Chapter 451 | Respect the Person

Chapter 451: 451 | Respect the Person

Jordan did not walk. He scooped her off the desk instead, one arm under her thighs and the other across her back, and Chloe made an offended little noise that turned into a laugh halfway out of her mouth.

"I said walk, you enormous idiot."

"I heard you. I’m choosing to interpret that instruction broadly."

He carried her out of Unit 403 and into the hallway, past the plate of snickerdoodles still parked outside Miss Valentine’s door with its handwritten card. FOR THE LOUD ONES, in shaky ballpoint capitals. Chloe read it upside down over his shoulder and groaned into the side of his neck.

"She’s going to bake a second batch after tonight."

"Then we’d better earn them," Jordan said, and felt her teeth close on his earlobe in response.

Twelve feet had never taken this long. Chloe used every inch of the distance, her mouth on his jaw first, then the hinge of it, then the soft spot under his ear she had discovered in week two and abused ever since. He fumbled the key twice. The second time she bit him hard enough to make him hiss, and the lock finally gave with a click that sounded obscene for a Wednesday night.

He kicked the door shut behind them. His apartment smelled of lemon cleaner and the jasmine rice she had left on the stove that afternoon. Harbor light poured through the factory windows in long orange bars that striped the concrete floor and climbed halfway up the brick.

Six weeks ago he would have needed a group chat, a spreadsheet, and a minor miracle to get a girl up these stairs. Now he took them two at a time with a pregnant goddess in his arms, and she was complaining about his form.

"You’re jostling me, Jordan. Stop bouncing."

"You weigh about as much as my gym bag. This barely counts as cardio."

"I’m growing a whole person in here. Respect the person."

He respected the person by laying her on the mattress with ridiculous care. Then he ruined the effect by dragging the turtleneck over her head in one tug that left her hair a wreck. It came loose from the ponytail and fanned across his grey sheets, black spilling everywhere except for that one electric streak of blue curling along her cheekbone. The gold choker stayed on. Underneath its edge, where the chain had slid sideways, the bruise he had left on Monday was going dark plum at the center.

She lay there in black lace and dark jeans with her bare feet digging into his duvet, and her stomach rose and fell fast under the orange light. Her skin had gone pink from her sternum up to her ears. Her nipples pressed hard against the lace, and she did absolutely nothing to hide it, because Chloe Kim had never once been shy about the parts of herself she knew were winning.

"Seventeen minutes left," she said, staring up at him. "Get your pants off."

"You’re genuinely counting down the minutes right now?"

"I am always counting something, and you are wasting my inventory."

Jordan grinned at her. He peeled his jeans down and kicked them toward the railing, and her eyes dropped immediately to the obvious situation straining against his boxers. Chloe did not blush. She tilted her head, examined him the way she examined quarterly projections, and licked her bottom lip once.

"That’s a lot of confidence for a man who just spent an hour losing an argument with a phone call."

"Brooke is undefeated. I’m taking the loss with dignity."

He climbed onto the mattress and knelt between her knees, and she reached for him right away, but he caught both her wrists and pinned them gently against the pillow above her head. Her eyes narrowed. Her hips rolled up into nothing, searching, and she made a small frustrated sound through her nose that went straight to his spine.

"Jordan, if you tease me on a timer I will actually kill you."

"No teasing. I’m just being thorough with the product."

He let go of her wrists and put both palms flat against her hips, right above the waistband of her jeans. The Master Massage skill woke under his hands before he even asked it to. Warmth poured from his fingers into her skin, and he felt every knot in her lower back light up on some map behind his eyes, a hard band across her lumbar spine where the pregnancy was already shifting her weight forward.

He pressed his thumbs into the dip on either side of her spine and circled once.

"Ahh, nnh, oh my god." Chloe’s whole back came off the mattress. "That’s cheating, you absolute cheater, that’s not fair."

"I’m literally only touching your hips right now."

"Liar. I can feel it going up my spine. Ahh, right there, don’t you dare move."

He did not move. He held the pressure there and watched her melt, her thighs falling open around his waist and her fingers fisting the sheets on either side of her head. The noise she made next was long and low and broken at the end, and it bounced off the brick and came right back at them.

Miss Valentine was definitely hearing this one.

He unbuttoned her jeans and worked them down her legs, slowly enough that she lifted her head to glare at him. The lace underneath matched the bra, black and tiny and already soaked through at the center. When the denim cleared her ankles she hooked one heel behind his back and yanked him forward, and he caught himself on his forearms just above her.

Instead of kissing her mouth, he dropped lower. He kissed her sternum, then the soft skin just under her ribs, then the flat plane of her stomach an inch above her navel. There was nothing there to see yet, just skin and a faint line of goosebumps rising under his lips.

He stayed there for a second longer than he had planned to.

Chloe went still under him. When he glanced up she was watching him with her mouth slightly open, dark eyes shining in the window light without the brown contacts she wore for everybody else.

"Don’t get sappy on my clock," she said, and her voice cracked right down the middle.

"I’m allowed one second of sappy. I’ll charge it to the business account."

"You’re so stupid. I love you. Keep going."

He hooked his fingers into the lace and dragged it down her thighs. She was pink and slick and swollen from the desk twenty minutes earlier, and when he spread her with his thumbs she jerked so hard the mattress squeaked under her. He kissed the inside of her left knee, then her right thigh, then the crease of her hip, and her breathing turned ragged and loud.

"Jordan, please, I swear to god, fifteen minutes."