Chapter 4

The elevator needed a key, not a button. He pulled out a slim brass fob and slipped it into a slot beneath the panel like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

The doors closed, sealing us inside a box of mirrored steel. Somehow, the whole elevator felt strangely weightless. There was no music, not even the usual mechanical hum. Just the faint pressure building in my ears as we climbed.

Through the narrow strip of glass in the wall, I watched the city fall away beneath us. Tiny lights scattered across the darkness, whole rows of other people’s windows shrinking with every floor. His hand found the small of my back, warm through the thin fabric of my top, a single point of heat against the elevator's manufactured cold.

"You live here alone?" I asked.

"Mostly." He didn't elaborate, and the doors opened onto a hallway with exactly one door at the end of it, dark wood against pale concrete, like the entire floor belonged to him and no one else had ever needed to know it existed.

Inside, he didn’t turn on a single light. He didn’t need to.

Floor-to-ceiling windows took up an entire wall, letting the skyline light the room instead. Blue-black night and scattered amber spilled across the polished concrete floors, the low grey couch, and the sharp lines of the kitchen island.

There wasn’t a thing out of place. No mail tossed on the counter. No mug abandoned on the table. Nothing that suggested anyone actually lived here. It felt less like a home and more like a place someone stopped at between flights.

I stood there for a moment, taking it all in.

It was the size of the place that got me first. There was a particular kind of quiet that came with money. The kind that somehow swallowed even the noise of the city outside.

"You're staring," he said.

"You're rich." I turned to look at him instead of the view. "Suspiciously rich."

"Well, there is a lot you don't know about me."

"Your job or parents?" I asked.

"Mmmmmm, a very boring job." His hand slid from my back to my waist, tugging me gently away from the window glass, toward the warmth of him instead. "Ask me something else."

I let it go, mostly because his mouth found my jaw just then, slow and unhurried. Whatever questions I’d been holding onto disappeared, replaced by something neither of us needed words for.

We ended up on the couch, though I couldn't have said exactly how we got there, only that at some point the leather was cool against the backs of my thighs and his weight was warm over me, his jacket long gone, and his hands slipping beneath the hem of my shirt like they were asking permission with every inch of skin they found. The city kept glowing beyond the glass, a hundred thousand strangers going about their own nights while mine narrowed down to this, his mouth, his hands, the low thread of his breathing against my ear.

I wanted this. I wanted it, wanted it with a hunger sharp enough to scare me, wanted to know what it felt like to be wanted back by someone who looked at me the way he did, like I was something worth being patient for

The kiss started hungry, mouths open, tongues sliding, teeth catching lips in the kind of clumsy urgency that only happens when both people have been holding back too long. His hands framed my face first, then dropped to my waist, pulling me in until there was no space left between us. My shirt came off over my head in one impatient tug; his followed, the soft scrape of cotton against skin loud in the quiet room. 

I pushed him back onto the couch and climbed over him, knees bracketing his hips. The first solid press of him against me made my breath hitch. Thick, hot, already hard, the blunt head of his cock nudged the soft skin of my inner thigh, then higher, dragging a slow, deliberate line against my folds as I settled my weight. It felt massive under me, insistent, the heat of it searing even through the thin barrier of my own wetness. Every small shift of my hips made it slide and press, a constant reminder of exactly how much he wanted this.

His hands stroked up my sides, over my breasts, thumbs brushing my nipples until they tightened. Then one palm slid lower, over the plane of my stomach, between us. Fingers found me slick and open. He circled once, twice, gathering the wetness, then pressed the tip of one finger against my entrance and pushed in.

The stretch was sudden and sharp. A bright, invasive burn that made my whole body jerk. I jumped, hips snapping up and away before I could stop myself, breath punching out of me in a startled sound that was half gasp, half flinch. My thighs clamped, muscles locking hard around his hand.

Root felt it instantly. His whole body stilled against mine, weight lifting, and then he was pulling back just far enough to see my face, the city light catching the concern in his eyes before he said a word.

"Hey." His palm found my cheek, thumb brushing slowly along my cheekbone. "Hey. Look at me."

"I'm sorry." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to, already scrambling to explain the unexplainable. "I don't know what that was. I'm fine, we can...."

"We're not doing anything else tonight." He said it plainly, no weight of judgment anywhere in it, and something in my chest cracked open at how easily he let me off the hook.

"You're not mad."

"Why would I be mad?"

"Because I just...." I gestured uselessly at the space between us, at whatever had just happened to my own body without my consent. "That wasn't normal."

"It was completely normal." He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, patient, like we had nowhere else in the world to be. "Your body's allowed to say no even when the rest of you doesn't want it to."

I didn't have an answer for that. I just looked at him, at how carefully he was watching me, waiting to see what I needed instead of telling me what he wanted.

"Can I ask you something?" he said, "and you don't have to answer if it's too much."

I nodded, bracing.

"Is this your first time? All of it?"

Heat crawled up my throat, and I almost lied out of pure reflex, but something about how gently he'd just handled the last five minutes made the lie feel unnecessary. "Yeah," I admitted. "First everything."

He didn't laugh. Didn't tease, the way Kyle would have. He just nodded slowly, like I'd handed him something fragile and he was working out where to set it down safely.

"Okay," he said. "So we're not doing that tonight."

"You don't have to stop on my account—"

"I know I don't have to." He shifted us both instead, arranging our bodies along the length of the couch until my head found the spot below his collarbone, like it had been carved to fit there. His heartbeat thudded steady against my ear, close enough that I could count it. "I really want to, trust me, I do. If it's your first time, you don't have to do it so recklessly."

He reached behind us without looking, found a soft grey throw draped over the couch's arm, and pulled it loosely over both of us. The wool was rough against my bare arms, warm in a way the leather hadn't been, and the last of the tension in my shoulders finally started bleeding out.

"Tell me something true," I said into him.

"Like what."

"Anything. Something nobody else knows."

He went quiet long enough that I thought he'd deflect again, the same careful wall sliding back into place he'd shown me at the swings. But his hand started moving slowly through my hair instead, unhurried strokes, and he said, "I haven't slept peacefully in a while. It's always something in my head and the pressure too."

"What kind of pressure?"

"Don't you think it's past your bedtime?" His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek. "Aren't you like twenty?"

I tilted my head up to look at him, and whatever crossed my face made something shift in his. "You're deflecting again."

"Tell me a story so that I get to have a good night sleep then," I said softly.

"No," I said fast, "I'm not doing that."

"So I will do it. Close your eyes so that I do it."

His voice was low and steady, changing slightly as he slipped into the story, making up a tale about a girl who was convinced she didn't belong anywhere and a boy who kept finding reasons to prove her wrong.

I listened quietly, my eyes growing heavier with every word.

Somewhere between his voice, the warmth of his arms around me and I stopped fighting sleep.

The last thing I registered was his voice.

"Sleep, Lavinia. I've got you." 

I heard his voice softly echo as I let myself be consumed by the beauty of my dreams.