Chapter 19: : Chapter 19

I can’t let you sleep on the floor.”

Theo looks over his shoulder from his crouched position. “What do you mean?” But his gaze drifts to the empty space next to me.

I’ve been pretending to busy myself with TikTok, reading and responding to comments from my videos. But so many of them are thirsty comments about Theo, and it just brings me back to him.

God, do I get it. If they could see him now, bent over the blanket he’s trying to smooth out in low-slung gym shorts and a shirt so threadbare the golden hue of his skin shows in diffused patches, that thirst would multiply. They’d be screaming at me to tell him to get in this bed. They’re already screaming at me to hook up with him, date him, fall in love with him.

I can’t do that. But there’s a lot of space between here and love where we could play.

“I can’t let you continue fucking up your body in good conscience. I felt bad about it last night, and tonight it’s extra absurd.”

He stands and turns, hands on his lean hips. “Why absurd?”

I give him a look. His tiny smirk reveals he knows exactly why. I can’t give what shifted between us today a name, but now it’s as emotional as it is physical. I crave both things with him.

Maybe he craves it, too. He picks his pillow up and pads over, pausing at the bed’s edge. He looms there, chin dipped toward his chest as our eyes lock.

“Are you sure?”

I let out a breath, pulling down the covers on his side. “Rarely, but about this, yes.”

I’m wearing the shorts he mistook as underwear the other night, and his gaze goes dark taking them in, just before the room goes dark when he turns off the lamp.

Sight is replaced by sound: The brush of his skin against the sheet as he slips into bed. The rustle of the covers when he pulls them over both of us. The squeak of the mattress springs adjusting to his weight. The damp parting of his lips and his soft inhale.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone I cared about in my bed, three years since my last relationship. Having Theo next to me, feeling the heat and weight of his body is unbearably intimate. That it’s , the boy who occupied so many of my thoughts a decade ago, the man who’s turning everything upside down now, makes the moment surreal. It’s so coincidental that I’m starting to think it can’t be anything but inevitable.

“Good night,” I whisper, lit up with awareness. I won’t sleep for hours.

He lets out a breath. “ ’Night.”

Even minutes later, my heart is beating too hard to close my eyes. It’s the same sensation I felt leaping into the water, that heady rush of adrenaline. But I have nowhere to expend it, so it just keeps pulsing through my veins in an endless cycle of anticipation.

I shift my head the barest inch to see if Theo’s asleep, only to find him looking at me, his eyes glittering in the darkness. The rush becomes a wave. I’m underwater again, but my scream’s caught in my throat. “What?”

“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “You.”

It’s the way he says it, stripped bare, that has me turning fully. I press my lips together, waiting for him to go on.

He does. “You said I didn’t have to sleep on the floor last night, but I stayed there because I wanted the alternative too much. Tonight, I told myself if you said it again, I’d ignore it like I did last night.”

“Why?”

“Because I want it too much,” he repeats. “And after Vegas, we modified the truce—”

“Yeah, well, I think the truce is broken.” We crossed a line earlier. Or maybe we stepped into a bubble where we aren’t who we were ten years ago. We aren’t even who we were two weeks ago. “I needed that earlier. The yelling with you, I mean. But I . . .”

“Tell me.”

“I’m nervous to say it,” I admit. Even that feels like too much.

“Tell me,” he repeats, softly this time. “You’re not doing it alone.”

“It made me need this, too.”

“What’s this?”

He’s pushing me, but the timbre of his voice is tight. It’s as if he already knows the answer, and it’s the same as his. “You, here in this bed. Us, letting whatever’s happening between us just . . . happen. We’re both in a place where we need that, don’t you think?”

His voice drops low, singing down my spine. “You know why I’d need it. Besides the physical attraction, why do you?”

“Too many reasons to count,” I say, and he breathes out a laugh. I close my eyes, pushing aside every responsibility and decision and conversation that’s waiting for me back home. We have nine days left. The thought of really sinking into it, of not overthinking or worrying, is the pressure release I desperately need. “We don’t have to name it. It can be whatever we need it to be while we’re here.”

“And my granddad?”

“If we don’t have concrete expectations, will he?”

“Maybe.” He pauses. “But possibly less so if we’re chill around him.”

“I wasn’t planning on dry humping you in the van, so . . .”

“Were you planning on dry humping me in other places? Just curious.” His teeth flash, almost predatory. “Besides hotel hallways in Vegas, I mean.”

Remembering that—and the way he kissed me—has me sliding toward him. His features start sketching themselves out as my eyes adjust to both the darkness and his ever-increasing closeness. Finally I’m near enough to see his face in stark relief. His expression is stripped down to the naked need I feel. Whatever’s in me is reflected in him, and it removes the fear.

I hold my breath when our legs brush. The heat of his skin is unreal, and so is the feel of his hand snaking over my hip. I press my hands against his chest, gratified to feel his heart beating as hard as mine.

“What are you looking for tonight?” he murmurs.

“Just you. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

His thumb grazes over the high plane of my cheek, and he presses the softest kiss to my forehead. I sigh out a breath. His fingers dig into my hip as he pulls me close, one heavy thigh covering mine.

“No sex,” he whispers, his lips pouting over the words, barely grazing my mouth. “Not saying you want that, I just don’t want to get caught in a compromising position if my granddad wakes up. But kissing . . .”

“Beyond encouraged,” I breathe out, closing my eyes as his lips brush over mine.

His hand slides down my hip, and he moves his leg so his fingers can drift down my thigh, then cup the back of it. “Can I touch you?” he asks, burning a whiskered path across my cheek, to my neck, where he gently bites.

“Mmm,” I sigh out.

“Hmm?”

“You can touch me, too,” he says against my ear. “Do you want that?”

I fist my hand in his shirt. It’s so quiet I hear a seam groan. I want to rip the whole thing off. “Yes, I want that.”

“Fuck, I do, too,” he says just before his mouth covers mine. I still taste that on his tongue when it slips against mine, and I gasp into his mouth when he wraps an arm around my waist and pulls my body tight to him, like he’s planning to keep me for a while.

His hand moves up my side, fingers winding into my hair as we fall into an endless kiss. I press my palm against his lower back, feeling the surge of his spine as he rolls halfway on top of me.

The feel of his body is incredible. I’ve been watching it for days, striding down dirt paths and scrabbling gracefully up inclines, over massive boulders. I’ve secretly traced the contour of his thigh while he’s driving, wondered how much the muscle arcing up toward his hip would give under my fingers if I gripped him there. I’ve watched the line of his biceps extend and bunch when he stretched his arms over his head with a rough groan after a long drive. I’ve studied the whole of him behind my camera lens. His body is all angles and planes and hard curves I’ve wanted to explore with my hands.

I do that now as he groans almost silently into my mouth, his tongue silky against mine, that slow, dirty give-and-take. I cup his cheek with one hand, letting the other explore the heat of his skin beneath his shirt, the softness of it stretching over lean muscle that shivers under my touch.

He takes my bottom lip between his teeth, then licks it to soothe the sting. I like the way he makes it hurt; it takes me out of my mind. It’s the way we’ve always played with each other—a little rough, because we can take it. That he thinks I’m unbreakable enough to grip my hip that way, to grab my ass and yank me against his body makes me moan into his mouth.

“Your sounds,” he says on a laughing groan. “You drive me so fucking wild, Noelle.”

That wildness from him saying my name ricochets into my body, and I sink my fingernails into his skin until he hisses at the bite of it. I turn it sweet, skim my palms down his back, just so I can make it wicked again when I grip his ass in my hands, pulling him against me so tightly that for a second the breath leaves my body. He’s hard everywhere, but especially between my legs, and I feel the pulse of him there.

Theo props himself up above me after a few minutes of drugging kisses, leaning all of his weight onto one elbow so his other hand can travel down, palming the curve where my neck and shoulder meet. There’s no pressure there, but now I feel him everywhere—pressed against me from chest to ankles, measuring the fierce throb of my pulse with his thumb as he kisses me hard, deep, rough. The way I like it. The way I it.

“Please,” I gasp out.

He nips at my bottom lip. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I moan with a laugh. It’s too much, not enough.

He rocks against me, exactly where it’s too much. Exactly where it’s not enough.

“You asked if you could touch me,” I challenge. “So do it.”

“I am,” he laughs, scraping his teeth along my jaw.

“Not there.”

He makes a noise in his throat. “Where?”

I could say it out loud, but I’d rather show him instead, so I reach up and grab his wrist.

He rolls off me, readjusting himself on his propped elbow. He doesn’t stop kissing me; in fact, it intensifies as his fingers skim over my collarbone, down my breast. He shapes it with his hand, runs his thumb over my nipple, tipping his hips against the side of my body with a groan. It’s a short detour to my stomach, where he stops, his pinky finger flirting with the waistband of my shorts.

“Here?” he asks. His smirk spreads across his mouth and mine, pressing into my lips.

“You’re an asshole,” I sigh, tortured. “Keep .”

His fingers are long, and he barely has to move his hand for them to slip under the waistband of my shorts, stopping just shy of where I need him. “Here?”

“You talked a big game during that two fingers conversation, and you’re not living up to it.”

He laughs, quiet and unguarded. It’s so delicious I grip the hair at the nape of his neck and pull him down to me, kissing him deeply just as his fingers find the center of my need. They slip over me, then into me, and we both let out shaking groans. His thumb starts a torturous rhythm in tandem with the slow push and pull of his fingers. His tongue follows the same beat, sliding in against mine again and again.

He’s pushing against my hip in short thrusts while he works me, getting harder with every minute he continues to build the perfect pressure. He listens for my cues, circling his thumb faster when I start to ride his hand in earnest.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Mmm.” I grip his forearm as everything starts winding unbearably tight. “Can you come like this?”

“No, but it doesn’t—”

“It matters, Theo,” I say, my voice breaking. “Please. I need you to.”

His body jolts against mine, either from his name or my request. “God, okay,” he breathes out. “I—just let me get you there.”

The intense mix of his touch, of his promise, of us finally doing this, pushes me right to the edge. “I’m there—”

His voice shakes with a heady mix of restraint and excitement. “Fuck yes, Noelle.”

It’s him saying my name again, curving over me to kiss me deeply, that throws me into intense, explosive relief. I release the smallest cry, my thighs closing around his hand, shaking as he gasps into my mouth. He doesn’t stop, just slows his pace until I wind my fingers around his wrist, my kisses turning sloppy.

He sits up suddenly, pulling off his shirt. “I have to—”

I get a brief look at his broad chest before he puts the shirt down between us and lays back down, propped on his elbow again. He pushes down the waistband of his shorts, just past his hips so he can wrap a hand around himself. It’s so dark that I can’t see, but his mouth finds mine and a heady rush of lust interrupts my disappointment.

I feel the stroking bump of his hand against my hip and break off the kiss so I can bite at his jaw, replacing his hand with mine. His skin is hot, slick from his fingers in my body, from the pleasure he got touching me. He’s so hard it must hurt, and the sound he makes in the back of his throat when I tighten my grip tells me it does.

“Show me.”

He groans, his fingers curling over my knuckles, and he demonstrates what he needs, the pace and the pressure that will get him there. We do it together, quietly in this dark, strange room we’ve made ours.

“Kiss me,” he pleads after barely a minute. “Please.”

I run my tongue over his bottom lip and he gasps, our pace stuttering, then speeding up. He catches my lips, kissing me deeply before pulling back to pant against the corner of my mouth, my cheek. His other hand wraps into my hair, grips it as he whispers a soft and pulses onto my skin and the shirt beneath us.

“That’s it.” I echo his encouragement from earlier, and he wheezes out a laughing groan, our strokes getting slower and longer, his forehead dropping against mine.

We’re both shaking by the time he finishes. Theo’s warm breath escapes his mouth in bursts, his heart pounding in his chest pressed against my arm. Something deeper than pleasure sinks into me when his lips press against my temple, his fingers loosening their hold on my hair.

“That . . .” he murmurs, “. . . was my favorite shirt.”

I turn my face into his chest, shaking with laughter. It’s the last thing I expect, but the first thing I need. It detonates any potential awkwardness before it can build. I keep my nose and mouth buried against his shivering skin while he uses his shirt to wipe my hip and stomach. I don’t want to move. Ever.

When he’s done, Theo’s arms circle me. I shift onto my side, sinking back into the cradle of his body. He lays his thigh over mine, pressing a trail of kisses against my shoulder, up the slope of my neck. Our fingers tangle together against my stomach, and I sink into the quiet connection of the moment. We’ve never touched like any of this, but it’s this right here that makes me ache the most.

“Noelle,” Theo whispers.

“Mmm.”

“I love the way you say my last name with all your attitude, so I’m not saying stop calling me Spencer.” He pauses and I open my eyes, holding my breath. “But now that you’ve started calling me Theo, don’t stop that either, okay?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, inexplicably, exhaustedly happy. “Okay.”