Tolrek turned back toward me, the distance between us maybe ten feet. The gym was small, and we’d been closer than this moments ago when I’d risen from the bench and walked over to him.
Ten feet felt like miles.
He crossed the space, and I tracked each step. The sequence was already visible. I knew where it would end. No question this time. This wasn’t the corridor or the stairwell, where we’d both pretended surprise. Where we’d been interrupted. This was both of us knowing exactly what we were doing.
I stayed where I was. This was an active choice. I could’ve walked to the door and left or stepped back or done any of the dozen things that would’ve signaled this was a mistake. I did none of them.
He stopped in front of me. A towel lay around his neck, white against the green of his skin. He didn’t reach for me. Just looked at me like I was the only thing in the room.
The safety of invisibility wasn’t available to me anymore, and I didn’t want it back.
His hand came up. One hand, slow enough that I could follow it. His palm found my jaw like it had outside my apartment, his fingers settling against the pulse point in my throat.
My heart kicked hard against his touch. There was no hiding the response this male drew from me every single time.
The warmth of his hand registered before anything else. The gym was cool, the air conditioning working overtime in a space that probably didn’t see much use this late.
He leaned down.
This kiss was different from the others, without urgency. He had time and he was using it, his mouth moving over mine with the kind of intention that made my knees weak.
I understood the difference between someone taking something and someone offering it.
This was an offering.
My hands found his chest. His shirt was still damp from his workout, the fabric clinging to muscles I could feel even through the material. He made a sound low in his throat when I touched him, between a growl and a groan that I felt more than heard.
He drew back enough to look at me again.
After studying my face, he took my hand, his so much larger than mine. He led me a few steps to the weight bench along one side of the room, and I followed without questioning where we were going or what would happen when we got there.
He sat first, straddling the bench to face me. Then both hands came to my waist, the span of them nearly meeting at my sides. Every other large male I’d known had used size as authority, a way of establishing hierarchy without words. Tolrek had arranged himself so I was at his level while standing, so I could see his expression and he could see mine.
He made me feel like he was holding something he considered valuable, and I’d spent so many years being invisiblein this world that his attention, turned on me like this, made my chest tighten.
He guided me down to straddle the bench facing him, his hands steady on my waist until I was settled.
We were close enough that I could see the scar above his left eyebrow. The chip in his left tusk. Details I’d noticed in the corridor weeks ago, the first time I’d really looked at him. I knew his face the way I knew footage I’d reviewed a hundred times, but this was different. This was being allowed to look without pretending I wasn’t.
I’d come to this gym because I couldn’t let him sit alone with what the game had cost him. His pain felt like mine, and that was the line I’d told myself I wouldn’t cross.
I crossed it now, and I wasn’t stepping back.
He kissed me again, his hands moving from my waist into my hair.
My hands found his chest again, my fingers spreading across the damp fabric of his shirt. His heart beat hard enough that I could feel it through my palms.
He pulled back to glance down at me.
Three weeks ago this would’ve been harder. I would’ve dropped my eyes or deflected or found some way to create distance without physically moving. I’d spent years building that particular skill, the art of being present without being seen.
He remained completely still, the way large males rarely were. It read as full attention. He’d been still like this before. In front of my door. While standing in my office doorway. And at the park with Beau. Always choosing presence over motion.
This was who he was, and I was falling in love with him.
I wasn’t working toward it. It was simply there, already finished, the way some things arrived without warning. This wasn’t only want because I couldn’t locate where the want ended and the rest began. They were tangled too tightly together.
I didn’t know how to hold this alongside everything else, though. My father didn’t know. I had a good job, one people would almost kill for. The season was just starting, and the team was watching. I didn’t have a plan, and I’d spent my life making plans because not having one meant living with chaos.
