Chapter 5 Charlotte’s POV

Charlotte POV

I expect to feel exposed. Instead, under the weight of how he's looking at me, I feel something closer to powerful.

"You're stunning," he says, low, like it costs him something to say it out loud, and his hands settle at my waist, thumbs tracing slow circles against my skin.

His mouth finds my collarbone, then lower, and every place his stubble drags against me lights up like a struck match. I have to grip his shoulders to stay upright.

Is it the drinks, the adrenaline, the fact that it's him? I can't separate the threads anymore, and I stop trying.

"Stop thinking," he says against my skin, like he's read my mind. "Just stay here with me."

He drops slowly to his knees in front of me, fingers hooking into the waistband at my hips, drawing the fabric down with a patience that feels almost cruel. I step free of it, and for one long beat he simply looks at me  entirely undone while he's still fully dressed.

"Unfair," I manage.

He glances up, and the sight of him there nearly buckles my knees on its own. "Most things worth having are," he says, and then his attention drops lower, deliberate and unhurried.

The first slow drag of his mouth has my hands fisting in his hair. By the second, I've stopped being able to form words. He takes his time, like there's nowhere else in the world he'd rather be, and I lose track of everything except his hands steadying my hips and the slow build climbing through me until it breaks all at once, sharp and sudden enough to startle a sound out of me I don't recognize as my own.

He doesn't stop. He eases me through it and straight into another wave that hits even harder, until my legs are shaking and my grip on his shoulders is the only thing keeping me vertical.

When he finally rises, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, unhurried, and the look on his face is enough to make heat pool low in my stomach all over again.

"Turn around," he says, voice rough at the edges.

I do, facing the mirror above the sink. Behind me I hear fabric hit the floor, the quiet tear of foil.

His reflection settles in behind mine, his chest warm against my back, and our eyes meet in the glass.

"Look at you," he murmurs against my ear, one hand sliding down to find me again, slow and deliberate. "You should see what you look like right now."

I barely recognize the woman in the mirror  flushed, hair loose and wild, nothing like the version of me who schedules Christopher's life down to the quarter hour.

I think I might like her better.

He lines himself up, unhurried, watching me in the glass the entire time. "Tell me what you want."

"You," I say, pushing back into him before I've finished the sentence. "Now."

He fills me slowly, and the low sound he makes against my neck matches the one I can't hold back. There's a stretch to it that borders right on the edge of too much, and somewhere in the haze it tips over into something closer to perfect.

"You feel incredible," he says against my shoulder, and then he starts to move.

Each thrust is deliberate, deep, his hand anchored at my hip while the other finds my breast, his thumb circling in rhythm with him. I brace myself against the counter and watch us together in the mirror  his face tight with effort, the muscle along his forearm flexing every time he pulls me back into him.

"More," I say, pushing back to meet him.

He gives it to me, faster now, until the only sounds left in the room are us. I can feel another wave building, faster than the last, sharper.

"Touch yourself," he says, voice strained. "I want to feel you when you go."

My hand finds its way between my legs, and it takes embarrassingly little before I'm clenching around him, his name breaking out of me on a sound I don't recognize.

"Alexander"

That's what undoes him too. He drives in deep one last time and goes still against my back, both of us breathing hard, slick with sweat, holding each other up.

For a long minute neither of us moves. Then, carefully, he turns me to face him, his hands gentle at my hips in a way that feels almost more intimate than what just happened.

"That was" he starts.

"Yeah," I agree, because I genuinely don't have a better word yet.

I wait for the familiar crash of regret to show up  the post-hookup spiral I usually get right on schedule.

It doesn't come.

Instead I feel light. Almost giddy. Alexander pulls his shorts back on while I gather the pieces of my bikini, and there's no disguising any of it  my hair's a disaster, my mouth feels swollen, my whole body still humming.

"You're beautiful," he says, catching me checking the damage in the mirror.

I feel a blush finally catch up to me. "You're not exactly hideous yourself."

He grins, dragging a hand through his own wrecked hair. "So. What now?"

"Now we go back out there and pretend this didn't happen?" I offer.

"Is that what you want?" He says it lightly, but there's something underneath it, listening for the real answer.

What I actually want is to do this again. In an actual bed, ideally. Possibly more than once.

"I have no idea what I want," I admit. "This was not on the itinerary."

"Spontaneity suits you, Charlotte Carter." He tips my chin up with one finger. "Almost as much as I apparently do."

"Your ego is showing," I say, rolling my eyes, though I can't quite kill the smile.

"Among other things," he says, and I laugh before I can stop myself.

As we get ready to face the others, he catches my hand at the door. "For what it's worth," he says, "that wasn't just the tequila talking."

"No?" Something warm unspools in my chest.

"No. It just made it easier to stop pretending I didn't want to."

Before I can do anything with that, Logan's voice booms through the door. "You two finished commandeering the bathroom, or should we order room service?"

Alexander huffs out a laugh. "Get lost, Logan."

"Oh, so that's a yes on the commandeering," Logan calls back.

I look at Alexander and we both end up laughing, quiet and a little helpless.

I keep waiting for my usual self-consciousness to come crashing back in the part of me that would normally be mortified about any of this happening twenty feet from my best friends.

It never shows up. I just keep smiling.