Page 108 of Rising Heat

He disappears up the loft stairs and pauses halfway, looking back once with the grin that means he’s saving the rest of this for later.

The house settles around me the way it always does, the old pipes ticking somewhere in the walls, the furnace kicking on, the floorboards shifting with the cold. For the better part of two months those sounds have come with another set layered over them—the muffled rhythm of cabinet doors upstairs, water running through old plumbing, footsteps crossing the floor above my bedroom.

Darcy.

Tonight every sound reminds me she’s one flight up. It would be easy to go back upstairs. Easy to knock on her door and take back every inch of careful distance I’d forced between us in the foyer.

Tempting as it is, I stay put, staring at the ceiling running through the logic again—give her the night, let her come to it on her own terms, don’t push. All still right.

Except I can still feel her.

The way her soft frame melted into me the second I pulled her close, full lips against mine, fingers climbing into my hair and gripping me closer. I can still hear the sound she’d made against my mouth when I’d backed her into the wall like it surprised her. The way she grinded against my thigh, desperate enough she’d forgotten there was any reason to hide what she wanted.

I’d had her pinned against the wall, finally tasting her as her hips worked against me, and I’d still walked away.

My dick still has strong opinions about that decision.

Four minutes later, I stop pretending sleep is coming. I think about what she’d sounded like. What she’d sound like in my bed with nothing to muffle it, no foyer, no clothes, no reason to stay quiet.

Her underneath me, rolling her hips to meet mine as I slide into her, taking the pressure she was chasing all night. Her crying out for me when I finally gave it to her—and I’d make her wait for it, because I’m a thorough man and I want to hear her ask. Want her to beg. My mouth working its way down her body until patience became the first thing she lost, her thighs locked around my head while my name fell out of her in pieces she couldn’t put back together.

Whether she’d stay sharp-tongued right up until she came or just let herself go completely.

Both. Every version. I wanted all of it.

I fist my cock and stroke, slow at first, chasing relief that doesn’t come as easily as it usually does. I think about getting her out of Tyler’s hoodie and taking my time with every inch underneath it, about the way she’d grind against my hand the same way she’d ground against my thigh, chasing what she needed without a second thought. I picture her back arching off the mattress, nothing careful or composed left, her asking for more in that wrecked voice until I gave her exactly what she was asking for.

When it’s over, I’m lying there just as wound up as when I started.

That’s the difference. Has been for weeks if I’m being honest with myself. I’m a practical man. I understand what I need and I handle it and move on. That’s always been enough.

But with Darcy, it isn’t.

She doesn’t feel like something I can shake off or fuck out of my system. She lingers in the quiet after, in the spaces between thoughts, in the sound of my own house settling around me.

I told her tomorrow because it was the right thing to do, because she deserved the chance to wake up and choose this again with a clear head. It was either the most sensible thing I’ve done all day or something I’m going to regret the second she appears at the door.

Or maybe she’d decide this wasn’t for her and think it was a mistake.

The thought settles like an anchor on my chest.

Down the hall, Tyler’s TV clicks on and off a few times.

“Yeah,” I mutter to the ceiling.

“Me too.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

darcy

I’ve been awake for the past hour and a half, if you can call the tossing and turning I’ve done since we got home a version of sleep.

I don’t feel anxious exactly. More like alert.

A kind of wakefulness that has nothing to do with being rested and everything to do with the fact that I’m lying in my own bed while something inevitable waits one floor below.

I stare at the ceiling recounting the last twenty-four hours.