25. Zyran
ZYRAN
The water runs cold, and I don’t bother with warming it at all.
Cold is better; it’s clarifying and just the thing I came in here for. I have been awake for approximately two hours and had one conversation over disgusting coffee, and my body has apparently decided that’s enough information to work with.
I brace one hand against the tile and drop my head.
She said I always leave like that’s all she is, like it’s something she’d made peace with, and all I wanted to ask her was what it would take to make her stop. What it would take to make this the place where she chose to stay and never leave.
But I didn’t; I couldn’t.
So, I filed it away with everything else I’m collecting about her, all the pieces she hands me without realizing she’s handing them over.
The water hits my shoulders and runs down, but it does nothing useful; it doesn’t even help the racing of my heart.
I think about last night, her hand in mine in the dark, the way she turned over this morning and didn’t startle when I told her to stop thinking so hard. She just looked at me with those eyes that are always doing more than she thinks they are.
I think about this morning, the laugh, the real one, the unguarded one, and the one that she got embarrassed about immediately after, like happiness was something she’d been caught doing.
My jaw tightens.
I’m not a man who loses control, not over anything.
Control is the thing I’ve built everyone else on top of—work, the quiet, the ability to walk into a room and know exactly what needs to happen and do it without flinching.
It’s the one thing I’ve always trusted about myself even when I trusted nothing else.
And then she knelt down next to me like it cost her nothing and held my hand until I came back.
I exhale, my cock growing hard.
I’m a bastard, because while she’s a girl with a past that I don’t fully understand, I’m in her shower, thinking about wanting to sink my dick into her.
My hand wraps around my length, and I squeeze the tip, a hiss escaping through my lips. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, let alone in her bathroom, but I can’t stop, not when the images of her laid on the bed flash through my head.
I’d take my time, slipping her panties down her legs, kissing her soft skin. Her moans would be like music to my ears.
Precum leaks down my shaft, mixing with the cold water, while my hand begins to work up and down. In my head, it’s not my hand; instead, it’s her pussy, wrapped so tightly around me, suffocating me in the best ways.
It’s even worse because I know she’s just outside the door all while I’m imagining all of this.
And part of me wants to stomp my way out there and rip her clothes off.
I want to have my way with her because I have this feeling that she’d let me.
Esperr hides herself, thinking no one is looking, but I am.
I’d burrow my way beneath her skin until there was nothing left, and you couldn’t tell where she began and I ended.
Patience is a skill; just like everything else, it’s learned, practiced, and applied deliberately. But I would be patient with her; I would be whatever she needed me to be for however long it takes. She’s worth the wait in a way nothing else has ever been, and I knew it before I ever spoke to her.
I rub myself faster, rougher, the same way I’d fuck her once I had her begging for more. One, two, three more pumps and I empty myself, painting the shower wall. My breath comes in short and ragged, my cock pulsing in my hand while I stand there, the other hand braced against the wall.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but I don’t–can’t–move until my heart rate calms down. Settling into something I can manage, something I can carry without it showing on my face. And that takes longer than it should.
Eventually I turn the water off and climb out of the tub, grabbing the towel off the sink and drying myself off.
I don’t look in the mirror before I get dressed, already feeling shameful about what I did.
Opening the door, the apartment is quiet, but I can see her down the hall, sitting in the chair.
Her legs are tucked underneath her, and just over her shoulder, a book in her lap, the blanket is halfway from falling off her.
For a moment, I stayed there, leaning against the doorframe, just looking at her. She hasn’t noticed me yet, or she’s pretending she hasn’t, which I’m thankful for.
Her hair is still slightly damp from her shower, falling loose over one shoulder, and she’s wearing a large shirt that slips down one side.
The socks she’s wearing that poke through the side of the blanket are mismatched, and she’s completely unaware of or unbothered by the fact that she looks like something I want to keep.
She chuckles at something in the book before turning the page, and for the second time, it’s careless. Like she’s so far into whatever she’s reading that I know without seeing her that the line between her brows is gone.
My chest tightens, pulling at my heart, while the corner of my mouth tips up. I’ve never seen someone look so beautiful.
“It’s not polite to stare; didn’t your mother ever teach you that?” Esperr asks, not bothering to look up; she already knows I’m there. And she doesn’t wait for me to answer; she’s already focused back on her book, turning the page.
Pushing off the doorframe, I cross the room, and she doesn’t look up, even when I’m close enough that she has to know exactly where I am. But still reading, or maybe she’s pretending, her eyes tracking the page with tremendous focus for someone who just called me out from across the apartment.
I stop just behind her and watch her shoulders stop moving, meaning she’s stopped breathing—it’s just for a second, but it’s enough that I notice it.
I slowly lean down without thinking about it, the same way you move toward something before your brain catches up with what you’re doing. I’m close enough that I can smell her shampoo, and close enough that it would cost me almost nothing?—
I stop, seconds from kissing the top of her head. My mouth hovers just above the top of her head, close enough that I’m sure she can feel the warmth of me.
Esperr looks up, and it makes everything worse in a way, because now her face is tilted toward mine and there are approximately three inches between us.
Her eyes are doing that thing again—the thing she does where she can’t seem to stop them from dropping to my lips and then slowly back up to my eyes.
And then her lips part, whispering, “You’re really close.” Her breath ghosted across me.
“I know.”
The corner of her mouth curves, slow and deliberate, in the smirk that means she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asks.
I look at her for a long moment, fighting against the urge to slam my mouth against hers and have my way with her.
Instead, I reach forward, taking her chin between my fingers, and tilting her face up even more than it, watching her breath catch.
“When you’re ready,” I start, my voice barely above a whisper. “But not before; I won’t do that to you.”
Esperr’s smirk falters, just slightly, as something moves through her eyes that she doesn’t manage to put away in time—something that looks a lot like the thing she’s been trying not to feel since yesterday morning.
I hold her gaze for another second, and then with the willpower of a fucking saint, I let go and take a large step back.
“Ready for lunch?” I ask, moving towards the kitchen.
Behind me I can hear her huff, and I don’t even have to look at her to know she’s rolling her eyes before she’s mumbling, “So freaking infuriating.”
Smiling, I open the fridge. “You’re not the first to tell me that. Sandwich okay?”
The snow hasn’t let up; if anything, it’s gotten worse, three feet easy, and maybe more where it’s drifted. Montana’s winter can be brutal, but it hasn’t been this bad in a few years.
I stand at the window with my arms crossed, watching it continue to come down. It’s thick and steady with no plans of stopping either. The streets below are untouched; no footprints, no tire tracks—absolutely nothing.
Esperr moves in the kitchen behind me, the small sounds of her deliberately not being in the same room as me. Which she’s done since lunch, and she’s refused to make any sort of eye contact.
She can have all the space she needs; I have nowhere to be and have nothing but time. If she wants to spend the afternoon pretending I don’t exist because I told her I’d wait until she was certain, then that’s her right.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t notice.
And it doesn’t mean I’m not counting the hours.
The kitchen goes quiet, and then she moves, the soft sound of her opening the fridge, closing it, and then reopening it again like something different might appear that wasn’t there thirty seconds ago.
“I’m bored,” she announces.
I smile, knowing that sooner or later she was eventually going to cave.
Peering over my shoulder, I raise a brow at her. “Okay.”
Esperr’s left eye twitches, and she bites down on her cheek like she has to physically stop herself from snapping at me. It’s a battle she quickly loses. “That’s all you’ve got? Okay?”
“Well, what else would you like me to say?”
“I don’t know,” she huffs, twisting around and going back to the fridge. She reappears moments later, frowning at me. “Say anything, something; you’ve been standing at that window for like an hour.”
“Forty minutes.”
“Oh, so sorry, forty minutes,” she hisses, rolling her eyes. “So much better.”
I turn around, giving her my full attention.
She’s leaning against the counter with a yogurt that she’s not eating, a spoon in hand, looking at me with too many emotions she probably doesn’t know how to handle.
Her hair is up now, loose pieces falling around her face, and she’s still in that oversized shirt from this morning.
The bruise from Dean is now a pale yellow, bits of blue peaking through.
My jaw tightens at the sight of it.