Chapter 12
SIMONE
He sets me down on the bed and stays standing between my knees.
The lamp is off. The window's got that pre-dawn indigo that makes everything in the room a shade of blue.
His chest is bare because he didn't bother with a shirt when he came out to the porch.
Just jeans slung low on his hips, and me in his shirt from two nights ago, the collar stretched out because I've been sleeping in it.
He doesn't kiss me yet.
He takes my face in his hands. Runs his thumbs under my eyes. Wipes the last of the wet away.
"Say it again."
"I want to come home to you."
"Again."
"I want to come home to you."
His forehead drops to mine.
We breathe like that a second.
"I was cold to you yesterday," he says quiet. "That won't happen again. If I'm mad, I'm going to tell you. If I'm scared, I'm going to tell you. I'm not going to make you guess."
"Okay."
"And you don't get to decide for me what I can survive. Deal?"
"Deal."
"One more."
"What."
"Tell me what you need right now."
My breath catches.
"I need you to put your hands on me and not let go until I'm quiet."
His eyes close a second.
When he opens them, they're the version I saw in the office that first night. Focused. Present. A man who has already made his plan.
"Safe word."
"Revelstoke."
"Good girl."
It drops through me like water finding a crack.
He pulls the shirt over my head. Slow. Tosses it.
My leggings go next. He hooks two fingers in them and slides them off my hips, down my legs, off my ankles, onto the floor. No underwear because I didn't bother when I got up.
I'm naked on his bed and he's still in his jeans and I'm already breathing different.
He kneels down on the floor between my feet.
"Gray."
"Shh."
He lifts my left foot. Kisses the inside of my ankle. Slow. Works his way up. Calf. Knee. Inside of my thigh. Beard against skin. He takes his time in a way that undoes me more than his hands did two nights ago.
I am not a woman who trembles.
I am trembling.
He spreads my knees with his hands on the inside of my thighs and holds them open. Looks at me. Takes me in.
"You are so fucking beautiful."
"Gray."
"Quiet."
I go quiet.
He lowers his mouth to me.
The first drag of his tongue is soft. Flat. A stripe from my entrance to my clit. Slow. He's mapping. Testing what I do.
I do a lot.
My hips push up and his hand comes to my lower stomach and presses me flat to the mattress.
"Keep still."
"Yes sir."
He circles his tongue around my clit. Not on it. Around it. Teasing. His beard is rough on the inside of my thighs and my whole lower half is getting the message that it belongs to him for the duration.
He adds a finger. One. Slides in slow. Curls. Finds the spot he found two nights ago. Settles there.
His mouth comes to my clit proper.
He sucks.
I make a sound that is not a word.
His finger moves. Slow drag in and out. The suck becomes a soft rhythm. Tongue flat. Lips gentle. His other hand on my stomach holding me down.
"Oh God."
"Mm."
The vibration of his mm against me tips something.
"Gray."
"Mm."
"I'm gonna come."
"Not yet."
He pulls his mouth off.
I whimper out loud.
He looks up at me from between my thighs. Mouth glistening. Beard wet. Gray eyes black in the blue light.
"You said hands on you until you're quiet. You're not quiet yet."
"I was about to be."
"Not the kind of quiet I want."
"What kind do you want."
"The kind that comes after I've made you come twice and you're so wrung out you can't lie to me about what you want."
My thighs clench around nothing.
"Keep them open," he says. Low. A command.
I open them.
He goes back down.
He makes me come twice before I get language back.
The first one is with his mouth. He adds a second finger and curls them both and sucks my clit in a rhythm that starts slow and builds and doesn't stop.
I feel it climb. I feel him hold me down through it.
When I come I come loud and I come hard and he doesn't move off me until the last pulse eases.
The second one is before I'm done from the first.
He keeps going.
"Gray. Gray. I can't."
"You can."
"It's too much."
"Yellow or green."
"Green."
"Then take it."
He doesn't pull back. He softens. Tongue gentle. Fingers curling in small slow motions. He lets the sensitivity settle and turn into something else, and somewhere in there a second wave builds that I didn't plan.
When it comes I'm crying.
Not sad crying. The other kind. The kind that leaks out of you when your body does something so big that your face can't keep up.
He kisses my inner thigh. My stomach. My navel. My sternum. Works his way up until his face is over mine.
"There she is."
"Gray."
"Hi."
"Hi."
He kisses my mouth. I taste myself on him. His hand comes up to my jaw. Thumb at the corner of my lip.
"Still green?"
"Still green."
He stands up and takes his jeans off. Boxers with them. His cock stands thick against his stomach. He grabs a condom from the nightstand. Rolls it on. Comes back to me.
He flips me.
Not rough. Firm. One hand on my hip, one on my shoulder, and he turns me onto my stomach in a single motion. My cheek hits the pillow.
"Hips up."
I push up onto my knees. Chest low. Arms out. He pulls a pillow under my hips and presses me down onto it at a better angle.
Then he climbs up behind me and I feel the weight of him settle. His hand on my lower back. His cock against me.
"I'm going to go slow."
"Don't."
"Simone."
"Don't go slow. I'm wrung out. I want you to fuck me like you mean it."
He lets out a sound that might be a laugh.
"Yes ma'am."
He pushes in.
One stroke. Deep. All the way.
I cry out into the pillow.
His hand slides up my spine. Fingers splay between my shoulder blades. The other hand locks on my hip.
He starts moving.
The first few strokes are a test. I push back into him. He takes it as the answer. After that it's real.
He fucks me hard. Not fast. Hard. Every stroke bottoms out and the sound of us is obscene and his grip on my hip is going to leave a mark tomorrow and I do not care. I want the mark. I want to find it in the mirror in Toronto on Wednesday morning and know it's there.
His hand slides from my back up to the nape of my neck. Finds my hair. Wraps a handful of it around his fist.
He pulls. Just enough. My head comes back. My chest lifts.
"Good girl."
I come again on the word alone.
It surprises both of us.
He groans against my shoulder. Bites down at the curve where it meets my neck. Just teeth. Not hard. A claim.
"Jesus."
"I'm yours."
"Mine."
"Yours."
He pulls me up. Back against his chest. Both of us on our knees, me in his lap, his arm across my breasts, the other around my waist. He goes deeper from this angle. Slower. One of his hands comes around my throat. Not squeezing. Resting. Thumb along my pulse.
"Feel that."
"Yes."
"That's mine too. For as long as you let me have it."
"Yes."
He thrusts up into me.
Once. Twice. On the third one he breaks. Buries himself deep and his hand tightens on my throat and the other one presses flat on my lower belly like he's feeling himself inside me and he comes with his mouth on my shoulder and a sound in his chest I will hear for the rest of my life.
I go boneless against him.
He holds me up.
After, in the shower, he washes me again.
This time I notice all of it.
The way he soaps his hands first. The way he moves my hair off my back. The way he runs the cloth down my spine slow. The way he kneels to wash my legs and my feet and does not rush a single movement.
It is not just aftercare.
It is a man telling me with his hands that he meant it.
I stand under the water with my eyes closed and I let him.
When he's done he wraps me in a towel and carries me back to bed.
Puts me in his shirt. Clean sheets because he changed them while I was still half-awake and didn't notice. Water on the nightstand. A granola bar he unwrapped because he's learned I won't unwrap things when I'm wrung out.
He gets in behind me. Wraps himself around me. One arm under my neck. One arm across my waist.
His mouth finds the back of my neck.
"You quiet yet."
"Yeah."
"Good."
A long silence. The sky in the window is going pale at the edges. Dawn is half an hour away.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"I'm going Tuesday."
"I know."
"And I'm coming back."
"I know."
"I don't know when."
"Okay."
"Is that okay."
"Yeah."
"You sure."
He tightens his arm around my waist.
"I'm sure of one thing. You said home on the porch. I heard you. I'm going to wait for the version of you that knows what she wants to do about it. I'll wait as long as it takes."
"Gray."
"Sleep, baby."
"Okay."
I close my eyes.
The wobble in my chest finally stops.
I fall asleep in his arms as the first real light comes through the window, and for the first time in my adult life I sleep through a sunrise without a single thought about what I'm supposed to do next.