Page 34 of Locked & Loaded

Mads sucks in a breath. His fingers flex on my ass, his hips pushing into my hand like he can’t help it.

Then he goes still.

His mouth leaves mine, his hand stills on my ass, and he tips his head back just enough for me to see his face. His eyes are dark, his breathing ragged, his lips swollen from kissing, and he looks at me like something important has just caught up with him.

“Wait,” he says, his voice rough. “I need to talk to you about something.”

The shift is so sudden it leaves me dizzy. A second ago, my brain was headed straight for pornographic territory. Now it slams into a wall, and anxiety floods in.

What if he’s having second thoughts?

What if he woke up this morning and realized he’s not into men after all?

What if he’s here to let me down gently, the way guys do when they’ve used you as an experiment and now need to find a polite exit?

My throat tightens. I step back, putting space between us, and pull the robe shut over my chest. “Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”

Mads watches me, his eyes tracking the distance I’ve put between us, and something flickers across his face. I can’t tell what it is. He only nods and moves toward the bed.

The mattress dips under our weight, and suddenly the space between us feels huge. My heart is hammering so hard I’m sure he can hear it. The arousal drains out of me, leaving nothing but the cold weight behind my sternum.

Mads sits there, looking at me like he’s trying to find the right words. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak. The silence stretches, and every second of it feeds the anxiety in my chest.

Then he says, “So, about last night.”

Here it comes.

“I really enjoyed it.” His voice is quiet, careful. “If you couldn’t tell,” he adds with a small smile.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. Or smile back, for that matter. The anxiety is physical now, something lodged behind my ribs and spreading into my throat until it’s hard to swallow.

He hesitates and takes a breath. “But—”

“But you want this to be a one-time thing?” The words leave my mouth before my brain catches up, brittle and too loud in the quiet room.

Mads stares at me.

His expression changes so fast it would almost be funny if I weren’t sitting there with my heart in my throat. Confusion hits first—his brow furrows, his mouth parts slightly—and then he blinks, looking almost offended.

“What?” he says. “No.”

I blink. “No?”

“No,” Mads says, more firmly. “Of course not.”

Relief hits me so hard I have to breathe through it.

“Okay.”

The anxiety doesn’t vanish. It shifts, reconfiguring itself around this new information, and now I’m just confused, which is arguably worse.

Before I can spiral any further, Mads frowns and says, “I don’t want this to be a one-time thing, Chris. Quite the opposite, actually.”

And I swear his cheeks go a little pink at that.

I sit there, staring at him, waiting for him to continue.

He swallows. “It’s just, you told me you used to have a crush on me, so I didn’t know if this was casual for you or…” He stops, and for a second his confidence wavers. “I know you’re not out, right? So I don’t expect you to hold my hand in public or anything—”