The universe has a sick sense of humor, and I am the punchline.
Jaxson stands in the doorway, silhouetted against the ambient glow from the motion lights outside. He doesn't move past the threshold. Doesn't step inside. Just exists there in the entrance, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath, his eyes searching the darkness until they land on me.
His eyes find mine across the distance, and the storm that's been building between us all night draws closer. I feel it in the charge of the air, in the way my skin prickles with awareness, in the pressure gathering behind my ribs like thunder waiting to break.
He looks disheveled in ways that make my mouth go dry. His jacket is gone, his shirt untucked, the top two buttons undone to reveal the hollow of his throat. His hair falls across his forehead, mussed from agitated fingers, and the sight of him undone like this sends warmth pooling low in my stomach.
"There you are. Running from me twice in one week—I'm starting to think you enjoy being chased."
His voice wraps around me in the darkness, and my body responds before my mind can intervene. My lips part. My weight shifts toward him, bare feet pressing harder into the stair beneath me. The resistance I've been clinging to all night loosens its grip, thread by thread.
I stay on that goddamn third step while my mind races through every possible outcome of what might follow this moment—none of them wise, all of them inevitable.
Move, Harper. Turn around. Climb the stairs. Lock your bedroom door and pretend you never heard him come in.
But my legs refuse to carry me away from him. My eyes trace the line of his jaw, the column of his neck, the way his chest strains against white cotton with each controlled breath.
He steps inside at last, letting the door swing shut behind him. His fingers rise to his collar, working at the knot of his tie with slow, deliberate movements. The silk loosens, sliding free inch by inch, and my hands curl at my sides—not into fists, but with the ache of wanting to help him. To wrap that fabric around my palm and draw him closer.
He approaches the stairs, and I watch the way he moves, fluid and certain. The muscles of his forearms flex as he pulls the tie free and lets it drop to the marble floor. My gaze follows the movement, then travels back up—the flat plane of his stomach, the breadth of his shoulders, the sharp cut of his cheekbones in the dim light.
Three stairs separate us now, but my body has already closed the distance. I lean toward him without meaning to, my hand finding the banister for balance when my knees threaten to give. The fight drains out of me with each step he climbs, replaced by a surrender that feels less like defeat and more like finally setting down something too heavy to carry.
We are both waiting. Both suspended in this moment of terrible potential.
"Where's Preston?"
The question emerges low, and his jaw tightens around the name. He takes another step, and another, his collar now open, his throat exposed. I want to press my mouth to the pulse point there. I want to taste the salt of his skin again.
"Out."
The word scrapes past my lips, barely audible. Out. Gone. Not here. The house is empty except for the two of us and seven years of accumulated wanting that has nowhere left to hide.
His hand rises. Fingers brush my jaw with a gentleness that makes my eyelids flutter. The touch travels along my cheekbone, traces the shell of my ear, and my head tips into his palm without conscious thought. A small sound escapes my throat—not protest, not permission, just need given voice.
His fingers thread into my hair, sliding through the strands until his palm cradles the back of my skull.
Then he grips.
The pull is sharp, sudden, forcing my head back until my throat is exposed and my spine arches toward him. My breath catches, lungs seizing, but I do not break eye contact. My hands find his chest, palms flat against warm cotton, feeling the hammer of his heart beneath my fingers.
The grandfather's clock ticks exactly one second before Jaxson's mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss obliterates everything—thought, reason, the carefully constructed walls I've spent years building against this exact moment. His teeth catch my lower lip while his hand holds my head exactly where he wants it, and I am drowning in sensation, in the taste of whiskey and want.
My fists close around his shirt, but not to push him away. I drag him closer, rising on my toes to meet him, my body pressing against his with an urgency that surprises us both. He groans into my mouth, and the sound vibrates through me, settling between my thighs where heat has been building all night.
He walks me backward without breaking contact, our bodies moving together, mouths fused and desperate. My spine connects with the wall. The impact drives air from my lungs, but I swallow his gasp this time, my tongue sliding against his, my hands traveling up his chest to his shoulders to the back of his neck.
The plaster behind me holds a crack—a reminder of his fist connecting with this exact spot seven years ago, the night he discovered Richard was sending him away, the night he pressed me against this same wall in fury instead of desire.
His hands find my hips, fingers digging into the fabric of my dress, pulling me flush against him. The evidence of his arousal presses into my stomach, hard and insistent, and my body responds with a throb so deep I feel it in my spine.
I whimper into his mouth. Actually whimper, like some desperate creature who has never been touched before, and I should be embarrassed but I am too far gone to care.
His thigh slots between mine, and I grind against it without shame, chasing friction, chasing relief from the ache that has been building since that dance floor. His hands slide down to cup my ass, lifting me higher against him, and the new angle makes me gasp.
"Jaxson." His name falls from my lips with a moan.
He groans in response, the sound rumbling through his chest and into mine. His mouth moves from my lips to my jaw, teeth grazing the sensitive skin, then lower to my throat where my pulse hammers visibly. He sucks at that spot, hard enough to mark, and my head falls back against the wall as my hips rock against his thigh in a rhythm I cannot control.
His hand slides up my ribcage, thumb brushing the underside of my breast through thin fabric, and my nipples tighten in anticipation. I arch into his touch, silently begging for more, and when his palm finally closes over me, I make a sound that echoes through the empty foyer.
We have been building toward this moment since we were teenagers too young to understand the fire we were playing with. Every cruel word, every calculated distance, every night spent pretending the other didn't exist—all of it was kindling, and we have finally struck the match.