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He kept smiling. He brought his free hand to the nape of her neck. In an obviously practiced movement, his thumb and forefinger dragged along the muscles on either side of her spine, unwinding a tension she hadn’t even realized was there.

Embarrassingly, her eyes rolled back without her consent, a tiny moan of approval clawing its way from the base of her throat. Aster chuckled, but it was a dark noise, devoid of the things one does in the light.

“Things like this,” Molly said, rolling her shoulders to indicate the magnificent way his hands melted her muscles. “Not memories. Echoes. Or reflexes. You’ve”—a shudder rolled down her spine—“touched me like this before.”

Aster spoke against the side of her neck, a distance he’d closed without her knowing it.

“I have,” he said. The momentary drag of his teeth against her flesh nearly hijacked Molly’s ability to breathe, held hostage by a violent thrum of anticipation. His lips replaced his teeth, pressing fleeting, featherlight kisses up the length of her neck.

Molly barely registered the sound of keys hitting the floor before he kissed her in earnest.

She arched into him, needing closer contact. When Aster groaned against her lips, it was a desperate, needy sound.

Molly ran a hand along his jaw, smooth and freshly shaven, before threading her fingers through his hair. She’d learned after one particularly indulgent date that she could make him shudder with a well-placed drag of her nails across his scalp. It was academic curiosity, really, that compelled her to test this thesis at every opportunity.

He rolled his hips to hers, a flint and steel of friction striking sparks to her very core. She pulled him tighter, desperate to memorize the taste of his mouth and the shape of his sighs. Every time they did this, it pushed her closer to a ledge of intimacy she knew she’d tumble over soon.

Irreparable drifted quietly through her mind, a reminder that with each passing day, it seemed less and less likely that her stymied medical team would suddenly unearth a breakthrough.

And if that was the case, what point was there in holding back? So the ledge she approached, tangled in his limbs and at the mercy of his mouth, had started to look like a tempting leap into the unknown.

Her chest heaved, struggling to draw proper breath as he began a new path of kisses down her neck, across her clavicle, and lower. Her blouse shifted, and Aster stilled. He exhaled a strangled sound at the sight of the lace bra she’d finally had the courage to pull from her drawers. His breath coasted across the curve of her breast, beneath the fabric of her blouse, and straight to the live wire of nerves between her legs.

“Fuck,” he murmured, resuming his worship of the skin at the edges of her blouse, shifting it further, stepping closer to the ledge.

Molly’s head fell back, body arching under the rapture of physical praise, skin turned to static in all the places Aster’s lips touched. Her eyes, half open, caught on the clock in the kitchen.

“Fuck,” she breathed with far less reverence than Aster, hands still clutching the sides of his crisp dress shirt. “Aster, the time.”

He paused, looking down at her with enormous black pools for eyes, crystalline blue nearly swallowed up by his pupils. He leaned into her ear and dropped several more tiny, fleeting kisses against the side of her neck before finally bending to pick up the keys.

“Fucking finally,” was Justine’s greeting as Molly stepped into Eli’s absurdly grand foyer, hand in hand with Aster. “PDA and all? We are so blessed.”

Without leaving the space of a blink to consider that greeting, Justine pulled Molly from Aster’s grasp and dragged her into a cavernous room. “Look who’s finally rejoined the social circuit!”

A round of cheers circled an enormous table in the center of the gargantuan space. The vaulted ceilings, echoey tiled floors, and wall of stained glass windows on one side of the room made Molly feel like she’d stepped inside some sort of cathedral. It was too grand and peculiar a space to exist inside any building, let alone someone’s home. The table alone looked carved from solid wood and probably weighed more than Aster’s car.

Might have cost more too.

In the center of that table, a litany of finger foods, drinks, glasses, and what looked like an enormous tray of Alannah’s kouignettes—a pastry Molly hadn’t known existed until Alannah spent an entire week perfecting her recipe and technique for an exam—called to Molly with hypnotic force. Even now, she still had a Pavlovian response to that barely caramelized pastry smell and wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

Justine breezed toward the table, pointing a finger between Alannah and Roy. “Now you two can quit moaning about being outnumbered. You missed us. I know you did.” She took the seat next to Alannah with a most unexpected smile. Molly required a moment to take it all in. Alannah and Roy—her best friends—sharing what appeared to be a genuinely friendly table with Justine, Bentley, and Eli—Aster’s best friends. Together, perhaps, they were all just . . . friends.

Eli and Roy hopped up at the same time. After a split-second standoff, Eli moved first, grabbing a wine bottle from in front of him. “About time, Graham. Have a drink, have a seat, and let’s have some fun.”

He thrust the bottle into her hands and led her to the seat across from Bentley, who leaned precariously back in his chair, two legs off the ground. The smoke from his cigarette twisted and swirled into the air above him.

“No upholstery left to ruin?” Molly asked. Of everyone here, he remained a relative stranger to her.

Eli answered as he sat. “No rugs, tapestries, or upholsteries in this room. It’s impervious to the nouveau riche. I thought the billiards table was safe, but the baize had to be replaced, so it lives elsewhere now.”

“Missed you,” Alannah said with a quick squeeze of Molly’s shoulders, having delivered her a pastry and a glass for her wine.

“You too,” Molly replied as if she hadn’t seen Alannah and Roy twice that week already. “How’d setup for slumber party at Grandma and Grandpa’s go?”

“Jessa was out of her mind with excitement.”

“Thomas was just along for the ride,” Roy added.