Chapter 448 | Mine First

Chapter 448: 448 | Mine First

His thumb found the knot and pressed.

The sound that came out of Chloe Kim was not a sound she would have made in front of another human being at any point in the previous eighteen years. It started low in her throat and climbed, cracking in the middle, and her forehead dropped onto his shoulder with a soft thud.

"Haaah... oh my god..."

"You were saying."

"Shut up." Her fingers closed on the front of his henley. "Shut up and don’t stop, nnh, right there, that’s been there since Tuesday and I hate you."

He worked it slowly. The heat traveled out from his palm and sank into the muscle, and he felt it lengthen under his thumb, felt the whole architecture of her lower back release in a chain reaction that made her knees go unreliable. Chloe’s breath came out in a shudder against his collarbone.

"Mmmnh... Jordan..."

"Still hate me?"

"So much." Her hips pressed forward against him without any instruction from her brain. "This is a war crime. You weaponized... ahn... you weaponized back pain."

"The System weaponized back pain. I’m just holding the gun."

"Your metaphors are terrible and I can’t even, hah, I can’t even mock you properly because my legs stopped working."

He slid his hand up her spine, tracing the line of it with his fingers spread, and when he reached the base of her skull and pressed his thumbs into the two points there, Chloe made a noise that he was fairly confident Miss Valentine heard through two walls and a hallway.

"Nnnnahh—"

Her knees went. He caught her weight against him and she stayed there, boneless, her cheek on his chest, breathing like she’d sprinted up four flights of stairs.

"Brooke," she managed.

"What about Brooke."

"I have a call with Brooke in nineteen minutes and if you keep going I’m going to take that call in a state I cannot professionally justify."

Jordan considered this. The old Jordan, the one from six weeks ago who had cried into a Red Bull can on a floor he hadn’t vacuumed in three months, would have apologized for touching her at all. Would have backed off with both hands up and spent the next four hours wondering whether he’d overstepped.

The new Jordan slid his hand down to her waist, found the strip of bare skin where her turtleneck had ridden up, and let his palm rest there.

"Nineteen minutes is a long time."

Chloe lifted her head. Her eyes had gone dark and glassy, the brown of them soft and unguarded, and her mouth was slightly open. Her hair had come loose on one side. The gold choker had slipped, exposing the mark he’d put on her throat four days ago that had faded to the color of a bruised peach.

"Eighteen," she said. "You wasted one."

Then she grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and pulled.

They didn’t make it to the loft. They didn’t make it out of Unit 403. Chloe backed into the edge of the streaming desk, and Jordan’s hand went into her hair, and the kiss was not careful. She bit his bottom lip hard enough that he tasted copper, and then her tongue was in his mouth and her leg had hooked around the back of his thigh and the ring light rocked on its tripod.

"The camera," Jordan said against her jaw.

"Not on."

"You sure?"

"I’m always sure." Her hands were already under his henley, palms flat on his stomach, dragging up over the ridges of muscle that six weeks ago had been three months of cold pizza. "Ahn... god, this body. This stupid, unfair body."

"You picked the shirt."

"I picked the shirt because it makes your shoulders obscene and I like watching other girls notice and then remember I exist." She got the henley over his head and threw it somewhere behind her, and then her mouth was on the bite mark Kumiko had left on his chest, and she bit down directly on top of it.

"Fuck—"

"Mine first." Her voice came out low and rough. "Hers second. Mine first."

Jordan got his hands under her thighs and lifted her onto the desk. The keyboard slid. Something plastic hit the floor and he didn’t care. Chloe’s legs came around his waist and she pulled him in until there was nothing between them but denim and the thin fabric of her turtleneck, and she rolled her hips against him with a sound that came out cracked down the middle.

"Nnh... Jordan..."

"Seventeen minutes."

"Then stop talking."

He put his palm flat between her shoulder blades and let the skill run while he kissed her.

It hit her like a second heartbeat. The heat poured out of his hand and into her back at the same moment his tongue found hers, and Chloe’s entire body arched off the desk into him, spine curving, head tipping back, and the sound she made was not a word in any language she spoke.

"HAAAaahh—! What, ah, what are you, mmm, you can’t do both at the same time—"

"Why not?"

"Because—nnnhh—because that’s, ahn, that’s not, my brain is, Jordan, my brain is—"

Her fingers clawed at his back. He felt the nails go in, four points along his ribs, and he held her there with one hand working the muscle at the base of her spine and the other fisted in her hair, and Chloe Kim, who had built a two hundred thousand dollar business behind a mask and never once let a single person see what was underneath, came apart on a streaming desk in eight minutes and twelve seconds without either of them getting fully undressed.

She shook through it with her face pressed into his neck and her teeth on his skin to keep the sound in, which did not work, and Jordan made a note to leave Miss Valentine a thank-you card for the snickerdoodles and a sincere apology for everything else.

Afterward she sat on the desk with her legs still around him and her forehead against his sternum, breathing.

"Six minutes," she said.