25. Dante #2
"He's always ready. That's the point. The family doesn't fight your boundaries.
They wait for your boundaries to need them.
Uncle Enzo learned that. I just learned it.
" I press my palms against the counter. The granite is cold against my skin.
"The protection I purchased for Maya is exactly the leash my father wanted around my neck.
And the leash works because it's made of love.
That's the part I can't get around. He didn't trick me. I walked in."
Cole stands and sets the mug on the table. He crosses the kitchen and stops in front of me, close enough that I feel the heat coming off him. His hand finds my chest, palm flat over my heart.
"You're inside his world now," he says. "The protection isn't free."
"The protection is never free."
"What's the cost?"
"I don't know yet. My father doesn't name the cost upfront. He lets the debt accumulate. And when the debt is large enough, the conversation changes from the door is always open to the door never closed."
Neither of us moves. Cole's palm stays over my heart, and my hands stay braced on the counter behind me. We should be at practice. The regional final is Friday, and Addison will notice our absence, but Cole doesn't step back and I don't reach for my phone.
"I'm scared," I say.
His palm stays there. The word is out again, the one the family taught me to bury because scared is a weakness and weakness is leverage.
"I'm scared that I just gave him exactly what he wanted. That the man who built me just watched me use his men to protect the people I love and now he has a hook in me that he'll pull whenever he wants."
Cole's hand presses harder against my chest.
"You said something in the kitchen that morning," he says. "When Maya asked about new terms. You said the new shape has to be different. That the old shape was built on things none of us could see."
"I remember."
"This is the same thing. The old shape with your family was you alone, carrying the weight, making decisions in private. The new shape has to include us. Maya's right. The decisions are hers. And yours. And mine. Together."
"Together is harder."
"Together is the only thing that works. We proved that."
I look at him. Morning light cuts across his face. His jaw is tight enough to crack teeth. This is the man who has been holding me together since we were sixteen, with the same hand that once engineered comfort and now presses steady over my heart.
"When Maya was holding you that morning," I say. "I said I love you."
"I remember."
"I said it with Maya there. In the group. In the crisis. It was true. Every word. But I've been thinking about it since. About how I said it while everything was burning down around us. When it gave all three of us something to stand on."
Cole goes very still.
"I want to say it when the room doesn't need it. When it's just us. When it serves nothing except the truth."
His hand is on my chest. My heart beats against his palm.
"I love you," I say. "I love you and the mess is enormous and I don't know how to hold it all."
His eyes fill. He doesn't blink.
Cole kisses me.
His hands close over my face and pull me off the counter. His mouth hits mine hard, open, wet with salt. Cole Maddox is crying, and I know it only because I can taste it.
I kiss him back. My hands go to his waist, his hips, pulling him against me. My back hits the counter. His mouth stays on mine, and for one second there is only salt and breath and the word I finally gave him.
He pushes me. Both hands on my chest. The same redirect Maya uses. I catch myself against the counter.
"Bedroom," he says.
"Which one?"
"Yours."
My room is full of daylight. No lamp. No darkness. Nothing soft enough to hide in. Cole stands beside the bed and looks at me like he intends to memorize what the dark used to keep from him.
I pull my shirt off. He watches the scar on my ribs he's traced in the dark a hundred times, now visible. The tattoos he's mapped by feel, now in color. His eyes travel down my chest to my stomach to the waistband of my jeans.
"You're staring," I say.
"I've been waiting six years to stare."
Crossing the room, I stand in front of him. Inches between us.
"You said it," he says. Quiet. "In the kitchen. Just now. To me."
"To you."
He strips his shirt. Chest bare. The lean muscle hockey built.
The compass rose tattoo on his inner wrist. Daylight gives me the body I've known by feel for six years.
I put my hands on his shoulders and push him down onto the bed.
He goes willingly. His body falls against the mattress, trusting the hands that guide him down.
I follow him down. My body over his, my weight settling carefully over him. I kiss his neck, the spot below his ear. His head tips back. Throat exposed.
My mouth moves down. Collarbone. Chest. His nipple under my tongue. He gasps, louder than the dark ever allowed. Every sound costs more in the daylight.
I kiss down his stomach, over the trail of hair below his navel. His hips lift. I pull his jeans and boxers off in one motion, and Cole is naked on my bed in daylight.
My hand wraps around him. He arches off the mattress. "Fuck—Dante—"
Slowly, I stroke him, watching his face when my hand moves, his mouth falling open, his eyes closing, then forcing open.
"Keep your eyes open," I say.
"I'm trying—"
"Look at me."
He looks at me. His pupils are blown wide. The tears have dried. His jaw is set. I lower my mouth onto him.
His entire body locks. His groan hits the walls. I take him deep, the taste and weight familiar, the sight of his hand fisting the sheets and his stomach clenching and his head pressing back against the pillow entirely new.
I work him with my mouth, slow enough to track his thighs shaking when I suck the head, his hand tightening in my hair when I take him deep, his voice breaking on my name.
"Dante—wait—I don't want to come yet. I want you inside me. Please."
The please hits my spine.
I pull off. Reach for the nightstand. Lube. Condom. I roll the condom on slowly enough that he can watch. His eyes on my cock, on the piercings. The Jacob's ladder catching the daylight. Silver he's felt a hundred times and is seeing now for the first time.
"Jesus," he says. Staring. "I knew what they looked like. Feeling them and seeing them are two different things."
"Better or worse?"
"Better. Significantly better. The light catches the—" He swallows. "Just get inside me."
I slick my fingers. Position my hand between his thighs. His legs fall open. My finger traces his entrance. He shivers.
Pushing in, one finger, slow, I feel his body grip me, the resistance giving way to acceptance. I add a second. He groans. I curl forward. Find the spot.
His back arches off the bed. Pure sound, no composure, no filter. I add a third and work him open, watching his face. His mouth opens around another sound.
I position myself. His legs around my waist. His heels pressing into my lower back.
"Look at me," I say.
He looks at me.
Then I push in.
The first ridge enters him and his jaw drops. "Oh—fuck—" Each piercing drags as I press deeper, the ridges catching. He can see my face and I can see his. I bottom out. Fully inside him. Every piercing buried.
"Move," he says, and his breath breaks loose.
I move. The first thrust is slow, a withdrawal that drags every barbell against his walls and a deep push that seats them again. The piercings hit his prostate on the stroke, and his voice breaks.
"Harder."
Harder is what I give him. My hips drive into him, the bed moving. His hand flies to the headboard, bracing, and the crack of his palm against wood is sharp in the quiet room. The wet slap of skin gets louder. His moans. My own breathing ragged.
"I can see you," he says between thrusts. "I can see your face. You look wrecked."
"I am wrecked," I say.
"Good." His hand leaves the headboard and finds my face, his palm on my cheek, holding me there while I fuck him. "Fall apart. I've got you."
I reach between us. Wrap my hand around his cock. He's hard, leaking, his body wound to the edge by the angle and the piercings working him from inside. I stroke him in time with my hips, each thrust paired with a pull of my fist.
"Love you," I say. "I love you, Cole."
"I know—I've always—Dante—I'm close—"
"Come. Let me see it."
He comes with a sound that fills the room. His body arches, clenching around me in rhythmic contractions that grip every barbell. His face is in the daylight when he falls apart, mouth open, tears caught at his lashes.
The pressure pulls me under. I come buried inside him, the orgasm tearing through me, total and obliterating. I hold myself inside him through it, eyes open, watching his face because I promised myself I'd see.
I see him.
The collapse comes in pieces. My arms give first, and I lower myself onto him before they fail completely. His arms close around me. My face goes into his neck, his into my hair, and daylight stays on every inch of us.
We lie there while the light moves across the ceiling.
"I love you," I say into his neck, quieter. "I chose this city for you. The rest, I'll figure out with you too."
"I love you," he says. His hand finds my hair. Holds. "I'm not going anywhere, D. Whatever your father thinks you owe."
His hand cards through my hair, the same slow pass Maya uses on me.