House 66

The Briar hoodie is half-zipped over his chest, his hair still shower-wet at the ends, his cheek faintly red where someone’s glove or shoulder had caught him in the third period.

He has one beer in his hand within twelve seconds of entering the room and Dean yelling something obscene into his ear within fifteen.

She watches all of this from the couch with Monique’s thigh pressed warm against hers and Lucy leaning forward to shout over the music about some guy from their psych elective.

She should probably be listening better. She had been, before Garrett came in and changed everything about the room by existing in the doorway with that stupid easy grin.

She knows who he is, obviously. Everyone knows who Garrett Graham is. Briar hockey captain, star forward, walking campus landmark. She’d known he was hot before tonight in the same abstract way a person knows water is wet and clinical paperwork is designed by sadists, but there’s a difference between seeing someone across campus in athletic gear with three teammates around him and seeing him walk into his own party already smiling, already loose, already being wanted by half the room and not looking especially pressed by it.

She’s not blind. She’s also not a nun, despite the fact that clinical rotations have recently made celibacy feel less like a choice and more like an accidental lifestyle outcome.

Garrett Graham is hot. Objectively. Annoyingly. In that golden-boy hockey-player way that should be too obvious to work but does anyway because he carries it like he’s in on the joke.

Broad shoulders, sharp grin, dark curls, the kind of body built by early mornings and ice and being slammed into boards often enough to develop either resilience or brain damage. Probably both. 

He looks like someone who knows exactly how many girls at this party have already thought about his mouth tonight, and the worst part is that he doesn’t even seem smug in a lazy way. He seems amused. Like everyone else is playing a game he learned years ago and can still win drunk, tired, and half-distracted.

She would fuck him. This isn’t a moral failing. This is simply data.

She’s heard enough girls talk about Garrett to know he’s not one of those men whose reputation has been inflated by proximity to a jersey.

Girls talk, and they talk worse in bathrooms when they think no one useful is listening. She’s heard things. Good things. Very specific things, actually, some of which had made her stare very hard at her own reflection while washing her hands because there’s a difference between knowing a man is attractive and finding out from a girl in a tiny red top that he knows what to do with his mouth and doesn’t need to be coached into caring whether you come.

Useful information, frankly. And he doesn’t want a girlfriend, which is also useful.

That part matters more than it probably should. Garrett Graham not doing girlfriends is practically printed on the campus map at this point, tucked somewhere between the rink and the library. 

It makes other girls roll their eyes or take it as a challenge, like every charming emotionally unavailable athlete is secretly a lock waiting for the right girl to break the mechanism. She doesn’t have that kind of schedule.

She has labs and placement and a care plan due Monday and a pharmacology quiz she’s pretending not to think about while sitting on this couch in a top that shows more cleavage than her anatomy professor would probably consider academically relevant.

She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She had one. Recently enough that her body still occasionally goes tight around old memories it refuses to finish processing at convenient times. Shitty is one word for him. Incredibly shitty is closer.

The kind of ex who leaves behind little dents in the way a person reacts to praise, touch, questions, silence. The kind she has no interest in unpacking at a hockey house party while Metallica plays and some guy in the kitchen attempts to open a beer bottle with the edge of the counter.

So, no. She doesn’t want anything complicated. She wants a good time. She wants stress relief. She wants to remember that her body can be a place something nice happens, instead of just the thing she drags between lectures, placement, the grocery store, and bed. 

She wants to kiss someone who won’t ask about her five-year plan. She wants to be touched without being studied for damage. She wants, in the blunt private part of herself she’s not interested in dressing up, to get fucked properly and go home with a story she doesn’t have to turn into anything.

Then Garrett changes the music to Metallica, and she mouths along to the first verse without meaning to. That’s, apparently, where the trouble starts.

He notices from across the room. He’s standing near the speaker with Dean and Logan, taking a pull from his beer, and his eyes cut across the couch almost casually, like he’s just sweeping the room. They land on her mouth. She knows they land there because she feels it. A tiny hot flick of awareness across the skin, ridiculous and immediate. She stops mouthing the words half a second too late.

Garrett’s grin changes.

“Oh, God,” Monique says beside her, not subtle at all. “Captain America has spotted you.”

“He’s not blond,” Lucy mutters.

She should look away. She doesn’t. Garrett lifts his beer toward her in what could technically pass as a toast if everyone involved were committed to pretending subtlety still exists, and she raises her own cup back before taking a sip that tastes like cranberry vodka and bad decisions.

Five minutes later, he’s in front of the couch.

“Didn’t peg you for Metallica,” he says, because apparently Garrett Graham opens conversations like he’s already halfway through them.

She tilts her head back to look up at him, which is unfair because he’s even better from this angle. Taller than expected, warm from the room and the game, cheeks still a little flushed, curls drying messy over his forehead. “You didn’t peg me as anything. You don’t know me.”

His grin widens, delighted by the correction. “That’s true.”

“Strong start, though.”

“I’m usually better.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah.” He drops onto the couch arm beside her like he’s been invited, one knee bent, beer balanced loosely in his hand, his body angled toward her in a way that feels casual until it doesn’t. “Give me a minute.”

She should be annoyed by the confidence. She is, a little. Unfortunately, it’s working on several very humiliating levels.

Monique and Lucy, traitors with excellent survival instincts, last another thirty seconds before manufacturing a reason to leave. Something about drinks. Something about the bathroom. Something about how they’ll be right back, delivered in voices that mean the opposite so loudly that even Garrett looks amused as they disappear into the crowd.

“Subtle friends,” he says.

“Deeply. They’ve been trained in espionage.”

“Good girls.”

“Mm. Not always.”

His eyes flick to her mouth again. It’s not long. Barely a second. Just enough to tell on him before he brings them back to her eyes with that smooth athlete recovery, like a player who knows exactly how close he came to losing the puck and still wants credit for keeping it. She feels the look sit low in her stomach, warm and spreading, and tries very hard not to smile like an idiot.

They talk for twenty minutes. It should be less easy than it is. Garrett’s exactly as cocky as expected, but not in the dull way. Not in the way men get when they think confidence can substitute for listening. He actually listens. He asks what she’s studying and then makes a face when she says nursing, like the word has exhausted him.

“Brutal,” he says, leaning back into the couch, one arm stretched along the back behind her without touching yet. “You guys are always carrying, like, seven textbooks and a haunted look.”

“That’s pretty accurate.”

“Clinical rotations?”

“Yeah. Labs too. Exams. Placement. Occasional will to live, but it’s inconsistent.”

He laughs into his beer. “So this is your night off?”

“This is me making questionable choices for balance.”

“That what I am?” His mouth curves. “A questionable choice?”

She looks at him for a beat too long, because his mouth is right there and because his gaze has dipped again, this time lower, to the neckline of her top where the fabric is doing exactly what she hoped it would do when she put it on. He catches himself, eyes bouncing back up, but she saw it. 

“Maybe,” she says.

Garrett’s grin goes slower. “Maybe’s not bad.”

“Maybe’s generous.”

“Wow. Mean.”

“You look like you can handle it.”

“Usually.”

There’s a little heat under the word, tucked neatly enough that anyone else might miss it. She doesn’t. Her fingers tighten around her cup. Somewhere across the room, Dean’s shouting about something. The music hits a heavier part of the song, guitar thick and grinding through the floorboards. 

Garrett’s knee is close to hers now. Close enough that if she shifted by an inch, denim would touch bare skin. She wonders, briefly and terribly, if he kisses the way people say he does. If he’s all that controlled heat up close. If the girls in the bathroom were exaggerating or simply too stunned to provide complete peer-reviewed data.

Garrett’s eyes move over her face again, slower now, his grin fading into something more focused. “You always stare like that?”

She lifts her brows. “Like what?”

“Like you’re deciding something.”

“I’m a student nurse. I’m assessing risk.”

His mouth twitches. “And?”

“High.”

“Yeah?”

“Probably worth monitoring.”

He laughs, and that stupid pleased warmth moves over his face when she gives him something back. Like he likes the push. Like girls probably giggle and touch his arm all night, but he likes when she makes him work half an inch for it.

He takes another sip of beer, but his eyes stay on her. “Did you wanna go upstairs?” he asks, so casually that it almost loops around into politeness. “It’s quieter.”

It’s not subtle. It doesn’t need to be. Her body answers before her brain finishes enjoying the question. A small, sharp tightening low in her stomach. Her pulse suddenly obvious in her throat, wrists, mouth. 

She glances toward the kitchen as if Monique or Lucy might materialise with moral guidance, then remembers both of them would probably give her a thumbs-up and ask for details later with the focused attention of scientists documenting a rare event.

Garrett waits. He doesn’t lean closer. He doesn’t put a hand on her thigh. He just watches her with that half-smile softened at the edges, giving her just enough room to say no that the yes in her body feels like hers.

She nods. “Yeah.”

His grin flashes. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make me say it twice.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He stands, then holds a hand out to her.

It’s such a small thing and so annoying that it works. His palm is warm when she takes it. Big, callused in places, rough along the fingers in a way she doesn’t need to notice as much as she immediately does. He helps her up like he has no doubt she can stand on her own and also no intention of missing an excuse to touch her.

Garrett leads her through the party without rushing. Past the kitchen, where Logan’s leaning over the counter laughing at something Tucker says. Past two girls in Briar shirts who watch Garrett’s hand around hers with expressions that make her feel, briefly and shamefully, like she’s won something. Which is ridiculous. He’s not a raffle prize. He’s a man with commitment issues and a very nice mouth.

Still.

The stairs are narrow and crowded, bodies shifting around them, someone sitting halfway up with a cup balanced on one knee and the glazed expression of a person who has either made peace with gravity or lost to it. 

Garrett looks back once as he starts up, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. “You good?”

The question lands warmer than it needs to. She nods. “Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Cool. As if his hand isn’t wrapped around hers. As if she’s not staring at the back of his neck, because the skin there disappears under messy curls and she’s just enough imagination to picture putting her mouth there. As if her heart isn’t doing something deeply stupid for a woman who had, thirty minutes ago, been very clear with herself about wanting uncomplicated stress relief.

The hallway upstairs is dimmer and hotter, muffled by shut doors and bodies and the thump of music through the floor. Garrett guides her past a bathroom with light spilling under the door, past a half-open bedroom where someone’s sitting on the floor scrolling through a phone, then stops at the end of the hall.

“Just in here,” he says, pushing open a door.

His room is more Garrett than she expects, which is an insane thought because she doesn’t know him well enough to know what more Garrett means. Still, it fits. Clean enough in the places that matter, messy in the places that don’t. 

Textbooks on the desk. Hockey tape on the dresser. A hoodie thrown over the chair. A laundry basket in the corner with one sleeve hanging over the side. The bed’s unmade, navy sheets twisted toward the wall, pillow dented. It smells like detergent, cold air from the cracked window, and him under it, soap and deodorant and boy.

Garrett closes the door behind her.

The party drops to a dull animal pulse beyond the walls. The air in the room shifts around the two of them. She’s standing just inside his door, Garrett’s hand still warm around hers, and he turns toward her with that easy, almost careful look again, like he’s about to say something. Maybe ask if she wants a drink. Maybe make another joke. Maybe do the polite ramp-up that men do when they think women need a few more seconds to pretend they’re less eager than they are.

She doesn’t have the patience for it. She steps into him and kisses him first. It’s immediate and a little hungry and probably reveals far too much about the state of her semester, her dry spell, and her ability to make impulsive decisions while wearing a low-cut top at a hockey party.

Garrett makes a small sound against her mouth, surprised enough that his hand tightens once around hers before he lets go and catches her waist instead. Then he gives it back.

Oh.

That’s the first clear thought she has, and it’s barely a thought at all. Just oh, because Garrett kisses like he doesn’t need to prove he knows how and somehow proves it anyway. 

His mouth opens over hers, hot and confident, one hand sliding to the small of her back while the other cups her jaw, fingers gentle but sure as he angles her face up to him. He tastes like beer and mint gum and the night air still caught somewhere in him from coming home after the game. His lips are softer than they have any right to be. His body is not.

She fists both hands in the front of his hoodie and pulls him closer, and Garrett laughs once into her mouth, low and pleased, before the sound turns into something rougher when her teeth catch his bottom lip.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

It goes straight through her. Then his hands are on her ass, full and shameless, pulling her tight against him as he walks her backward. She bumps into something hard at hip height – his desk, she realises distantly – and Garrett keeps her there, pressing in, enough to make the edge of it bite lightly into the backs of her thighs.

“Jesus,” he says against her mouth, breathless enough to sound almost impressed. “You always do that?”

“Kiss people?”

“Attack people.”

She laughs, and it comes out unsteady because his hands are still on her and his hips are right there and the front of his body is warm and solid between her thighs. “You invited me upstairs.”

“I did.”

“So.”

“So,” he repeats, and kisses her again like that has settled the matter.

The kiss goes messier fast. There’s no delicate way around it. Garrett’s hand slips from her jaw to her throat, resting there with his thumb along the line beneath her chin so he can guide her where he wants her. 

The touch should probably make her think of her ex. The fact that it doesn’t, not really, not in any way that sticks, feels so good it almost scares her. Garrett’s hand is warm and confident and easy to move away from if she wants, but she doesn’t want. She tips her head back into it, letting him tilt her face up, and his mouth gets deeper, slower, his tongue sliding over hers until her knees go embarrassingly soft.

“That okay?” he asks, barely pulling back, his thumb still at her throat.

She nods too fast. “Yeah.”

His eyes flick over her face. He looks a little darker like this. Less golden-boy from across the room, more flushed and close and focused, mouth wet from hers, curls falling forward. “Yeah?”

“Garrett,” she says, because if he makes her explain how okay it is while he’s standing between her legs looking like that, she’s going to lose whatever remains of her dignity.

His grin comes back, but there’s heat under it now. “Right.”

He kisses down her jaw before she can say anything else, and her head tips sideways on instinct. His mouth is warm against her skin, open and unhurried at first, then less so when she makes a small sound. His lips find the tender spot beneath her ear, then the line of her throat, then lower, over the place where her pulse is doing something embarrassing.

One of her hands slides into his hair. It’s a mistake. His curls are soft, still damp at the ends, and when she tugs lightly Garrett’s hips press into hers on reflex. The pressure of him between her thighs makes her breath leave in a short, broken little exhale.

“Careful,” he murmurs.

She wants to laugh at him. She really does. Instead she pulls his hair again, a little harder.

Garrett’s hand tightens at her waist. “Okay,” he says, voice dropping. “So not careful.”

“Not really my brand.”

“Good to know.”

Then he lifts her onto the desk. It happens so smoothly that she doesn’t even have time to make a sound until she’s already seated on the cool wood, thighs spread around his hips, her hands flying to his shoulders. 

A pen clatters off the edge and hits the floor. Something else – a notebook, maybe – slides sideways under her palm. Garrett doesn’t look away from her face. He steps in close, hands bracketing her hips, and tugs her forward until the edge of the desk meets the backs of her thighs and his body fits between them.

“Is this your study desk?” she asks, breathless, because her mouth has decided humour is the only thing standing between her and complete personal collapse.

“Sometimes.”

“That feels unsanitary.”

His grin flashes. “You wanna stop?”

She looks down between them, at his hands on her thighs, the press of him against her, the way her own knees have already hooked loosely around his hips. Then she looks back at his face. “No.”

“Great,” Garrett says, and kisses her again.

The desk is a terrible place to make good decisions. It puts her at the perfect height for him to get too much of what he wants too easily. His mouth on hers, his hand at her jaw, then her throat again, tilting her back enough that she has to trust the desk and his arm around her waist. His thumb strokes once along the side of her neck, and the touch sends a slow heat down her spine, pooling low and insistent.

He kisses like he’s paying attention, not just kissing because a girl is in front of him and willing, but noticing what makes her breath catch, what makes her nails press into his shoulder, what makes her knees tighten around his hips.

He kisses her mouth until she’s soft and open, then drags his lips back to her throat when she starts getting too loud, like he enjoys the cause and also the management of the effect.

She had thought, coming upstairs, that it would be fun. Hot. Simple. Garrett Graham’s room, his hands, his reputation tested for accuracy. She hadn’t accounted for him being this present. This annoyingly good at making her feel like the only thing in the room even while a party shakes the floorboards below them.

She rolls her hips once, mostly because the need to relieve the pressure has become unbearable. Garrett’s breath breaks against her neck. His hands flex on her thighs.

“Fuck,” he says again, softer this time. “You’re gonna be a problem.”

She smiles, half-drunk on the compliment, half too turned on to pretend she doesn’t love it. “You brought me up here.”

“Yeah, well.” He lifts his head and looks at her mouth like he’s considering biting it. “I make bad calls sometimes.”

“On the ice too?”

His eyes flick up. “You watch hockey?”

“I like hockey.”

The interest on his face is immediate and deeply male. “Yeah?”

“Don’t look so touched.”

“I’m not touched.”

“You are. You look very moved.”

“I’m just glad you have taste.”

She laughs, and he kisses the sound out of her, smiling into it for half a second before the heat takes over again. His hand slides under the hem of her top, palm finding bare skin at her waist, and she sucks in a breath at how warm he is. 

His fingers spread over her like he’s been waiting to get under fabric since the couch. Maybe he has. Maybe every glance at her mouth and cleavage, every casual sip of beer, every easy line had been leading here, to his desk and his hand on her skin and his hips pressing forward just enough to make her forget which sentence she had been about to use.

Then his mouth is at her throat again, moving lower, lips dragging over the hollow above her collarbone, and the whole thing starts to tilt too fast toward something that needs saying before their clothes are all over his floor.

“Just so we’re clear,” she says, breath coming unevenly, one hand still in his hair. “I don’t want a boyfriend.”

His mouth pauses against her neck, warm and damp, and then he lifts his head just enough to look at her. His pupils are blown wide, his lips swollen, his breathing not quite steady. The sight of him like that almost makes her forget what point she’s making, which is probably dangerous and exactly why the point needed making.

He blinks once, then nods. “Great.”

She nods too. “Great?”

“Yeah.” His hand is still under her top, thumb resting at her ribs. “I don’t want a girlfriend.”

“Good.”

“Perfect, actually.”

“Perfect.”

They nod at each other like two extremely reasonable adults who are definitely not flushed and panting on a desk while Metallica plays downstairs. Garrett’s mouth twitches first. She bites her lip, which is a mistake because his gaze drops there immediately.

“Glad we cleared that up,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Very mature of us.”

“Incredibly.”

His hand moves higher by an inch. Her breath catches. Garrett’s grin fades again, attention narrowing in that way that makes the air feel warmer.

“Take off your clothes,” he says, low and direct, and somehow not crude because he’s looking at her like he wants to watch every second of it.

Her body answers before modesty can even pretend to be useful. She reaches for the hem of her top and pulls it over her head. 

Garrett’s eyes drop. There’s no smooth recovery this time. No quick bounce back to her face. He looks. Properly. At the dark lace of her bra, at the curve of her breasts above it, at the way her breathing is making the cups shift slightly because she cannot seem to get enough air into her lungs. 

His jaw goes a little slack for half a second before he catches himself, but not fast enough. The attention hits her like touch. Hot, visible, almost embarrassing in how much she likes it.

“Well,” he says, voice rougher. “Fuck.”

She laughs, but it gets caught halfway when his hands slide up her sides, thumbs tracing the line beneath her bra. “That’s your review?”

“I’m still drafting.”

“You’re usually better?”

“Give me a minute,” he says, echoing himself from downstairs, but his mouth is already on her before she can answer.

He kisses her over the lace first, which is unfair. Completely unfair. His lips press to the top of one breast, then the other, warm and open-mouthed, his hands steady at her back while she grabs at the edge of the desk and tries very hard not to make a noise loud enough for the hallway. 

He looks up at her once from under his lashes, and the expression on his face is so smugly pleased that she would call him annoying if his tongue had not just dragged over the skin above her bra and wiped her brain clean of language.

“Garrett,” she manages.

“Yeah?”

“That door locks, right?”

He pauses. His eyes lift toward the door, then back to her, and for one terrible second she thinks he’s going to say no. “It does,” he says, and steps back only long enough to turn the lock.

The click lands in the room like permission. He pulls his hoodie off on the way back to her, and then his shirt underneath, and she has a brief, stupid moment of gratitude that she’s sitting down already. Because the rumours, as it turns out, didn’t fully prepare her for the reality of Garrett Graham shirtless. 

The broad shoulders. The cut of his chest. The flat, hard plane of his stomach. The light bruising near one rib from the game, purple at the edge, proof of something brutal and physical that only makes him look more like himself. She must stare too long, because Garrett lifts his brows.

“Assessing?” he asks.

She swallows. “Risk is increasing.”

His grin is immediate. “Worth monitoring?”

“Extremely.”

He steps back between her thighs, and this time when he kisses her, there’s skin everywhere. Her palms spread over his chest, warm and hard under her hands, and Garrett makes a low sound when her nails drag lightly down his stomach. It’s small, almost bitten back, but she hears it. Feels it. Files it away with an internal satisfaction so bright it borders on unprofessional.

He reaches behind her for the clasp of her bra, then pauses. “Okay?” he asks.

The word is simple. A check, low and rough, his hands warm at her back. Something in her chest goes tight and then loosens.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

The clasp gives under his fingers. The straps slide down her arms, and then her bra is somewhere on his floor, and Garrett’s looking at her again like he’s briefly forgotten every line he has ever used on another girl.

“Still drafting?” she asks, because the silence is making her feel too naked in a way that has very little to do with clothing.

His eyes come back to hers. Darker now. Warmer. “I think the review’s gonna be positive.”

She laughs, breathless, and his mouth finds hers at the same time his hands cup her breasts.

The sound she makes is small and immediate, caught half in her throat, half in his mouth. Garrett groans like that did something to him. Like her not being composed is its own reward. His thumbs move slowly, then with a little more pressure when her back arches, and he breaks the kiss only to lower his mouth to her chest.

It’s too much in the best way. His mouth hot over her nipple, his tongue, the graze of teeth careful enough to make her gasp and grab his hair. His hands hold her steady when her hips roll forward again, searching for friction, and this time he gives it to her, pressing himself between her thighs until the seam of her shorts and the hard line of him make her head tip back.

“There?” he murmurs against her skin.

She nods, but that’s not enough for him because he lifts his head, one hand coming back to her jaw.

“Words,” he says, not stern, but sure. Captain voice, some tiny traitorous part of her brain supplies, and that absolutely doesn’t help.

“Yes,” she says, a little too quickly. “There.”

His smile is slow enough to be mean. “Good.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re proud of yourself.”

“I am proud of myself.”

“You’ve done very little.”

That’s a lie. They both know it. Garrett’s eyebrows jump anyway, delighted, and then his hand slides from her jaw to the back of her neck, pulling her in until his mouth brushes hers.

“Yeah?” he murmurs. “That a complaint?”

“No.”

“No?”

She shakes her head, their lips almost touching. “More of an observation.”

“Smart girl.”

The phrase shouldn’t hit like it does. It’s probably the nursing student in her, exhausted and overpraised only by rubrics and under-caffeinated professors, or it’s the fact that his hand is at her neck and his body is between her legs and he’s just called her smart like it belongs in the same room as wanting her. 

Whatever the reason, it goes through her hard and warm. Garrett notices. His eyes sharpen slightly, like he’s just watched a puck change direction.

“Oh,” he says softly, and that is dangerous.

“Don’t.”

He grins. “Didn’t say anything.”

He kisses her again before she can answer, and it’s rougher now, heat biting through the teasing. His hands go to the button of her shorts, then pause again with his fingers tucked at the waistband. She nods against his mouth before he can ask. Garrett exhales like he felt the answer in his own body.

They come off awkwardly because shorts are not romantic and his desk is not, in fact, designed for efficient undressing. She nearly kicks him in the thigh. He laughs. She tells him to shut up. He catches her ankle and kisses the inside of it, which is so unexpected and stupidly hot that the next insult evaporates right off her tongue.

Garrett drags her closer by the backs of her thighs, and the laugh disappears from both of them at the same time. Because now she’s in just her underwear on his desk, and he’s shirtless between her legs, and the party downstairs may as well be happening on another campus. 

His thumb traces the edge of the lace at her hip, slow enough that her stomach trembles. His gaze follows the movement. She watches his throat work once.

He hooks one finger beneath the elastic. “These?”

She looks at him. The room is warm. Her skin feels too awake. There’s a tiny voice in the back of her head that sounds unfortunately like caution, but it’s not saying no. It’s just noting the size of the moment because it’s been a while, because the last person who touched her left behind shadows she does not feel like introducing to Garrett Graham on a desk. Because wanting this and being ready for it are not always the same thing, except right now, in this room, they seem close enough to touch.

She reaches for his belt instead of answering directly. Garrett’s breath catches. That feels good. Better than good. It puts something back in her hands.

“Yeah,” she says. “Those.”

His eyes hold hers for one more second, checking for something beyond the word. Whatever he sees must satisfy him, because his mouth comes down on hers again and the rest of their clothes become a problem they solve badly and with a lot of breathing. 

His belt. His jeans. His boxers. Her panties. His laugh when her fingers fumble once. Her muttered, “Don’t be smug,” followed by his immediate, deeply smug, “Never.” The condom from his drawer, because at least one man in this house has prepared for something besides protein intake and chaos. His hands on her hips. Her legs around his waist.

He carries her from the desk to the bed like she weighs nothing. Hockey player, she thinks dizzily, arms locked around his neck, mouth pressed to the side of his jaw because she cannot stop kissing whatever part of him is closest. He drops her onto the mattress with more care than the gesture suggests, following her down before the bounce has settled.

For a second, with him above her and the room dim and the house still loud beneath them, the pace breaks. Garrett’s forearm braces beside her head. His other hand slides over her waist, then her thigh, then back up again like he’s mapping what he has been trying not to stare at since the couch. 

She looks up at him and catches a strange little flicker in his expression. Something aware, like he’s realised she’s not just some girl in his bed, even if that’s technically and conveniently what both of them are agreeing to make this.

She doesn’t know what to do with that. So she hooks her leg higher over his hip and says, “You always this slow?”

Garrett’s face clears into a grin so bright and wicked that relief moves through her right alongside the heat.

“Baby,” he says, dipping his head until his mouth is at her ear, “you have no idea how nice I’m being.”

Her breath catches. “Then stop.”

He goes still enough that she feels it. His mouth grazes her cheek when he pulls back, eyes searching hers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, softer this time. “I mean, don’t be a dick about it. But yeah.”

His laugh is a low breath against her mouth. “Got it. Very clear instructions.”

“I’m good at instructions.”

“Good.” He kisses her once, slower than before, then again, deeper, and when he shifts against her, the joke leaves her body in one clean sweep, because there’s the heat of him against her, and then there’s the sight of him reaching for the condom.

Garrett sits back on his heels for half a second, tearing the foil open with his teeth because he’s decided to be exactly the kind of cliché that works because he looks like that while doing it, bare chest flushed, curls falling into his eyes, mouth still red from hers. 

His shoulders move under the warm bedroom light as he rolls it on, one hand braced briefly at the base of himself, jaw tightening around a breath he doesn’t quite let out.

She watches like an idiot, like a woman who’s forgotten she has eyelids. like the last several months of not being touched have gathered into one tight, humiliating knot under her ribs and are now watching Garrett Graham’s hand move with the focused awe of a medical student witnessing a miracle and a crime at the same time.

He glances up and catches her. His mouth curves slowly. “You good over there?”

She has enough dignity left to close her mouth. Barely. “Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked like you were about to.”

“I was just checking on you.” His grin widens, far too pleased with himself, and he crawls back over her with the easy, controlled strength of someone who’s spent most of his life learning exactly what his body can do. His hands slide along the outside of her thighs, over the backs of her knees, spreading her wider as he settles between them. “Very caring of me, actually.”

“You’re a humanitarian.”

“I’ve been told.”

“By who?”

“Many women.”

She groans, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, but it comes out thin and breathless because he’s right there, all heat and weight and hard muscle, his hips nudging hers, his mouth finding the corner of her jaw like he can feel the exact moment she needs him close enough to stop thinking. “God, you’re annoying.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, and kisses the spot beneath her ear. “You keep saying that.”

“You keep being annoying.”

“You’re still naked in my bed.”

She would argue harder if he weren’t sliding one hand under her thigh, lifting her leg a little higher against his waist. The movement opens her more, changes the angle before he’s even inside her, and her breath catches so sharply that Garrett’s teasing drops out of his face. 

His forearm braces beside her head. The other hand stays at her hip, thumb moving once over the skin there, a small grounding stroke that lands in a place embarrassingly deeper than skin. “Hey,” he says, lower now. “Still good?”

She nods, too quickly, then remembers his thing about words and tries not to hate how much she likes that he’s already made it a thing. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Garrett.”

His grin flickers at that, warm and wicked. “Bossy.”

“Please don’t make me regret having standards.”

“Oh, I love standards.” He dips his head and kisses her, softer than the words, mouth warm and slow until her fingers loosen from their death grip in the sheet and climb back to his shoulders. “Big fan.”

Then he shifts, and the first press of him makes the whole room narrow to the exact place where their bodies meet. Her hands clamp down on him immediately. Nails catching at his shoulders, then sliding over his back, trying to find somewhere to put the sudden overwhelming fact of him. Because she had known. She had seen. She had made reasonable visual estimates. She had spent the last five minutes pretending not to be deeply affected by the evidence.

Knowing is different from this.

Garrett pushes in slowly, so slowly it feels almost mean, his jaw locked and his eyes fixed on her face like he’s studying every flicker, every caught breath, every tiny shift of her mouth. It stretches her open in increments, heat and fullness and pressure blooming through her so intensely that her head tips back into the pillow and the sound she makes is barely a sound at all, more like her body dropping something fragile.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, and her hands move on him again, one to his bicep, one dragging down his back, not sure whether she wants to pull him closer or push him away or just leave marks somewhere to prove she survived this.

Garrett stills instantly. “Too much?”

“No.” The word comes out fast, almost offended, because even overwhelmed she has priorities. She opens her eyes and finds him above her, brows drawn, mouth parted, the cocky set of him interrupted by genuine restraint. “No. Just– fuck. You’re…”

His mouth twitches despite the tension in his jaw. “I’m what?”

“Do not make me compliment your dick right now.”

A laugh breaks out of him, rough and startled, and the movement shifts him a fraction deeper. Her whole body tightens around him in response, a gasp punching out of her as her fingers dig into his shoulder.

Garrett’s laugh dies in his throat. “Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t laugh,” she gets out, though she’s not sure if she’s scolding him or begging him.

“I’m not. I’m really fucking not.” His forehead drops close to hers, breath warm against her mouth. He slides his hand from her hip to the side of her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone with a steadiness that makes her body, traitorous and desperate, loosen by half a degree. “Relax. You got it.”

She makes a sound that’s probably meant to be sarcastic and ends up nowhere near language.

His mouth grazes hers. “Atta girl. Just breathe for me.”

The praise goes through her so hard she clenches again before she can help it, and Garrett’s eyes almost roll shut. His hand tightens briefly at her jaw.

“Oh, you like that,” he murmurs, voice gone darker, rougher around the edges.

“Shut up.”

He hums, pecking her lips once. “Yeah, you do.”

“Garrett.”

“I know. I know.” He kisses her before the argument can build properly, mouth soft and deep, and keeps pressing in by slow degrees, stopping whenever her breath catches too sharp, moving again when her hips shift up like some impatient, greedy part of her has decided the stretch is worth the ache. “So good. You’re doing so good.”

Her brain doesn’t survive that intact. It simply doesn’t. The words, his weight, the steady patience of him, the heat between her thighs, the fact that he’s watching her like this is not just sex but some very important game he has every intention of winning by learning her properly. 

All of it gathers and gathers until he finally bottoms out and her body takes him all at once, full enough that her mouth opens around a gasp she can’t swallow. For a second, neither of them moves.

Garrett’s face is close above hers, flushed and tense, his eyes darker than they were downstairs by the couch, his breathing held too carefully in his chest. She can feel the restraint in him. Feel the way his hips want to move and don’t. Feel the tiny tremor in the arm braced beside her head.

It does something horrible and hot to her. Something almost worse than if he’d just been cocky through all of it.

She kisses him. It’s clumsy at first because she’s still adjusting, still catching up to her own body, but Garrett kisses her back immediately, like the waiting has cost him something and her mouth is the first permission he can take.

His hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers spreading there as he deepens it, and then he shifts her leg a little higher against his waist.

The angle changes. She moans straight into his mouth.

Garrett freezes, then exhales a sound that’s almost a laugh and almost a groan. “There?”

She nods, breathless against his lips.

His nose brushes hers. “Can I move?”

The fact that he asks it like that, low and rough and barely holding together, with his body already buried in hers and his thumb stroking once at the side of her neck like he’s giving her every chance to stay in control, makes some foolish, tender, inconvenient thing move under all the heat.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Move.”

Garrett nods once, like the word has landed somewhere physical in him.

The first few strokes are slow. Almost careful. Deep enough to make her breath hitch each time, steady enough to let her body catch up around him. He watches her face at first, eyes flicking between her mouth and her eyes and the little furrow that keeps appearing between her brows when the pleasure goes sharp. 

He kisses her there once, right between them, which should be too sweet for the fact that he’s currently inside her, except somehow it only makes the whole thing feel hotter. More specific. More dangerous.

She can feel him everywhere. The stretch, the drag, the warm weight of him above her. His chest sliding against hers, the muscles in his back moving under her palms, the faint bite of his breath near her jaw. 

The bed creaks under them, not loudly enough to compete with the party downstairs, but enough that the sound keeps catching in the corner of her awareness and making her body tighten around him with the absurd knowledge of where they are. 

Garrett Graham’s room. His bed. Music beneath the floorboards. People laughing downstairs. His door locked.

He presses his mouth to her neck when her breathing gets uneven, and she turns into it, one hand in his hair, the other clawing lightly down his back when he hits that same place again.

“Fuck,” she gasps, not meaning to be so loud.

Garrett’s hips stutter. “Careful.”

She would very much like to care. Unfortunately, he does it again. Her head tips back. “Oh–!”

His hand comes up, covering her mouth for half a second, more instinct than command, and the gesture sends such a vicious little spark through her that her body tightens around him before either of them can process it.

Garrett groans, low and wrecked. “Holy shit.”

Her eyes go wide over his hand. His grin appears slowly, and it’s filthy. Delighted. Almost boyish, if boyish can include the kind of look that makes her entire nervous system offer its resignation. 

He takes his hand away and replaces it with his mouth, kissing her hard enough to swallow the next sound. “Didn’t peg you for loud,” he murmurs against her lips.

“I’m trying to be quiet.”

“You’re doing a terrible job.”

“It’s been a while,” she snaps, or tries to, except it comes out too breathy to have any real bite.

His eyes flick over her face again, sharper now, catching the edge of what she’s said and whatever sits underneath it. Not pity, not that, if anything, it’s satisfaction braided with focus, like he’s just been handed another piece of the puzzle and intends to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

“Yeah?” he says, voice lower. “That why you’re so worked up?”

She glares at him, but it’s less effective when her legs are wrapped around his waist and she can barely breathe. “Don’t sound so pleased.”

“Baby, you pounced on me.” His hips roll again, slower this time, deeper, and her nails scrape down his back. “I’ve been pleased.”

“Asshole.”

“Yeah.” He kisses the corner of her mouth. “You want it harder?”

The question is so blunt it punches the air out of her. She stares at him for a second, cheeks hot, body hotter, and for reasons she’s absolutely going to blame on the dry spell, the music downstairs, and Garrett’s stupid mouth, she cannot quite make herself answer.

His grin softens into something more controlled. “Use your words.”

She huffs a laugh, embarrassed and turned on and annoyed by the exact ratio of both. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Garrett.”

“What?” He kisses under her jaw, smugness warm against her skin. “I’m being thorough.”

“Yes,” she says, louder, fingers tightening in his hair. “Harder.”

“There we go.”

He builds into it, like he’s testing how much she actually wants, how much her body can take before the noises change shape. But Garrett is big, and strong, and horribly aware of both facts, and once he understands that she likes the weight of him, likes the pressure, likes the way he can pin her open without making her feel trapped, he stops treating her like something breakable and starts treating her like something he wants to make a mess of.

Her body loves it. The harder rhythm. The way his hips snap into hers with enough force to push her up the bed until he has to hook an arm under her and drag her back down. The way he catches her knee and pushes it higher, opening her up until every thrust hits deep enough to make the room flash at the edges. The way he murmurs little things against her mouth, against her throat, half praise and half self-control unraveling.

“Fuck, that’s it.” His voice is rough, breathing uneven now. “That’s what you needed, huh?”

She cannot answer. Truly, it’s not her fault. The words are somewhere, presumably, but Garrett keeps hitting that place inside her with such awful precision that all she can do is cling to him and gasp like language is a skill she once had in high school and then abandoned.

He seems to take that personally, in the best and worst way. “Yeah,” he says, almost to himself, mouth at her jaw. “Thought so.”

It feels too good. It’s been long enough that she had forgotten sex could be this much body. This much sound. This much heat spreading under her skin until she feels flushed everywhere, sensitive everywhere, the old tightness in her chest and shoulders dissolving into the messy slap of skin and the creak of the mattress and Garrett’s breath catching every time she drags her nails down his back. 

He keeps finding it. That spot that makes her toes curl and her stomach pull tight and her voice come out higher than she means it to. Again. Again. Again, like he has a map and a grudge.

“Garrett,” she gasps, louder than she intends.

His mouth crashes over hers immediately, but he is smiling into it. “You trying to let the whole house know?”

“I’m trying to survive.”

He groans, forehead dropping to hers for half a second. “Jesus, don’t say shit like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m trying to last longer than six minutes.”

The laugh that breaks out of her is so startled and breathless that it turns into a moan halfway through when he thrusts again. Garrett laughs too, low and rough and proud of himself, then kisses her until the humour melts back into heat.

And it’s fun. Even like this, even with her body slick and strung tight and his jaw clenched from holding back, there’s laughter under it. There’s Garrett being smug and her telling him to shut up and both of them failing to pretend they don’t like the other one’s mouth. 

There’s nothing heavy in the room, nothing sharp-edged enough to draw blood. Just want, and sweat, and stupid little jokes bitten into kisses, and Garrett Graham proving several pieces of bathroom gossip correct in a way she may have to send a formal thank-you note for later.

Then he changes the game entirely. One second he’s above her, solid and hot and driving into her until her thoughts are slippery, and the next his arm locks around her waist and he rolls them. 

She gasps, clutching at his shoulders as the room flips, and then she’s on top of him, knees braced on either side of his hips, hands planted against his chest.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, because the angle is different, the fullness shifting deeper, heavier, making her thighs tremble before she has even moved properly.

Garrett lands beneath her with a grin that should be illegal. His curls are spread over the pillow. His chest is rising hard, skin flushed, mouth swollen, eyes taking her in like the view has improved his quality of life.

“Hi,” he says.

She stares down at him, panting. “Hi?”

“Still with me?”

“Barely.”

His grin widens. “Good.”

He sits up enough to get his mouth on her chest, one arm looping around her back to hold her to him, and the movement forces her down around him in a slow, helpless grind that makes both of them swear at the same time. 

His hands find her waist, then her hips, guiding her into a rhythm before she can overthink the mechanics of it. Which is good, actually, because her thighs are already shaking and her brain has moved most of its remaining resources to the single overwhelming fact of him inside her from this angle.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders and moves. It’s messy at first. Too eager, not smooth enough, her knees sliding on the sheet, her breath catching every time she sinks down too fast and takes him deeper than she’s prepared for. 

Garrett doesn’t seem to mind. Garrett seems, if anything, violently invested. His hands flex at her hips, helping without taking over, his mouth moving over her breasts, tongue hot and deliberate until her back arches and her rhythm falters.

“Fuck,” she pants, fingers tangling in his hair. “Feels so good.”

He lifts his head, eyes dark, mouth wet. “I know,” he says. His hands tighten at her waist, guiding her down harder. “Fuck, you feel incredible.”

It’s breathless and blunt and dragged out of him by the look on his face, by his hands pulling her closer, by the way his hips keep lifting to meet hers when his restraint slips. It makes something bright and hot flare under her ribs. 

She drops her forehead to his, riding him with her arms locked around his neck, panting into the small space between their mouths while he kisses her in pieces whenever either of them gets close enough.

The party downstairs disappears. The whole world goes down to the slide of him in her, the ache in her thighs, his hands dragging over her back, her body moving because stopping feels impossible now. 

Garrett’s teeth graze her jaw. His mouth finds her throat. He says something that might be her name or might just be a curse and it makes her clench around him so hard his fingers dig into her hips.

“Shit,” he groans. “Okay. Okay, hold on.”

She blinks at him, dazed. “What?”

His grin comes back, strained at the edges. “Trust me?”

That’s a stupid question to ask a girl he met properly forty minutes ago. Worse, her body answers yes before her brain can come online.

Garrett rolls them again. This time there’s no mistaking the strength in it. He shifts her under him like it’s nothing, like she weighs nothing, like the bed and her body and the entire hot mess of the room are things he can arrange exactly how he wants. Firm and sure and so fucking hot that the sound she makes when her back hits the mattress is almost embarrassing.

“Yeah?” he asks, already reading her face.

She nods quickly, breath wrecked. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Then he hooks her legs over his shoulders. Her eyes almost roll back before he even moves. The stretch, the angle, the sudden deep press of him when he leans forward – it’s obscene. Actually obscene. 

Her hands fly to his forearms, then the sheets, then back to his arms, needing something to hold while he looks down at her with a grin spreading slow across his face like he knows exactly what he’s done.

“There?” Garrett asks.

She makes a sound that’s not a word.

His grin gets worse. “That a yes?”

“Right there,” she gasps, finally, because pride has lost all funding and vacated the building. “Don’t stop.”

Garrett’s expression flashes with satisfaction so intense it should annoy her. It does annoy her. It also makes her clench around him again, so her body has betrayed the cause.

He doesn’t stop. He fucks her like that, deep and hard and focused enough that the air keeps leaving her in broken little sounds she cannot control. The angle is devastating. Every thrust hits the same place, the one that makes her vision go soft and her fingers claw at his forearms, the one that pulls heat tight and fast through the low centre of her body until she can barely keep her eyes open. 

Garrett watches her through all of it, flushed and breathing hard, curls falling over his forehead, mouth open around rough little curses every time she tightens around him.

“That’s it,” he says, voice thick. “Fuck, that’s it. Right there, huh?”

She nods, frantic now, legs shaking against his shoulders. “Don’t stop. Garrett, don’t–”

“I’ve got you.” His hand slides between them again, thumb finding her clit with the kind of precision that makes her sob, actually sob, one sharp little sound punched out of her before she can catch it. “Come on, baby. Let me have it.”

The words hit at the exact wrong time, or the exact right one. There’s no way to tell. Her body pulls tight, tighter, every nerve narrowing to him, his voice, his thumb, the brutal perfect drag of him inside her, and then it breaks open.

She comes hard enough that the room blanks at the edges. Her back arches. Her hands scramble for him, one locking around his wrist, the other twisting in the sheet. Garrett groans above her, hips losing rhythm for the first time as she clenches around him, and the sound of him nearly tips her into another wave before the first has finished. 

He keeps moving through it, not as controlled now, more desperate, his face dropping toward her thigh where it rests near his shoulder, mouth pressing there in a hot, messy kiss like he needs somewhere to put the feeling.

“Fuck,” he grits out. “Fuck, you’re–”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He follows her with a broken groan, hips driving in deep once, twice, then stilling as he comes, shoulders tense and shaking slightly under her hands. His head dips, breath hot against her skin, and for a second all she can hear is the rush in her own ears, the muffled thud of music downstairs, the violent uneven breathing of both of them trying to become people again.

Garrett eases her legs down carefully. That’s the first thing she notices when thought starts returning in pieces. The care of it. His hands sliding her calves from his shoulders, lowering them to the mattress, his palms moving over her thighs like he’s checking she is still attached to herself. 

Her legs feel boneless. Her whole body does, really. Warm and damp and used in the best possible way, heart still pounding hard enough that she can feel it in her fingertips.

He leans down and kisses her. It’s slow. Almost ridiculous after everything. His mouth presses to hers with a softness that makes her chest do something inconvenient, and she kisses him back because she has no energy left to pretend anything. His lips move over hers once, twice, then he pulls back just enough to breathe against her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she says, because that’s the official post-Garrett Graham vocabulary.

He laughs, low and pleased and exhausted. “Yeah?”

She turns her head slightly into the pillow, smiling despite herself. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said yeah like you were fishing.”

“I was absolutely fishing.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“Only after sex.”

She laughs again, breathless and hoarse, and Garrett’s grin softens as he looks down at her. For a second it’s quiet. Too quiet, maybe. The kind of quiet that could become something if either of them were stupid enough to let it.

He pulls out carefully, and even that makes her inhale, sharp and oversensitive. Garrett’s hand comes to her hip at once, thumb brushing there. “Sorry.”

She shakes her head. “It’s fine.”

He gives her a look.

She huffs. “Good fine. Not bad fine.”

“Important distinction.”

“Very.”

He deals with the condom, tying it off and disappearing just long enough to toss it in the bin by his desk with impressive aim, which he absolutely notices himself doing. When he comes back to the bed, still naked and smug and far too pleased with his own athleticism, she lifts a weak hand.

“Do not brag about that.”

He points at the bin. “That was clean.”

“Garrett.”

“What? You like hockey. You should respect accuracy.”

“I respect silence.”

“Liar.”

He climbs back onto the bed, and she expects him to flop down beside her, maybe make some obnoxious comment, maybe reach for his jeans. Instead he pulls the sheet up first, dragging it over her hips, then higher until it covers her stomach and chest. The gesture lands somewhere soft and private, made worse by the fact that Garrett seems to do it without thinking.

She watches him through the loose fall of hair over her face. He notices that too, because Garrett Graham’s most irritating quality isn’t the mouth or the abs or the competence with which he has just rearranged her understanding of casual sex, but the noticing.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Bad nothing or good nothing?”

She gives him a look. “You’re very invested in categories.”

“I like knowing where I stand.”

“On top of your own bed, mostly naked.”

His grin flashes. “Good place to stand.”

Then he kneels beside her and pushes her hair off her forehead, fingers brushing damp strands back with a gentleness that feels wildly out of proportion to what they’ve just done. His thumb traces once near her temple. Her eyes close before she can stop them, her body willing to embarrass her in every available genre tonight.

“You good?” he asks, quieter now.

She nods, eyes opening again. A smile pulls at her mouth, lazy and stupid and completely beyond her control. “So good.”

Garrett’s face changes. The grin goes less showy, more pleased in a way that looks almost boyish. Like he’s been praised for something that mattered. Which is absurd, because they’re adults and this isn’t a skills assessment, except part of him still looks like he’s put that answer somewhere important.

“Yeah?” he says.

She groans. “You’re fishing again.”

He catches the back of her neck and pulls her up just enough to kiss her. It’s not like the kiss by the door. Not like the desk or the one right before he moved inside her. This one is slower, warm and indulgent, his mouth smiling faintly against hers until she gives in and smiles back. 

His fingers stay at her nape, holding her there with easy pressure, and when he pulls away, he doesn’t go far.

“That was so fuckin’ good,” he murmurs.

The words move through her in a slow, heated wave, different from before now that her body is loose and satisfied and embarrassingly receptive to praise. She looks up at him, still close enough that their noses nearly brush. “Yeah?”

Garrett nods, eyes flicking over her face, down to her mouth, back up again. “Yeah.”

There’s something too bare in that little pause after. A room after thunder. A body after adrenaline. The seconds after a joke has been made and neither person has found another one fast enough. 

She can feel the shape of the thing they agreed this wouldn’t become sitting somewhere near the foot of the bed, patient and smug and wearing his hockey number.

So she does the sensible thing and pokes his chest with two fingers. “Good review?”

Garrett’s grin comes back so fast it almost looks like relief. “Five stars.”

“Oh, gross.”

“Would recommend.”

“You’re never speaking to another woman again if that’s your line.”

“Probably for the best.” His hand slides under the sheet to rest on her waist, warm and heavy, casual like he has every right to be there. “I’m retired now.”

She snorts. “After one round?”

His eyebrows lift. The room changes again. Instantly. She feels it in the hand at her waist. In the way his gaze drops to her mouth and lingers. In the fact that her own body, traitorous little thing, gives a faint, interested pulse despite being wrecked and oversensitive and probably in need of water.

Garrett’s thumb moves once over her skin. “One round?” he repeats, voice dropping into that dangerous, amused register.

She realises too late what she has done. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“I meant… eventually.”

“Sure you did.”

She blinks. “I have friends downstairs.”

“They abandoned you twenty minutes ago.”

“I have dignity.”

“That one’s debatable.”

She laughs, and Garrett kisses her again, quick and warm and infuriatingly pleased, before drawing back with that bright golden-boy grin doing entirely too much damage in the low light of his room.

“Relax,” he says. “I’ll get you water first.”

She stares at him. Garrett’s grin widens. And watching him climb off the bed with all the unbearable confidence of a man who knows exactly what he just did and fully intends to do better next time, questionable might have been underselling it.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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