His voice was quiet. Steady. But his eyes were dark, and I could see the way his chest was moving—faster now, the fabric of his t-shirt rising and falling. And lower. The grey sweats doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that this conversation was landing exactly where he wanted it to.
I watched him get hard. Watched the shape of him press against the cotton. My mouth went dry.
"You're getting hard," I said.
His gaze intensified. "Yeah."
"From me just talking to you."
"From you looking at me like that." A beat. His hand moved to his dick and he rubbed it. "You make me feel—" He moaned gently. "You make me feel like I don't have to hold everything together."
That cracked something open in my chest. Because that was the thing about Alex. The thing underneath the composure and the risk calculations and the Harrington armor. He was so fucking tired of holding it all together. And here, in this room, with the door locked and the city humming outside and nobody coming—he could let go.
"Come here," I said.
He sat next to me on the edge of my bed.
Close. His knee touching my thigh. His face level with mine. The lamp on the nightstand casting warm light across the left side of his face, the right side in shadow.
I put my hand on the back of his neck. Fingers curling into the hair at his nape. He closed his eyes. Leaned into it like a person who'd been waiting all day to be touched.
"We should probably sleep," he said.
"Probably."
"We have a race tomorrow."
"I'm aware."
"Hale would kill us."
"Hale would have to find out first."
His mouth twitched. "You're a bad influence."
"You love it."
His eyes opened. Blue. Clear. Holding mine with the intensity that made my chest crack open and my brain go quiet and every carefully constructed wall I'd ever built feel like paper.
"Yeah," he said. Soft. "I do."
He kissed me.
Not desperate. Not the frantic collision of mouths we'd had in dorm rooms and closets. This was slow. Deliberate. His lips finding mine with the precision he brought to everything—the same careful attention he gave to his catches, his drives, his perfect recoveries.
I pulled him closer. My hand on his neck, his hand on my chest—flat, fingers spread, feeling my heartbeat. Reading me.
"Liam." Against my mouth. My name like a question and an answer at the same time.
I pulled his shirt over his head. He let me. Raised his arms, the fabric clearing his face, his hair falling messy across his forehead. The lamplight on his skin—the definition in his shoulders, his chest, all the lean muscle.
He pulled my shirt off. His hands on my ribs. Tracing the lines of muscle with his fingers, following a body he already knew by touch but was learning again.
I leaned back on the bed. He followed. His weight settling over me—chest to chest, hip to hip. The pressure of him grounding and electric at the same time. His mouth on my neck. The spot below my ear that made my hips jerk.
"There," I said.
"Here?" His mouth on the spot again. Teeth scraping.
