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We were slow-moving as we made our way from the bed. He offered me a shirt that didn’t have paint stains on it and I took it from him, opting not to wear bottoms for both comfort, and in case things became heated again. The shirt hung low enough over my rear that I didn’t feel a need to, anyway.
As we made our way from the bedroom and passed the handful of closed, mysterious doors and one that saidLucas, I wondered where exactly he’d sent his child for the weekend.
“He’s with Grace,” Adrian said, intensely nonchalant as if he hadn’t just read my mind. “She’s got a grandson about his age.”
The walkway on the second floor opened up, overlooking a massive, bright living room with windows lining the entirety of the far wall. Two sets of stairs lined each side, and at the far end of the walkway, an open doorway led to a room I could barely make out the contents of, but I could see what I thought was the corner of a grand piano.
gray walls carried through to the living room as he took me down the stairs. His place was sleek and modern with a hint of an almost academic feel, with white couches and wooden furniture filling the space. A handful of oversized Legos sat in the corner in the shape of a castle, and beside them, an abandoned train beside a set of disconnected tracks.
“Are you a savory or sweet breakfast kind of person?”
I turned my attention back to him as he pulled me into the kitchen, depositing me by the island with high-top chairs along one side. “Oh. Uh, sweet.”
“Pancakes?”
I grinned. “Do you have chocolate chips?”
“I have an eight-year-old,” he laughed, pulling out a box of flour. “Of course I have chocolate chips, Ava.”
————
“It’sfreezing.”
“The water’s hot, love.”
Adrian slid the glass door open onto the hidden balcony. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why this was tucked away on the other side of the penthouse, the only access point hidden in the room I’d spotted earlier that housed nothing but a grand piano, massive mirrors, and a bench to sit on.
Frigid air whipped my hair as he pulled me out into the cold, my bare feet expecting frozen ground but finding warm paneling. I stared down in confusion, wondering why the hell my toes hadn’t gone numb.
“Heated floors,” he said casually. He pressed a button on the wall and the cover on the pool began to shift, retracting toward the left side and revealing roiling, steaming water. By the time I’d finally pulled my gaze from the floor and the pool, Adrian was already half undressed, standing in nothing but his flannel pajama bottoms. “Come on.”
The wind picked up again, his unstyled hair lifting and blowing lightly. He pushed his pants down to his ankles and kicked them off, baring himself entirely, and I couldn’t tell if it was the cold of the wind or justhimthat stole the air from my lungs.
He held out a hand for me, and I took it.
Shivering in the cold, my body naturally gravitated toward him as he pulled me backward in the direction of the pool. Hishands snaked beneath the oversized shirt he’d given me, lifting the fabric up my body as his fingers glided across my bare skin.
In one quick move, he pulled the shirt up and over my head and hooked his fingers beneath the curve of my rear. He lifted me up, hooking my legs around his waist.
“Hi,” I breathed, my teeth chattering.
Step by step, he descended slowly into the pool. “Hi,” he grinned.
The moment the water touched my toes, I trusted him. Warmth enveloped me as it rose up my calves, my hips and thighs, my waist. It was almost as warm as a hot tub but was large enough to be considered a small pool, stretching maybe twenty feet wide. It backed right up against the side of the building, and the lack of railing on the edge made my heart rate spike.
“Is that…safe?” I asked, clutching onto the back of his neck. Heights weren’t my worst fear, but they were up there, and the possibility of being thrown over the edge or accidentally lifting myself when we were almost high enough to touch the clouds made my hair stand on end.
Little by little, he edged us closer to the edge. “The drop is just to the lower balcony,” he said. Damp hands pushed the hair from my face. “A fall would hurt, but you’re not dropping sixty floors.”
I clung to him like a fucking koala anyway. “Do you let Lucas out here?”
He snorted. “Not a fucking chance. He can swim out here when he’s ten. Until then, he can use the building’s community pool.”
I watched him, studying him in the confusing mixture of freezing air and warm water. If he didn’t swim with Lucas out here, then this was either solely for him, and he swam alone, or he saved it for occasions like these. I wasn’t sure why that mademy stomach twist. It shouldn’t bother me that he’d been with other people—he had a son, for God’s sake. But the idea that whatever this was would just be another name on his list made me feel as small as a fucking grape.
He propped me up on a seat that jutted out from the inside of the pool, just beside the edge. I could see the balcony he was talking about down below, and the wooziness washed over me, a mixture of adrenaline and fear from the height and a sickening feeling that maybe, this meant nothing to him. Sure, the sex was incredible, the tension between us was finally breaking. We’d shared one of the best nights of my goddamn life, and we’d spent far too long together today to be considered healthy, but that didn’t necessarily point toward anything real from him.
He’d said he wanted me last night. That on its own had shot me into the goddamn stratosphere, and the longer I stayed here, the more I worried I wouldn’t be capable of coming down—and that was fucking terrifying if he was down on earth and not beside me.
