So I watched the floor numbers instead and tried to remember how to stand normally.
“Soren,” he said finally, and my name came out rough enough to send heat straight through me.
“Yeah?”
He turned to look at me, and the expression on his face was complicated — want and confusion and conflict all sitting on top of each other in ways that made my chest pull tight. “I need to tell you a thing, and I don't know how to say it without sounding like I've lost my mind.”
“Try me.”
“I've dated women my whole life. Been attracted to women in ways that made sense and felt normal and never questioned it once.” He said it like a confession, and I felt my stomach drop all the way to the lobby.
“Okay.” I kept my voice carefully neutral even though hearing him say that out loud hurt more than it had any right to at this point. “That's — I mean, I know that, Rook. You don't have to?—”
“But I can't stop thinking about you.” The words came out in a rush, like he'd been holding them back for too long and the pressure had finally won. “I can't stop thinking about that kiss in the club. About how your mouth felt against mine. About how I've spent the past week trying to convince myself it was just the heat of the moment or the alcohol or anything other than what it was.”
My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. “What was it actually?”
“Me wanting you so badly I can barely fucking think straight.” He laughed, but the sound was strained and a little wrecked. “No pun intended. And I don't know what that means about me or my sexuality or anything else, but I know I can't keep pretending I don't want to kiss you again.”
I should have said it was a bad idea. But all I could think about was the way he was looking at me and my mouth made its own decision.
“So kiss me,” I said, and the challenge in my voice was deliberate. “If you want to so badly, then do it.”
For a second I thought he wouldn't. Then he moved, closing the gap between us in one decisive step and kissing me like he'd been storing it up for a week and had run completely out of room.
His mouth was demanding and desperate and warm, tongue sliding against mine with a hunger that made my knees go genuinely unreliable. I grabbed the front of his shirt to keep myself vertical, fingers twisting into the fabric, and he made a noise low in his throat that went straight through me.
He turned us without breaking contact and my back hit the elevator wall and I felt it in my whole spine, the solidity of it, the fact that there was nowhere to go and he was right there. One of his hands braced against the mirrored surface beside my head and the other gripped my hip hard enough that I felt it through my jeans, and the kiss deepened into frantic and a little desperate, both of us trying to say something through it that we hadn't figured out how to say with words yet.
I could feel how hard he was getting pressed against my thigh.
“Fuck,” he breathed, pulling back just far enough to look at me, and his eyes were dark and a little dazed in ways I wanted to memorize. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
“Nothing you're not doing to yourself.” My voice came out shakier than I'd meant. “Rook, you don't have to — if this is curiosity or experimentation or?—”
“It's not.” He cut me off cleanly, and the certainty in his voice was enough to shut down every backup argument I'd been queuing. “I want you, Soren. I've wanted you since I found you again, and I'm done pretending I don't.”
Then he kissed me again before I could say anything back, which was probably smart on his part because what I'd been about to say was embarrassingly close tothen take whatever you wantand I had at least a shred of dignity left.
His hand moved from my hip to my ribs, pressing flat against my side through my shirt, and I felt the heat of his palm like it was going straight through the fabric. He was bigger than me in a way I'd always known intellectually but was now experiencing in specific and unhelpful detail — broad shoulders blocking the rest of the elevator out, the wall of his chest against mine when he pressed in close — and the instinct to dig my hands into him was so strong I stopped fighting it.
I got both hands under the hem of his jacket and gripped his sides through his shirt, feeling the shift of muscle when he moved. I dragged my hands up his back and felt him inhale sharply against my mouth.
“You have no idea,” he said, rough and quiet, and I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or himself.
“About what?”
He pulled back long enough to look at me, and there was something in his expression that made me want to hold very still. “How many times I told myself it was just old history. That standing next to you didn't mean anything. That whatever I was feeling was something I could put away and leave there.” His jaw was tight. “I couldn't.”
My hands tightened against his back without me deciding to do that. “Rook?—”
“I watched you perform tonight and I couldn't look at anything else.” He said it simply, like he was reporting a fact he'd already made peace with. “The whole set. I kept waiting for it to feel normal and it just didn't.”
“That's—” I stopped. Swallowed around the tightness in my throat. “You're very bad for my self-control, you know that?”
The corner of his mouth curved. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I pulled him back in before the conversation could do any more damage to my composure.
