He lowers himself back down. Chest to chest, skin to skin, and the full-body contact drags a groan out of both of us. He's hard against my thigh. I can feel it through the denim, the thick line of him, and my body responds with a surge of heat that makes me rock up against him before I can think about it.
His hips shift. The friction is specific. Direct. Through two layers of denim, unmistakable, and the pressure of him against me hits exactly right and drags a sound out of my throat that I will deny making in any future context.
"Okay?" Ezra asks. His voice is rough. Wrecked. The composure that I thought was unbreakable has broken and what's underneath is raw and wanting and asking permission.
"Yes. Okay. Very okay."
He does it again. Not accidental this time — deliberate. A slow roll of his hips that grinds us together through our jeans, and I feel every inch of him, the length and the heat and the weight of his body holding me exactly where he wants me. My hands clench in the back of his waistband, pulling him tighter, and the friction builds into something rhythmic and desperate.
"Ezra — the jeans —"
"Yeah." He reaches between us. Unbuttons mine first, quick, efficient, his knuckles brushing against me and making my spine arch. Then his own. We strip the rest off without grace or patience, denim and cotton shoved down and kicked away, and when he presses back against me with nothing between us the difference is staggering. I can feel him. The heat and his cock and the way he throbs against me when I shift the angle. Skin on skin, the full length of him against the full length of me, and I understand now why he's been holding his breath for days.
"Better," he says. His voice has dropped into something barely human. "Much better."
He finds a rhythm. Slow at first, deliberate, controlled, the way he does everything. His hand grips my hip, adjusting the angle until we're lined up, and when he rolls forward the friction drags along the full length of me and my head drops back against the pillow and I stop thinking entirely.
It builds fast. Embarrassingly fast. I haven't been touched like this in months, maybe longer, and Ezra's body against mine is overwhelming in a way I wasn't prepared for. The heat of him, the weight, the sounds he's making that are somewhere between human and not. His mouth on my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat where he can feel my pulse hammering. My hands on his ass, pulling him into every thrust. His skin burning under my palms.
"Nico." My name in his mouth. Low and broken and reverent. "Nico, I —"
I come first. It hits me like a wave cresting, my whole body locking up, hips stuttering against his, the orgasm pulled out of me by the weight and the heat and his voice saying my name like it belongs to him. I bury the sound in his shoulder because the walls are thin and this is a Pinewood Inn and I have some remaining shred of dignity.
He follows seconds later — two more hard thrusts, his hand clenched in the pillow beside my head, a sound against my throat that's more growl than moan. His whole body shudders, and I feel the wet heat of it between us, soaking me, and I don't care. I hold him through it, my hands in his hair, his face pressed into my neck, both of us breathing like we ran something.
The HVAC hums. The ice machine cycles. Ezra's weight settles onto me. He's heavy, warm, his face in my neck, his breathing ragged against my skin.
We lie there. The ceiling is still popcorn textured. The art is still mass-produced. The room is still beige.
But it's not depressing anymore.
"Well," I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone less put-together. Someone better. "That happened."
"That happened," he agrees.
"In a Pinewood Inn."
"In a Pinewood Inn." He lifts his head. Looks down at himself. At me. At the situation. "We're a mess."
"We are."
"I tore my pants getting them off. Please tell me you have some spare in this room."
"I'm a man who packs for every contingency. I have spare everything." I gesture vaguely toward my suitcase. "Bottom compartment. The gray sweats."
He rolls off the bed, graceful, because apparently lion shifters don't do the awkward post-hookup shuffle the way humans do, and finds the suitcase. Pulls out the gray sweats. Cleans up with a hand towel from the bathroom and pulls on my pants. They're slightly too short on him and too loose in the waist and he looks better in them than I've ever looked in anything.
I change and clean up while he's in the bathroom. Boxers and a clean t-shirt. When he comes back, he looks at me standing by the bed in my underwear.
"Don't," I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"Your eyes said something."
"My eyes are not something I can control." He sits on the bed. "No regrets?"
"None."
