“Yes. Weird.” She leaned back against the cushion and turned her head to look at me. “Callan, we literally had sex this morning, and now you’re sitting like I’m radioactive.”
I blinked.
“Well, when you put it like that—”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” I exhaled slowly. Let my head tip back against the cushion. “That’s the problem.”
Her expression shifted, the sharpness faded, and something more honest took its place—something tired and uncertain.
The day sat between us, all of it. The radio transmission, the smoke-filled skyline. The growing, suffocating certainty that the world beyond these walls might already be gone—and that the two of us, sitting in this stupid couch fort with peanut butter and chip crumbs, some guy on a boat miles from here, might be all that was left.
“Sloane,” I said quietly. “I just can’t add that to everything else right now; I don’t have room for it.”
She was quiet for a long time.
When I finally looked over, she wasn’t angry. Wasn’t hurt, exactly.
“Yeah,” she said. “Fair enough.”
Another pause.
Then she nudged the blanket toward the center of our construction.
“Truce?”
I nodded.
“Truce.”
We settled in, both facing opposite directions, backs to the gap between us, like two stubborn kids at a sleepover who’d rather fall off the edge than accidentally touch in the middle of the night.
The room went quiet; I stared at the ceiling.
The sound of her breathing. Slow and deliberate, the way people breathe when they’re trying very hard to fall asleep and failing.
I was doing the same thing.
Trying not to think about how close she was. Trying not to think about what was happening outside. Trying not to wonder how many of those things were standing in the dark right now, pressed against fences and doors and windows, waiting for something living to make a sound.
* * *
The dim aquarium light flickered across the room like dyingstars, casting long, restless shadows over the makeshift bed we’d made on the sagging office couches. The rough sleeping bag scraped my back every time I shifted, but I barely noticed. Every nerve was tuned to her—Sloane. Her back pressed against mine, skin hot, the faint tremor in her breathing telling me she wasn’t sleeping either. That clean, salty scent of her skin mixed with soap and sweat clung to the air between us, intoxicating, maddening. My cock was already thick and heavy, pulsing against the confines of my boxers, betraying me with every shallow breath she took.
The radio static from earlier still crackled in my head. Empty streets. The world ending in slow motion. And here we were, two animals pretending a thin layer of cotton and a bullshit “truce” could keep us from tearing each other apart.
She moved first.
A slow, deliberate roll of her hips—the plush, heated curve of her ass dragging along my thigh. Teasing. Sinful and so not accidental; not even close. My body tensed, every muscle coiled, heart slamming against my chest like it was trying to break free. I shifted, turning to spoon her fully. Pretending to still be asleep.
Another grind, but this one slower. Filthier. Her round ass pressing back with wicked intent, molding perfectly against the thick, hardening length of my cock through the thin fabric. The heat of her pussy radiating against me as she rocked just enough to tease the swollen head.
“Sloane,” I rasped. A low, rough warning, thick with barely leashed hunger.
She didn’t answer with words, simply arched her back like a cat in heat instead, pushing that perfect ass harder against me, rolling her hips in a slow, obscene circle that groundher perfect ass along the rigid length of my cock, teasing the swollen head through the thin fabric until my vision tunneled.
I snapped.