Page 63 of Offside

I reached past her to set my keys on the hook by the door, close enough she had to tip her chin up to look at me. Close enough I could feel the warmth coming off her.

“Still want to be here?” I asked. She needed to pick me, to want me back as much or hell, half as much, as I wanted her. I didn’t want to push her into anything she was uncomfortable with and I started to think maybe we should have talked about it more before going to my place. But after the last night, I couldn’t leave the bar without any alone time with her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I really do.”

Considering that my official go ahead, I kissed her once, slow, and felt her lean into it. Then I took her hand and walked her toward the windows.

She went still when we got there. The city spread out below us. The canal, the grid of lights, the mountains dark against the sky at the edges. Fourteen floors up with nothing between us and all of it but glass.

“Nobody can see in,” I said. “Angle of the building and the glass is reflective.”

She looked out for a long moment, taking it in. The scale of it, the intimacy of standing this high up with the whole city below us. Then she turned her head to look at me and I could see her deciding. “You’ve thought about this.”

“Since the moment you walked through the door.”

Heat moved through her face and she didn’t try to hide it while her cheeks turned slightly pink. I ran my hands through her hair once, feeling it, and watched her eyes go soft as I inhaled the beachy scent she always seemed to have. Standing behind her still, I buried my face in her neck and licked gently where it met her shoulder. I settled them there and gently ran my fingers down her arms and to her waist, I asked. “Can I take this off you?” My fingers curled at the hem of her shirt.

“Yes,” she said. No hesitation.

I slowly pulled it past her ribs, over her head, and dropped it so she was standing in the window light in just her jeans and a lacy red bra, the whole city in front of her, and I took a moment to look at her. Deliberately, without hurrying, because she was worth looking at and I wanted her to know I thought so.

She held still for it. That was the thing I noticed. Not posing, not performing—just standing there in the city light and letting herself be looked at, by me. Her chin came up, garnering my attention.

I placed her palms against the glass.

She gasped at the cold—sharp and involuntary—and I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck and felt her shiver move all the way through her. My hands found her waist and stayed there, feeling her breathe, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric still between us. She’d worn this under her clothes at the bar all evening without my knowing it. Hours across a table from her, her laughing and texting me with her eyes bright and her drink in her hand, and underneath all of it—this. Red lace. Her own. Not for me, not planned, just hers—and she was going to ruin me for every other view in the world.

“I can feel you staring,” she said.

“Yeah.” The word came out rough. “Give me a second.”

She laughed and it went straight through my chest and down, and I unclasped her bra and let it fall. Her hands stayed against the glass. She didn’t cover herself or turn. She stood bare in the city light and let me look, and my blood went entirely animal about it—the long line of her spine, the curve of her shoulders, the way the Phoenix skyline blazed in front of her like the whole city had arranged itself to frame what was mine. I’d had my hands on her last night and I was still not prepared for her. I didn’t think I was ever going to be prepared for her.

I slid my hands up her ribcage, slow, feeling every rib, every breath she took, and covered her breasts with my palms. Warm weight, soft skin, the press of her nipples against my hands hardening instantly.

She arched into me before she’d finished deciding to.

“Oh—”

“Good?”

“Really good.” Her voice had dropped to a level I felt in my spine. “Don’t stop.”

I didn’t stop. I learned what made her fingers curl against the glass and what made her hips push back and what made her say my name in the register that bypassed my brain entirely and went somewhere more fundamental. The smell of her hair against my face. The warmth coming off her skin. The sound of her breathing going uneven in the quiet of the apartment. I was so hard it was a physical problem and I had exactly one thing I needed and it was her falling apart, and I intended to get there.

When she was trembling faintly and had entirely stopped pretending she wasn’t, I turned her around.

She came willingly, hands dropping from the glass. I kissed her once, deep enough that she made a sound against my mouth. Then I worked the button of her jeans open and dragged them down while she braced a hand on my shoulder and stepped out of them. Then I dropped to my knees in front of her.

She looked down at me and an expression crossed her face that I felt in the back of my throat. Want and heat and the slight undone quality she kept every room she walked into at arm’s length and had decided, for me, to stop. I was going to dismantle every last brick of that composure until there was nothing left standing but her.

“Ryan—”

“I’ve been thinking about this since last night,” I said. It came out exactly as wrecked as I felt. “I need to taste you. Let me.”

Her hand moved into my hair and gripped.

“Yes,” she said. Not okay, not yeah. Just yes, immediate, like she was done pretending to think it over.