I nod frantically, my hands sliding back into his hair, pulling him closer instead of answering with words. The movement breaks him.
His mouth crashes back to mine, hungry and unrestrained now.
My legs feel weak. My whole body hums, oversensitive and alive in a way I haven’t felt in years. I’m painfully aware of how flushed I must look, how breathless, how undone.
This is not who I am.
Except… maybe it is.
Jesse’s body presses closer, and I forget everything else. The fire, the cabin, the men down the hall, the careful life I’ve built around myself.
There’s only this.
Heat.
Want.
The very real knowledge that I’m about to cross a line I can’t uncross.
And then…
A floorboard creaks with a step.
My eyes fly open. Jesse freezes. Time snaps back into place with brutal clarity.
Marshall stands at the end of the hallway.
Hat in his hand. Shoulders squared. Expression stoic but sharp enough to cut. His gaze takes everything in at once.
The way Jesse is still too close, the way my hands are still gripping his shirt, the way my lips are swollen and my breath is embarrassingly uneven.
The silence is deafening.
“Oh shit,” I gasp, horror flooding in.
Heat drains from my body so fast it’s dizzying. My face burns. My chest tightens.
Jesse steps back instantly, hands lifting like he’s been caught doing something illegal. “Marshall?—”
“I was checkin’ the perimeter,” Marshall says evenly. Too evenly. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Interrupt.
The word lands like a slap.
Shame crashes over me, hot and merciless, magnified by the fact that my body is still very much aware of Jesse standing there.
Of what we were doing. Of how far gone I felt seconds ago.
“I… I’m sorry,” I blurt, mortified beyond reason.
I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for.
Wanting.
Being seen wanting.
This is exactly the kind of situation I never get myself into.
