I press in, mouth opening just enough to let him in all the way. He groans against me, low and raw, like he’s been starving and I’m the only thing that’s ever tasted right. His hands tighten at my waist, greedy now, like he’s making up for every second we’ve wasted dancingaround this.
“You’re impossible,” he mutters between kisses, pulling my bottom lip between his teeth. “You undo me.”
“Good,” I say, breathless, fisting the front of his shirt. “I was starting to think you’d never unravel.”
He laughs once, dark and low, and kisses me harder for it—less careful, more desperate, like he’s finally letting himself feel all the things he’s tried to bury beneath professionalism and protocol. I kiss him back with everything I’ve been holding in, every touch I couldn’t allow, every look I couldn’t linger on.
And in this moment—this breathless, rule-breaking moment—I don’t care about anything else.
Not the rules.
Not the timing.
Not even tomorrow.
Just his mouth on mine, his body flush against me, and the sharp, exquisite danger of getting everything I want.
Half an hour later, his palms are smoothing over my hair, trying to tame the wild mess of curls he’s been tugging at with reckless, desperate hands—again and again and again. Somewhere between kiss number seven and number I-lost-count, we both agreed we should probably stop if we wanted to look remotely human walking out of here.
“Turn around,” he murmurs.
I do.
Of course I do.
Because I love this side of him—composed, exacting, quietly sovereign over whatever world has been placed in front of him. He’s always carried control like a second spine. It’s there in the way he marks our papers in red, not carelessly but with surgical conviction; in the way his brow lifts, almost imperceptibly, when someone in seminar mistakes volume for intelligence; in the way disorder seems to offend him on a cellular level.
He hates mess.
Not chaos, though. That’s the contradiction. Mess irritates him. Chaos fascinates him.
A mislabeled data set can ruin his afternoon, but give him a cyclone—give him pressure systems collapsing into violence, give him wind with no manners and rain with teeth—and he leans closer. He wants to understand its shape. Its hunger. The exact point where pattern becomes destruction.
And then, because he is who he is, he tries to make even that obey a spreadsheet.
I feel the shift behind me—his fingers parting my hair into three even strands.
“Are you… braiding my hair?” I ask.
“Uh huh.”
“Where did you even learn to do that?” I glance at him over my shoulder, genuinely startled.
“Penny’s been asking for braids since she was four. Eventually I gave in.”
He ties off the braid with the elastic from my wrist casually. Like he hasn’t just made my chest ache with something unbearably simple.Then he pulls me gently into his lap, one arm slipping beneath my knees, easy as breath.
“Do you see her often?”
His knuckles trail absently along my shins, and my breath stumbles over itself.
“I see her once a week,” he says. “Stacy—my sister-in-law—and I have always been close. When Jacob passed, I started helping more. Penny keeps me in line now. Was furious I left for this trip.”
I smile, picturing it—this mini version of him, kind of, with a braid in her hair and a lecture on her lips.
“She’s lucky,” I say quietly. “To have you.”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m lucky. She reminds me so much of Jacob it’s hard sometimes. But it’s good. He didn’t get to stay, but he left her behind.”
