“Stay,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The second time, she rolled on top of him and pinned his wrists above his head.
“My turn,” she said.
He let her take control, watching her move above him in the lamplight, her hair falling around her face, her lips parted. When she leaned down and whispered, “You feel even better this time,” against his ear, he nearly lost it right there.
She rode him slowly at first, then faster, until he grabbed her hips and drove up into her, and she cried out and collapsed against his chest.
Afterward, they lay tangled, her head on his shoulder, his hand tracing lazy circles on her back.
“We should’ve done this at Ashford,” she murmured.
He laughed. “We weren’t ready.”
“We were idiots.”
“That too.”
The third time, he woke her at three in the morning with his mouth on her shoulder, on that freckle. She turned in his arms, still half-asleep, and pulled him over her without a word. It was slow and quiet and felt like a promise neither of them had said out loud yet.
At some point, they slept.
Gabriel woke to the first gray light of dawn with Tessa curled against him, her breath warm on his chest, her palm resting over his heart. The sheets were a disaster. One pillow had ended up across the room. He had no idea where his boxers had gone.
He lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling.
Something had shifted. He’d been falling for her since he was a teenager, probably before that, and he was done letting fear decide what he did with his heart. She’d been the one who got away because he’d let her get away, and he wasn’t making that mistake twice.
His arm tightened around her. She murmured in her sleep and pressed closer.
The city hummed fourteen floors below. Tessa’s breathing matched its rhythm, steady as a promise he hadn’t earned yet but was going to spend the rest of his life keeping.
Chapter 12
TESSA
Tessa woketo sunlight and the unfamiliar weight of an arm across her waist.
For three seconds, she didn’t know where she was. The faint hum of traffic sounded wrong, too muffled, too far below. Her apartment was a fourth-floor walk-up in Park Slope. This ceiling was at least twelve feet high.
Gabriel’s ceiling.
Gabriel’s bed.
Gabriel’s arm, heavy and warm, pinning her in place like he was afraid she’d bolt in the night.
Three times. She was absolutely counting.
Her body ached in places she had forgotten could ache. The good kind.
Gabriel shifted behind her and pulled her closer. His breath was warm against her shoulder, slow and even. He was still asleep.
She should get up. Shower. Find her dress wherever it had ended up. Her phone was probably dead, and she had a meeting with a vendor at two, and she hadn’t checked her email since yesterday afternoon, and?—
His palm moved. Slid up her stomach. Cupped her breast like it belonged there.
