The light had changed.

Ivy surfaced through layers of sleep to the wrong quality of gray—not the amber dim of the library's overnight lamps but the thin, watery pallor of dawn bleeding through high windows. Her cheek was stuck to something warm that rose and fell. Flynn's chest. Still bare. Still under her. The shirt she'd been using as a pillow had bunched somewhere in the night, and now it was just skin—his skin, salt-dry now, a faint tracing of her own dried saliva at the corner of her mouth where she'd been pressed against his pectoral.

She didn't move. Not yet. His arm was heavy across her lower back, his hand loose but still there, fingers curved over the swell of her hip where her jeans weren't. Her jeans weren't anywhere. Neither were his. The memory of that landed in her stomach—a drop, a heat, the specific way he'd said I want everything while still inside her—and she felt her face go hot against his chest.

The clock on the wall above the circulation desk read 6:40.

Twenty minutes.

"Flynn." Her voice came out sandpapered, cracked down the middle. She cleared her throat. Pressed her palm flat on his sternum. "Flynn, wake up. We have twenty minutes."

He made a sound—low, rough, the noise of a man who had slept harder in four hours than he had in four years—and his arm tightened around her before his eyes opened. When they did, green and unfocused, they found her face and something in him settled. Like he'd been braced for her not to be there. Like waking alone was the expected thing.

"You're still here." Not a question. But not not a question either.

"I'm still here." She pushed herself up on one elbow, and his hand slid from her hip to the floor. The loss of contact was a small grief she didn't have time to examine. "And in about eighteen minutes, someone is going to unlock that door and find two naked Egyptologists on the floor of the special collections room. So."

He blinked. Processed. Then he was moving—sitting up, scrubbing a hand over his face, looking around at the evidence of them scattered across the carpet. Her sweater balled near the shelf. His jacket halfway under the table. His belt still looped through the leg of the chair where she'd dropped it. And books. Hieroglyphic grammar texts and excavation reports that had nothing to do with what happened here and everything to do with the excuse that had put them in the same room after hours.

"Pants," he said, and the absurdity of it—the professor voice applied to pants—made her snort. That laugh. The one she usually caught. She didn't catch it now.

"Pants," she agreed. "Then books. Then looking like we did not spend the night doing what we spent the night doing."

He found his boxers first, then his trousers, and she watched him pull them up over his hips—the muscles in his back shifting, the dark hair on his chest still mussed from her cheek, the silver at his temples catching the dawn light—and she had to look away. Because if she kept looking, she'd touch him. And if she touched him, they'd still be naked when the door opened.

Her jeans were under the table. She crawled to them, felt his gaze on her ass as she moved, and didn't hate it. Not even a little. The denim was cold and uncooperative when she pulled it up over her thighs, over her hips, the button requiring more force than it should. She was still wet. From him. From the memory of him. She'd shower later. Maybe. Or maybe she'd let it stay.

His shirt was next—he'd found it, was buttoning it with quick, practiced fingers, but he paused at the third button to look at her. Just look. The green of his eyes was different in daylight. Less guarded. Or maybe the guard was gone because there was nothing left to guard against. She'd already seen him on his knees. She'd already felt him come inside her. The secrets were spent.

"You're staring," she said, pulling her sweater over her head. It smelled like him now. Old books and sandalwood and the salt of his skin.

"I'm cataloging."

"That's not a real answer."

"I'm an academic. Everything is cataloging." He tucked his shirt in, found his belt, and the rasp of leather through loops filled the silence. "Ivy."

The way he said her name stopped her hands. She was reaching for a book—Petrie's Naqada and Ballas, spine cracked, yellow stickies feathering the edges—and her arm just paused mid-reach.

"What?"

He didn't answer right away. Just finished threading his belt, the buckle clicking shut with a finality that made her stomach clench. Then he crossed to her—three steps, bare feet on industrial carpet—and took the book from her hand. Set it on the shelf. Turned her by the shoulders until she was facing him, his palms warm through her sweater.

"Ivy." Softer this time. His thumb found the place where her neck met her shoulder, right above the collar of the sweater. Pressed there. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one where you're deciding something. Alone. In your head. Without me."

She wanted to laugh. Wanted to deflect. But his thumb was tracing small circles against her skin and the question was already climbing up her throat, the one she'd been swallowing since she opened her eyes on his chest. Since before that. Since the first time she'd sat in his lecture and thought this man will never see me and then he had, he had, and now she was terrified he'd stop.

"Flynn." She made herself look at him. The green of his eyes was steady. Patient. Like he had all the time in the world even though the clock above them said fourteen minutes. "Are we still—" She stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "You said breakfast. Before. When we were—you said you'd take me home and make me breakfast. And I know people say things. During. Things they don't—"

His hands tightened on her shoulders.

"Ivy."

"I'm just asking. Because I need to know if I should—if this was—" She couldn't finish. Her chest was too tight. Her eyes were stinging and she refused, absolutely refused, to cry in the special collections room with her sweater inside out and his come still drying on her thighs.

He didn't make her finish. He pulled her in instead. One arm around her back, one hand cradling her head, pressing her cheek to his chest where his shirt was still half-unbuttoned. She could hear his heart. Fast. Not calm at all, despite the professor voice and the steady hands.

"I meant every word." His voice vibrated through his sternum into her ear. "Every single one. The breakfast. The arguments. The late nights. The—" A pause. His hand in her hair. "The stopping being alone. All of it. I meant it at three in the morning with your thighs around my ears and I mean it now at six forty-six with Petrie's Naqada and Ballas watching us like a disapproving chaperone."

She snorted. The laugh. Ugly and wet and embarrassing. She didn't catch it.

"You're ridiculous."

"I'm an academic. We're all ridiculous." He pulled back just enough to look at her face. His thumb found her cheek, wiped under her eye where a tear had escaped despite her best efforts. "Yes. The answer is yes. I want breakfast with you. I want a hundred breakfasts. I want to argue about ceramic typologies over coffee and fight over the last piece of toast and watch you correct my lecture notes with that little frown you do."

"I don't frown."

"You absolutely frown. Right here." He touched the space between her eyebrows. "It's devastating. I've been trying to make you do it for three years just so I could look at it."

She blinked at him. "You've been trying to annoy me on purpose?"

"Constantly." No shame in his voice. None at all. "The questions I'd call on you for. The grading comments. I once spent forty minutes debating the Middle Kingdom chronology just to see you get that crease between your eyes."

"That's deranged."

"That's courtship."

She laughed again. This one wasn't wet. This one was surprised, bright, the kind of laugh that usually made her clap a hand over her mouth. She let it out. Let him hear it. His face changed—softened, opened—and she realized she'd never laughed like that in front of him before.

"Breakfast," she said, and it wasn't a question this time. "At your house. With toast and arguments and—what do you even have in your refrigerator?"

"Eggs. Probably. Some cheese that may or may not be from this decade." He was smiling now. Small and crooked and real. "Coffee. Definitely coffee. I'm not a complete savage."

"You had me at 'probably' and 'may or may not.'" She reached up, fixed the button he'd missed on his shirt. Her fingers brushed his chest hair. His skin was warm. "Twelve minutes."

"Then we'd better finish making this room look like two people did not have the most amazing sex of anyone's life in it."

She bit her lip. "Most amazing?"

"You're fishing."

"Absolutely."

He kissed her forehead. Quick. Firm. Then he was turning away, grabbing books, and she was reaching for the next one on the pile, and the clock kept ticking but her chest didn't feel tight anymore.

The library door clicked open at six fifty-eight and Flynn held it for her, his other hand hovering just behind the small of her back. Not touching. Barely not touching. She felt the heat of his palm through her sweater like a brand she'd carry all morning.

They walked out into the pale October light, and Ivy realized she'd forgotten what fresh air felt like. Or maybe she'd never known. Maybe every breath she'd taken before last night had been borrowed, and this was the first one that was hers.

"This way." Flynn nodded toward the faculty lot. His voice was back to professor-mode, but his eyes weren't. His eyes were still three-in-the-morning eyes, watching her like she might vanish if he looked away too long.

The campus was waking up. Early joggers. A maintenance truck. Somewhere, a bell tower chiming seven. Ivy kept her hands shoved in her pockets because if she didn't, she'd reach for him, and she couldn't reach for him, not here, not with a groundskeeper waving at Flynn from across the quad.

"Morning, Professor Ashworth."

"Gary." Flynn raised a hand. Didn't break stride. Didn't look away from her.

His car was a dark Volvo, older but well-kept, parked under an oak that had shed half its leaves onto the windshield. He unlocked her door first. Opened it. Stood there, one hand on the frame, waiting.

"You're being very gentlemanly," Ivy said.

"I'm being very obvious. There's a difference." He didn't smile. His green eyes tracked her face. "Get in the car, Ivy."

She got in. The leather was cold through her thin skirt, exactly like she'd imagined except better, because he was sliding into the driver's seat beside her and the door closed and suddenly they were alone. Truly alone. For the first time since she'd woken up with her cheek on his chest.

He didn't start the engine. Just sat there, hands on the wheel, staring through the windshield at the oak leaves.

"Flynn?"

"Give me a second." His voice was rough. "I'm trying not to—" He exhaled, long and slow. "We just walked across campus. Fifty yards. And I almost touched you four times."

"Only four?"

He turned his head. Looked at her. And the wanting in his face was so naked it stopped her breath.

Then his hand moved. Slow. Deliberate. He laid it on her knee, palm heavy and warm through the fabric of her skirt, and Ivy felt every finger. Felt the calluses. Felt the heat of him sinking into her skin like he was claiming territory. He didn't squeeze. Didn't move. Just held her there, his thumb resting on the inside of her knee, and it was the most obscene thing anyone had ever done to her.

"Is this okay?" His voice was gravel. "Tell me if it's okay."

"It's okay." Her voice came out breathy. Stupid. "It's very okay."

His hand tightened. Just slightly. Just enough that she felt the pressure travel up her thigh, through her hip, into somewhere deeper. Then he started the car.

He drove one-handed. His right hand never left her knee. At a stoplight, his thumb began to move—small circles, slow, tracing the seam of her skirt where it rode up her thigh. Ivy stared out the window and tried to remember how to breathe.

"You're quiet."

"You're distracting."

"Good."

She looked at him. His profile was sharp against the morning light, graying temples, jaw tight. He was watching the road like it had personally offended him, and his hand was still moving on her thigh, and she realized he was doing it without thinking. Like touching her was already automatic.

"Flynn."

"Yeah."

"How far is your house?"

"Seven minutes." His thumb traced higher. Half an inch. Maybe less. "Why?"

"Because if it's more than seven minutes, I'm going to do something stupid."

His hand stilled. "Define stupid."

"I don't know. Climb into your lap at a red light. Unbuckle your belt with my teeth. Something that gets us arrested for public indecency."

He made a sound. Not quite a laugh. Lower. "Seven minutes."

"You said that already."

"I'm reminding myself." His hand slid higher. Definitely higher. The edge of his fingers brushed the hem of her skirt. "Seven minutes. I can be patient for seven minutes."

"Can you?"

"No." He turned onto a residential street. Trees arched overhead. The houses were old, brick, set back from the road. "But I'm going to try, because I meant what I said about breakfast, and I refuse to let my neighbors see me carry you into the house over my shoulder."

"Is that an option?"

"Ask me again after coffee."

The car slowed. Then stopped. Ivy blinked at the house through the windshield—brick, two stories, a porch light still burning soft yellow against the morning. The oak tree in the front yard was old enough to have opinions. She hadn't realized they'd turned onto his street. Hadn't noticed anything except the weight of his hand on her thigh and the way his thumb had been tracing small, maddening circles for the last three minutes.

Flynn killed the engine. His hand didn't move.

"This is it," he said.

"I gathered."

He turned his head. Looked at her. The green of his eyes was darker in the early light, and there was something unguarded in his face—a hesitation she hadn't seen since the library floor.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm committing this to memory." His voice was quiet. "You. In my car. In my driveway. It's been a very long time since anyone was in my driveway."

Ivy felt her chest go tight. She reached down and covered his hand with hers. His knuckles were rough under her palm. "Flynn."

"Yeah."

"Your neighbors." She glanced past him at the houses set back among the trees. Old brick, quiet lawns, a newspaper on one porch. "Do any of them work for the college?"

His jaw tightened. Just slightly. "The Millers. Two doors down. She's in the registrar's office."

"Would she recognize me?"

"Probably not. But you're asking the right question." He lifted his hand from her knee—reluctantly, she could feel the reluctance in every finger—and opened his door. "Wait there."

He came around the front of the car. Ivy watched him through the windshield, the broad shoulders, the way he moved like a man who owned the space he walked through. He opened her door and reached down.

"Come on. Quick. Before I lose my resolve and do something that gets us both in trouble."

She took his hand. His grip was firm, callused, exactly the same as it had been on her thigh, and the contact sent a pulse of heat straight through her. She stood. The morning air hit her face—cool, damp, smelling of cut grass and something floral.

His hand stayed on hers longer than necessary. Then he let go and locked the car.

"This way." He nodded toward the front door. "And Ivy?"

"What?"

"The Millers leave for work at seven-fifteen. It's six-fifty. So if you're worried about being seen—"

"I'm not worried about being seen." She met his eyes. "I'm worried about you getting fired."

Flynn's expression shifted. The guarded hesitation from the car gave way to something quieter—not confidence, exactly, but a kind of resolve she hadn't seen before. He lifted his hand and pressed two fingers gently under her chin, tilting her face up.

"Ivy." His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. "I've been careful for three years. I'm done being careful. The question isn't whether I might get fired. The question is whether you're willing to risk being seen with me. Because that's the part I can't control."

She opened her mouth. Closed it. The morning birds were loud in the silence, and somewhere a lawn sprinkler ticked to life.

"I've been invisible to the registrar's office for two years," she said finally. "They don't know my face. They don't know my name unless there's a tuition problem. But if they see you with a student—"

"Then we don't give them a show on the front lawn." He dropped his hand. Turned toward the house. "Come on. The porch light's been on all night, which means I forgot to set the timer, which means I was distracted yesterday morning thinking about a certain graduate student who was going to be in my evening seminar."

"You were thinking about me before the seminar?"

He looked back over his shoulder. The look said obviously. "Every day for three years. Walk."

She walked. The front path was brick, slightly uneven, with moss growing in the cracks. Flynn's stride was longer than hers, but he slowed to match her pace, and his hand found the small of her back—not pushing, not guiding. Just there. Warm through her sweater. She could feel each finger.

At the door he fumbled his keys. Dropped them. "Shit." Bent to retrieve them, and Ivy watched the broad expanse of his back under the tweed, the way his shoulders strained the fabric when he crouched. He'd been inside her. He'd come inside her. And now he was dropping his keys on his own doorstep like a nervous undergrad.

"Smooth," she said.

"I'm aware." He got the door open. Stepped aside. Held it for her with his body angled so that his shoulders blocked the view from the street. Smart. Careful even when he said he was done being careful.

The house smelled like him. Old paper and coffee and something woody—sandalwood, she remembered, from the library floor, from his skin. The entryway was dark, a narrow hall with a coat rack and a stack of mail on a small table. Through an archway to the left she could see the front room: bookshelves floor to ceiling, a leather armchair with a reading lamp, more books on the coffee table. And artifacts. Small stone carvings on the mantle. A fragment of something with hieroglyphs in a glass case.

Flynn closed the door behind them. The lock clicked. The sound was loud in the quiet house, and then there was nothing but the hum of the refrigerator from somewhere deeper inside and the sound of his breathing.

"No one saw us," he said. "The Millers' car is still in the driveway. Gary went back to the grounds shed. We're fine."

Ivy turned in the narrow hallway. He was close. Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, and the heat of him reached her before his hands did.

"Flynn."

"Ivy."

"What day is it?"

He blinked. Whatever he'd been expecting her to say, it wasn't that. "Friday. Friday morning."

"And I don't have class until Monday. And you don't have class until Monday." She swallowed. Her heart was doing something ridiculous. "So that's three days. Three days where no one is expecting to see either of us anywhere."

His green eyes went very still. The kind of still that means something is happening behind them. "What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that I don't leave." She lifted her chin. "I'm suggesting that we stay here. Get food delivered. Ignore the outside world. Figure out the next three months on Sunday, when we have to. But Friday and Saturday—" Her voice cracked slightly. "I don't want to be careful yet. I want to be here. With you."

Flynn didn't answer for a long moment. His hand came up and cupped her jaw the way it had in the library, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. And then he smiled—not the surprised laugh from the floor, not the professor's wry twist, but something raw and hopeful and a little bit terrified.

"I was going to make you breakfast and then spend the entire meal trying to think of a reason to ask you to stay. You just saved me three hours of tortured small talk."

"You're welcome."

"Three days," he said. His voice dropped. "Three days in this house. With you. And no one knows where you are."

"Is that a problem?"

"It's the opposite of a problem." His thumb moved to the corner of her mouth again, the same spot. "It's the best idea anyone has ever had in my kitchen-adjacent hallway."

The kitchen was a surprise. Ivy had expected something academic—scattered papers, empty coffee mugs, the fossilized remains of takeout containers. Instead, the room was clean and bright, morning sun slanting through a window over the sink onto a butcher-block counter that had seen real use. A cast-iron skillet sat on the stove, seasoned to a dark gleam. The refrigerator hummed beneath a child's drawing held by a magnet—a lopsided cat, signed in crayon by someone named Emma.

"My niece," Flynn said, following her gaze. "She's six. Convinced I need a cat. I keep telling her I'm not home enough." He moved past her to the refrigerator, his arm brushing her shoulder, and pulled out a carton of eggs. "How do you feel about omelets?"

"I feel positively about them." Ivy leaned against the counter, watching him. He'd shrugged off his jacket somewhere between the hallway and here, and his shirt was still untucked, the tail hanging loose over his belt. The domesticity of it—Flynn Ashworth, barefoot in his own kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl—made something twist behind her ribs. "Can I help?"

"You can sit there and look beautiful. That's your job." He didn't look up from the eggs, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "And maybe tell me whether you eat onions. I can't remember if you ordered them on your sandwich at the department lunch last fall."

"You remember what I ordered at a department lunch?"

He did look up then. Green eyes, direct. "I remember everything you've ever said to me. It's a problem."

Ivy felt heat climb her throat. "Onions are fine. And I didn't order a sandwich. I had the salad with grilled chicken. You were sitting three tables away, talking to Professor Hendricks about the Amarna period, and you kept looking over at me like you'd forgotten something."

"I had." He turned back to the counter, slicing an onion with quick, practiced strokes. "I'd forgotten to tell you that your paper on female literacy in the New Kingdom was the best undergraduate work I'd read in a decade. I thought about saying it then. Chickened out."

"You gave me a B-plus on that paper."

"I overcorrected." His shoulders tensed slightly. "I was so worried about favoritism that I graded you harder than anyone else. It's the worst thing I've ever done as a teacher, and I've regretted it for three years."

Ivy stared at his back. The broad span of it, the way his shirt pulled between his shoulder blades. "You were trying to be ethical."

"I was trying not to want you." He scraped the onions into the pan. They hit the hot butter with a hiss. "It didn't work."

"No," she said quietly. "It didn't." She pushed off the counter and crossed the kitchen to stand beside him. Close enough that her hip almost touched his thigh. "What else do you remember?"

Flynn didn't answer immediately. He stirred the onions, watched them turn translucent. "I remember the first day you walked into my lecture. You sat in the back row, which every student who doesn't want to be noticed does, but you couldn't stop taking notes. You filled three pages before I finished the introduction. I thought—there she is. That's the one who's going to ask questions I don't know how to answer."

"I was terrified. I almost dropped the class."

"Why?"

"Because you were the most attractive man I'd ever seen, and I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to learn about Middle Kingdom burial practices when your hands looked like that." She gestured at his fingers wrapped around the spatula. "I thought about switching to Mesopotamian studies just to get away from you."

Flynn laughed, the surprised boyish sound from the library floor. "You would have hated Mesopotamian studies. The cuneiform alone would have driven you insane."

"I know. That's why I stayed." She reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her bun was coming apart. "Also because I'm stubborn."

"I've noticed." He cracked the eggs into the bowl with one hand, whisked them with the other. The motion was efficient, practiced. He'd done this alone a thousand times. "Scarsdale?"

"What?"

"Your accent. You said you're from New Jersey, but that's not a Jersey accent. You flatten your vowels like someone from Scarsdale. Am I right?"

Ivy blinked. No one had ever noticed that. "Westchester. My mom moved us there when I was twelve. I worked hard to lose the Jersey because kids are cruel about regional dialects."

"Kids are cruel about everything." He poured the eggs into the pan. They spread and set at the edges. "What did your mom do?"

"She's a paralegal. Works for a firm in White Plains. She thinks I'm insane for getting a master's in Egyptology instead of law school." Ivy hesitated. "What about you? Are your parents—"

"My father's a retired history teacher. My mother died when I was twenty-two. Breast cancer." He said it simply, without self-pity, sprinkling cheese into the omelet. "She would have liked you. She had a soft spot for stubborn women."

Ivy put her hand on his forearm. Just rested it there, her fingers light on the warm skin below his rolled sleeve. "I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago." He covered her hand with his. His palm was callused, rough from handling stone and tools. "I'm not—I don't usually talk about her. But you asked, and I want you to know things. I want to stop being careful about everything, including the parts of myself I've kept locked up."

"Then tell me something else." She turned her hand under his, interlacing their fingers. "Something small. Something you've never told anyone."

Flynn was quiet for a moment. He folded the omelet with the spatula, slid it onto a plate. "I can't pronounce the word 'hieroglyph' correctly unless I think about it first. I had a speech impediment as a kid. The 'gl' sound. It comes back when I'm tired."

Ivy's mouth opened. "You're an Egyptologist who can't say 'hieroglyph'?"

"When I'm exhausted, it comes out 'hierogwiff.'" He handed her the plate. "I'm trusting you with that information. Use it responsibly."

She took the plate, but she didn't move away. His hip was solid against hers now, and he was looking down at her with that expression from the hallway—raw and hopeful and a little bit terrified. "I'll only use it when you're being insufferable," she said. "Which is about forty percent of the time."

"Only forty? I'm slipping."

"You're making me breakfast. That bought you at least ten percent." She picked up a fork from the counter, speared a bite of omelet. The eggs were fluffy, the onions sweet. "Oh my God. This is really good."

"I've had a lot of practice cooking for one." He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, watching her eat. "It's different with someone else here. Better."

Ivy chewed, swallowed. "What else do you want to know about me? Since we're doing this. The sharing thing."

Flynn didn't answer right away. He took the fork from her hand—slow, deliberate—and cut a corner of the omelet for himself. Ate it. Set the fork back on her plate. His eyes held hers the whole time, green and unblinking, like he was working through a translation no one had asked him to attempt.

"What were you like," he said finally, "at fourteen?"

Ivy blinked. Of all the questions he could have asked—her father, her thesis, her first kiss—he'd gone somewhere she hadn't armored against. "Awkward. Angry. I read a lot of Dorothy Parker and thought I was the only person in Westchester County who understood irony."

"That's the defense." He took the spatula, ran it under the tap, set it in the drying rack. The motion was unhurried, domestic. "Tell me the part you don't lead with."

"I was fat." The word came out harder than she meant it to. She looked down at her plate. The omelet was half-eaten now, cheese congealing at the edges. "I was fat and I was new and my mom worked nights, so I ate dinner alone and watched documentaries about ancient Egypt because the dead felt like better company than the girls in my homeroom." She stabbed a piece of egg with the fork. "That's the sob story. You asked."

Flynn didn't say anything. He just reached over and tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear, his knuckle grazing her temple. The touch was almost clinical in its precision—like he'd been planning it for paragraphs.

"I asked," he said, "because I want to know the girl who sat in the back row and took three pages of notes before I finished the introduction. Not the armor. The girl."

"She's still in there." Ivy's voice cracked on the last word. She hated that. Hated how easily he peeled her open. "She's the one who thought you'd never look at her twice."

"She was wrong." His hand was still near her face. His thumb traced the edge of her jaw, light, the callus catching on her skin. "What else?"

"You're supposed to be answering my question."

"I am. I want to know everything. I want to know what book you were reading when you were fourteen that made you think you understood irony. I want to know what you eat when you're alone. I want to know if you bite your lip when you're nervous or only when I'm close." His thumb stilled at the corner of her mouth. "I want to know the exact moment you knew you wanted me."

Ivy's breath caught. She didn't pull away. His palm was warm against her cheek now, his fingers threading into the loose hair at her nape, and the kitchen was very quiet. The coffee maker had stopped its gurgle. Outside, a bird was losing its mind about something.

"First lecture," she said. "You mispronounced 'Thebes'—you said 'Thebes' like the city in Greece instead of 'Thebes' like the Egyptian capital—and then you caught yourself and made a joke about it, and you laughed at your own mistake, and I thought: oh no. He's kind and he's brilliant and he can laugh at himself. I'm doomed."

"Thebes." He said it the right way this time, the Egyptian way, and a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "I remember that. I was terrified. First lecture of the semester, I'd been up all night revising my notes, and I walked in and saw you in the back row and promptly forgot how to pronounce the name of the city my entire career is built on."

"You didn't forget. You just had a moment."

"I had a you-shaped moment. That was the problem." His thumb moved, just a fraction, along her lower lip. He was watching her mouth like it was a text he'd been trying to decode his whole career. "Three years of those. You walking into my classroom and me suddenly unable to remember whether the Middle Kingdom came before or after the Second Intermediate Period."

"Everyone knows the Middle Kingdom came first."

"I'm aware." His voice had dropped. That octave she'd heard in the library, gravel and glass. "But you'd walk in wearing that green sweater with the sleeves too long, and I'd lose three thousand years of chronology. Every time."

Ivy turned her face, just slightly, and pressed her lips to the pad of his thumb. The kiss was almost nothing—a whisper of contact—but Flynn's other hand found her hip, fingers curling into the soft flesh there, steadying himself or steadying her, she couldn't tell.

"What do you want to know?" she asked against his skin. "Really."

"Right now?" His forehead dropped to hers. His breath was warm, coffee and the sharp green of the herbs he'd chopped. "I want to know if you'll let me kiss you here. In my kitchen. Where there's no locked door and no excuse, and I have to look at you afterward and know I meant it."

Ivy's hand came up to his chest. His heart was pounding under her palm, fast and hard, the rhythm of a man who'd been careful for too long. "You've already kissed me. In the library. Twice."

"The library was the fantasy. This is—" He stopped. Swallowed. She felt his throat move against her forehead. "This is the part where I have to be real. Where I make you breakfast and then I have to figure out if I'm the man who can keep you, or just the man who wanted you in a locked room."

She pulled back far enough to see his face. His green eyes were wet, not crying, but shining with the effort of holding something back. His jaw was tight. The silver in his hair caught the kitchen light, and Ivy realized she was looking at forty years of loneliness, thirty-nine of them spent learning to be fine alone, and then her—a student who'd walked into his lecture hall and shattered his careful composure with three pages of notes.

"You're an idiot," she said softly. "You're the man who carried me to a couch I didn't even know you had and promised me breakfast. You're already real."

"Kiss me, then." His voice broke on the word. Not a command. A plea. "I need you to do it. So I know I'm not—so I know you're choosing this. Not the library. Not the fantasy. This. My kitchen. My stupid apron still hanging on the hook. My coffee grinder that's too loud. The fact that I own seven identical tweed jackets and none of them fit right anymore."

Ivy rose on her toes, her soft body pressing against his chest, her hands finding the back of his neck, and she kissed him. Slow. Sweet. Morning-light-through-the-window sweet, no locked door, no urgency, just her mouth on his and the quiet certainty that she'd been waiting three years to kiss him in daylight.

Flynn's mouth curved against hers—not a kiss anymore, just a smile she could feel, and then he laughed. A real laugh, startled out of him, the sound vibrating through his chest against her palms. He pulled back just enough to look at her, and his eyes were still wet but crinkled at the corners now, and he was shaking his head like she'd caught him at something embarrassing.

"What?" Ivy's voice came out breathless. Her hands were still locked behind his neck. She didn't want to let go.

"I just—" He ran a hand through his hair, disheveling the gray at his temple, and the gesture was so boyish, so un-professor-like, that Ivy felt her stomach flip. "I have wanted to do that for three years. And now I've done it. And I'm standing in my kitchen with a half-eaten omelet and a woman who knows about my seven identical tweed jackets, and I have no idea what comes next. I'm a scholar of ancient civilizations. I can tell you the exact burial rites of the Eighteenth Dynasty. I cannot tell you what you're supposed to say after you kiss your former student in your kitchen at nine in the morning."

"Former student?" Ivy arched an eyebrow. "I still have a thesis to finish."

"Right." He winced. "Ethics violation. Potential academic ruin. Breakfast."

Ivy snorted. The sound escaped before she could stop it, that embarrassing half-laugh she usually tried to smother. This time she let it hang there, ugly and real, and Flynn's eyes went soft at the sound. "You're really bad at this," she said.

"I'm aware." His hands were still on her hips. He hadn't moved them. "I've been alone for a while. I've forgotten how to—" He stopped, searching for the word. "How to be. With someone. In the daylight."

"You were pretty good at being with someone in the library."

"That was different. That was—" He paused, and Ivy watched him decide whether to deflect. He didn't. "That was me losing a battle I'd been fighting for three years. I knew what I wanted. I didn't have to figure out what to say afterward because I didn't think there'd be an afterward."

"And now?"

"Now I'm terrified I'm going to say something that makes you leave." The admission came out flat, unadorned. He wasn't performing vulnerability. He was just stating a fact. "And I keep talking because if I stop talking, you might realize you have better things to do than stand in a middle-aged man's kitchen while he panics."

"Flynn." Ivy said his name deliberately, the way he'd said Thebes the right way. "I'm not going anywhere."

He exhaled. The sound was ragged, like he'd been holding that breath since the library floor. His forehead dropped to hers again, and this time there was no urgency, just the weight of two people who'd been alone in different ways finding the same place to rest. Ivy felt his thumbs trace small circles into the soft flesh above her hip bones, and she realized she was still wearing her sweater from the night before, rumpled and smelling of old books and his skin.

"I make terrible coffee," he said into the space between them. "The grinder is too loud and the beans are always stale and I never remember to clean the machine. You should know that. If you're staying."

"I noticed." She turned her head, just slightly, and her lips brushed his jaw. The stubble was rough, silver-threaded. "The omelet made up for it."

"I can't cook anything else. Just omelets. And toast. Sometimes pasta if I'm feeling ambitious."

"Then we'll order takeout."

Flynn laughed again, quieter this time, and Ivy felt it rumble through his chest where she was pressed against him. His hands slid from her hips to the small of her back, pulling her closer, and she let herself be pulled. Her soft stomach pressed against his belt buckle. She didn't flinch away from the contact. Not today. Not with him.

"You're really here," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I'm really here. In your kitchen. With your stupid apron." She nodded toward the hook by the pantry, where a navy apron hung, dusted with flour. "And your too-loud coffee grinder. And seven jackets I haven't seen yet but I'm already prepared to mock."

"I'll show you the jackets. Prepare your critiques."

"Oh, they're ready. I've been sitting in your lectures for three years. I know all the jackets." She pulled back to look at him, and her grin was sharp. "The brown one with the elbow patches is the worst. You should burn it."

"That was my father's jacket."

"I stand by my statement."

Flynn stared at her for a beat, and then his face cracked open—not the controlled smile he gave faculty meetings, not the distracted nod he gave students, but something lighter, surprised, the face of a man who'd forgotten he was allowed to be happy. He kissed her forehead, quick and dry, and then stepped back, his hands falling to her wrists.

Ivy pulled back from the kiss—the quick, dry press of his lips to her forehead—and took his hand. Her fingers wove through his, callused palm against callused palm, and she tugged him toward the kitchen door.

"Show me the rest," she said. "Every room. And you have to show me something special in each one."

Flynn's eyebrows rose. "Something special."

"Something I wouldn't notice on my own. Something that matters." She glanced back over her shoulder, and her grin was sharp but her eyes were serious. "You've been alone in this house for how long? There's got to be stories in the walls."

He didn't answer right away. His thumb moved over her knuckles, back and forth, a slow, absent rhythm. Then he nodded—not the professor's nod, the distracted one he gave students, but something smaller, more private. "Living room first."

The living room was small and cluttered in the way of a man who didn't expect guests. Books stacked on the coffee table, a worn leather armchair positioned in front of a window that looked out onto a overgrown backyard, and on every wall, framed photographs of excavation sites and museum artifacts. But it was the jacket draped over the back of the armchair that Ivy noticed first—brown tweed, elbow patches, unmistakable.

"There," she said, pointing. "That's the one. The worst one."

Flynn walked to the armchair and picked up the jacket, holding it by the shoulders like he was presenting evidence in a trial. "My father wore this every Friday. He was a high school history teacher. Kids called him Professor Ashworth before I ever earned the title." He turned the jacket over, and Ivy saw the lining was frayed, the seams visible. "He died fifteen years ago. I've been wearing it to lectures ever since."

"That's not the worst jacket," Ivy said quietly. "That's the best one."

Flynn looked at her, and his green eyes held something she couldn't name—gratitude, maybe, or grief, or the strange relief of being seen without having to explain. He folded the jacket carefully and set it back on the armchair. "Living room done. Come on."

The hallway was narrow, and Ivy had to walk close behind him, her shoulder brushing his arm. Photographs lined the walls—Flynn at a dig site, younger and sunburned, Flynn shaking hands with a man in a suit she didn't recognize, Flynn's mother in a garden, her smile crooked and warm. Ivy wanted to stop at each one, but Flynn was already pushing open the door at the end of the hall.

"Study," he announced. "Also known as the room where I grade papers and pretend I'm not counting the hours until your next office visit."

The study smelled like old paper and dust and the faint, metallic tang of ink. A massive oak desk dominated the room, covered in books and loose sheets of translation notes. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with volumes on Egyptology, linguistics, ancient history. But it was the object on the windowsill that caught Ivy's attention—a small, pale statuette, no taller than her hand, carved from limestone. A woman with the head of a lioness.

"Sekhmet," Ivy breathed. She crossed the room and knelt in front of the windowsill, not touching, just looking. The carving was exquisite—the sweep of the lioness's mane, the curve of the woman's breasts, the hieroglyphs etched into the base. "Is this real?"

"Twelfth Dynasty. Or so I was told when I bought it in Cairo." Flynn knelt beside her, his knee pressing against hers. "She's a forgery. A very good one, but a forgery. The limestone is wrong for the period, and the glyphs on the base are nonsense—a student's attempt at Middle Egyptian. I knew it the moment I held her."

"But you bought her anyway."

"She was the first artifact I ever held that made me feel something. Not academic interest. Not historical curiosity. Something—" He paused, searching for the word. "Something personal. She's the goddess of war and healing. Destruction and restoration. I was twenty-three and I'd just decided to pursue Egyptology, and I walked into that shop in Cairo and saw her, and I thought: yes. That's what I want to study. Not just the tombs and the kings. The contradictions."

Ivy turned her head to look at him, and their faces were very close. She could see the pulse beating in his throat, the tiny scar above his left eyebrow she'd never noticed before. "You kept her by the window," she said. "So the light would hit her in the morning."

"Every day."

"That's something special."

Flynn stood, offering her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. "One more room," he said, and his voice had gone rough at the edges. "The one I didn't think I'd show you this morning."

The bedroom was at the end of the hall. The door was closed. Flynn's hand hesitated on the knob, and Ivy watched his shoulders rise and fall with a breath he was clearly steadying. Then he pushed the door open, and they stepped inside together.

The bed was unmade—white sheets rumpled, pillows stacked crookedly against the headboard. A bookshelf beside the bed held a single lamp and a stack of mystery novels, spines cracked. The curtains were still drawn, and the morning light filtered through them in pale gold stripes. It smelled like him here—sandalwood and coffee and the faint, clean scent of cedar from the closet.

Ivy walked to the bookshelf and picked up the top novel—a worn paperback with a lurid cover. "You read detective fiction?"

"Guilty." Flynn leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, but his eyes tracked her movement. "I like puzzles that get solved. Unlike history, which mostly just asks more questions."

"What's the special thing in here?" Ivy set the book down. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper, because the bedroom felt like sacred ground—the place he slept, the place he dreamed, the place she'd imagined so many times but never seen.

Flynn didn't answer right away. He pushed off the doorframe and walked to the window, his back to her, his hand finding the edge of the curtain and holding it like he needed something solid. The morning light cut a pale stripe across the unmade bed, and Ivy watched his shoulders rise, fall, rise again.

"I told myself I wouldn't do this tonight." His voice was low, rougher than it had been in the study. "Bring you here. Show you this room."

"Why?"

"Because it felt like a line I couldn't uncross." He turned, and his green eyes found her across the rumpled sheets. "The study is books. The living room is my father's jacket. Those are stories I can tell anyone. This room—" He gestured at the bed, the cracked paperbacks, the drawn curtains. "This is where I stop being Professor Ashworth."

Ivy didn't move. Her chestnut bun had come loose, strands falling against her neck, and she could feel her pulse in her throat. "Who are you when you stop being him?"

"Someone who's been alone a long time." He said it without self-pity, just fact, the way he'd told her the Sekhmet was a forgery. "Someone who lies in that bed at night and—" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "You asked what the special thing is in here."

"Yes."

He crossed the room slowly, and she felt every step in her chest. When he stopped in front of her, close enough that she could smell the sandalwood and the faint salt of old sweat on his skin, he lifted his hand. Not to touch her. Just held it there, palm open, an inch from her cheek.

"You," he said. "You're the special thing. You've been the special thing in this room for three years, and you never even knew it existed."

Ivy's breath caught. Her glasses had slipped down her nose, and she didn't push them up. "Flynn—"

"I'd lie here at night and hear your laugh." His voice dropped, intimate, confessional. "Not just any laugh. The snort you do when something's really funny and you forget to hide it. I'd hear it in the dark, and I'd—" His hand still hovered, trembling slightly now. "I'd imagine what it would feel like to make you laugh like that. Here. In this bed. With the morning light coming through those curtains."

"You heard my laugh," she whispered. "In your head."

"Every night." His thumb found her cheekbone, the lightest possible touch, like she was a artifact he was afraid to damage. "And I'd dream about your eyes. The way they get sharp when you're about to correct someone. The way they went soft that time you found the translation error in Seti's tomb inscription and you were too proud to smile but your eyes gave it away anyway."

Ivy leaned into his palm, her cheek pressing against his callused skin. "You remember that?"

"I remember everything." He stepped closer, and now his body was a wall of heat in front of her, his barrel chest rising and falling with breaths he wasn't controlling. "I remember the first day you walked into my lecture. You sat in the third row, left side, and you had a pen with a chewed cap and you didn't look at anyone. You just opened your notebook and waited. And I thought—"

"What?"

"I thought, there she is. The one who's going to ruin my life." He said it with a crooked smile, but his eyes were wet. "And you did. You ruined everything. I couldn't look at a syllabus without wondering if you'd find a flaw. I couldn't grade a paper without hoping it was yours. I couldn't lie in this bed without imagining you here. Your hair on my pillow. Your laugh in my dark."

Ivy's hand came up and covered his, pressing his palm flat against her cheek. "I dreamed about you too," she said. "Not just—not just sex. I dreamed about breakfast. About arguing over coffee. About grading papers together and you stealing my red pen just to make me grab for it."

"You stole my red pen once."

"I still have it." She laughed, and it was the snort, the one she couldn't control, and his face cracked open at the sound. "It's in my desk drawer. I've been meaning to give it back for two years."

"Keep it." He bent his head, and his forehead touched hers, their noses almost brushing. "Keep everything. Stay. Not just tonight. Not just breakfast. Stay—" His voice broke, and he swallowed hard. "Stay until I stop being surprised that you're here."

Ivy closed her eyes. Felt his breath on her lips. Felt his pulse where her fingers wrapped around his wrist. "How long will that take?"

"Years." He said it like a promise. "Maybe the rest of my life."

Ivy didn't breathe.

The word years hung in the air between them, and she couldn't draw air past it. Her chest locked. Her fingers tightened around his wrist, and she felt his pulse hammering under her grip—fast, too fast, a rhythm that matched the roaring in her ears.

She pulled back just enough to see his face. His green eyes were wet, the lines around them deeper than she'd ever noticed, and he was looking at her like she was the answer to a question he'd stopped letting himself ask. That was what scared her. Not the intensity. The hope.

Because hope this big had a shadow. She'd spent years building walls against exactly this kind of promise—the kind that could be taken back. The kind that could leave her alone in her apartment with a stolen red pen and a laugh no one heard.

"You're scared," Flynn said. Not a question.

"Yes."

His thumb traced the curve of her cheek, slow, deliberate, like he was memorizing the shape of her. "Of what?"

She could have lied. She was good at lying—had spent three years pretending she didn't want him, pretending his looks didn't burn through her, pretending she was fine with scraps. But his hand was on her face and his pulse was under her fingers and the bed was right there, unmade, waiting.

"That you mean it," she whispered. "That you don't mean it. Both. Neither. I don't know which is worse."

Flynn's jaw tightened. She watched him swallow, watched the way his throat moved, and she remembered his mouth on her through her jeans, the hunger in him, the way he'd said I've imagined this like a confession. But this wasn't sex. This was a bedroom and a promise and the rest of his life.

"Ivy." He said her name like it hurt. "You don't have to answer now."

"But—"

"No." He shook his head, and a strand of silvered hair fell across his forehead. She wanted to push it back. She didn't. "You've been handling me with kid gloves since the library. Let me handle you for a minute. You're scared, and I see it, and I'm not going to make you say anything right now. You don't have to decide. You don't have to promise. You just have to breathe."

She breathed. A shuddering, ragged thing that made her glasses fog.

"There," he said. "Good girl."

The praise hit her low in the belly, and she saw him register it—the way her pupils flared, the way her lips parted. He didn't push. He just held her face in his callused hand and waited, patient as an archaeologist brushing sand from bone.

"Will you lie down with me?" His voice was rough, almost shy, as if asking for something that wasn't sex was the real vulnerability. "Just—on the bed. With the morning light. The way I imagined."

"Yes."

He stepped back, and the loss of his heat was immediate, a cold space where his body had been. She watched him cross to the window, pull the curtains tighter so the light softened from gold to amber, and then he turned back to the bed. The unmade sheets. The crooked pillows.

Flynn sat on the edge first, his weight bowing the mattress, and then he held out his hand. She took it. The calluses on his palm were rough against her softer skin, and when he pulled her down beside him, she went willingly, letting the mattress take her weight, letting the pillow cradle her head.

Flynn’s arm slid beneath her shoulders, and he pulled her in with a quiet, sure strength. No hesitation. No asking. Just his bicep cradling her neck, his hand spreading wide across her back, and then her cheek was pressed against his chest and the wool of his jacket was gone and all she felt was the heat of him through his shirt and the slow, heavy thump of his heart under her ear.

“Tell me something,” he said, and his voice rumbled through his ribs, a low vibration that settled somewhere in her own chest.

“Mm?”

His hand moved up, threading into the loose strands of her bun, his fingertips tracing the nape of her neck. “What are you afraid of losing?”

The question landed in her throat and stopped there, a knot too tight to swallow. Her glasses were still on, pressed awkwardly between her face and his sternum, the frames digging into her nose. She lifted her head, and the cool air rushed into the space between them, making her shiver.

She reached up and pulled the glasses off, the earpieces dragging through her hair. The room blurred to amber and shadow, but she didn’t need to see clearly to find the bedside table. Her fingers found the wood, set the glasses down with a soft click, and then she was turning back into him, her face finding the warm hollow of his throat this time.

He waited. She could feel the patience in his stillness, the way he didn’t rush her, didn’t fill the silence with reassurances she hadn’t earned yet. One of his hands rested on the curve of her waist, thumb brushing the soft flesh there through her sweater, and the other stayed at her nape, steady and warm.

She pressed closer, her nose against his collarbone, her lips grazing the cotton of his shirt. He smelled like salt and old books and the faint bite of sandalwood, and underneath that, something that was just Flynn—the smell of a man who’d held her through the last hours and hadn’t let go.

“This,” she whispered, and her voice came out raw, scraped clean of sarcasm. “I’m afraid of losing this.”

His chest rose and fell, and she felt the breath he let out—a long, slow exhale that carried something heavy with it. His arms tightened, pulling her deeper into him, and she let herself be small for once. Let herself be the one who needed holding, not the one with the sharp tongue and the armor.

“You mean the quiet?” he asked, and she could hear the smile in it, the gentle tease that said he already knew the answer but wanted to hear her say it.

“No.” She turned her head, her lips brushing the skin just above his collar. “The feeling. The one where I’m not pretending. Where you’re not pretending. Where I don’t have to be fine because you already know I’m not.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then his hand left her waist and found her chin, tilting her face up until she could see the blur of his green eyes, the dark sweep of his brows. “Ivy, I haven’t been pretending since the moment my mouth touched your jeans.”

A wet laugh broke out of her, and she buried her face again, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “That’s a hell of a sentence, Professor.”

“It’s Flynn,” he said, and his arms came around her fully now, one banded across her back, the other cradling her head, holding her like she was something precious and breakable and fiercely, ferociously wanted. “And I’m not going anywhere. You lose me? You’d have to pry me out of this bed with a crowbar and a signed eviction notice.”

She snorted against his chest, the laugh she never let anyone hear, and he made a sound in return—a low, pleased rumble—and pulled the blankets up over them both. The morning light was still gold through the curtains, and somewhere outside a bird was making a racket, and Ivy let her whole weight sink into him, her thigh sliding between his, her belly pressed to the soft give of his side.

His hand stroked down her spine, slow, patient, the way he might brush dust from a relic. “You’re not going to lose anything,” he said, quieter now. “Not while I’m breathing.”

She closed her eyes. His heartbeat was a steady metronome under her ear, and his hand kept moving, tracing the curve of her back, the dip of her waist, the wide flare of her hip. He didn’t grab. He didn’t possess. He just held, like the holding was the whole point.

Her fingers uncurled from his shirt and flattened against his chest, feeling the solid heat of him through the cotton. She could feel the slight give of his muscle, the softness over strength, and she pressed her palm there, right over his heart, and let it beat against her hand.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay,” he echoed, and kissed the top of her head.

She didn't think about it. Her lips found the warm skin of his neck, just below his jaw, and pressed there. Not a kiss so much as a question—the soft pressure of her mouth asking something she hadn't figured out how to put into words.

Flynn's breath caught. His hand on her spine stopped moving.

She kissed him again, higher this time, the slight rasp of stubble against her lower lip, and she felt the sound he made before she heard it—a low vibration in his throat that traveled through her mouth and settled somewhere deep in her chest.

"Ivy." Her name came out rough, scraped raw.

She didn't answer. Her hand slid up from his chest to his shoulder, fingers pressing into the muscle there, and she kissed the spot where his pulse beat against his skin. The salt of him was sharp on her tongue, and underneath it, the faint bitter tang of soap from hours ago, before the library, before everything.

His hand moved—the one that had been stroking her spine—and flattened against the small of her back, pulling her closer. Not guiding. Not controlling. Just holding on.

She kissed a path up the column of his throat, and when she reached the hinge of his jaw, she let her teeth graze the skin there. Just barely. Just enough.

He groaned. A real sound, low and helpless, and his hips shifted under her thigh.

Her other hand found his side, her fingers spreading over the heat of him through his shirt. She could feel the shape of his ribs, the slight give of flesh over bone, the way his whole body had gone taut beneath her touch. She dragged her palm up, following the ladder of his ribs, and then back down, slow, learning the territory.

"You're going to kill me," he said, and his voice was half-laugh, half-ache.

"Good." She bit the word against his neck, and her teeth closed on his earlobe, a quick sharp pressure that made his hand fist in the back of her sweater.

He turned his head, and his mouth was suddenly at her temple, his breath hot and uneven. "Come here." His hand left the small of her back and found her thigh, his callused palm rough against the soft denim, and he pulled.

She let him. Her leg slid over his hip, the angle shifting her whole body until she was half-draped across him, and then his thigh was between hers—solid, hot, pressing up against the seam of her jeans—and the weight of it drew a sound from her she hadn't meant to make.

"That's it," he breathed, and his hand cupped the back of her thigh, holding her there. "Right there."

Her fingers curled into his shirt, her forehead dropping to his shoulder. The pressure of his thigh was maddening, not nearly enough and too much all at once, and she didn't know whether to grind down or pull away. Her breath was coming in short, sharp pulls, and her glasses were still on the nightstand, and the morning light was still gold through the curtains, and none of it mattered except the heat of him between her legs.

"You feel that?" His voice was rough silk, his mouth moving against her hair. "That's what you do to me. Every time you walked into my lecture hall. Every time you bit the end of your pen. I'd sit there behind my desk and think about this—" His hand tightened on her thigh. "—and I'd have to stay seated until the room cleared."

She rocked against him, a small, involuntary roll of her hips, and the friction sent a shock of pleasure through her. Her mouth opened against his shoulder, and she bit down through the cotton of his shirt, muffling the sound she couldn't stop.

"No." His hand left her thigh and found her chin, tilting her face up. His green eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and his jaw was tight with the effort of holding still. "Don't hide that. I want to hear you."

She stared at him, her chest heaving, her thigh trembling where it lay over his hip. "Flynn."

"Yeah." He brushed his thumb over her lower lip, his eyes following the movement. "Say it again."

"Flynn."

"Yeah." He brushed his thumb over her lower lip, his eyes following the movement. "Say it again."

"Flynn." His name came out broken, a syllable cracked down the middle, and the sound of it made his chest rise sharp under her palm.

His thigh pressed up, a deliberate flex of muscle against the seam of her jeans, and the friction dragged a whimper out of her before she could swallow it. Her hips rolled—involuntary, desperate—and the ridge of his quadricep ground against her clit through the denim, a hard pressure that sent sparks up her spine and made her fingers claw into his shoulder.

"There you are," he breathed, his mouth still at her temple, his hand sliding up from her chin to cup the back of her head. "That's it. Take what you need."

She didn't deserve this. The thought surfaced through the haze, sharp and familiar—the old voice that told her she was too much, too heavy, too hungry. But his hand was fisted in her sweater, and his breath was coming in rough, uneven pulls against her hair, and his thigh was rock-solid between her legs, and he was telling her to take.

She took.

Her hips rolled again, a slow, grinding circle that made her gasp against his neck. The friction was maddening—too much denim, not enough skin, but the pressure was perfect, the hard heat of him exactly where she needed it. She did it again, and again, finding a rhythm that made the world narrow to the point of contact, the wet heat building between her legs, the soft animal sounds she couldn't stop making.

"Look at you." His voice was wrecked, his hand sliding down to grip her hip, guiding her movement without controlling it. "God, Ivy. Do you have any idea what you look like right now?"

"Tell me." She bit the words against his jaw, her teeth scraping stubble, her hips still rolling, chasing the pressure. "Tell me what I look like."

He made a sound—half-laugh, half-groan—and his hand tightened on her hip. "Like you've been waiting three years for this. Like you're done waiting. Like you're going to come on my thigh and then look me in the eye and ask for more."

She shuddered, a full-body tremor that made her rhythm stutter, and she buried her face in the crook of his neck. He smelled like sweat and sex and the faint ghost of sandalwood, and his pulse was hammering under her lips, and his thigh was still there, still hard, still pressing up into her with every roll of her hips.

"I'm going to," she said, the words muffled against his skin. "I'm going to come on your thigh, and then I'm going to—" She broke off, gasping, as the pressure built to something sharp and urgent. "I'm going to ask you to make me breakfast."

He laughed, a surprised, boyish sound, and his hand left her hip to cup her jaw, tilting her face up again. His green eyes were dark, his expression cracked open in a way she'd never seen—tender and hungry and something else, something that looked a lot like hope. "Deal," he said, and kissed her.

Not soft. Not tentative. His mouth covered hers, his tongue sliding against her lower lip, and she opened for him without thinking, her hips still working against his thigh, her fingers twisting in the front of his shirt. He kissed her like he was drowning and she was air, deep and desperate and messy, and the taste of him—coffee and want—made her moan into his mouth.

His hand slid down, over her throat, her collarbone, the swell of her breast through the sweater. He palmed her, his thumb finding her nipple through the fabric, and the dual sensation—his thigh between her legs, his hand on her breast—made her break the kiss with a gasp. "Flynn. I'm close. I'm—"

"I know." He rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger, a sharp pinch that made her buck against him. "I can feel it. Your rhythm's changing. Your thighs are trembling." His voice was pure gravel now, stripped of every trace of the professor. "Come for me. Right here. Don't stop."

She didn't. Her hips ground down hard, her clit pressing against the solid ridge of his thigh, and the pressure crested—sharp, bright, inevitable—and she came with a cry that she muffled against his shoulder, her whole body clenching and releasing in waves that seemed to go on forever. He held her through it, his hand on her breast, his mouth pressed to her hair, his thigh steady and unyielding beneath her.

She surfaced slowly, the aftershocks still rolling through her in soft, diminishing waves. Her face was pressed to the damp cotton of his shirt, her breath coming in ragged pulls, and his hand was still cupping her breast, his thumb still tracing lazy circles over the peak of her nipple through the fabric. His thigh was still between her legs, the pressure eased now but still there, still solid, still his.

"Hey," he said, and the word was soft, almost wondering.

She couldn't lift her head yet. Couldn't face whatever expression was on his face—tenderness, or satisfaction, or the dawning realization that he'd just held a student through an orgasm on his thigh. "Hey," she managed, and the word came out hoarse.

His hand left her breast and found her chin, tilting her face up with a gentleness that made her chest ache. His green eyes were still dark, still heavy-lidded, but the hunger had eased into something quieter. Something that looked a lot like awe. "You okay?"

"I'm—" She laughed, a shaky, surprised sound. "Yeah. I'm okay. I'm better than okay. I'm—" She stopped, searching for a word that could hold what she was feeling, and came up empty. "I'm still wearing too many clothes."

His eyebrows lifted, and then he laughed, that boyish, startled sound she was already hoarding. "Fair point." He shifted, easing his thigh from between her legs, and the loss of pressure made her whimper before she could stop it. His hand stilled on her chin. "What?"

"Nothing. Just—" She swallowed. "I'm going to miss that."

"Who says you have to?" But he was already sitting up, his hands going to the hem of his shirt, and she watched as he pulled it over his head in one fluid motion. His chest was broad, barrel-shaped, dusted with dark hair that tapered down his stomach and disappeared into his waistband. His shoulders were massive, the kind of shoulders that filled doorways, and there was a scar on his left collarbone she wanted to trace with her tongue.

She did not trace it with her tongue. Not yet. Instead she sat up too, her hands going to the hem of her own sweater, and she hesitated—just for a second—because this was different. This was full daylight, gold through the curtains, and he was going to see all of her.

"Hey." His hand closed over hers, stilling the movement. "We don't have to—"

"I want to." She pulled the sweater over her head before she could think about it, before the old voice could tell her to cover up, to hide, to make herself smaller. The air hit her skin and she shivered, but she didn't cross her arms. She let him look.

He looked. His eyes moved over her—her shoulders, the swell of her breasts in her plain black bra, the soft curve of her stomach, the waistband of her jeans—and his expression didn't change except to sharpen, his jaw tightening, his hands fisting in the sheets. "Ivy," he said, and her name was a sentence.

"What?"

"You're—" He stopped, shook his head, and then his hands were at the clasp of his own jeans, working the button free, pushing the denim down over his hips. His boxers went with them, and then he was naked—all of him, the broad expanse of his chest, the thick muscle of his thighs, his cock hard and curving up toward his stomach—and she forgot to breathe.

"Your turn," he said, and his voice was rough but patient, his eyes steady on hers. "But only if you want."

She wanted. She reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, letting the straps slide down her arms, letting it fall. His breath caught—she heard it, a sharp inhale that made her nipples tighten—and then she was working her jeans down over her hips, shimmying out of them, kicking them off the side of the bed. Her panties followed, and then she was as naked as he was, and the morning light was gold on both of them.

"There," she said, and her voice was steadier than she felt. "Now we're even."

He didn't answer right away. He was looking at her—all of her—and she let him, holding still under his gaze, her heart hammering so hard she was sure he could see it. Then he reached for her, his hand closing around her wrist, and he pulled her toward him until she was straddling his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, his cock pressing hot and hard against her stomach.

"Before we go any further," he said, and his hands settled on her hips, thumbs stroking the soft flesh above her hipbones, "I need to know something."

"What?"

"What you like. What you don't like. What you want me to do to you—and what you don't." His green eyes were serious now, the professor surfacing through the hunger. "I'm not going to assume anything. I want to hear it from you."

She stared at him, her chest tightening with something that wasn't arousal—or wasn't only arousal. No one had ever asked her that. No one had ever stopped mid-heat, mid-hunger, and said tell me what you want. "Flynn."

"Ivy." He said her name the same way, a mirror, a promise. "Tell me."

She took a breath. Another. And then she said, "I'll try anything once. Pretty much." She licked her lips, and his eyes followed the movement. "I know I like thigh riding—obviously—" A surprised laugh escaped her. "Oral. Giving and receiving. Dirty talk, clearly." She gestured between them, at the wreckage of the last half-hour. "Rough sex is good—I want to feel it—but no humiliation. If you're going to call me something, make it something good."

"Something good," he repeated, and his thumbs kept moving on her hips, steady, soothing. "Got it. What else?"

"Spanking." She said the word without flinching. "Biting. But no permanent damage—I have to sit in your lecture hall, remember."

His mouth quirked, and his hands tightened on her hips. "Noted."

"And absolutely no—" She hesitated, but only for a second. "No pee. No shit. That's a hard line."

"Hard line," he said, and his voice was steady, no judgment, no surprise. "Understood." His hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb brushing her lower lip. "Anything else?"

She thought about it, her mind turning over the catalog of fantasies she'd never spoken aloud, the things she'd only let herself imagine in the dark. "Praise," she said finally. "I like being told I'm doing good. Being told I'm—" She stopped, the word catching in her throat.

"Good," he finished for her, and the word was a caress. "You like being told you're good."

"Yeah." She swallowed. "I do."

"Then I'll tell you." He leaned in, his mouth brushing the corner of hers, his breath warm against her skin. "As often as you need to hear it."

"What about you?" Ivy shifted on his lap, her thighs tightening against his hips, the question coming out before she could measure it. His cock was still hard against her stomach, and the nearness of it—the heat of him, the weight—made her feel bold and fragile at the same time. "What do you like?"

His hands stilled on her hips. The pause was heavy, not uncomfortable, but careful—the way someone handles a fragile artifact. "It's been a very long time," he said, and his voice was rougher now, the professor's polish worn thin. "But I like being in control. When the power is given to me. When someone trusts me enough to hand it over."

Her breath caught, a hitch she couldn't swallow. She'd seen it in him—the way he'd held her jaw, the way he'd asked for permission, the way he'd waited. "I can do that," she said, and the words felt like stepping off a ledge. "Give it to you. The power."

His thumbs resumed their slow stroke above her hipbones, grounding her. "I like everything you listed," he said. "Spanking. Biting. Rough sex." He said the words without flinching, solid and sure. "And I like restraints. Blindfolds. Things that intensify what you're feeling—take away one sense so the others have to work harder." His green eyes held hers. "But only if that's something you'd want."

"I—" She stopped, her mouth dry. The image flashed through her—herself, bound, blindfolded, unable to see him, only feel—and a pulse of heat went through her so sharp she had to press her thighs together. "I think I'd want that. One day."

"One day," he repeated, and the promise in it was a slow burn. "No rush. We have time."

She nodded, but her chest was tight now, another question pressing against her ribs. A question she'd never asked anyone, had only whispered to herself in the dark, embarrassed even then. She looked down at his chest—at the scar on his collarbone, at the dark hair trailing down—because she couldn't look at his face while she asked. "There's something else."

"Tell me."

Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "I've heard—" She stopped. Swallowed. Her cheeks burned. "I've heard that anal sex can be good. But I've never tried it. And I don't know—maybe it's stupid to bring up now—"

"Ivy." His hand left her hip and found her chin again, gently, tipping her face up until she had no choice but to meet his eyes. His expression was steady, no judgment, no surprise—just the same careful attention he'd given her from the start. "It's not stupid. And I'm glad you told me."

"I don't even know if you'd want—"

"I'd want whatever you're willing to give," he said, and the certainty in his voice made her eyes sting. "But that's not a yes or a no. It's a conversation. For another time." His thumb brushed her lower lip, feather-light. "We'll talk about it. Figure out what you're curious about, what you're nervous about. And if you decide you want to try, we'll go slow. If you decide you don't, that's the end of it."

The pressure in her chest cracked open, and a sound escaped her—half laugh, half exhale, all relief. "How are you this good at this?"

"At what?"

"At making me feel like I'm not—" She struggled for the word. "Like what I want isn't too much."

His jaw tightened, and for a moment the hunger surfaced in his eyes again, sharp and dark. "Because it isn't," he said. "None of it is too much. The only thing too much would be you not telling me."

She leaned forward and kissed him—not the devouring, desperate kisses from the library, but something softer, slower. A kiss that said thank you. A kiss that said I trust you. His mouth met hers, and his hands slid up her back, his palms warm and broad against her spine, and she felt the tension drain out of her shoulders for the first time since she'd woken up.

Ivy pulled back from the kiss, just far enough to see his face. His green eyes were still half-lidded, his mouth still soft from hers, and beneath her palm on his chest she could feel his heart beating hard and steady. She didn't speak. She didn't have to. Her hand slid down—over the trail of dark hair, over the hard plane of his stomach, lower—until her fingers closed around him.

His breath stopped. Just stopped, caught in his throat, and his whole body went still beneath her. She held him, not moving, her grip loose around the thick heat of his cock, and watched his face as the sensation registered—the slight parting of his lips, the way his eyes flickered and then found hers again, sharp and dark.

"Ivy." Her name, rough as stone.

She tightened her fingers, just slightly, and his jaw clenched. A muscle jumped in his cheek. She could feel the ridge of him, the vein on the underside, the slick of pre-cum already beading at the tip, and she let her thumb find it—a slow circle that made his hips lift, involuntary.

His hands, still on her hips, pressed harder. Not guiding. Not demanding. Just holding on.

She began to stroke him. Slow. Deliberate. The way you handle something priceless—not tentative, but reverent. Her fingers slid down to the base and back up, the skin moving over the hardness, and his head tipped back against the floor, his throat exposed, his breath coming in short, controlled bursts.

"Look at me," she said, and his eyes opened. The green was nearly swallowed by pupil. But he looked.

She stroked him again, watching the flicker of pleasure cross his face—the way his brow creased, the way his lips pressed together to hold back sound. She did it a third time, slower, and this time a sound did escape him, a low rumble from deep in his chest that she felt through his ribs, through her own palm, through the floor beneath them.

Her own body was answering—the wet heat between her legs, the ache that hadn't gone away, had only banked itself while they talked and now flared back to life. She shifted her weight, her thighs spreading wider over his hips, and the tip of his cock pressed against her inner thigh, smearing wet against her skin.

"I want to feel you," she said, and her voice was steady but low, meant only for him. "All of you. Slow."

His hands moved from her hips to her thighs, his palms spreading over the soft flesh, and his thumbs stroked once—a question, a permission. She answered by rising up on her knees, guiding him with her hand, the broad head of him finding her. The contact was a shock of heat, a promise, and she saw his nostrils flare, his fingers dig into her thighs.

She didn't close her eyes. She watched his face as she began to sink down.

The stretch made her gasp—not pain, but fullness, an overwhelming pressure that demanded she go slow, let her body open around him inch by inch. His cock was thick, thicker than she'd registered when he'd been inside her last night, and this time she felt every ridge, every vein, every pulse as she took him deeper.

His mouth opened. No sound came out. His hands were shaking on her thighs, she realized—big hands, steady hands, the hands of a man who handled ancient objects with precision, and they were trembling against her skin.

"God," he breathed, and the word was prayer and curse together.

She paused halfway, her body stretched and pulsing, and let herself feel it—the impossible fullness, the heat of him inside her, the way her own muscles clenched around him, greedy and involuntary. His cock twitched, and she gasped, her hips jerking forward, taking another inch she hadn't planned.

"Flynn." His name on her lips, and his eyes found hers—held them, the green blazing through the dark. "Tell me."

"You're—" He stopped. Swallowed. His voice was wrecked, barely more than gravel. "You're so tight. So wet. I can feel every—" Another swallow, and his thumbs pressed harder into her thighs as she sank another fraction, her body yielding, accepting. "Every pulse. Every flutter. You feel—"

"Good," she prompted, and a smile flickered at the corner of her mouth—breathless, daring.

"Perfect." The word was immediate, unfiltered. "You feel perfect."

She lowered herself the rest of the way, a long, slow glide that ended with her seated against him, her hips flush with his, his cock buried to the hilt. The fullness was staggering—deep enough to steal her breath, to make her press a hand to her own stomach as if she could feel him there. For a long moment she didn't move, just stayed, feeling the stretch, the heat, the way they fit together like a lock and key.

His hands slid from her thighs to her hips, up her waist, her ribs, until they cupped her face. His thumbs brushed her cheekbones. His eyes, still locked on hers, were wet at the edges—not crying, not quite, but something close. Something that made her chest squeeze tight.

"Ivy Castellano," he said, and his voice was hoarse but steady now, deliberate. "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

She didn't look away from his eyes. She couldn't. The wetness at their edges held her, that raw and unguarded thing she'd never seen on a man's face before—not like this, not aimed at her. His thumbs still rested on her cheekbones, and she could feel the faint tremor in them, the way his calluses dragged against her skin with every breath she took.

She kissed him.

Not the soft thank-you kiss from before. Not the devouring desperation of the library floor. This was something else—something that started slow and deepened with intent, her mouth opening against his, her tongue tracing the seam of his lips until he opened for her. His hands slid from her face into her hair, fingers tangling in the messy bun, pulling it loose so the chestnut waves fell around her shoulders and brushed his knuckles.

She kissed him like she was claiming territory. Like she was writing her name somewhere inside him where it couldn't be erased. And he let her—his mouth soft and yielding, his breath coming faster, his cock still buried deep and impossibly hard inside her.

She began to move.

Slow. The word was a mantra in her head, a rhythm she matched with her hips. She rose—just an inch, just enough to feel the drag of him against every swollen, sensitive inch of her—and then sank back down. The fullness hit her again, that stretching, breathtaking pressure, and she gasped against his mouth.

"Ivy." Her name, broken open.

She did it again. Rose higher this time, two inches, three, feeling the way her body clung to him, the wet sound of their joining, the way his cock seemed to swell even thicker on the downstroke. Her thighs burned with the effort, the slow control, but she didn't rush. She wouldn't. This was hers—the pace, the depth, the way she took him into her body and held him there.

His hands found her hips, but he didn't guide. Didn't push. His fingers pressed into the soft flesh, gripping hard enough to leave marks, and she liked that—liked the evidence of his desperation, the way his restraint was costing him. His jaw was clenched, his eyes half-lidded but still on her, still watching her face as she rode him with the deliberate, unhurried rhythm of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

She rose until only the tip of him remained inside her, the broad head stretching her entrance, and held there. Her thighs shook. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Below her, Flynn made a sound—low, guttural, a groan dragged up from somewhere deep in his chest—and his fingers dug harder into her hips.

"Look at me," she said again, and his eyes opened fully. The green was nearly gone, swallowed by black, but he looked.

She sank down. All the way. One long, slow, merciless glide that seated him to the hilt and made her cry out—a sound she didn't recognize, raw and high and completely unguarded. Her hands braced on his chest, fingers splayed over the dark hair, feeling his heart hammer beneath her palms. His cock pulsed inside her, and she clenched around him deliberately, felt him jerk, felt the way his whole body went rigid beneath her.

"You feel that?" Her voice was rough, breathless, but steady. "That's me. Taking what I want."

"Yes." The word was barely a word—more of an exhale, a surrender. "Yes, Ivy. Take it."

She rode him harder. Still slow—the pace was a promise she wouldn't break—but deeper, grinding down at the bottom of each stroke, her clit pressing against the coarse hair at the base of him. The friction made her gasp, made her hips stutter, made her do it again and again until the pleasure built into something sharp and demanding. Her breasts swayed with the motion, heavy and sensitive, and she watched his eyes drop to them, watched his mouth open slightly, watched his hands twitch on her hips like he was fighting the urge to touch her everywhere at once.

"You can touch me," she said, and the permission broke something in him.

His hands moved. Up her waist, over her ribs, cupping her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples until they peaked hard and aching. She moaned—couldn't help it, the sensation arrowing straight to her cunt, making her clench around him again—and he groaned in answer, his hips lifting to meet her next downstroke. The collision was electric, a shock of deeper penetration that made them both gasp.

"Again," she demanded, and he gave it to her—another thrust upward, his hands still on her breasts, his cock driving into her from below while she rode him from above. The rhythm stayed slow but the force behind it built, each stroke a claiming, each thrust a conversation neither of them had words for anymore.

She leaned forward, changing the angle, and the new position made her see stars—his cock pressing against something deep inside her, something that made her whole body shake. Her forehead dropped to his, their breath mingling, their eyes inches apart. His hands slid from her breasts to her back, pulling her closer, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, her chest pressed to his, her hips still moving in that slow, devastating rhythm.

"I've wanted this," she whispered against his mouth, "for three years. Three years of sitting in your lectures, watching your hands on the chalkboard, wondering what they'd feel like. Three years of dreaming about you and waking up empty. And now—" She gasped as he thrust up into her, hard, his control fraying. "Now you're inside me. And I'm never going to stop wanting this. Wanting you."

His arms tightened around her, crushing her against his chest, and he buried his face in her neck. She felt his mouth open against her skin, felt the wet heat of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, and then he sucked hard—a mark, a brand, a claim of his own—and she cried out, her hips bucking, her rhythm finally breaking as the pleasure crested and held her on the edge.

"Come for me," he growled against her throat. "Come on my cock, Ivy. Let me feel you."

The command undid her. She shattered—not explosively but completely, her body clenching around him in waves, her cunt pulsing, her thighs shaking, her mouth open against his shoulder in a silent scream. She rode him through it, through every pulse and spasm, and he held still beneath her, letting her take it, letting her feel every second of the orgasm she'd been waiting three years to have with him inside her.

When it finally ebbed, she collapsed against his chest, breathing hard, her heart hammering against his. His cock was still hard inside her, still pulsing, and she clenched around him weakly, making him groan.

"God," he breathed. "God, Ivy."

She lifted her head, just enough to see his face. His eyes were wet again, his expression cracked open and raw, and she kissed him—soft this time, a kiss that tasted like salt and relief and something that felt terrifyingly close to love.

Her breath came back in pieces—shallow gasps that slowed, deepened, found a rhythm again against his shoulder. The sweat cooled on her skin, tacky where her chest pressed to his, and she could feel his heartbeat still hammering beneath her palm, could feel his cock still thick and rigid inside her, and the knowledge that he hadn't come yet settled in her belly like a new kind of hunger.

She pulled off him slow. Deliberate. The drag of him leaving her body made them both gasp—her at the sudden emptiness, him at the wet clutch of her cunt trying to keep him. She felt the slickness between her thighs, the smear of his seed and her own arousal, and when she looked down at his cock—wet, glistening, impossibly hard and still curved toward his belly—her mouth filled with saliva.

"Ivy—"

"Shh." She was already moving, already sliding down his body, her breasts dragging against his chest, his stomach, the coarse hair that made her nipples tighten. "You made me come. My turn."

His hand found her hair before her mouth found his cock. His fingers threaded through the chestnut waves, still tangled from sleep and sex, and when she looked up at him from between his thighs his eyes were dark and desperate and completely unguarded.

She held his gaze and lowered her mouth.

The first taste was salt and her. Her own slickness coating him, musky and sharp and somehow sweeter because it was them mixed together. She dragged her tongue up the underside of his shaft—slow, flat, feeling every ridge and vein—and when she reached the head she circled it, dipped into the slit, tasted the pearl of precum that had beaded there.

The sound he made was broken. A groan dragged up from somewhere deeper than his chest, and his fingers tightened in her hair, not pulling, just holding on like she was the only solid thing in the room.

She took him into her mouth.

Not all at once—she worked for it, her lips stretched around the thick head, her tongue pressed flat against the underside, her hand wrapped around the base where her mouth couldn't reach yet. She sucked, hollowing her cheeks, and his hips jerked, and she felt the pulse of him against her tongue, the way his whole body went rigid beneath her.

"Fuck." The word was punched out of him. "Ivy, fuck—"

She moaned around him in answer. The vibration made him buck again, made his cock twitch against her soft palate, and she took him deeper—an inch, another, her jaw aching, her eyes watering, and she didn't care. She wanted to feel him in her throat. She wanted to taste him when he came. She wanted to swallow him down and keep him there and never let him forget what she could do with her mouth.

His hand tightened in her hair. The other found her shoulder, her neck, his thumb pressing against the hinge of her jaw, feeling her work. "Look at you," he breathed, and his voice was wrecked, hoarse, reverent. "Look at you, sweetheart. Taking me so deep."

The praise sank into her skin like heat. She pulled back until only the head remained between her lips, sucked hard, then sank down again, faster this time, finding a rhythm that made wet sounds fill the quiet of the library. Her spit slicked his shaft, dripped down to her hand, made every stroke obscene and perfect.

She hollowed her cheeks and sucked like she was starving for him.

His hips met her on the downstroke, a shallow thrust he couldn't seem to help, and she let him—opened her throat, took him deeper, felt her eyes spill over with the effort. His thumb caught the tear at the corner of her eye, brushed it away, and the tenderness of the gesture while she had his cock in her mouth made something crack open in her chest.

"Ivy." Her name was a warning now, a desperate edge creeping in. "I'm—I'm close, I'm going to—"

She didn't pull off. She sucked harder, her hand twisting at the base, her tongue working the sensitive underside with every stroke. She wanted him to come in her mouth. She wanted to taste him, swallow him, take everything he had to give her.

His fingers tightened in her hair, and she felt the exact moment his control snapped—the way his thighs tensed beneath her arm, the way his cock swelled even thicker against her tongue, the way his breath caught and held and then broke on a groan that was half her name and half something wordless and wrecked.

He came. Hot and salt and bitter, flooding her mouth, and she swallowed, swallowed, kept swallowing as his hips bucked and his hands held her in place and his release pulsed against the back of her throat. She didn't stop sucking until he was spent, until the last pulse faded and his grip loosened and his breath came in ragged, shaking gasps.

She pulled off slow, her lips still stretched, her jaw aching. A strand of spit and cum connected her mouth to his cock, and she broke it with her tongue, licked her lips, tasted him still.

He stared at her like she'd rewritten every text he'd ever studied. Like she was the hieroglyph he'd been trying to translate his whole life and she'd finally let him read her.