She tastes like every risk I’ve been too afraid to take, like hope I didn’t know I still had.
Her teeth catch my bottom lip—just a graze, just enough to make me groan—and then she pulls back just an inch. Her forehead rests against mine. Her breath is hitching, her chest rising and falling against my ribs.
“Leo,” she whispers. It’s not a protest. It’s not a “stop.” It’s just my name, sounding like a prayer in a room where I’d declared there were none.
“Yeah?” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. Because my brain has officially stopped functioning and all I can think about is the way she feels against me, the way she tastes, the wayI want to keep kissing her until the sun comes up and possibly after that, too.
Her eyes are dark, her pupils blown so wide that the hazel irises are just a thin ring. “That was…um…”
“Bold?”
“Ridiculous,” she finishes, but she’s grinning.
“You’re the one who told me to be more ridiculous. I’m just a dedicated student.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
She’s still holding my shirt, her fingers twisted in the fabric as if she’s afraid I’ll evaporate if she lets go. I’m still holding her face, my thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
“We should probably talk about this,” she murmurs, though she hasn’t moved an inch away.
“Probably.”
“You’re my boss.”
“I’m aware.”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“The worst,” I agree.
But I’m already kissing her again, and she’s already kissing me back, and somewhere in the rational part of my brain, I know this changes every single thing about my life. I know that tomorrow morning, when Emma wakes up and the sun is hitting the floorboards, the world is going to look different.
But for once, I just don’t care.
Chapter 17
ANNIE
My eyes flutter open, and for a terrifying, suspended second, the world doesn’t quite click into place.
The light is the first problem. It’s too bright, too expansive, pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows that definitely don’t look out onto the brick wall of my neighbor’s air-shaft. This is a bedroom, but it’s a grown-up bedroom. It’s a room that implies the owner has a retirement fund and knows how to use a French press. I am currently submerged in a bed so vast and comfortable that my twin mattress back at the apartment—the one that creaks every time I roll over like it’s giving up the ghost—is a distant, poverty-stricken memory. The sheets are soft. The thread count is high enough that I suspect it’s actually made of woven clouds.
The room is…nice. Cozy but organized. There’s a bookshelf packed with the heavy hitters—archaeology textbooks, philosophy books, dog-eared novels, and a collection of vinyl records that suggests he’s a man of very specific, very expensive tastes. A glass of water sits on the nightstand next to a silver watch and a framed photo: Leo and Emma at the park, caught in a mid-laugh explosion that makes my heart do a clumsy somersault.
Leo’s room.
Oh, god. This is Leo’s room.
I shift to sit up, and the sheet slides down my skin with a traitorous, silky glide. I am naked. Utterly, undeniably naked, wrapped in a white cocoon that smells like sandalwood, fresh detergent, and him.
I peer over the edge of the mattress. An empty condom wrapper and my bra are discarded on the floor, and the latter looks like a dejected beige ghost. It’s my “nun bra”—the one Cori says is a nude-colored, full-coverage monstrosity that I only bought because it was on sale and felt “sensible.” It has zero lace, zero personality, and exactly zero sex appeal. Of course! Of course, the one time I end up in a bed like this, I’m wearing a bra the exact color of oatmeal. I wasn’t planning on anyone seeing it, let alone a man who looks like he belongs on the cover of a moody academic magazine.
I try to piece together the trajectory of the night, but the memories are fuzzy around the edges, blurred by the wine into a series of snapshots. We were talking. About God and stardust and—what else?Love.We were talking about love. About whether it was real or just chemicals. About tragedy and magic and the price of admission.
And then, the talking just…stopped, and the kissing started. It wasn’t the tentative, “should we be doing this?” sort of kissing. It was a landslide. It was Leo picking me up—his hands solid and certain under my thighs—while I wrapped my legs around his waist and he’d carried me here, and then we were having sex.
