His thumb circles the aching peak, and two fingers slide deep inside me, and the world narrows to that point of contact, to the water, to his ragged breath in my ear. “You’re dripping,” he murmurs, his voice thick with awe. “Even here.”
"Even here," I mumble, the words dissolving into the humid air between our mouths. "Makes perfect sense to be wet in here."
Sebastian chuckles, a low, rough sound that vibrates through my chest where it’s pressed to his. "Ah yes. A pool would make anyone wet." His fingers curl inside me, a deliberate, devastating twist, and my head falls back against the tiled edge with a soft thud.
"You’re quite good at that," I murmur into the column of his throat, tasting chlorine and salt.
"You talk too much," he says, but there’s no bite in it, only a breathless kind of focus. His lips find mine again, not tentative, not exploratory, but claiming. This kiss is different from the frantic one that started this—it’s slower, deeper, a conversation. His tongue traces the seam of my lips and I open for him, a silent surrender that feels more intimate than anything his fingers are doing. The water laps at our shoulders, his free hand splayed against the small of my back, holding me anchored to him, to this moment, to the terrifying fact that I don’t want to be anywhere else.
He breaks the kiss, his forehead resting against mine, our breaths mingling. His blue eyes are dark, pupils swallowing the azure ring. "Imogen." Just my name. It’s a question, a warning, a plea. I feel the rigid length of him, hot and insistent against my hip through the water.
I don’t answer with words. My hands slide from his shoulders, down the hard planes of his chest, through the water, until my fingers brush him. He goes perfectly still. The feel of him, velvet-over-steel, makes my own breath catch. I wrap my hand around him, and a ragged groan escapes his throat, a sound of pure, undignified need. It’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever heard. I stroke him once, slowly, watching his face fracture. The proper professor is gone. In his place is just a man, unraveling.
My hand tightens around him, and the sheer size of him—long, thick, veined with urgency—makes my breath stutter. My brain, always so loud, goes quiet with a single, pragmatic thought. I hesitate, my fingers curling, not pulling him closer but just… holding. “I’m not sure you’ll fit,” I say, and it comes out half a laugh, half a wince, a terrible, awkward joke tossed into the charged space between our mouths.
His eyes, dark and intent, lock on mine. A muscle feathers in his jaw. “We’ll fit,” he says, his voice a low rasp that brooks no argument. It’s not arrogance. It’s a solemn, desperate certainty. His hand covers mine where I hold him, his skin fever-hot even through the cool water. He guides us both, his gaze never leaving my face. “Slowly.”
The blunt head of him presses against me, and my whole body goes taut. It’s a stretch, a burning, perfect fullness that makes my eyes flutter shut. “Sebastian—” It’s a gasp, his name the only anchor I have.
“Look at me.” The command is soft, frayed at the edges. I force my eyes open. His expression is shattered, raw, every ounce of his proper distance incinerated. “Just… look at me.” He pushes forward, an inexorable, slow inch, and the water ripples around us. The sensation is everywhere—the cool silk of the pool, the searing heat of him sinking into me, the tile hard against my back, his hand cradling my jaw like I’m something precious he’s afraid to break. It’s too much. It’s not enough.
He pauses, fully seated, and we simply breathe. His forehead is against mine again, our noses brushing. The world has shrunk to this: the joined heat of our bodies beneath the waterline, the sound of our ragged synchronization, the jasmine-scented air. “See?” he murmurs, his lips moving against my cheek. “A perfect fit.”
Then he moves, and it’s not a thrust. It’s a withdrawal so agonizingly slow I whimper, and a return so deep I see stars. He sets a rhythm that is pure torture, each stroke a deliberate, devastating exploration. My nails bite into the corded muscle of his shoulders. Every gasp I steal, he swallows. His name becomes a chant on my lips, and with each repetition, his control splinters further, until he’s burying his face in the crook of my neck, his movements turning frantic, his breath hot and broken against my skin. The professor is gone. There is only this man, and me, and the devastating truth of how we fit.
The sensation is obscenely specific. When he pulls back, a slow, deliberate retreat, I feel every ridge of him, the swollen head catching at my entrance before it slips free. There’s a vacuum, a soft, wet pull, my own body trying to keep him inside. Then he pushes forward again, and the stretch is a bright, shocking fullness, his shaft a brand along walls that had only known emptiness. He fits. He fits so perfectly it feels like a verdict.
My thoughts, usually a riot of commentary and fear, have gone still. There is no past, no wildfire, no sister’s wedding, no trust fund punchline. There is only this: the cool lap of water at my collarbones, the searing slide of him within me, the scratch of tile against my spine, and his face—flushed, fierce, undone—inches from mine. We don’t speak. The only sounds are the slick rhythm of our joining, the gasp of his breath, the punched-out little whimpers I can’t seem to swallow.
“Imogen.” My name is ragged on his lips. His forehead rests against mine, his eyes screwed shut. A single drop of water, or sweat, tracks from his temple down the sharp line of his cheekbone. I watch it fall.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur. I can feel the fine tremor in the muscles of his shoulders where I’m clinging to him.
He lets out a breath that’s half a laugh, half a sob. “Astute observation.” His hips roll again, that same devastating, slow precision, and my vision blurs at the edges. “You feel… God. You feel like home.” The confession seems to shock him as much as it does me. His eyes fly open, blue and desperate, as if I might laugh.
I don’t laugh. I just hold his gaze and tighten around him, a deliberate, internal clutch. His control snaps. The slow, worshipful pace shatters into something urgent and hungry. His hands come up to cradle my face, his thumbs brushing my cheeks, and he’s kissing me like he’s drowning and my mouth is the only air. The water churns around us, sloshing against the pool steps. I am weightless, anchored only by him, by the relentless, perfect friction that is building a tremor deep in my belly, a silent, rising scream.
The tremor in my belly becomes a seismic wave, cresting, breaking, dragging a raw, broken sound from my throat that echoes off the water and the glass ceiling. The world whites out—no tile, no jasmine, no chlorine—just the pure, shocking unraveling of every nerve ending I own, focused entirely on where our bodies are joined. I clench around him, a series of involuntary, rhythmic pulses, and his name is the only word left in the universe.
“Imogen.” It’s a groan against my neck, his own release triggered by the feel of mine. I feel the hot pulse of him deep inside, a final, intimate claim that makes my oversensitive body shudder again. His arms lock around me, holding me through the aftershocks as we both gasp for air in the humid, charged dark.
For a long moment, there is only the gradual slowing of our hearts, the lap of water settling around us, the cool kiss of the tile against my flushed back. My mind, the traitor, begins its tentative return. It offers up a pathetic, post-coital bullet point: You just had transcendent sex against a swimming pool wall with your future brother-in-law’s brother. The thought is so absurd I let out a weak, breathless laugh that gets lost in the damp skin of his shoulder.
“What’s funny?” His voice is ruined, rough and low, his lips moving against my temple. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t pulled away. We are still intimately connected, a fact that is both obscenely practical and wildly intimate.
“Nothing. Everything.” I swallow, my own voice hoarse. “I was just thinking about the washing machine schedule. This seems a significant deviation from the rules.”
He goes still for a second, then I feel the rumble of his own quiet laugh. “A flagrant violation of Section 4, Subsection B: No unsanctioned aquatic engagements after 10 PM.” He finally shifts, lifting his head to look at me. His blue eyes are soft, hazy, the pupils still blown. A strand of his dark hair is stuck to his forehead. “I’ll have to write myself up.”
“Terribly improper,” I whisper, and the act of speaking, of returning to our familiar, sharp-edged banter, feels like stepping onto solid ground after being adrift at sea. It’s a lie, of course.
The ground isn’t solid.
It shifts slightly, subtle but undeniable, the surface giving just enough to remind me nothing here is as steady as it should be. The chill seeps upward anyway, damp and quiet, settling against my skin.
Figures.
We’ve changed things. What happened tonight tilted something fundamental, turned what used to feel certain into something uncertain. Like the ground itself is reconsidering me.
I shouldn’t be thinking about it.
The air bends strangely in the weak light, the darkness swelling and shrinking around the edges of my vision. My breathing sounds louder than it should. Somewhere deeper in the dark, water taps against stone. Slow. Patient. Like it has all the time in the world.
I could start pulling it apart now. Turn every word, every look, every moment over in my head until morning.
But not tonight.
Tonight I just keep moving across ground that isn’t quite solid and pretend it doesn’t mean anything yet. Tomorrow can have the questions. Tonight I’m going to enjoy this.