He thrusts into me. I grip the sheets, bracing myself. I meet my hips up to meet his over and over again. He kisses me as I moan. He feels so good against me. His muscles flex under my palm. There’s no universe where I thought this would ever happen. That Stanleythe cupErmington would be this close to me, this close to making me lose myself completely, and making me feel this alive. He kisses me sweetly, caressing my face and looking directly in my eyes.
“I’m ––” He pulls out all at once, breath wrecked, keeping his word even though a piece of me wish he wouldn’t. “That’sit, that’s me, I’m so sorry, oh my god—” His face goes red and stricken and apologetic, and it’s so sweet I want to kiss him.
And then he’s moving down my body.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He settles low and looks up at me through the dark, and there’s nothing shy left in him now.
“Making sure you get there too.” He looks into my eyes. “Did you come?”
I hesitate but shake my head.
“Then we’re not done.” His eyes go dark, traveling over me. “Do you trust me, Aspen?”
I don’t even have to think. I nod.
His mouth finds me, and my back arches up off the bed, and the very last thread of the fear I’ve been holding for so long finally, finally lets go.
I didn’t know that the feel of his wet, warm mouth would undo me completely. It takes less than two minutes. All the blood leaves my head, leaving my vision to crumble. He pumps his finger inside of me, and that’s all it takes. I’m seeing white floating above me as I moan and cry out to him, gripping his hair. He moans against me, and his hot breath makes my body shudder. I’m literally shaking like jelly underneath him.
When the high starts falling, I sit up on my elbows and ask, “Did you come?”
He leans up and shows me the overflowing condom. He pulls it off and looks at me. “That was so hot.”
I flush, watching him look around for a trash can. He walks back to the bed and wraps me in his arms. I hold onto him and wait for the drop.
I know the drop. The cooling. The distance arriving like the sun does through the clouds. It’s going to come eventually. He kisses the top of my head and pulls me closer. My heart races, waiting. I wait two minutes, then five, then ten. It doesn’t come.
He just stays, one hand drifting slowly up and down my spine like he isn’t even thinking about it, his heartbeat under my ear, mumbling something about how he’s definitely going back down tomorrow to apologize to Channing and order the branzino like a grown man — and it’s nonsense, sleepy, ridiculous, golden nonsense, and it’s the least lonely sound I’ve ever heard.
I did the thing I swore I would never do again. Eyes open. On purpose. With my own two hands.
And the sky hasn’t fallen.
Chapter 31
Stanley
I wake up before the alarm with Aspen Linwood asleep on my arm, and I lie there a long time not moving, because moving means the night will be over, and I’m not ready for it.
She didn’t bolt. That’s the first fact of the morning, the one I keep turning over like a coin. She’s here. Hair everywhere, one hand loose in the sheet, breathing slow, and somewhere in the dark last night, I kept a promise I’d have cut my own hand off before breaking, and she stayed. I keep waiting to feel like a guy who got away with something. I don’t. I just feel full, which is a strange word for it and the only one that fits.
She wakes slowly. There’s a second where she surfaces and finds me watching her. I see the old reflex flicker, and then it lets go.
“I have a panel at nine.”
“I have a thing at ten,” I reply.
Neither of us says the rest of it. She dresses and gathers her bag, and at the door she stops, comes back, kisses me once,quick, like she’s proving to herself she’s allowed to, and then she’s gone down the hall to her own life.
And I get into my suit.
The room’s a glass box on the third floor with a long table, a tray of pastries nobody’s going to touch, and more coffee. Marchetti’s already there, wearing the face he wears when there’s money in a room. Then there’s the rest of them. There’s Halvorsen, the scout who put my name on a card three Junes ago and has acted like he owns a piece of me ever since. A development guy named Russ with a lanyard and a tablet. The assistant GM — Whitfield, calm, old-money, the one who sets the temperature of the room.
Good suits. Good coffee. Warmth coming off all of them, because this isn’t an audition — they’re not deciding whether they want me, they did that years ago. They want me to feel wanted. They want me to feel at home.
And I do. That’s the snag right there. I know how to be in this room, thanks to my father and the family legacy. This is home.
