Page 175 of Key of Kink

He laughed. “I think I can cope.” He stood and walked over to the door, pausing as he opened it. “Now, no trying on my leather pants while I’m gone.”

I snorted. “I’d need a lump hammer and a lot of Vaseline to get into those. Now go make tea.”

That light in his eyes made something flip in my stomach. “Yes, Sir.”

Quinn disappeared down the narrow staircase, his footsteps fading beneath the soft hum of voices from below.

The attic room fell quiet. I remained where I was for a moment, listening.

A burst of laughter drifted up from the floor below. Someone—Jess, I suspected—said something loudly enough to carry through the house. Quinn’s voice followed a moment later.

I looked around the room again.

This was Quinn’s world. It felt lived in. And for reasons I wasn’t entirely ready to examine, I found myself imagining what it might look like if I spent more time here. A notebook on the desk that wasn’t Quinn’s. A spare shirt draped over the chair. My jacket hanging beside his.

The thought arrived quietly—and stayed there.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. This was precisely the sort of mental territory I usually avoided, and yet tonight I’d stepped directly into Quinn’s life as if the boundary had never existed.

Another peal of laughter rose from downstairs, and I smiled.

He fits here.

The easy banter downstairs, the casual affection between the people who lived here… It was clear they were used to one another’s rhythms. But what struck me was something else.

Quinn hadn’t hesitated to bring me into it.

He’d walked into my world weeks ago and treated it like an open invitation, and now I was sitting in the centre of his. The disquieting part was that it didn’t feel like an intrusion.

It felt… natural. Even more worrying? It felt strangely inevitable.

I exhaled slowly. For someone who had spent years building careful lines between different parts of his life, I seemed to be crossing an alarming number of them tonight.

The shocking thing was, I didn’t feel particularly inclined to stop.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs again a moment later.

I straightened slightly, schooling my expression back into something closer to neutral just as Quinn’s head appeared in the doorway.

He held up two mugs triumphantly. “I survived.”

“Barely,” I said. “You were gone long enough that I assumed they’d taken you hostage.”

Quinn laughed and stepped back into the room. “Careful. It’s hot. And also very strong. Sam claims caffeine is the solution to most emotional situations.” He sat beside me again, and a comfortable silence settled between us for a few seconds. He gazed at his surroundings as though seeing it differently now that I was sitting in it.

“My mum’s never seen this place,” he said suddenly.

The comment caught me off guard. “No?”

A small smile tugged at his mouth. “She probably imagines I live somewhere much tidier than this.”

I glanced at the stacks of books. “It’s not untidy. It’s… well read.”

Quinn laughed. “That’s a polite way of saying chaotic.” He leaned back, resting his weight on one hand.

I took a sip of tea, wincing. “You weren’t kidding.”

“About its heat or its strength?”