24. Cole #2
"I heard everything," she says. "And I never told you because telling you would mean admitting I was listening. And admitting I was listening would mean admitting I pressed my ear against the wall and held my breath so I could hear better."
"Maya—"
"I was fifteen. I couldn't reconcile the wanting with the flinching.
How I could want to hear you and also flinch when you touched my shoulder at breakfast. Both things were true and I didn't have the framework to hold both.
" Her hands find each other in her lap. The interlocking grip.
"Dante gave us the framework. The three of us together gave me a structure to be wanted in.
But this is older than the framework. This is the original thing.
And I've never let it exist on its own."
I sit on the bed beside her because what she's telling me isn't a prelude. She keeps her hands in her lap, and I keep mine on my own knees.
"I spent four years listening to you breathe," I say. "Every night. Your breathing was the last sound I heard before I fell asleep. And I wanted to knock. Every night. To open the door and cross the hall and be in the same room. Not even to touch you. To be closer than the wall allowed."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because you had a chair under the doorknob. Because the last man who came into your room at night hurt you. Because I was sixteen and I understood that my wanting didn't override your safety."
She unfolds her legs and turns toward me. Her hand finds my chest. Palm flat, over my heart.
"The wall is gone," she says. "It's been gone. But we've never stood in its absence alone. I want to feel what the two of us are without the third point. Because this thing between us existed first, and I've never given it room to breathe."
I turn toward her. My hand on her jaw. Open palm. Warm against her skin.
"It's breathing," I say. "Right now. Can you feel it?"
"I can feel it."
I kiss her. Slow. A kiss that belongs to this room.
She pulls back an inch. "Don't be gentle because we're alone. I don't need you to be the soft one because Dante's not here to be the hard one."
"I'm being slow. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"Gentle means I'm holding back. Slow means I'm taking my time. I've waited nine years. I want every second to register."
Her breath catches. Then her hand fists my shirt and she pulls, hard enough to drag my mouth back to hers.
The sweatshirt comes off over her head. No bra. Maya bare from the waist up in my room, on my bed, and the only eyes on her are mine.
"Don't look at me like that," she says.
"Like what?"
"Like you're seeing me for the first time."
"I am seeing you for the first time. You. All of your attention on me, all of mine on you." I trace my hand from her collarbone to her breast. Her nipple hardens under my palm. "It's a lot."
"Then take your time." Throwing my words back at me.
My mouth goes to her neck, to the spot below her ear that makes her arch.
Then her collarbone. Her shoulder. The curve of her breast. When I take her nipple between my lips and suck, slow and firm, she makes the sound I can never get enough of—low, involuntary, the one I heard through the wall at sixteen and have been chasing ever since.
My hand covers her other breast, and every sound she makes goes straight into my mouth.
I kiss down her stomach. When she lifts her hips, I peel the leggings and underwear in one motion, then settle between her legs and look up at her.
She's propped on her elbows, watching me.
Maya on my bed. Watching me between her thighs.
Scars on her skin, strength in her arms, sharp hunger in her eyes.
"Your room. Your pace," she says. Quiet.
Then I put my mouth on her.
The taste of her hits my tongue and my grip tightens on her thighs. Her hips roll against my mouth. The sound she makes when I suck her clit, sharp and bitten-off, is aimed at me alone.
I work her the way she wants. Firm pressure, steady rhythm.
Not teasing. Direct pressure makes her thighs open farther, makes her breath go short.
She knows when I'm paying attention. I tongue her clit in the pattern that makes her thighs shake, then slide two fingers inside her and curl them forward. Her back comes off the mattress.
"Cole, right there, don't—"
Same pressure. Same angle. Her hand finds my hair. Grips. The grip tightens as the orgasm builds, thighs tensing, breath shortening, pitch climbing. When she comes, my name breaks in her mouth. No wall between us. No hallway. No one else in the room.
I climb up her body. She catches my mouth, deep, tasting herself, deliberate.
Her hands push at my jeans until I kick them off.
She wraps her hand around me, firm, certain.
Her grip is confident now in a way it wasn't the first time on the couch.
She uses the pressure I respond to, the stroke that makes my hips jerk.
Now her fist is tight, her wrist twisting on the upstroke, her thumb dragging through the wetness at the tip.
"Condom," she says.
"Nightstand."
She reaches past me, finds the foil, and tears it open. Rolls it on with both hands. Then she pushes my chest, both palms, and I go back against the mattress. She climbs over me. Straddling. Her hands on my chest. Her hips lowering.
She sinks onto me. Slow. Eyes on mine. The feeling is tight, hot, gripping enough to knock the air out of my lungs.
"God—" My hands find her hips. "Maya—"
"I know." She rolls her hips. A slow, grinding circle that drags me against her front wall. "I feel it too."
She sets the pace. Slow. Deep. Each roll deliberate and devastating. Her eyes stay on mine, her hands braced on my chest, her body taking every reaction from me.
"You used to say my name through the wall," she says above me, voice low and rough. "Say it now. To my face."
"Maya."
"Again."
"Maya." My hands tighten on her hips. "Maya."
Each repetition is punctuated by her hips driving down. Her name in this room, in my mouth, with her body on mine.
She plants her hands on my chest and increases the pace. Harder. The bed moving, the headboard hitting the wall, the sound percussive, rhythmic. Her body taking mine. The room on the other side of the plaster is gone now, and the plaster is dust.
"I'm close," she says. "Touch me."
I reach between us. Thumb on her clit, firm, circling. She grinds down against my hand and my cock simultaneously, the dual friction making her voice break.
"Cole, fuck, don't stop—"
"Never."
She comes. Body seizing, gripping me in rhythmic pulses, hands fisting against my chest. Her head falls back, throat exposed, spine curved. Her body clenches around me, and that is enough.