.” His silence is deafening, but I push forward, the darkness giving me confidence daylight won’t allow. “I wish you had. I wish you would.”
“Violet,” he warns, but his voice is rougher now than before.
“Landon.” I flip onto my side to face him fully. He’s on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and I trace over his sharp features with my eyes before inching my body across the bed. I wait to see if he’ll move away. He doesn’t. “Say it then.”
“Say what?” he murmurs.
“Say that you don’t want to touch me,” I whisper. “Tell me you don’t want me to touch you.”
His eyes snap to mine, pupils inked, irises blazing. The dark look he’s giving me makes my stomach dip and my breathing speed up. It’s a life-altering sort of look, one I’m sure I’ll never get out of my head.
Hesitant, I reach out my hand, pressing it against his chest, but before I can inch it down, he catches it quickly under his palm. I freeze. For a moment, I think he’s going to tell me to stop. To move back to my side of the bed. To knock it out, shut it down, get a grip.
“Flip over,” he commands in a voice that rumbles through me, from my chest to my toes. I obey instantly, holding my breath in anticipation.
His warm body comes up behind me, strong arms pulling my back flush against his front. His longer limbs fit perfectly to mine. One of his hands splays across my hip, over my shorts, and the other slips beneath my head before his arm bands around my front, his forearm locking across my chest, fingers curling over my shoulder.
I press back against his hard muscle, his hot skin, wanting to be closer. Needing to be closer. Without warning, his head bends into the crook of my neck, his nose pressing against the skin beneath my ear, while the thumb on my hip dips beneath the waistband of my shorts. I gasp as it rubs slow circles across the sensitive skin of my hip bone at the same time his lips brush my neck, and I arch back against him with a pathetic-sounding whimper. My heart’s pounding in erratic rhythms inside my chest, and there’s a desperate ache in my abdomen that makes me wiggle my hips back toward his.
The circles stop. His hand tightens, holding me in place. His mouth disappears.
“Behave,” he murmurs against my ear, and his warm breath sends a shiver down my spine. My own breath comes out in a whoosh as the circles resume, and his mouth presses hot kisses against my neck, my ear, my shoulder. I try to be still as the hand on my hip moves beneath my shorts, fingertips trailing heat down my thigh before moving back across my hip, but I can’t stop the dramatic rise and fall of my chest as my breathing grows erratic. And when he teases me everywhere except the place I ache the most, the place I need him to touch more than anything, it’s impossible to remain motionless.
“Landon,” I breathe, giving up the effort to remain still and arching my back against him. I reach for his hand, hoping to guide it. “Please.”
And then, all at once, it stops. His heat disappears, along with his hands and his heartbeat, leaving me achy and wanting and desperately longing. I shoot up to find him sitting on the side of the bed, shoulders hunched, elbows braced against his knees, the hands that were moments ago leaving tingles across my skin now scrubbing down over his face.
“Landon?” I breathe. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“You. This. I want you…so fucking bad.”
His words make no sense, but I jump on them with an eagerness I’m not exactly proud of.
