And then there is the other thing.
The thing I know because I have spent two nights lying in the dark next to that knowledge, pretending my brain has not done the math.
Two nights. Not normal. Not even slightly.
He’s still looking at me. Not casual. Not distracted. Focused. The same way he watches a play develop — patient, precise, already ahead of it.
I feel it land. Low. Annoying. Dangerous.
He puts the tablet down. I close the laptop.
“Come here,” he says. Not a question.
I stand up. Cross the eight feet like it’s nothing and also like it’s everything. He doesn’t reach for me until I’m close. That’s worse. That’s intentional.
His hand closes around mine. Warm. Steady. Certain.
He pulls me into his lap like he already knows I’m not going to stop him. His hands settle on my hips and I can feel exactly what two nights in this suite have done to him and that information goes straight through me.
For half a second — just half — V. North sits in my chest like a held breath.
Then his hands move and I stop thinking about anything else.
“Still a terrible idea,” I say.
“Yeah.” Looking at my mouth. “You keep saying that.”
He kisses me.
Not the parking lot. That was dark— fast and deniable. This is eleven PM with all the lights on— his hand wrapping around the back of my neck tilting my head exactly where he wants it.
I make a sound I didn’t plan and my whole system goes down. I pull at his shirt. He lifts it off. I get my hands on his chest and — there it is. Everything the practice jersey and the towel were barely containing. He reaches for mine and takes it off slowly. His eyes drop and stay and I feel it everywhere.
He stands, picks me up like I weigh nothing. My legs wrap around him and he carries me to the bed and puts me down and steps back and looks. Just looks. Like touching me wasn’t enough.
“You’re staring,” I say. Not completely steady.
“I know.” He puts one knee on the bed. His mouth finds my jaw. My throat. The place just below my ear. Low, right there: “You have no idea what you look like right now.”
I stop breathing.
“I’ve been thinking about this since the physio room,” he says. His hand slides down my side slow. “ I locked it away and I’ve been going back to it ever since.”
“Jax—”
“The way your ass looked in those leggings.” His mouth moves lower. “I’m not apologizing for that.”
His hands find my waistband. “Lift,” he says. I lift.
He looks at me — all of me, slow and deliberate — and I reach for the sheet. He catches my wrist.
“Don’t.”
“I’m just—”
“No.” He puts my hand back on the bed, holds it. “Let me look at you.”
The world narrows down to the wet, rhythmic drag of his mouth against my inner thigh, and then the sharp, shocking pressure of his tongue pushing inside my slit. My back bows off the mattress, a broken cry tearing from my throat as he goes at me like he’s been holding this back for days. Not teasing. Not careful. His hands grip hard, holding me open, keeping me exactly where he wants me while his mouth works me until thinking is not an option.