Ctrl + Alt + Dalt (BxB)

Ctrl + Alt + Dalt + 10

"Sneaking a peek there, Dalton?" Edmund's voice calls out from the darkness. Surprisingly, I hadn't realized that he's the lone figure until I heard his voice.

"I didn't see anything. Just your head and shoulders. Nothing more," I respond, shivering despite the searing heat of embarrassment lighting my cheeks on fire.

"I don't mind if you see me—I had no such condition placed upon you. Besides, you should really come up here, it's a spectacular view." He laughs, returning his gaze upon the bridge. "Well worth freezing your backside for."

"I don't know." My cheeks are hot enough as it is and I can only imagine how much hotter and more uncomfortable they'll get if I see him in his current state, both of us wearing nothing but the cold air of night.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. You really should come and join me. I promise not to look."

"Fine." Just imaging his bare backside is cooking my cheeks off my face, so I turn my gaze off to one side as I begin to climb up. "But I won't be looking at you either way, even if you didn't have the condition placed."

"Fair enough," he says without looking at me and while I can only vaguely see his figure from the very periphery of my vision. I join him, nearly side by side but slightly behind him, in the case that I might instinctively look at him and perhaps be tempted to peer downward. Being near him at this moment, I can only imagine that my cheeks are burning brighter than the bridge in the distance.

"This really is a nice view, and I'm sure it's a once-in-a-lifetime kind for you, but, honestly, I've never felt captivated by it at all," I admit.

"I suppose that makes sense, seeing as you live here and such. Perhaps our positions will be reversed, when I show you all of the famous bridges in London," he says and I'm so touched at his words and his promise to show me around London that I instinctively turn to meet his gaze, but he continues to stare at the bridge and away from me—as promised, he remains a perfect gentleman.

"You're offering to show me around?" I ask, shivering through my teeth, but excited at the prospect of sightseeing with him. "All the bridges?"

"Of course, if you'd prefer to skip the bridges, I'll still be more than happy to show you every other sight that you might want to see."

"I'd love to see London with you." I smile, teeth clattering loudly and uncontrollably.

"It will be my pleasure. Now, since I can hear your teeth as you shiver, shall we head back?"

"Yes, please."

"Did you wish to go first, or would you like for me to go?"

"You can go first."

"Right. Well, I'll have to pass in front of you, seeing as it's the easiest way down and would probably be the best way to keep with your condition."

"Sounds good. I'll just turn around as well," I say, turning my shivering backside to the bridge, holding my arms tightly across my chest. I can hear his footsteps passing just behind me, then a slip and a thud. Fearing the absolute worst, that he might have fallen into the abyss below, worry guides my gaze behind me as I call out, "you all right?"

"Fine, just a bit slippy," he says as I turn around, but not seeing him at eye level, I instinctively look down. And there he is, still looking away from me even as he tries to get back up, still lying on his backside, in all his exposed perfection, the faint glow of the moon bright enough for me to drink in his every detail. My whole face is on fire, but I reach for his arm to drag him back up to his feet. Perhaps as if he wasn't expecting me to help him, or to be facing him at all, he turns his head to see me. His face turns right into my waist, his body freezing in place as his head stops less than an inch away from my other head. His other self rises up like a missile, standing on its launchpad. His colorless halos rise to meet my gaze. "I'm sorry. I've seemed to have broken my promise to you."

Still frozen in his rather precarious place so close to my waist, the heat growing between my thighs urges me to back up before he loses an eye. Although he's still on the ground, his other self is standing tall and ticking in the wind to every beat of his heart. Unable to hold myself back anymore, I begin to reach for it.

"Parking lot is closed! Final notice!" a faint and distant voice calls out from the darkness to the south. The beam of a flashlight cuts through the night, rotating from a distant, darkened figure like a moving lighthouse. Without need of a single word between us, Edmund and I silently scramble away in the direction of our clothes before the spotlight gets close enough to reveal skin entwined in the mischief of the moment.

We get dressed, run back to my car, and exit the gates with the park police staring us down as we leave—the last car in the lot that they must have been itching to impound and tow away.

In the car, en route to his hotel, Edmund and I remain in complete silence. I peer at him sideways but I can't see his expression as he stares out his side window into the nothingness of the night—away from me. I return my attention to the darkness of the highway, my mind burning like the skin of my cheeks, alight with images of Edmund's bare perfection. My heart sinks as I realize that I never asked his permission to reach for him at all and perhaps he can't look at me because I overstepped the boundaries.

The drive is short, but the painful silence makes every passing second an eternity of agony. The ever-present hollow void in my chest deepens as it dawns on me that this is it—I've messed it all up and I'm never going to see him again. I pull up to the porte-cochere with the engine still running as I tap the little switch in my side panel to unlock the doors, mentally saying goodbye to Edmund for good. Still looking out the side window, having not glanced at me at all, Edmund sits still even as the locks of the doors audibly unlatch.

"We've yet to have... dinner. Would you care to join me upstairs?" He finally turns to me, revealing a small but devilish grin. Never more elated to be wrong, my cheeks blaze up ferociously as I drive off to the parking area.