The lid was open.

Ivy didn't remember hearing the hinges—only the sudden hush of aged wood releasing its hold, a sound like a door that hadn't been opened in centuries deciding to speak. The lamplight pooled inside the box, and there it was: a single sheet of papyrus, folded into fourths with the precision of a woman who had meant every crease. The fibers at the edges had gone the color of weak tea, and at the deepest fold lines they threatened to separate, held together by nothing but memory and the weight of the lid that had pressed them flat for four millennia.

The ink was black once. Now it was the color of dried blood.

Ivy's glasses slipped a millimeter down her nose. She didn't push them up. The first word sat at the top right of the folded sheet, painted in a hand that had known exactly how much pressure to use on the reed pen—confident, unhurried, the strokes of someone writing a truth she'd already accepted.

A woman's name. Not a goddess, not a queen. A private name, the kind you'd find in household accounts or a letter between sisters. Ivy didn't recognize it.

"I don't know her," she said, and her voice sounded too loud in the small room.

Flynn didn't answer. His hands were still cradling the box as if the weight of it hadn't changed, as if the lid swinging open had been its own complete act and everything after was hers to decide. But his eyes—green and steady in the yellow lamp glow—were fixed on her face with an intensity that made her throat tight. He was waiting. Not for her to be impressed. Not for her to say something clever. He was waiting to see what the letter would do to her.

Ivy looked back down at the hieroglyphs. The woman had written in the cursive of the Middle Kingdom, the same script Ivy had spent three years learning to read in the margins of her lecture notes while pretending not to notice her professor standing too close to her desk. The grammar was simple. The vocabulary was domestic. Bread. House. Night. The verb for wanting, written twice in the first three lines.

"'I am alone in the house you built,'" Ivy translated, her voice dropping into something quieter, something that belonged to the woman on the papyrus. "'The bread rises and I do not eat it. The lamp burns and I do not sleep. My body remembers the weight of yours and will not let me forget.'"

She stopped. The next line was the same verb for wanting, but this time the determinative wasn't the generic figure of a woman with her hand to her mouth. The woman had drawn herself—a small, careful figure with her arms reaching toward something that wasn't there.

Flynn still hadn't moved. The box rested in his palms, and the lamplight caught the silver at his temples, and the silence in the room was the silence of a man who had been carrying this letter inside him for so long that watching someone else read it was a kind of undressing.

"You translate it differently," Ivy said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Show me."

He set the box down on the table, the wood meeting the wood with a quiet knock. Then he reached past her—close enough that she caught sandalwood and coffee and the particular warmth of his skin—and his finger hovered a centimeter above the fragile papyrus, tracing the air over the hieroglyphs without touching them.

"She doesn't say 'the weight of yours,'" Flynn said. "She says 'the shape of you.' The word she used—it's the same word for the impression a body leaves in the bed." His voice was low, the teaching cadence stripped bare, and when he turned his head to look at her, the green of his eyes was wet. "The indent where someone used to be. The hollow. She's saying the bed still holds his outline, and she can't stop touching it."

Ivy didn't look at him. Not yet. She looked at the hieroglyphs—at the small, careful figure the woman had drawn of herself with arms reaching—and let the silence settle between them like the dust that had been collecting on that box for four thousand years.

Then she read the next line aloud.

Her voice was barely above a whisper, the Middle Kingdom vowels unfamiliar in her mouth, the cadence of a woman who had been dead longer than most civilizations but whose loneliness was right there in the room with them, breathing down Ivy's neck. The word for *shape*. The word for *bed*. The word for *touch*, written with a hand that knew exactly what it was reaching for.

"The hollow where your hip rested," Ivy translated, and her voice cracked on *hip*. Not from the translation. From the weight of him beside her, still close enough that she could feel the heat of his shoulder through the air. "The linen still holds the curve of your spine. I press my palm into it and pretend—"

She stopped reading. Not because the grammar was difficult. Because the next glyph was the determinative for *weeping*, and the woman had drawn it with such precision—the tear falling from the eye, the hand lifted to catch it—that Ivy felt her own throat close.

Flynn's hand came to rest on her lower back. Not pulling. Not pressing. Just there, the warmth of his palm spreading through the thin fabric of her sweater, grounding her in the present while the past threatened to swallow them both.

"She drew herself crying," Ivy said, and now she did look at him. His eyes were wet, the green gone dark and deep like river water under a storm. "Not the generic sign. She drew her own face."

"Yes." His voice was rough, scraped clean of the professor's polish. "She was a scribe. Or trained as one. That's not—" He stopped, swallowed hard, and the hand on her back curled slightly, gathering the fabric of her sweater. "That's not how love letters were written. You hired a scribe. You dictated. The words weren't supposed to be yours."

"But these are hers."

"Every stroke."

Ivy didn't look at the hieroglyphs anymore. She looked at him—at the wet green of his eyes and the way his jaw was set against something he'd been holding back since the moment he lifted the lid. The question was already in her throat before she knew she was going to ask it.

"Why did you keep it for me?"

The words landed in the space between them, small and quiet and weighted with everything she wasn't saying: *Why not show it to your colleagues? Why not publish it and claim the discovery? Why hide a four-thousand-year-old love letter in a locked cabinet and wait until I was standing close enough to smell your skin?*

Flynn's hand on her lower back went still. Not pulling away. Not pressing closer. Just still, the way a man goes still when he's deciding whether the truth will cost him something he can't afford to lose.

"Because you'd understand it," he said. His voice was gravel over river stone—rough and low and scraped clean of anything that wasn't the truth. "Not the grammar. Not the translation. The—" He stopped, swallowed, and the motion made the silver at his temples catch the lamplight. "The being alone. The wanting someone who wasn't there."

Ivy's chest tightened. She thought of three years of sitting in his lectures, of catching his eyes on her and telling herself it was her imagination, of nights in her cramped apartment with the heater clicking off and the silence pressing in and her hand between her thighs thinking of him. Wanting someone who wasn't there. She'd written that story on her own body a hundred times.

"I watched you read the Book of the Dead translations in class," Flynn said, and now his voice was moving faster, the words tumbling out like he'd been holding them behind a dam that had finally cracked. "You didn't just read the hieroglyphs. You—your voice changed. When you hit a line about grief, your hand went to your throat. When you translated a passage about hunger, your fingers curled on the desk. You felt it. Every time. And I thought—"

He broke off and looked down at the papyrus, at the ancient ink and the woman's drawn face and the tear falling from her painted eye. His thumb moved against Ivy's lower back, a small, unconscious circle through her sweater.

"I thought, here is someone who would read this and not just see a artifact." His voice cracked on *artifact*, and the hand that wasn't on her back lifted, hovered above the papyrus, trembled slightly in the lamplight. "Someone who would see a woman. Who would feel her grief in her own body. Who would know—" He stopped, and Ivy saw his throat move. "Who would know what it is to want someone so long you forget you're allowed to have them."

Ivy didn't speak. She couldn't. Her own eyes were wet now, the glasses doing nothing to hold back the heat gathering along her lower lids. She reached up—slow, giving him time to pull back if he wanted—and pressed her palm against his jaw. The stubble was rough under her fingers. The muscle beneath it was corded tight.

"You kept it for me," she said, and it wasn't a question anymore. It was an understanding. A door swinging open. A key turning in a lock she hadn't known still held anything.

Flynn turned his head and pressed his lips to her palm. Not a kiss. Just—contact. The warmth of his mouth against the lifeline of her hand, his breath shuddering out against her skin like he'd been holding it for years.

"Yes," he said into her palm. "I kept it for you."

Ivy didn't answer.

She pulled him closer—her hand on his jaw tightening, her other hand finding the lapel of his jacket and fisting in the tweed—and she kissed him.

Not a soft kiss. Not the careful press of lips she'd imagined a hundred times in the dark of her apartment. This was a kiss that had been waiting three years to happen, and it landed like a door slamming open. His mouth was warm and startled against hers for half a heartbeat, and then his hand on her lower back pulled her into him so hard her glasses pressed crooked against her nose.

He made a sound—low in his throat, a half-groan that vibrated against her lips—and his other hand came up to cup the back of her head, fingers threading into the messy bun, anchoring her there like she might try to leave. She wasn't leaving. She was climbing him, her body pressing up against the barrel of his chest, the soft curve of her belly meeting the hard plane of him, and she didn't care how she looked, didn't care that her glasses were fogging, didn't care about anything except the taste of salt and coffee on his lips and the way his tongue found hers like it was the answer to a question neither of them had known how to ask.

His stubble scraped her upper lip. She didn't mind. She wanted the scratch, wanted the proof that this was real, that Flynn Ashworth was kissing her in the restricted section with a four-thousand-year-old love letter open on the table beside them and both of them crying.

When they broke apart—just far enough to breathe, his forehead pressed to hers, her hand still fisted in his jacket—the lamp hummed in the silence like a witness that had seen everything and was keeping its secrets.

"Ivy." Her name came out of him wrecked, a single syllable scraped raw, and his thumb traced the edge of her jaw where her pulse beat hard and fast under the skin. His eyes were still wet, the green dark and deep, and he was looking at her the way a man looks at something he's been forbidden to touch for years and has just been given permission to hold.

She pulled her glasses off. Set them on the table beside the wooden box. The world went soft at the edges, but she didn't need sharp focus to see him—she'd memorized the lines of his face across three years of lectures, stolen glances, dreams she woke from with her thighs pressed together.

"You kept it for me," she said again, and this time her voice was steady. Steadier than she felt. Steadier than her hands, which were trembling where they rested against his chest. "And you waited. Three years, you waited."

"I would have waited longer." His voice was gravel and truth, and his hands—both of them now—were on her face, thumbs wiping the tears from her cheeks with a tenderness that undid her more than the kiss had. "I would have waited forever, Ivy. I just didn't think I'd get to stop."

She kissed him again. Slower this time, but no less desperate—her mouth parting under his, her tongue sliding against the salt of his own tears, and her hands moving up from his chest to his shoulders, feeling the breadth of him, the solid weight of a man who had been carrying this alone for so long he'd forgotten he was allowed to set it down.

The papyrus sat on the table between them, the ancient ink holding a woman's grief and a woman's want, and in the humming quiet of the restricted section, Ivy Castellano kissed her professor and let the wanting that had lived in her chest for three years finally, finally breathe.

She pulled back.

Not far—just enough to see his face, the blur of him without her glasses, the wet shine of his eyes catching the lamplight. Her hands were still on his shoulders, and she could feel the muscle beneath the tweed, solid and warm and real, and that was the problem. That was always the problem. He was real, and she was Ivy, and somewhere in the back of her mind a voice that had been running for twenty-five years was telling her this didn't happen to girls who looked like her.

"What's wrong?" Flynn's voice was immediate, the gravel roughened by concern. His hands were still on her face, thumbs frozen mid-sweep on her cheekbones. "Ivy. Talk to me."

She let out a breath—a sigh, but not the soft kind. This was a sigh with weight behind it, the kind that had been building since the first time she'd seen him lean against the lectern and felt her stomach drop. Her fingers curled into the wool of his jacket, gripping like he might dissolve if she let go.

"Are you real?"

The question hung in the humming quiet of the restricted section, and she heard how it sounded—giddy, girlish, the kind of thing a character in a bad romance novel would say. But she didn't take it back. She couldn't. Because he was standing here with his callused hands on her face and a four-thousand-year-old love letter open beside them and tears still drying on his cheeks, and he'd waited three years. Three years of watching her across lecture halls and correcting papers he'd already read and keeping a dead woman's grief locked in a cabinet because he'd thought Ivy would understand it.

"I'm real." His voice cracked on real, and one corner of his mouth lifted—not quite a smile, but close, the boyish thing that undid her every time. "I'm standing right here, Ivy. I'm—"

"You're hot." She said it flat, the way she'd deliver a translation. "And smart. And you can cook some things. And you're romantic, and you're funny, and you're—" She stopped, her throat closing around the last word, and her eyes burned fresh. "You're beyond amazing in bed, Flynn. You're all of it. Every single thing I spent three years telling myself I'd never have. And I just—"

She pressed her palm flat against his chest, over his heart, feeling the steady thump beneath the layers of shirt and jacket. Her hand looked small there, against the breadth of him, and she watched her own fingers tremble against the tweed.

"I need to know this is real." Her voice dropped to something smaller, something she'd never let out in a lecture hall or a seminar or anywhere else she'd had to be sharp and armored. "Because if I wake up in my apartment with the heater clicking off and this was all—"

Flynn didn't let her finish. He took her hand from his chest and pressed it to his jaw again, the same way she'd done to him minutes ago, and held it there with his own palm covering her knuckles. His stubble was rough. His skin was warm. His pulse beat steady and fast under her fingers, and his eyes—those green eyes she'd memorized across three years of stolen glances—were fixed on hers with an intensity that made her breath catch.

"This is real." He said it slow, each word a separate stone laid down with care. "I am real. And I have wanted you for so long, Ivy Castellano, that I forgot what it felt like not to ache." He turned his head, pressed his lips to her palm again—slower this time, a deliberate kiss that lingered. "You are not dreaming. You are not imagining. You are standing in the restricted section of my library with a four-thousand-year-old love letter on the table and a man who is desperately, hopelessly in love with you."

"Say that again."

"I am desperately, hopelessly in love with you."

Ivy kissed him. Not like before—not the door-slamming-open kiss of three years breaking loose. This was slower, deeper, the kind of kiss you give someone when you're testing whether they'll still be there when you open your eyes. Her lips parted under his, and his tongue found hers, and her hands slid up from his shoulders into his hair—the silver at his temples soft under her fingers, the dark strands thick and threaded through with the scent of old books and sandalwood.

When she pulled back this time, her eyes were wet but her voice was steady. "Okay," she said. "Okay. I believe you."

Flynn's laugh was the surprised, boyish sound that always cracked something open in her chest. He pressed his forehead to hers, his hands still cradling her face, and in the humming quiet of the restricted section, with the papyrus open beside them and the lamp casting its tight circle of yellow light, Ivy let herself believe that the wanting could finally, finally stop being an ache and start being something else.

Something that felt like home.

Flynn's laugh started somewhere deep in his chest, a low rumble that built into something surprised and helpless and almost boyish, and then he was laughing—really laughing, the kind that bent him forward until his forehead dropped to her shoulder and his shoulders shook against her palms.

"What?" Ivy's voice pitched up, half-indignant, half-relieved. "What's so funny?"

"We're crying." He pulled back just enough to look at her, his green eyes still wet but crinkled at the corners now, his mouth doing that lopsided thing that made her stomach flip. "We're standing in the restricted section, sobbing into each other's jackets, with a four-thousand-year-old love letter between us like a chaperone, and all I can think about—" He broke off, laughing again, shaking his head.

"All you can think about what?"

"How much I want you." The laughter softened but didn't leave, hanging in the corners of his mouth like a secret. "Right now. Here. On this terrible Persian rug that's probably a hundred years old and hasn't been cleaned in forty. And we're both crying so hard we can barely breathe, and I still—" His hand found her hip, thumb pressing into the soft flesh above her waistband. "I still want you so badly I can't think straight."

Ivy snorted. The laugh she'd spent years trying to catch before it escaped—and this time she let it come. "You're ridiculous."

"I'm aware." His other hand was still on her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone, and the contrast between the tenderness and the laughter made her chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with sadness. "We're both ridiculous. We're two crying academics in a locked room with an ancient artifact and no chaperone, and instead of being professional, I'm about to—"

"About to what?"

Flynn kissed her. Not desperate like before—this kiss had laughter in it, a smile pressed against her lips, his stubble scraping her chin as his mouth curved. She tasted the salt of their combined tears and the coffee he'd had hours ago and something underneath that was just Flynn, warm and solid and real, and her hands fisted in the lapels of his jacket because she was done being careful, done being uncertain, done waiting.

"I'm about to lay you down on this rug," he said against her mouth, "and make you forget we were ever crying." His hands dropped to the hem of her sweater, fingers slipping underneath to find the warm skin of her waist. "If you want."

"Yes." The word came out breathless and immediate, and she was already reaching for his belt, her fingers fumbling with the leather. "Yes, I want. I want you to stop being careful and stop being professional and stop treating me like I'm going to break if you—"

Flynn's hands tightened on her waist, and then he was pulling the sweater up over her head, and her glasses went flying somewhere onto the table. She didn't care. She didn't care about anything except the way he was looking at her now—at her soft stomach and the plain black bra that had seen better days and the stretch marks that silvered the curve of her hips—and his eyes were dark and hungry and absolutely, devastatingly certain.

She didn't wait for him to move. Her hands found the front of his jacket and pulled—not gently, not carefully, but with the same desperate certainty that had been building since the first time she'd watched him uncross his long legs at the lectern and felt her stomach drop. Flynn came with her, his weight following hers as she let herself fall backward onto the Persian rug, and the impact knocked the breath from both of them in a shared gasp.

The rug was coarse against her bare shoulders, the wool nap pressing into her skin in a hundred tiny points of friction. Above her, Flynn caught himself on his forearms, his chest a solid wall of tweed and muscle that blocked out the lamplight and left her in his shadow. His breathing was ragged, and she could feel the tension in his arms, the way he was holding himself up like he was still afraid of crushing her.

"Stop." She reached up and cupped his jaw, her thumb finding the corner of his mouth where the smile had been minutes ago. "Stop holding yourself up. I'm not going to break."

His eyes searched hers for one heartbeat, two, and then something in him let go. His weight settled onto her—not all of it, but enough that she felt the solid press of his chest against her breasts, the hard line of his belt buckle against her soft stomach, the way his hips found the cradle of her thighs like they'd been built to fit there. The air went out of her in a sound that was half laugh and half moan.

"There," she breathed. "That's better."

Flynn made a sound low in his throat—something between a groan and a growl—and his mouth found her neck. Not the careful, measured kisses of a professor who'd spent three years maintaining distance. This was open-mouthed and hungry, his teeth grazing the tendon beneath her ear, his tongue tracing the sweat-salt taste of her skin. Her back arched without her permission, pressing her belly into the hard ridge of his cock through his trousers.

"You have no idea," he said against her throat, his voice a gravel wreck, "how many times I imagined you under me. Just like this. On this rug. In this room." He pulled back just enough to look at her, and his green eyes were blown dark, the pupils swallowing the color. "Every time I unlocked that cabinet. Every time I showed a grad student the collection. You were here. In my head. Bent over that table or on your knees or—" He broke off and pressed his forehead to hers, his breath hot on her lips. "I am so tired of being professional, Ivy."

"Then don't be." She hooked her legs around his hips and pulled him down harder, grinding up against him until she felt the full length of his erection pressing into the seam of her jeans. The friction made her gasp, and his answering groan vibrated through her chest. "Be unprofessional. Be reckless. Be whatever you want—just don't stop touching me."

His hand found the clasp of her bra, and his fingers paused there, a question he didn't need to speak. She answered by arching up into his palm, and the clasp gave way with a soft snick that was somehow the loudest sound in the humming quiet of the room. He pulled the straps down her shoulders, the black cotton sliding away, and then his mouth was on her breast and her vision went white at the edges.

His tongue circled her nipple—once, twice—and then he sucked, hard, and the moan that came out of her was louder than she'd meant it to be. His stubble scraped the soft skin of her breast, and she could feel the wet heat of his mouth, the steady pull that sent a direct current of want straight to her cunt. She was already wet. She'd been wet since he'd opened the box, since he'd looked at her with those wrecked green eyes and said he'd been lonely.

"Flynn." His name was a gasp, her fingers threading into his hair and pulling—not gently—until his mouth left her breast with a wet sound that made her thighs clench. "I need you inside me. Now. I don't want to wait. I've been waiting three years and I don't—"

He kissed her before she could finish, his tongue sliding against hers, and she tasted herself on his lips—salt and skin and something muskier underneath. His hand was already at her jeans, thumb popping the button, fingers finding the zipper and dragging it down. She lifted her hips to help him, and he peeled the denim down her thighs with the same reverent care he'd used opening the papyrus box, like she was something precious and ancient and worth uncovering.

His weight vanished before she could finish the thought. Ivy's back hit the rug with a soft thud, the coarse wool scraping her bare shoulders, and then she was looking up at Flynn—his chest still heaving, his mouth still wet from her breast—and the confusion on his face was so genuine, so completely bewildered, that she almost laughed.

"What—"

"You're taking too long." She was already moving, pushing up onto her elbows, then her knees, her body a live wire of want that didn't care about grace or technique or the fact that her jeans were still bunched around her ankles. "Belt. Now. I want it off."

Flynn's hands found her hips automatically, steadying her as she swung one leg over his thighs and settled her weight across him. The new position put her above him for the first time—her soft stomach pressing against the hard plane of his chest, her thighs bracketing his hips, her cunt riding the ridge of his cock through his trousers—and the shift in perspective was dizzying. She could see the lamp light catching the silver in his hair, the way his pupils had swallowed nearly all the green, the flush that started at his collar and crept up his throat.

"Ivy." Her name was a rough exhale, his hands tightening on her hips like he was trying to anchor himself. "You don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to." She reached for his belt, her fingers finding the leather and the cold brass of the buckle. "I want to. I've wanted to ride you since the first time I watched you uncross your legs at the lectern and felt my stomach drop. So stop being careful and let me."

The buckle gave way with a metallic snick that seemed to echo in the humming quiet of the room. She pulled the leather free of its loops in one sharp tug—the sound of it sliding through fabric obscene in the stillness—and then her fingers were at his button, his zipper, and Flynn's head dropped back against the rug with a groan that vibrated through his chest and into her palms.

She freed his cock from his boxers and the sight of it made her mouth go dry. Thick and flushed dark, the head already slick with pre-cum, curving slightly toward his stomach. She'd had him inside her before—on the rug in front of his hearth, on the stairs, in his office—but she'd never had him like this, splayed beneath her with his chest heaving and his hands gripping her thighs hard enough to bruise.

"Look at me." She wrapped her hand around him, felt the hot velvet of his skin and the pulse beating beneath it, and his hips bucked up into her palm without permission. "Flynn. Look at me."

His eyes opened. The green was nearly gone, swallowed by the black of his pupils, and his jaw was tight with the effort of holding still. She positioned him at her entrance, the head of his cock pressing against the wet heat of her cunt, and held there—not pushing down, not yet—just letting him feel how ready she was, how soaked, how desperately she'd been wanting this since he'd opened that wooden box and shown her his loneliness like a wound.

"I love you," she said, and sank down onto him in one slow, inexorable motion that took him to the hilt and punched the air from both their lungs.

The stretch was sharp and perfect—that moment of fullness that bordered on too much before her body adjusted and welcomed him deeper. Her head dropped forward, her hair falling loose from its messy bun to curtain her face, and beneath her Flynn made a sound that wasn't quite her name and wasn't quite a prayer. His hands slid up from her thighs to her hips to the soft curve of her waist, his thumbs pressing into the flesh above her hipbones like he was trying to memorize the shape of her.

"Ivy." This time her name was a wrecked thing, barely a whisper, and she felt his cock throb inside her as he ground up into her cunt. "You feel—I can't—"

"Then don't." She braced her hands on his chest—felt the solid muscle beneath his shirt, the rapid hammer of his heart against her palm—and began to move.

Her thighs burned and she didn't care. Ivy rode him faster—not the slow, deliberate grind she'd started with, but a hungry, chasing rhythm that made her breasts bounce and her breath come in sharp, wet gasps. The Persian rug scraped her knees, coarse wool biting into her skin, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she'd have marks later, but that was later and this was now and now was Flynn's cock driving deep into her cunt with every roll of her hips, the thickness of him stretching her in a way that bordered on too much and then tipped over into exactly what she needed.

Beneath her, Flynn was coming apart. His head was thrown back against the rug, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords, and his hands had found her hips and were gripping hard enough that she felt the press of each finger through the soft flesh. His hips bucked up to meet her on every downstroke, a counterpoint rhythm that sent him deeper, harder, until she could feel him in her throat. The sound of it—the wet slap of her cunt taking him, the rough catch of his breath, the low animal groan that rumbled through his chest every time she sank down to the hilt—filled the humming quiet of the rare books room like something sacred.

"Look at me." Her voice was ragged, barely her own. She grabbed the front of his shirt—still buttoned, still tweed, still absurdly professorial—and used it as an anchor to shift the angle of her hips. The new position made her gasp, her clit grinding against the base of his cock with every stroke, and her rhythm stuttered for half a beat before she found it again. "Flynn. I want you to watch me."

His eyes opened. The green was nearly black, pupils blown so wide there was only a thin ring of color left, and his mouth was wet and slack and utterly wrecked. He looked up at her—at her soft stomach flexing with effort, at her breasts swaying above him, at the chestnut hair that had come completely loose from its bun and was sticking to the sweat on her neck—and something in his expression cracked open. Raw. Devastated. Worshipping.

"I see you." The words came out in a gravel rasp, his hands sliding up from her hips to the curve of her waist to the undersides of her breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples in a way that made her clench around him. "God, Ivy. I see you. All of you. Every inch. You're—" He broke off on a groan as she ground down harder, taking him impossibly deeper. "You're going to make me come."

"Good." She braced her hands on his chest, felt the solid muscle beneath the sweat-damp fabric, and rode him faster. The edge was there—a tightening coil of heat low in her belly, the telltale flutter of her inner muscles that meant she was close, so close, right there. "I want you to come. I want to feel it. I want—"

His thumb found her clit. Just the pad of his thumb, pressing firm and wet against the swollen nub, and Ivy's sentence shattered into a cry that was half his name and half pure, animal sound. Her rhythm broke entirely, hips grinding down and staying there, and Flynn took over—thrusting up into her from below in short, desperate pulses while his thumb circled her clit with the brutal precision of a man who had spent years studying ancient texts and was now studying her body like it was the only language that mattered.

"Let go." His voice was a wrecked whisper, his free hand gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. "I've got you. I've got you, Ivy. Let go."

The coil snapped. Her climax hit her like a wave—not gentle, not gradual, but a sudden crashing crest that wrenched a sob from her throat and made her cunt clench around him in rhythmic, milking pulses. She felt herself flood him, felt the wet heat of her orgasm slicking his cock and dripping down onto the coarse wool of the rug, and above her own ragged cries she heard Flynn make a sound that was her name and a prayer and a groan all at once, and then he was coming too—pumping up into her in rough, desperate thrusts, his cock throbbing inside her as he spilled himself deep.

His hands clamped down on her hips, holding her in place, and Ivy felt the heat of his release flooding her cunt, marking her from the inside out. She collapsed forward, her forehead finding the sweat-damp hollow of his throat, and for a long moment there was nothing but the sound of their breathing—ragged, wet, slowly steadying—and the distant hum of the lamp on the reading table.

She could feel his heart hammering against her palm where it still pressed against his chest. She could feel his cock softening inside her but still buried deep, and the thought of pulling away, of unsealing herself from him, was unbearable.

"I love you." She whispered it against his throat, her lips brushing the salt-skin over his pulse point. "I love you. I love you. I—"

Flynn's arms came around her, heavy and solid, and pulled her tighter against his chest. His mouth found her temple, then her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, and when he spoke his voice was still wrecked but steadier now, an anchor in the humming dark.

"I know," he said. "I know. I love you too."