14. Cole #2
Maya lifts her eyes from her pasta. She looks at Dante. He looks back. The first time they've made direct eye contact since she walked through the door.
"Thank you," she says.
"Most journalists don't sit in the press box for four years building a data set like that."
"That sounds dangerously close to a compliment, Voss."
"It's an observation."
"Your observations come with a lot of qualifiers. You can just say it was good work."
"It was competent work."
"Competent." Her mouth curves. "Last week it was wrong. Now it's competent. At this rate I'll reach adequate by May."
"I set standards."
"You set traps. You frame every compliment as a concession so you never have to admit you're impressed."
"I'm impressed."
Maya's fork pauses halfway to her mouth. Dante's jaw hardens.
"Well," Maya says, quieter now. "That's new."
I watch both of them.
The flush climbing Maya's neck. Dante's hand tightening around his water glass. The way neither of them looks away fast enough.
My fingers curl against my thigh.
Then heat drops low, dirty and wrong enough that I should look away and don't.
Maya's chin lifts the way it does when she's about to win an argument. Dante's jaw goes rigid the way it does when control starts slipping out of his hands. They are sparring across my kitchen table, and my pulse kicks before I can put a name to it.
Dante's fork hits the side of his bowl. The sound is small, sharp. Maya's whole body goes still for a fraction of a second. Her fingers tighten on the stem of her glass. Dante's hand slows. He sets the fork down gently. Deliberately.
Maya's jaw tightens. She picks up her wine.
I reach under the counter and put my hand on her knee.
Same hand. Same knee. The gesture I've been making since we were kids.
Yesterday, this was only a way I knew how to steady her.
Dante's body was on hers. These legs wrapped around him. This skin was under his hands.
The thought makes my fingers tighten before I can stop them.
She feels the difference. Her eyes flick to mine for a half-second, reading. Then her thigh releases under my palm. She takes a breath. My hand stays where it is. Dante can't see it from his side of the counter, but Maya's posture changes. She softens a fraction. Leans a half-inch toward me.
Dante sees the lean. His eyes track from Maya's face to her shoulder to the angle of her body tilting toward me. His jaw shifts. His water glass rotates once in his fingers.
I eat my pasta with my hand still under the table, touching one of them while the other watches me do it.
"Maya," I say. "Stay tonight. It's late, and you've been drinking."
"I've had half a glass."
"Stay anyway. The spare room's yours."
"My apartment has heat now."
"I know. Stay because I'm asking."
She looks at me. Reads me. Her eyes move to Dante for a half-second. Back to me.
"Fine."
Every muscle in Dante's body commits to stillness.
When we're done, I stand and collect the bowls.
As I pass behind Maya's stool, my hand lands on her shoulder.
The same spot. The same pressure I've been placing there since we were kids.
But this time my thumb finds the ridge of her neck and traces along it, slow, the way I've been pushing the boundary for weeks.
She doesn't correct it.
She leans into my hand, her head tilting toward my wrist, her eyes closing for a half-second. The lean is visible. Unmistakable.
Across the counter, Dante sets his water glass down. His phone screen goes dark in his hand. He's stopped pretending to read it.
My thumb traces the line of her neck one more time before I lift my hand and carry the bowls to the sink.
Maya does the dishes. She insists. I dry. Dante sits at the counter with his phone. Maya's sleeves are pushed to her elbows, her forearms in the water, and Dante's eyes drift to her wrists twice before he catches himself.
The second time, Maya is watching him in the reflection of the window above the sink.
She doesn't look away.
He does.
I stand beside her at the sink. Our hips almost touch. She hands me a plate, and our wet fingers slide together. She holds the contact for a beat too long before letting go.
My breath catches.
She hears it. The corner of her mouth curves without looking at me.
Behind us, Dante watches from the counter. I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck. On the space between Maya's hip and mine. On the way she leans into my arm when she reaches for the sponge.
There are three people in this kitchen, two of them just had sex, and one of them knows.
At ten, Maya goes upstairs to the spare room and closes the door behind her.
I hear it open again a few minutes later, then hear her in the hallway, testing the boards, learning which ones creak between the spare room and the bathroom.
She's done this in every new space since she was thirteen.
Every house, every hotel room, every apartment.
The floorboard map before she closes her eyes.
Dante hears it too. We're sitting in the living room, and his head tilts toward the sound.
"She does that," I say.
"I know."
I stand up. "Come to bed."
He follows me to his room. The door closes behind us. He's at his dresser, back to me, pulling his shirt over his head. It drops to the floor. The tattoos I've memorized. His shoulders stay tense under the ink.
I cross the room and stand behind him.
My hands land on his shoulders hard enough to make my fingers ache, and my grip tightens before I choose it.
He stills.
"Cole—"
I put my mouth on the back of his neck and bite down, teeth sinking into the tendon below his hairline until his head drops forward and the sound in his throat breaks against my tongue.
I grip his shoulders and turn him to face me. He resists, his body refusing for half a second to be moved.
He didn't used to hesitate when I touched him.
I kiss him before he can speak. Hard. My hand on the back of his neck. He responds, hands to my waist, but there's a lag, a half-second where his body is here and somewhere else.
I bite his lip. He jerks away.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?"
I push him onto the bed with both hands on his chest. He lands on his back, but his hand catches my wrist and grips.
We stare at each other. His fingers tighten around my wrist.
"You going to let go?" I ask.
"You going to tell me what this is about?"
"No."
I straddle him and settle my weight, rolling my hips down against him slow enough that his jaw clenches. He's half hard already.
"I know you used her word this morning," I say. "Fine. You've said that word maybe three times in your life."
I roll my hips again. His cock stiffens against me.
"I know it took almost two hours before you texted me back." I lean down and trace the faded mark on his jaw with my thumb. Four points of pressure. "And I know you came home with this."
His breathing changes. "Are you going to ask me what happened?"
"No." I pull my shirt off. "I'm going to remind you what you already have."
A shift moves through his face. I lean down and bite the place where his neck meets his shoulder, harder than I've ever bitten him. His back arches.
"Cole, fuck—"
I work down his chest with my teeth and tongue, marking every inch. He grabs my hair and yanks me back up. His mouth crushes mine, his tongue pushing in, his hand holding my head in place.
I shove his chest and pin him flat.
"My pace tonight."
He grabs my hips and flips me. My back hits the mattress, his weight on top, his hands pinning my wrists.
His face is above mine, his breathing hard.
"You don't get to change the rules because you're upset," he says.
"I'm upset because you changed the rules first."
His grip loosens. I wrench my wrist free, hook my leg around his hip, twist, and roll us. He lands on his back, and I'm on top, panting.
"Stop fighting me," I say.
"Stop trying to own me."
I slide down his body and drag his pants off.
His cock springs free, the piercings catching the dim light from the window.
I know these piercings. I found them before anyone else here did.
My tongue traced each one of them in my room at eighteen while he gripped the headboard and tried to stay quiet.
I wrap my hand around him and squeeze.
"These are mine," I say.
My grip loosens, and my thumb goes straight to the third barbell because I know where the nerves cluster. I press. His hips jerk. I skip to the fifth. His breathing stops. The sixth, just below the head. I press and hold. His whole body goes rigid. A sound rips out of him, low and broken.
I take him in my mouth, root to tip, tongue tracing each barbell.
He groans, his hand in my hair, his hips rocking up.
I pin his pelvis with my forearm and hold him flat.
He fights the pin, muscles flexing, trying to thrust. I pull off and look up at him.
His chest heaves, his cock wet, the piercings gleaming.
"Was she on top?"
His jaw locks. His hand stills in my hair. The room goes quiet except for his breathing.
The mark on his jaw. Four faint points of pressure. A hand gripping his face from above.
"Cole—"
"Don't."
I crawl up his body and press my forehead to his.
"I'm here. I need you to be in this room. With me."
His hands come to my face. Both hands. Holding me.
"I'm in this room," he says.
"Prove it."
I slide back down and take him all the way, the sixth piercing hitting the back of my throat. He groans. His hips buck. I pin them and work him slow, tongue dragging over each barbell, sucking the head before pulling off and taking him deep again.