The car’s too small for this silence, and my fucking rule is the loudest thing in it.
He looks up at the dark second-floor windows of his building, then back at me. “Okay then. So, I guess I’ll see you?—”
“Could I come up?” I blurt, bracing against the steering wheel.
“Ash, I?—”
His hesitation deflates the momentary confidence that rose up against my will, and I bury it under excuses.
“I don’t have to. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I?—”
“I was saying,” he says slowly, “if you come upstairs, I don’t think I have the kind of self-control your rule requires, and I—” He sighs, like he can’t believe what he’s saying or like he’s exhausted from holding back. “I don’t want to mess this up.”
I grip the steering wheel. “I made the rule because I didn’t want tonight to be only about wanting you.”
“And?”
I look at him, really look, at the flour on his shirt and the nervous tilt of his mouth and his place waiting above us with a locked door he’s willing to open.
“And now I know it isn’t.”
His breath catches.
So much for the rule.
I lean across the tiny console, slower than I want to, giving either of us every chance to stop me. Kael meets me halfway, one hand catching the front of my blazer, and the first press of his mouth quenches a thirst the wine only made stronger. Becausenow I know. I know how he laughs when we’re not hiking for our lives. I’ve seen his sweetness sand down a cooking class instructor’s stern direction. I’ve seen his joy at doing something new when there’s no desperate fear.
When Kael groans into my mouth, my self-control goes straight to hell.
I cup the back of his neck and kiss him deeper, crowded between the steering wheel, the gearshift, and the ridiculous glowing floorboards. His fingers slide into my hair, and the car becomes a dare no pair of adult men should attempt.
“I just want to give us a chance,” I say, still trying to defend my decision against my own brain.
“Yeah,” he says, tilting my chin up to nip at my neck.
“Like, we deserve that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“After everything we went through.”
“Ash.” He stops moving, and I look down to find him smiling. “Do you want to have sex? Because if you do, I’m going to need more space than this Micro Machine.”
I laugh, breathless and busted. “Yes.”
“Then come upstairs.”
He hurries us upward like he’s afraid one of us will come to our senses if we take the steps at a normal pace. His fingers stay hooked in mine as he tugs me up a narrow stairwell, and by the time we reach his door, I’m breathing hard for reasons that have nothing to do with the few flights.
He fumbles the key.
When the door opens, I barely get an impression of the apartment before Kael’s mouth is back on mine. There’s high windows and concrete floors, an impossible space for an artist in San Francisco.
My asshole brain supplies the math automatically. Alistair’s money.
Kael shoves my blazer off my shoulders, and the thought burns away.
Whatever paid for this place, nothing in it belongs to anyone but him. The apartment is clean with white walls, warm wood shelves, and a low couch that looks expensive in a way mine never will. Like taste instead of money. Track lights are aimed at an easel. Canvases lean three-deep along one wall, but even they’re arranged by size. Brushes stand bristle-up in glass jars by the sink. Drop cloths are folded. Paint tubes are capped.
