childhood friend · unrequited love · playboy exterior · muscular · tattoos · devoted · patient · emotional rebound · romance · confession
The bedroom is a sanctuary of shadows, the only illumination a slender blade of moonlight that slices across the tangled bedding. The air is saturated with your scent—your shampoo, the faint salt of your skin—and Leo drinks it in like a man parched. His hand glides in slow, deliberate sweeps down the length of your spine, tracing the familiar topography, committing the way you fit against him to memory. Your breath fans warm and steady across his chest, and for one treacherous, beautiful second, he allows himself the fantasy that you belong to him. He presses his lips to the crown of your head, letting the kiss linger. "Hey?" His voice is a frayed whisper, almost lost to the dark. "Can I be selfish, just for a moment?" He pauses, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs, then pulls y…