Page 60 of Depths of Desire
I didn’t know.
I couldn’t know. Not now. Not with the echo of last year screaming in my blood.
I clenched my fists around the towel and shut it down. Compartmentalize. That was what I was good at. Not tonight.
Tonight wasn’t for decisions.
Because Lennox was at my apartment.
He had a key. I’d given it to him last week, casually, like it didn’t mean anything. Like I hadn’t looked down at the spare in my palm and thought,This is what trust feels like.
I stepped out into the cool night, muscles tight, mind spinning, and walked hard. Feet on autopilot, emotions locked in a box. The world spun around me, too fast, too loud.
But I only thought about him.
About his smile. His voice. The sound he made when I kissed the side of his neck and he tried to play it off like it didn’t wreck him.
I took the stairs two at a time. I unlocked the door with trembling fingers. The apartment was warm.
Dim lighting pooled on the wooden floors. There was no noise, just the faint hum of the fridge and the ghost of shower steam still curling in the hall.
I stepped inside.
And stopped.
There it was. That smell.
His shampoo. His cologne. That earthy, citrusy mix that had burrowed so deep into my senses that I sometimes swore I could smell it even when he was gone.
I turned down the hallway, the tension breaking, bleeding into something else. Something deeper. Heavier. Hungrier.
The bedroom door was half-closed.
I pushed it open.
And there he was.
Lennox, in my bed.
One arm stretched lazily above his head, his fingers curled against the pillow like he’d been waiting there forever. The sheet rode low over his hips, a careless slant of white against gold skin. Nothing else. No shirt. No pretense. Just bare limbs and that breath-stealing calm he wore like a second skin.
The soft light from the bedside lamp hit him just right, gilding the peaks of his chest, catching along the fine edge of his collarbone, drawing long shadows down the ridges of his abs. His hair was damp and tousled from the shower, curling slightly where it touched the nape of his neck, like he’d towel-dried it in a hurry.
His cock lay thick and semi-hard against his thigh, visible through the thin sheet that did nothing to hide the outline of him. My mouth went dry at the sight.
His eyes found mine immediately. Half-lidded, slow to blink, and full of something wicked. Something soft. Like he’d been expecting me, counting the seconds. And now that I was here, the game could finally begin.
He looked like a dream I’d had a hundred times. Only better, because this time, the dream looked back. And he didn’t vanish.
He smirked faintly, just with the corner of his mouth. His gaze drifted down my frame and back up again like a deliberate drag of silk across skin. His free hand moved to palm himself through the sheet, slow and teasing, watching my reaction.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
He didn’t move otherwise. He didn’t need to.
He just was.
And he looked like he was mine.
