21. Ava

Chapter 21

Ava

I didn't have the bandwidth to process how nice his penthouse was as he carried me through the front door, my bare body wrapped around his front and his mouth on mine.

I didn't have the bandwidth to care about what this meant or what I was admitting to myself as he took me up the curving stairs and through a set of double doors.

I didn't have the bandwidth to question how he felt or why he'd walked away from Heather, because his hands and fingers were on me, in me, teasing me, filling me in the low light of his master bedroom, dark gray walls on one side and a floor-to-ceiling window on the other. My dad's penthouse didn't compare to whatever this place was, and for a moment, I wondered if I'd been hit by a fucking car back on Delancey and was vividly dreaming in the hospital.

None of it felt real .

But then he was slipping into me again, with his hand in my hair and his lips in the crook of my neck. His body pressed into the backs of my thighs, my knees hooked around his torso, my fingernails digging into his back. He moaned my name, and it sounded like heaven, like sin, like the only thing I ever wanted to hear for the rest of my life—and I didn't have the bandwidth to care about the consequences of this.

At that moment, I would gladly be Icarus if he were the sun.

And I was insane for it.

————

I woke the moment Adrian's arms unknitted themselves from me stitch by stitch. The room was cloaked in darkness as I blinked my eyes open, the sky out of the window only slightly brighter than it had been when we'd fallen asleep. Wa s he up early again?

I rolled to face him, catching him off guard as I slotted into the empty space of his bare chest. Half asleep and groggy, my mind was screaming at me that he was trying to leave, and I wasn't going to let that happen again.

He chuckled softly and pressed his nose into the top of my head. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Stay," I mumbled, the sound muffled.

"I'm not going anywhere." Gently, he played with my hair, smoothing it down and pushing strands behind my ear. "This is just what time my body wakes me up."

"Your body is stupid," I insisted. "The sun isn't awake yet. You shouldn't be either."

He laughed as he pulled me in just a little closer. "Go back to sleep, love."

"I don't want you to leave."

He went silent. There was no sound except our breathing and the steady hum of the heat, and even his fingers paused in my hair, the steady drum of his heart against my forehead slowing. I could feel myself slipping back toward sleep, and I wanted to fight it, wanted to make sure he wasn't going to run away like he had on the boat or like I had after the charity ball. This was his home, but that meant nothing when he had other places he could go.

"Okay," he whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. "I won't."

————

By the time I'd woken back up, the light of the room had increased dramatically, and the steady inhale and exhale of Adrian's breathing was still all around me. He was still holding me exactly the same way as earlier that morning.

I pulled my head up from his chest and looked up at him, fully expecting a bored, awake Adrian to be looking down at me. But his eyes were shut, his lips just barely parted…

He'd fallen back asleep with me.

Bleary-eyed and exhausted, I reached up, dragging my fingers across his cheek. The fine lines in his face seemed to smooth as I touched them, and I did it again, touching his forehead, the little lines beside his eyes, the one that ran from his nostril to the edge of his lips. He was relaxed out in the Hamptons, but seeing him like this was another level that I didn't think was possible for him to achieve.

He blinked awake and blue eyes found mine in an instant. "Hi," I said.

He studied me for a moment before glancing at the window behind me, a flicker of confusion washing over him. "Was I asleep?"

I nodded.

"Hmm." He cupped my cheek, his thumb moving back and forth across it. "I can't remember the last time I slept later than the sunrise."

We were slow-moving as we made our way from the bed. He offered me a shirt that didn't have paint stains on it and I took it from him, opting not to wear bottoms for both comfort, and in case things became heated again. The shirt hung low enough over my rear that I didn't feel a need to, anyway.

As we made our way from the bedroom and passed the handful of closed, mysterious doors and one that said Lucas , I wondered where exactly he'd sent his child for the weekend.

"He's with Grace," Adrian said, intensely nonchalant as if he hadn't just read my mind. "She's got a grandson about his age."

The walkway on the second floor opened up, overlooking a massive, bright living room with windows lining the entirety of the far wall. Two sets of stairs lined each side, and at the far end of the walkway, an open doorway led to a room I could barely make out the contents of, but I could see what I thought was the corner of a grand piano.

gray walls carried through to the living room as he took me down the stairs. His place was sleek and modern with a hint of an almost academic feel, with white couches and wooden furniture filling the space. A handful of oversized Legos sat in the corner in the shape of a castle, and beside them, an abandoned train beside a set of disconnected tracks.

"Are you a savory or sweet breakfast kind of person?"

I turned my attention back to him as he pulled me into the kitchen, depositing me by the island with high-top chairs along one side. "Oh. Uh, sweet."

"Pancakes?"

I grinned. "Do you have chocolate chips?"

"I have an eight-year-old," he laughed, pulling out a box of flour. "Of course I have chocolate chips, Ava."

————

"It's freezing ."

"The water's hot, love."

Adrian slid the glass door open onto the hidden balcony. I couldn't for the life of me understand why this was tucked away on the other side of the penthouse, the only access point hidden in the room I'd spotted earlier that housed nothing but a grand piano, massive mirrors, and a bench to sit on.

Frigid air whipped my hair as he pulled me out into the cold, my bare feet expecting frozen ground but finding warm paneling. I stared down in confusion, wondering why the hell my toes hadn't gone numb.

"Heated floors," he said casually. He pressed a button on the wall and the cover on the pool began to shift, retracting toward the left side and revealing roiling, steaming water. By the time I'd finally pulled my gaze from the floor and the pool, Adrian was already half undressed, standing in nothing but his flannel pajama bottoms. "Come on."

The wind picked up again, his unstyled hair lifting and blowing lightly. He pushed his pants down to his ankles and kicked them off, baring himself entirely, and I couldn't tell if it was the cold of the wind or just him that stole the air from my lungs.

He held out a hand for me, and I took it.

Shivering in the cold, my body naturally gravitated toward him as he pulled me backward in the direction of the pool. His hands snaked beneath the oversized shirt he'd given me, lifting the fabric up my body as his fingers glided across my bare skin.

In one quick move, he pulled the shirt up and over my head and hooked his fingers beneath the curve of my rear. He lifted me up, hooking my legs around his waist.

"Hi," I breathed, my teeth chattering.

Step by step, he descended slowly into the pool. "Hi," he grinned.

The moment the water touched my toes, I trusted him. Warmth enveloped me as it rose up my calves, my hips and thighs, my waist. It was almost as warm as a hot tub but was large enough to be considered a small pool, stretching maybe twenty feet wide. It backed right up against the side of the building, and the lack of railing on the edge made my heart rate spike.

"Is that…safe?" I asked, clutching onto the back of his neck. Heights weren't my worst fear, but they were up there, and the possibility of being thrown over the edge or accidentally lifting myself when we were almost high enough to touch the clouds made my hair stand on end.

Little by little, he edged us closer to the edge. "The drop is just to the lower balcony," he said. Damp hands pushed the hair from my face. "A fall would hurt, but you're not dropping sixty floors."

I clung to him like a fucking koala anyway. "Do you let Lucas out here?"

He snorted. "Not a fucking chance. He can swim out here when he's ten. Until then, he can use the building's community pool."

I watched him, studying him in the confusing mixture of freezing air and warm water. If he didn't swim with Lucas out here, then this was either solely for him, and he swam alone, or he saved it for occasions like these. I wasn't sure why that made my stomach twist. It shouldn't bother me that he'd been with other people—he had a son, for God's sake. But the idea that whatever this was would just be another name on his list made me feel as small as a fucking grape.

He propped me up on a seat that jutted out from the inside of the pool, just beside the edge. I could see the balcony he was talking about down below, and the wooziness washed over me, a mixture of adrenaline and fear from the height and a sickening feeling that maybe, this meant nothing to him. Sure, the sex was incredible, the tension between us was finally breaking. We'd shared one of the best nights of my goddamn life, and we'd spent far too long together today to be considered healthy, but that didn't necessarily point toward anything real from him.

He'd said he wanted me last night. That on its own had shot me into the goddamn stratosphere, and the longer I stayed here, the more I worried I wouldn't be capable of coming down—and that was fucking terrifying if he was down on earth and not beside me.

"We shouldn't stay out here for too long," I said, and the squeak my voice made as it cracked on the word long made me wish I'd shut my mouth instead. "You, uh, you have a date at seven."

His lips pressed into a thin line as he stared at me, his brows dropping. "Ava." He pushed my thighs apart and pressed me into the corner of the pool, invading my space again as he slotted his hips between my legs. A hint of firmness pressed against my inner thigh, and heat swept over me even in the cold. "Do you honestly think I have any interest in that?"

"I—"

"I walked away because I wanted you," he said, his chin dipping as he dragged his nose along my cheek. "Is that not what I said last night? I already canceled the two tonight and the one for tomorrow morning, Ava. This is the only date I want."

I swallowed to dampen my dry throat, my breath catching the moment his hand dragged up my thigh. You can want this.

You can properly want this now.

————

"On a fucking Saturday? Are you kidding me?"

Weak-kneed and wrapped in a towel with the lightheaded aftermath of another two orgasms flooding my senses, I stood beside the grand piano as Adrian shut the sliding glass door a little too hard, a little too angrily, his phone pressed against his ear.

"Fine. I'll be down in twenty."

He hung up, and those lines of stress popped back out on his face. Gone was the absolute calm I'd gotten used to. "What's wrong?"

"Crisis at the office," he sighed. The clock on the wall showed four thirty— surely they should be finishing up. "I'm sorry, I need to sort this out. I'm not sure how long I'll be down there but I can try…"

"It's okay," I insisted, a sinking feeling in my gut. Insecurity had always lingered a little too close to me, and I couldn't help but worry about the worst possible scenario here. But he'd insisted that he wanted me, and I needed to try to believe that. "I need to pick up a few things from my dad's anyway."

He closed the distance, damp feet padding across the wooden floors, and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "I'll call you when I'm done. We can meet up later tonight if you want."

Of course I fucking want that. I looked up at him, trying to get a read on whether that was a sincere offer, but he spoke before I could even question it.

"Lucas is with Grace until tomorrow afternoon. I don't want to waste that time on anything else."