“Câlice.” I breath against her mouth. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She tastes like wine and want and everything I’ve been trying not to think about for ten days. I angle her head, deepening the kiss, and she responds by arching into me, her tongue stroking mine. Rational thoughts vanish.
My hand slides from her hip to her lower back, pulling her flush against me, and she gasps into my mouth. I swallow the sound, greedy for it, greedy for her. Her fingers find my hair, tugging slightly, and I groan—low and rough and completely beyond my control.
“Zayden.” My name comes out broken, breathless, and hearing it like that does something to me.
I’m already hard, straining against my suit pants, and when her body presses into mine, she makes this soft sound of surprise that turns into something hungrier. I’m hard—instantly, embarrassingly hard—and there’s no way she doesn’t feel it.
I should be embarrassed. Should pull back, apologize, give her space.
I don’t.
Because her hips roll forward—a tiny, instinctive movement—and the friction makes us both gasp. Her head falls back against the wall, exposing the long line of her throat, and I can’t resist. I drag my mouth down her jaw, her neck, finding that spot beneath her ear that makes her shiver.
“Zay—” Her voice is wrecked. Broken. The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
I groan against her mouth, something low and desperate, and I think I say her name but the rest comes out French, the accent I usually hide slipping loose because I can’t control anything right now, least of all myself.
My erection presses into her stomach, but she doesn’t retreat. She grinds against me, slow, just enough to make me groan.
“Tor.” I pull back just enough to look at her. Her lips are swollen, her eyes dark, her chest heaving. She looks wrecked in the best possible way. “That wasn’t a mistake,” I say.
She swallows hard. “No. It wasn’t.”
“I need—” I can’t finish. I press my forehead to hers, breath ragged, hands flexing on her hips. “Six years, Tori. Six years of nothing, and now I can’t think straight. Can’t sleep. Can’t look at you without wanting—” My voice breaks off. “Tell me this isn’t just me. Tell me I’m not losing my mind.”
Her hand comes up to rest against my chest, right over my heart. “It’s not just you,” she breathes.
I lean my forehead against hers, breathing her in. “You’re killing me, you know that?”
“I know.” Her hand comes up to rest against my chest, right over my heart. “Believe me, it’s killing me too.”
We stay like that for a long moment. Foreheads touching, breath mingling, the muffled sound of the party filtering through the walls. I want to stay here forever. I want to take her home. I want to do a lot of things that aren’t appropriate for a hallway at a team banquet.
Instead, I wait for my body to chill the hell out.
“We should go back,” she says finally.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
“Separately,” she adds.
“Yeah.”
Still not moving.
She laughs—quiet, shaky—and pulls back, straightening her dress, touching her hair like she can smooth away the evidence of what just happened.
“Five minutes,” she says. “You wait here. I’ll go first.”
“Tori.”
She pauses, hand on the door.
“This isn’t going away,” I tell her. “Whatever this is between us. Pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t working.”
