One eye struggled to open but failed. “I kinda do, actually.”
“What, like Lightm4st3r or something?” Audrey snorted. “Surely not.”
Theo’s eyes flew open at the name.
“L-Lightm4st3r?!What about Li—”
He froze.
His fingers had stilled right as his thumb grazed across her nipple, which rapidly pebbled beneath his touch.
He’d finally realized where his hand was.
Theo gasped and yanked it out from beneath her shirt as if her skin had burned him.
And then his eyes went wide when he felt what was pressing into her back.
“OH MY GOD I’M SO SORRY!” he cried, throwing himself away from her and scrambling backward. His hand slipped off the edge of the bed and he lost his balance, legs flailing and tangling in the sheets, and he fell to the floor with a densethump.
The bed shook with the weight of his fall.
“Theo!” Audrey cried, scrambling across the mattress after him. She dropped off the side of the bed and crouched, trying to find where his face might have been, but he’d already cocooned into the sheet. “Theo, are you all right?”
When he groaned, “How long was I fondling you?!” in response, she was able to locate his head. She tried to rip the sheet away, but he tugged it back over his face. All she could see was one tip of a flaming-red ear.
“You were fine, I didn’t mind!” she shouted, tugging again at the sheet.
“I’ve ruined everything!”
He gripped it even tighter, his chest fluttering rapidly beneath it as he panicked. So she did the only thing she could think of.
She flung her leg over his waist and straddled him before laying down on top of him, resting her whole weight on his chest.
Theo drew in a deep shuddering gasp and stilled. Audrey waited, burrowing her face into the curve of his neck and running a hand along the left side of his ribs and chest where she knew he had fewer scars. “Calm down,” she whispered. He still didn’t move, andshe was able to slip a hand around the sheet to lay it against his ear. His skin wasburning.
“Audrey,” he croaked, his voice strained. “I’m sorry. After what you told me last night, I wasn’t trying to make this sexual, I swear. I was trying to be good. I didn’t ask if I could do that, and I’m so sorry, I—”
“It’s fine.” She nuzzled harder into his neck. “I liked it. Myboyfriendgave me a sleepy little breast exam and I wasn’t going to stop him. Consider this me giving you my express consent going forward.”
“Oh.” Theo finally lowered the sheet from his face. It was beet red and thoroughly abashed. “Well, uh, I didn’t want to make any assumptions, and—”
Audrey leaned forward and kissed him slowly and deeply, drawing his bottom lip between her teeth.
She couldn’t help herself.
Too cute.
He was too cute.
Theo moaned, the noise he made rumbling deep in the back of his throat and sending molten heat straight to her core before he made a slightly strangled sound. “That’s not—you’re not helping things,” he gasped when she pulled away for air. He screwed his eyes shut and motioned toward his hips.
“Oh. Sorry.” It was her turn to blush. “Are you uncomfortable?” He nodded shortly, and she rolled off to the side, lamenting the loss of the warmth beneath her. The heated floor wasn’t freezing by any means, but it wasn’t Theo, either.
He turned and looked at her, his eyes wide. Even the right one seemed like it was open more than it usually was, though it was his pupils that were blown abnormally large. The swirling whiskey and amber-green tones in his irises were oddly thin, as if he were trying to drink in every little bit of her light through his gaze.
“I’m trying really hard not to do everything I’ve ever imagined wanting to do to you right now,” he murmured, his voice lower than usual. “And you’re making it extremely difficult for me, looking like that. Laying on me like that.Kissingme like that.” He shook his head before snaking an arm under her neck and drawing her close, planting a kiss on her temple. “Here I was, fantasizing and plotting grand things inside my head for your first time someday—if you want it to be with me—and now I’m ready to toss everything straight out the window and take you on the floor right here and right now. Please don’t let me.”
She huffed a laugh before resting a hand on his cheek. “I do want it to be you, Theo,” Audrey whispered, leaning in close. “And you won’t have to wait long, either. I promise.”
