“I hate this,” I say against his mouth.
“Same,” he breathes, and kisses me again.
This time, there’s no pretending. Just heat, surrender—all tangled together until I can’t tell which of us gave in first.
His grip shifts with one hand sliding under my thigh, the other up my back. My legs tighten around him. The wall is cold against my shoulders, but his body is heat and pressure. We kiss like we’ve run out of other ways to fight. It’s not careful. It’s rough. It’s the kind of contact that burns straight through every excuse we’ve been using to stay apart.
His hands move before I can answer. One slides under my shirt, fingers finding skin and heat. The other grips my thigh,squeezing hard. He breathes against my neck, jaw tight, every muscle fighting restraint.
I arch against him, not because I mean to, but because I can’t not. His mouth finds mine again, deeper this time. His tongue brushes mine, patient at first, then demanding. He knows exactly how I respond—what sound I make when he presses harder, how my breath catches when he changes the angle.
I pull his hair. He bites my lip. The noise that leaves me isn’t a gasp—it’s a surrender I didn’t plan.
He growls against my mouth.
I hate that I still want him. I hate that I remember the way he used to touch me, and what it meant, and what it didn’t. My body doesn’t care about any of it. It just moves, desperate to close the gap his words always leave open.
He presses his hand flat to my stomach, his fingers dragging upward. “You sure you want this?” he asks, voice rough, almost begging for me to stop.
“No,” I whisper, tugging him closer anyway. “But I’m already halfway gone.”
He kisses me again, harder and less patient. My back hits the wall with more force, and I don’t care. All I care about is the sound of his breath and the way his body moves against mine. His hips grind once, and I lose every coherent thought I had left.
“This is a mistake,” he says, mouth still on mine.
“Absolutely.”
But neither of us stops. His hand finds my breast, thumb brushing once, twice. The sound I make isn’t polite. My fingers twist in his shirt, pulling him closer until I can’t tell which heartbeat is mine.
He kisses me like he’s starving.
And just when it starts to spiral, when it’s too much to take back?—
A knock sounds at the door.
We freeze.
Breathing hard. Skin flushed. Still close enough that one wrong move would start it again.
He lowers me slowly, and when my feet touch the ground, my legs barely hold. Another knock, this time louder.
I look up at him, chest heaving. “What now?”
Rowan runs a hand through his hair, his other hand still balled in a fist at his side. He looks wrecked. Controlled, but wrecked. If he opens that fist, I know exactly where it’ll go—back to me.
“Fuck me,” he says under his breath.
The knock comes again.
“Rowan…”
He turns toward the door, but I catch his arm. “Wait, I?—”
It’s not about the door. It’s about the line we just blurred again. About how fast we fall into this no matter how many times we swear we won’t. If someone’s at that door, this ends, and we go back to pretending we’re fine.
His eyes meet mine—dark, and still hungry.
“We fucked up,” he says quietly.