Page 59 of Reckless

Those three words hit hard.

Deeper than the kiss.

Because they mean I wasn’t imagining it. Every look, every almost, every moment that felt like the ground shifted beneath us, she felt it too.

My thumb brushes slowly along her side beneath her shirt’s hem before I stop myself, searching her face instead of assuming. She answers by closing the distance herself, and hesitation disappears.

My fingers slip just far enough beneath the fabric to feel the warmth of her skin, and the shiver that runs through her makes my pulse kick harder. Her hands find the bottom of my T-shirt at the same time mine settle against hers, and for a heartbeat, we look at each other, smiling as if neither of us can quite believe we’ve finally crossed the line we’ve been circling for months.

“Still with me?” she whispers.

I smile, resting my forehead against hers. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

Her breath catches, her eyes softening in a way that almost undoes me, and when our mouths find each other again, the kiss is slower, now that neither of us has anything left to fight. Every kiss only makes the next one harder to stop.

Then the stairs creak.

I hear it before Sage does, and my head snaps toward the hallway. “Fuck, Pipe—” The rest of her name never leaves my mouth. I push off the sofa so fast I nearly catch my boot on the coffee table, straightening my shirt on instinct while reaching down to snatch my cut off the sofa. My pulse is still trying to beat its way out of my chest as I drag leather over one shoulder, every part of me suddenly remembering exactly where we are.

Sage blinks up at me, still dazed from the kiss. Then her head snaps toward the stairs, clearly hearing the footsteps. Understanding flashes across her face, followed almost immediately by a quiet laugh. Just loud enough to tell me she’s thoroughly enjoying the fact that, for once, I’m the one who’s been caught off guard.

“You okay there?” she murmurs, trying and failing to hide her smile.

“I was,” I say, subtly rearranging my cock in my jeans.

She laughs again, softer this time, tugging the hem of her shirt back into place before running both hands through her hair in a half-hearted attempt to make it look like I hadn’t just spent the last several minutes kissing the life out of her.

It doesn’t work.

She still looks thoroughly kissed.

The smile she gives me this time is smaller, then she stands and turns toward the kitchen. “I’ll make coffee,” she says, clearing her throat as she reaches for the pot, probably for something to do with her hands, and because if she keeps looking at me, we’re both going to forget someone is walking downstairs.

I drag a hand over the back of my neck, take one unnecessary breath, then another, and force myself back into the chair I’d abandoned ten minutes ago. The laptop is still open where I’d left it, spreadsheets waiting patiently for my attention like the last ten minutes never happened. My heartbeat disagrees.

Piper wanders into the kitchen a second later wearing oversized sleep shorts and one of Sage’s old college hoodies, her hair pointing in three different directions. She heads straight for the refrigerator with all the determination of someone operating entirely on autopilot. She doesn’t even look at us.

I watch her open the refrigerator, stare into it, close it again, and open it a second time. “I swear…” she mumbles, still half asleep, “… I was looking for something.”

Sage’s shoulders shake as she tries not to laugh while filling the coffee pot, and I keep my eyes on the spreadsheet. It’s safer that way. Much, much safer.

Piper pours herself a glass of water and leans against the counter, signing to me slower than usual. She hasn’t been awake long enough for her hands to catch up with her brain yet.

Sage laughs and signs something back. I catch about half of it, my ASL still new enough that I have to work for it, something about the television and someone named Colin from Accounts and a show Piper is convinced Sage hasn’t been keeping up with.

Piper glances my way and signs slower, giving me the chance to follow. ‘You’re here late.’

I sign back. ‘Working.’

She gives me a look that suggests she doesn’t believe that for a second, then shrugs and heads back toward the stairs with her water glass, throwing one more sign over her shoulder that I don’t catch fast enough, and Sage doesn’t bother translating.

The apartment goes quiet again.

I focus back on my laptop and go back to the spreadsheet as if nothing happened. Sage sits back down across from me with her coffee, and we work for another hour in the same silence we had before, except it isn’t the same at all. Every time I glance up, she’s already looking somewhere else. Every time she glances up, so am I. When I finally close the laptop, it’s well past two in the morning.

Neither of us comments that, somewhere over the last hour, the reports stopped getting much attention. Sage gathers the papers into something that vaguely resembles a pile while I slide the laptop into my backpack, and by the time I’ve slung it over one shoulder, she’s already walking me to the front door and opens it.

I stop on the mat and turn back toward her.