Chapter 32 #2
Diego went still in my arms. He turned his face into my neck and pressed his lips against my throat. He breathed slowly against my skin, the way he did when he was keeping himself in check. The water lapped against the stones.
"I love you," I said.
I'd said those words once before, the night before Kiev, with adrenaline driving the confession out of me. This time the only thing driving it was hot water and his weight against my ribs.
"Say that again," he whispered.
"I love you, Diego Reyes." I kissed his temple. "I'm going to be terrible at this."
He turned in my arms, water streaming between us, and cupped my face in both hands. "Te amo." He kissed the corner of my mouth. "Te amo, Jasper. And I already know you'll be terrible at it."
"Thanks."
"De nada." He grinned against my mouth. "You know what I saw in Brussels? When I first looked at you?"
I shook my head.
"A grumpy, chain-smoking Russian with a samurai sword." He tilted his head back to look at me, grinning upside down. "Infuriatingly hot, though. Which was annoying because I was trying to concentrate on not getting killed."
"I’m not that grumpy."
"You absolutely are. You think you're this unreadable ice wall, and then your jaw does this thing when you're angry, and you get this crease right here when you're worried." He touched the spot between my eyebrows. "I had you figured out in three days."
"You're full of shit."
"I'm in love with you. That's not the same thing."
His mouth landed on mine, and the last three days burned off like fog.
Mineral water and salt hit my tongue when he opened for me, and I pulled him closer.
He wrapped his legs around me under the water and settled into my lap like he'd been waiting three days to get there.
His fingers curled into my hair, and I groaned against his mouth before I could swallow it, the sound bouncing off the stone.
His lips were chapped from the wind. I traced the rough edge with my tongue until he gasped, and I wanted to hear it again.
His grip tightened in my hair and he rolled his hips, and the friction lit up every nerve I had left, water slick between us. Then he did it a second time, slower. I gripped his hips hard.
"Again," I said against his mouth.
The third time pulled a groan out of him, low and raw, vibrating against my lips while I dug my thumbs into the grooves above his hipbones. He sucked in a sharp breath and pressed his forehead against mine.
"Jasper." He grabbed my jaw and tipped my face up to his, breathing ragged against my mouth. I was breathing just as hard.
My teeth found the tendon in his neck, and he shuddered, bracing his good hand on the stone behind my head while I ran my mouth along his collarbone. The edge of his bandage caught against my lip. He flinched.
My lips hovered against the bandage. He went rigid under my mouth.
"Don't you dare apologize," he said.
"I wasn't going to."
"You were. Your jaw's doing the thing."
I pressed my lips against his shoulder, right next to the bandage. My hands were still on his hips. His fingers were still in my hair. Neither of us moved, and neither of us let go.
"When we're healed," he said against my ear, "I'm going to take you apart."
"Promises."
"That one you can hold me to."
He kissed me once more, slow enough to mean something. Then he turned in my arms and settled back against my chest. I wrapped myself around him. The steam drifted. The lamp flickered.
"I keep thinking about what she said on the plane," he murmured. "You're my family."
"She meant it."
"I know. That's what gets me."
I pulled him closer.
"Jasper?"
"Mm."
"I want to build something. After this. When Zeus is done." He laced his fingers through mine under the water. "Somewhere real. You, me, Mila. A kitchen big enough for Mamá. A garden. A nice blue front door."
"That sounds dangerously optimistic for a man in our line of work."
"I'm a dangerously optimistic man." He pressed his thumb against my pulse point under the water. "Say yes."
"Yes."
"That was fast."
"You told me to say it."
"I wanted you to mean it."
I turned his face toward mine with my fingers on his chin. "I don't know how to build a house. I don't know how to plant a garden. I'd probably kill everything in it." I kissed him. He tasted like sulfur and salt. "But yeah. Give your mother her kitchen. I'll be there."
He kissed me back slowly. The steam rose around us.
We stayed in the water until our fingers pruned and the lamp burned low. Then we climbed out into the cool air and dressed slowly, trading clothes back and forth because we'd mixed them up and neither of us cared.
Diego held my hand all the way back through the compound in the dark, the cool air sharp against wet skin. We didn’t talk, but the silence was nice for once. Comforting.
Diego eased open the door to our room and stopped.
Mila was asleep in the center of the bed, a stuffed bear tucked under one arm and flour still dusting her hair. Carmen had left a plate of cookies on the nightstand with a note in Spanish.
"What does it say?" I whispered.
Diego cleared his throat. "She says the cookies are for breakfast, and if we eat them tonight, she'll know, and there will be consequences."
"I believe her."
"You should."
Mila had arranged the pillows around herself like walls. Her face was smooth, her breathing even. One sock had come off, and her bare foot stuck out from under the blanket.
Diego pulled back the covers and climbed in carefully. Mila stirred and grabbed a fistful of his shirt without waking. He curved around her, his body between her and the door, and looked up at me.
"Coming?" he whispered.
I got in on the other side. The bed was narrow for three, but we made it work the way we'd been making everything work since Brussels. Mila's back pressed warmly against my chest. Diego reached across her and held onto my hand.
The room smelled like flour and sulfur and Diego's skin against mine.
Family. It smelled like our family.
I waited until his breathing evened out. Then I reached over to the nightstand, picked up one of Carmen's cookies, and ate it in two bites because a lot had changed, but I was still a man who liked to live dangerously.