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Which is... me.

And also the vibrator buried discreetly beneath the clothes still folded in my suitcase.

I wasn’t expecting to have to share a room with him when I came here, though maybe I should have. It wasn’t even remotely on my radar with everything else running through my head about this visit. If it had been, maybe I would’ve packed differently. More conservatively. But I didn’t. Because a girl has needs, and let’s be honest—I don’t travel without certain essentials.

It’s not like I thought I’d be using it with anyone else around. Definitely not with him in the same room. But here we are. Sharing a bed. After that kiss. And now it’s basically mocking me from the bottom of my bag.

Do I feel anxiety ridden slipping into the bathroom with it? Absolutely.

Do I do it anyway? Yes.

There’s no way I’m going to sleep without relieving some of this tension.

It’s clinical (except the part where I imagine Theo bruising my esophagus). Quick. A means to an end, because I need to clear my head before I wake up tomorrow and say something like “So about that kiss—do you wanna fuck now, oooorrrr?” at breakfast.

I lock the bathroom door behind me and sit on the edge of the tub, one hand braced against the cool tile as I press the other between my thighs, the tiny hum of the vibrator already a small mercy. I’m not in the mood to draw it out. I can’t afford to. Not when every cell in my body feels like it’s buzzing with unsaid, untouchable things.

I close my eyes, and he’s there. That ridiculous intense look he gives me when I say something intentionally infuriating just to get a rise out of him. The way his entire demeanor changes. His mouth—god, his mouth—when he looks at me like he already has me figured out.

I try not to imagine his hand where mine is now, but it’s impossible. My brain’s already gone off the rails.

And now I’m thinking about that same hand in my hair. About what it would feel like if he lost his restraint, held me there, fucked my face until he came down my throat.

It’s obscene. It’s glorious. I want it. Badly, shamefully, and I’d thank him for it after.

I let my head fall back against the wall, biting my lip to keep quiet. This is about not losing my grip, I remind myself. About focus. It’s not indulgence—it’s damage control. Emotional triage. Preventative care, basically. Whatever makes it sound less pathetic.

And still, when I come, it hits harder than I expect. A sharp, hot snap through my core that makes me press my wrist to my mouth just in case a sound sneaks out.

Once I’m finished, I clean it quickly. I’m afraid if I take too long, I’ll start thinking about what it means. About why I needed it so badly in the first place. After all, it was just a kiss. I rinse it under warm water, then I flick off the bathroom light, and pad back to bed.

I am apparently being less cautious about tiptoeing around in my post-orgasm haze, because after all that, Theo stirs at the sound of my footsteps. I nearly launch myself into orbit, whipping around and instinctively shoving the vibrator behind my back.

He squints at me through sleepy eyes, hair mussed, not fully here yet. God, he’s so hot. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I blurt, my voice doing this weird squeaky thing I immediately regret. I shift awkwardly, casually-as-humanly-possible sliding the vibrator into the waistband of my sweatpants. “You just scared me. I thought you were asleep.”

“I was,” he murmurs, “But I’m a little awake now.”

Great.

I nod like a normal person—not someone who’s hiding a sex toy and on the brink of spontaneous combustion—and shuffle back to the bed in slow motion.

He watches me intently, either not noticing the way I’ve gone rigid, or pretending not to. “Have you been having a nervous breakdown all day too?” he asks as he rolls toward me, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Unfortunately,” I pull the blankets tighter around me, a barrier against the avalanche of things we still don’t know. Or maybe against how close he suddenly is. Hard to say.

“I still can’t wrap my mind around any of it.” He’s more alert now, that deep focus flickering behind his eyes. “I’ve Googled an inordinate number of hyper-specific questions to try and figure out if there is any record of an orrery worth as much as what we’ve been told.”

“Yeah. I’ve been wondering the same thing. It’s completely bonkers.”

“Indeed,” he says, yawning.

“There’s probably no real way to know,” I yawn in return.

“It’s a thing of myth and legend.” He lazily brandishes a hand in the air.

I glance at him, my heartbeat finally calming and my mind finally somewhere other than on my throbbing clit.