23. Dante #3
He does. His body arches off the mattress, his hands clamping on her hips and pulling her down, seating himself deep while his orgasm tears through him. The sound he makes is her name. Maya. The word cracks open mid-syllable, the same broken register he used for mine against the wall.
She follows him. My fingers tip her over the edge, her body seizing, her hand flying up to grip my wrist at her throat, holding on, keeping me there while she comes.
The orgasm moves through her in waves I can feel against my chest, through my fingers, in the clenching of her body around Cole that makes him gasp through his own aftershocks.
Her grip loosens on my wrist. My hand falls from her throat.
I haven't come. My cock aches against the curve of her ass.
Maya lifts off Cole, turns in the space between us, and faces me. Her eyes are glazed. A flush covers her body. She's shaking.
"You didn't finish," she says.
"I'm fine."
"You're so hard it looks painful."
"The pain is manageable."
"I didn't ask if it was manageable." She pushes me with both hands on my chest, down onto my back. She's kneeling over me, and her hand wraps around my cock. The contact is so direct my hips jerk and a sound exits my throat that I would make only in front of these two people.
Her thumb traces the first barbell, then moves up, finding each one. The same exploration from her apartment, but this time her grip is steady and sure. She presses the sixth barbell just below the head, and my hips buck off the mattress.
"Let me," she says. "You've been in control all night. Let someone else drive."
Cole pushes up from the sheets, his hand on her back, supporting. He steadies her while I shift beneath them. She reaches for a new condom from the nightstand, tears the wrapper, and rolls it onto me with a grip that is firm and deliberate, her fingers adjusting to each barbell on the way down.
She lowers herself onto me slowly. Each piercing enters her slowly, and her mouth opens the way it did in her apartment. Her eyes flutter. Her head drops forward.
"Oh." The syllable from her apartment. The same broken sound, dragged out of her from the inside. This time she says it with her eyes open, looking at me, letting me see what the piercings do to her face.
She rides me with her eyes locked on mine and her hands planted on my chest, focused with the same brutal precision I use when I want a room to obey. She pins me there with her palms on my chest until I'm flat on my back beneath her, taking orders from the woman running this room.
Cole reaches between us. His fingers trace where she's stretched around me, the barbells visible on each upstroke, the explicit contact of his hand on both of us simultaneously. Maya gasps. I groan. Cole makes a sound I have never heard from him with his fingers touching both of us.
"Come," Maya says, looking down at me, her voice wrecked but certain. "Let me see you."
I grip her hips, hard, fingers pressing in and pulling her down. I thrust up into her, and the orgasm hits all at once. My body arches. Her palms press harder into my chest. My hands are on her, her hands are on me, Cole's hand on both of us until it passes.
After.
The lamp still on. The sheets destroyed. Three bodies tangled on them. The air thick with heat and sweat and heavy silence.
Maya is between us. Her head on Cole's chest. Her back against mine. My arm over her waist, my hand finding Cole's hip on the other side of her. Cole's fingers lace through mine over her hip, the grip light enough that I feel every small adjustment.
Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. Sweat dries on my shoulder. Maya's breathing slows against Cole's chest.
Her breathing evens out. Sleep drags her under. Her eyes close in a bed with an open door. No count. No lock check. No exit map.
"Stay," I say into her hair.
"I'm staying. My boots are downstairs."
"I'll line them up in the morning."
"You always line them up."
"Disordered footwear is a personal failing."
"Dante Voss has opinions about shoe placement."
Cole laughs. The sound rumbles through his chest, into her body, into mine.
"The letter," Maya says. Quieter. The sleep receding for one more sentence. "I need to deal with the letter."
"Tomorrow," Cole says.
"I'll call Richard in the morning."
"We'll figure it out," I say.
She's asleep within minutes. Cole follows shortly after, his breathing slowing, his hand still in mine across her body. Six years of reaching for each other in the dark, except the lamp is on and Maya is between us.
I stay awake.
Maya breathes against Cole's chest, her back warm against mine. My father wants another dinner Tuesday. Her father is already in Briarcliff.
Downstairs, my phone is on the counter. Marco's name in my contacts. Tuesday waiting four days away. The man whose infrastructure I promised not to use sits in my phone while the man who hurt Maya breathes the same air as this city.
My hand stays open against Maya's waist instead of reaching for the phone downstairs.
Cole asked me not to call. Maya asked me not to call. I said I wouldn't. I said the restraint exists because she asked.
But the man who broke her ribs is in Briarcliff, and my father arrives Tuesday, and the distance between the promise I made and the phone on the counter downstairs is shrinking with every breath she takes against my chest.