The hall light snuck in behind me, lighting the slope of his bare back.
A pair of gray sweatpants was slung low on his waist, offering the smallest of barriers to his full body.
A creak was what finally drew his attention to my presence.
The phone’s light cut off, his body spun, his hand curled into a tight fist, ready for anything.
Except, it seemed, for me.
His body jolted back, brows furrowing, hands slackening immediately, enough that his phone slipped from his grip, clomping to the floor in its thick rubber case.
“Gemma,” my name rushed out from between his lips, airy, unsure. “Is everything okay?” he asked, recovering himself, immediately jumping to concern for my well-being.
When I didn’t answer him, his gaze went behind me, looking for threats, for a reason I might have found myself in his space when I hadn’t dared to tread there before.
Satisfied that no hooded man was lurking in a corner, his eyes slid back to me, staying on my face for an admirably long moment before sliding down, taking in my barely-there outfit. They paused for a long while on my breasts, the chill in his room from the open window making my nipples twist, poking through the barely-there fabric.
He moved on, noting the sliver of skin between the hem of my tank and the waistband of my shorts, then gliding down the length of my legs before moving back up.
Quickly.
Too quickly.
Like he caught himself in the act.
“Do you need something, Gem?” he asked.
For all the thinking I had been doing about this moment, I hadn’t actually managed to come up with anything to say.
Because, well, sometimes words just fell too short, didn’t they?
In times such as this, actions meant more, relayed things lips never could articulate accurately.
Decision made, I took a breath, then a step, closing the space between our bodies, pressing my front to the hard lines of his, pushing up on my toes as my hand raised, encircling the back of his neck.
A little tug had him finally close enough.
I saw the spark of understanding a mere second before my lips sealed over his.
There was a spark at the contact, something that sizzled and burned, became a roaring flame that overtook me completely, stealing away the cold that had been whispering over my skin.
Beneath mine, his lips were pliant, accommodating, undemanding. For long enough that I was starting to think I had misread before, suddenly, his body loosened, his arms wound around me, squeezing my body tight to his, tight enough to make breathing impossible as his lips came alive under mine, grew bolder, harder, more demanding.
The flame became a wildfire, encompassing us completely, cocooning us from the world and into a whole new one, one of ours alone, one that knew nothing but mutual need.
A low, almost pained whimper escaped me as my fingernails ripped down the back of his shoulder blade as I struggled to hold on, get closer, when such a thing wasn’t even possible.
The sound seemed, for him at least, to be an ice bucket on the moment, on this new, beautifully warm world we had come to explore together.
His lips ripped from mine, his hands releasing me onto unstable legs. The dreamy haze of desire took an embarrassingly long time to clear before my eyes finally fluttered open, finding him standing there, eyes open, jaw tight.
“Go back to your room, Gemma.”
It was a voice I didn’t know. If I heard it on the street, I never would have recognized it.
There was coldness to it.
And a harshness I’d never heard before.
Neither of those things seemed like Lincoln to me. Yet there was no denying it had been Lincoln who had said them.
“W…what?” I asked, hearing the airlessness of my own voice, making it hard to hear even to my own ears.
“Go back to your room, Gemma,” he demanded again, turning away from me.
Brain fuzzy, I figured this was just him thinking there was something inappropriate about the two of us getting physical.
Undeterred, my hand went out, closing around his arm, turning him back.
But his eyes refused mine for a long moment. His hand moved out, closing around my wrist, hard enough to force my hand away, holding it in the air for a long moment as his eyes found mine. There was none of the warmth he was known for there.
“Go. Back. To. Your. Room.” With that, he dropped my wrist, turned, walked back into his bathroom, and slammed the door.
Rejection was a part of life. I wasn’t sure anyone could go through their entire lifespan without knowing the sting of it, the burning embarrassment connected to it.
But this felt different.
Stronger.
Damn near overpowering.
There was a crushing sensation in my chest, compressing all my air, making me feel lightheaded as I moved out into the hall.
I planned on just going back to my room, licking my wounds, finding whatever it was that might help me be able to face him in the morning.