Swipe

Valentin breaths as Ari swipes to the next image. There he is—standing behind her, jeans slung low on his hips, chest bare, his hands resting on her waist. Her back is pressed against him, her head tilted back against his shoulder, and the grin on his face in the photo is one he doesn't remember making. It's a grin that says he knows exactly what he's doing, that he's already won something she hasn't agreed to give.

The photo freezes him in place, a mirror held up to a version of himself he doesn't recognize. He looks confident, almost cocky, his fingers splayed across the bare skin of her midriff where the cropped leather jacket has ridden up. Ari is looking over her shoulder at him in the picture, her lips parted, her eyes half-lidded, and even in a still image he can read the tension in her body—the way she's leaning into him, not away.

He reaches out and taps the screen, zooming in on his own face. "I look like I knew exactly what I was doing," he murmurs, more to himself than to her. "Like I had a plan." Ari shifts beside him, the sheet rustling, and he catches her glancing at his bare chest in the photo, then at his actual chest in the present. The comparison lingers in the air between them.

"Did you?" she asks, her voice quiet. "Have a plan?" He exhales slowly, dragging his hand through his hair. "If I did, I don't remember it. But I remember the way I felt watching you in that outfit. I remember thinking you were the most dangerous thing in that room." He gestures at the photo. "And I remember wanting to be the one standing behind you, just like this. So maybe the plan was just... this."

Ari's eyes search his face, and for a long moment, neither of them speaks. The phone screen glows between them, a testament to a night neither of them can fully recall. He swallows, his thumb brushing against the edge of the phone as he scrolls to the next image. "There's more," he says, his voice low. "You want to keep looking?"

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