Jan. Week 3: A Long Weekend-Movies...After the movie Leah insists on getting back home (Lust: -15)

Leah, after dabbing the last sticky, buttery remnants from her skin and the corner of her mouth, gave Daniel one of her signature crooked grins.

“You got your rocks off, superhero,” she whispered, amused by the way his ears burned red in the reflected light of the end credits. “Now I need to get home before my fiancé starts calculating the statistical likelihood of a two-hour movie lasting three and a half.”

She stood, discreetly straightening her clothing, tucking a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. Daniel, for all his bravado, looked sheepish and deeply satisfied, as if he’d just won a lifetime achievement award for debauchery.

She led the way through the empty, echoing theater, the sticky soles of her shoes leaving faint snarls of sound in their wake. Daniel caught up at the exit, holding the door with a chivalrous flourish. He glanced around, suddenly nervous, and made a dramatic show of bowing and offering her a hand.

“Milady,” he teased, but there was a nervous undertone, as if he worried she’d bolt and never come back.

“Don’t spoil it by being a dork.” She rolled her eyes, but slipped her hand into his.

He walked her to her car, every step an exercise in both restraint and anticipation. At the driver’s side door, Daniel hesitated, clearly yearning for one more illicit taste of her. In the flickering glow of a busted streetlamp, Leah let him press close, their bodies aligning as if by muscle memory. She could smell him—cheap aftershave, movie popcorn, and a little of herself. Their goodbye hug was quick, but loaded, a sensory replay of everything they’d done in the last two hours.

Daniel wanted to kiss her, she could feel it, but he had the sense not to try it in plain view of the whole strip mall even at this late hour. Instead, he let his lips linger just barely above the curve of her neck, breath humid and uncertain.

“Next time,” he promised, “I’m not letting you leave until you can’t walk straight.”

“Promise all you want, but I have lesson plans to write. And a fiancé who expects me home .” She snorted.

He grinned, and there was something boyish and almost sweet in the way he stepped back, hands raised in surrender. “Drive safe Leah.”

She got in, started the engine, and watched him in the rearview mirror as she eased out of the lot. Daniel stood there, silhouetted against the theater marquee, looking for all the world like some lonely extra from her own personal rom-com. In another universe, Leah imagined, she might have driven home to him, peeled off her jeans and tangled up in his sheets until she forgot all about work and Jonathan and the endless churn of her own guilty conscience.