That should have been simple.
It wasn’t.
Something about the way he said it, like there was no rush and no frustration in the process, made my throat feel tight for a second. So instead of saying anything stupid, I just curled into him a little closer and let the silence sit.
It felt good.
When he finally kissed the top of my head and told me I had earned a few minutes there before he got me dressed again, Ismiled into his shirt and let myself stay exactly where I was, half draped over him, marked all over and still warm from what we had done.
And if I ended up thinking that I could get used to this too, I kept that part to myself. I did not let myself think too hard about what happened when the repairs were done and I had to go back home, or what this was supposed to look like when summer ended, or worse, what happened when my dad got back from London and everything stopped feeling so suspended and easy. Those thoughts were there, dark and waiting, but right then it felt too good to be there with him to give them any real room.
Chapter Nine: Morning, Daddy
I woke up curled against him and immediately decided I did not want to move.
That was the first thought. Not good morning. Not what time is it. Not wow, my whole body is sore in a way that says last night was absolutely worth it. Just a very clear, very selfish, I want to stay right here.
Jonas was still half asleep beside me, warm and heavy and solid in that way that made it way too easy to tuck myself in closer and pretend I had nowhere else to be. One of his arms was still around me, loose now with sleep, but there all the same, and I lay there for a second just enjoying the fact that I could. The fact that I had ended up in his bed. The fact that after everything at the club, after the scene and the aftercare and the drive home, he had carted me upstairs to his bed.
And then we had gone for round two.
That thought came back warm and filthy and made me smile into his shoulder before I could stop it. I had not expected that part. I had expected the club to be the main event, the planned thing, the one we would both be careful with because it mattered and we had worked it out together. I had not expected us to get back to the apartment and end up tangled up in his sheets, half laughing and half desperate for each other all overagain, like we could do that too. Like it was not always going to be rules and scenes and structure, but also this. Casual. Unplanned. Just us wanting each other and going with it.
I liked that maybe a little too much.
Lying there in the slow, warm fog after all of it, I had the unmistakable feeling that something had shifted. Not huge. Not enough to make me think Jonas had suddenly turned into a different person overnight. But something in him had loosened a little, just enough to let me feel it, and I liked that too. I liked that I could still see all the control in him and all the care, but now there was this other thing threaded through it, this sense that once the rules were there and the trust was there, he could let go a little with me.
Which was hot.
And dangerous.
And exactly the kind of thing that was going to get me way too attached if I was not careful.
I was still half lost in that thought when the sound started downstairs.
At first it barely registered. Just a faint ringing somewhere below us, easy to ignore if I had wanted to. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to do exactly that, because if I stayed still long enough maybe it would stop and I could go back to pretending the rest of my life did not exist for another hour.
Then it clicked.
That ringtone.
Dad.
I sat straight up.
My phone.
I had left it downstairs in my room again before we went to the club, same as last time, because the last thing I needed was to risk him checking my location and seeing me at a sex club. Which had felt very smart at the time, right up until the pointwhere I realized that meant he had apparently been trying to call me while I had been upstairs in Jonas’s bed getting thoroughly distracted.
“Shit.”
I scrambled out of bed so fast I nearly took the sheet with me and bolted for the stairs naked and not even remotely thinking about that part until I was halfway down them.
My phone was on the bed in my room, lit up and vibrating across the comforter like it had a personal grudge against me. I snatched it up and saw the missed calls.
Three.
No, four.