Chapter 24 #2
He turns back so fast I barely have time to inhale before his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is hard and sudden and full of everything we are both too proud to say.
I kiss him back with equal desperation, pouring all of it into the contact—the fear, the anger, the need, the humiliating ache in my chest. Letting him feel everything I can’t bear to put into words.
Don’t go.
Come back.
Don’t make me miss you.
He pulls away just as quickly, like staying one second longer might ruin him.
“I’ll see you in a few days.”
Then he leaves. The apartment feels wrong the moment the door closes behind him.
The days drag.
They don’t pass so much as scrape by, one slow hour after another.
Breakfast arrives. Lunch arrives. Dinner arrives.
The guards rotate outside the door. The city glitters beyond the windows, unreachable and cold.
I try reading but I can’t focus. I try television but every voice irritates me.
I try walking laps around the penthouse until one of the guards gently reminds me the doctor said I’m supposed to be resting. So I rest. Or pretend to.
By the second night, I stop sleeping in my room.
I tell myself it’s because his room is darker. The blackout curtains actually block the city glow, and the mattress is firmer and better for my back. That lie lasts all of ten seconds.
The truth is worse.
I sleep in his bed because it smells like him.
Clean cologne and starch and something darker beneath it that clings to the sheets and pillows. It makes me feel less alone. The realization is so humiliating I almost march back to my own room on principle.
I don’t.
Instead, I curl onto his side of the bed and press my face into his pillow like a complete idiot.
“Pathetic,” I mutter to myself.
My hand drifts to my stomach.
The baby shifts, making me gasp. It’s been doing that since he left. A tiny, stubborn life. A constant reminder that nothing about this is simple anymore. Maybe it misses him as much as I do.
By the third night, I’ve developed a routine. I shower. I pace. I pretend not to listen for updates from the guards. Then I slip into Lorenzo’s room as if I’m borrowing something, not admitting a weakness.
It is on the fourth night, just after midnight, that I’m half-asleep in his bed when voices drift in from the hall. I sit up instantly, heart pounding.
One of the guards taps the door and says, “He’s back.”
Relief hits me so hard it’s almost nauseating which is how I know I’m already in far deeper than I want to admit.
A second later, footsteps sound outside the bedroom door.
The handle turns.
And Lorenzo walks in, looking exhausted, dangerous, and very much alive.
He stops when he sees me in his bed. One dark brow lifts. I sit up straighter and pull the blankets higher, suddenly aware of how this looks. Neither of us says anything for a second.
Then he closes the door behind him and says, very quietly, “Miss me, Birdie?”
I should laugh, roll my eyes, tell him I’m here because his mattress is better or because I hate my room or because I wanted to annoy him in absentia.
Instead, I say, “Don’t.”
His expression shifts. The teasing fades, replaced by something more focused. He takes a step closer. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t make fun of me for this.”
His gaze moves over me, then the bed, then back to my face. “I wasn’t.”
That surprises me enough that I look at him properly.
He loosens his tie with one hand, eyes never leaving mine. “I was trying to decide whether to be offended you invaded my room without permission.”
“Your room smelled better.”
His mouth curves. “That’s a terrible reason.”
He drops the tie on the chair by the door, then shrugs out of his jacket. The simple act shouldn’t feel intimate. It does. Maybe because I’m in his bed. Maybe because I spent four nights pretending his scent was enough to keep the bad things out.
Maybe because I missed him.
He comes to the side of the bed and stops there, looking down at me in a way that makes my pulse misbehave instantly. “Did anything happen while I was gone?”
I shake my head.
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“Any bleeding?”
“No. But I felt the baby move.”
His shoulders ease by a fraction. So slight I might have missed it if I didn’t know him better now.
I wet my lips. “What happened out there?”
“Nothing you need to worry about tonight.”
“That means it was bad.”
His jaw tightens once. “It means I’m here.”
The answer should irritate me. Instead, it warms something low and aching in my chest. He reaches out then, fingers brushing a strand of hair from my face. The touch is light. Almost careful. That’s what undoes me. Not the possessiveness. The care.
I lean into it before I can stop myself and his eyes darken at once.
“Birdie.”
I swallow. “You came back.”
Something unreadable passes over his face. “I said I would.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “You did.”
For a second, the room goes very still.
Then he sits on the edge of the bed, one hand still on my cheek, and whatever fragile restraint I had been clinging to just loosens. I reach for him first this time. My fingers catch in his shirt, pulling him closer until his forehead drops to mine.
He exhales like the contact costs him.
“You should be asleep,” he murmurs.
“I was.”
“In my bed.”
“In your room,” I correct softly.
A faint smile touches his mouth. “Such an important distinction.”
“It is.”
“Why?”
Because sleeping here made me feel less alone. Because I was afraid and because missing you felt worse in the dark.
I can’t say any of that, so I do the stupidest possible thing.
I kiss him.
He goes still for half a heartbeat, like he’s surprised I made the first move.
Then his hand slides to the back of my neck and he kisses me back with a low, rough sound that sends heat through me so fast it almost aches.
The kiss is slower than the ones before.
Not less intense. Worse, somehow. Like he’s relearning me after being gone and resenting how much he still likes the lesson.
I tug him closer.
He breaks the kiss just enough to look at me. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He searches my face for a long second, then nods once, like he’s making a decision he already knows is a bad one.
“Come here,” he says.
I’m already there.
He gets under the blankets with me, and the world narrows immediately to warmth and clean sheets and the shape of him beside me.
He kisses me again, slower, deeper, and I melt into him with a softness I wish I had the strength to resist. His hand glides over my side, then settles at my waist, careful even now.
That carefulness lights me up more than anything rough ever could.
“You were gone too long,” I murmur against his mouth.
His hand stills. “Were you counting?”
“Maybe.”
A dark, pleased look flickers through his eyes. “Dangerous answer.”
“You asked.”
“And you answered honestly. I should mark the date.”
I laugh softly, and he kisses the sound out of me.
The city glows beyond the curtains. His room smells like him and me now, like heat and relief and a mistake neither of us intends to stop making tonight.
He touches me like he missed me too, even if he’d rather choke than say it.
I hold him like I’m angry about needing this and too tired to lie about it anymore.
When his hand finds the curve of my stomach again, he pauses.
Just for a second. Long enough for his thumb to sweep over me with such reverence that something inside my chest threatens to split open.
The tenderness of it is dangerous. Worse than his mouth.
Worse than his hands. Worse than the way he looks at me like I’m something he wants to ruin and worship in the same breath.
So I pull him back down before I can start thinking.
His mouth crashes into mine. He doesn’t make me ask.
Doesn’t make me wait. He gives me exactly what I’m reaching for, all heat and hunger and his body pressing mine deeper into the mattress.
His hand slips under my thigh, hitching my leg higher, opening me for him while his breath comes rough against my lips.
“Tell me to slow down,” he murmurs.
I drag my nails down his back. “Don’t you dare.”
We’re too desperate for grace. Too far gone for patience. He drags my panties aside, the lace biting into my hip, and fumbles with his pants just enough to free himself. The blunt, hard pressure of him finds me, and for one suspended second, we both go still.
“God,” he breathes.
Then he pushes into me.
Slow enough to make me feel every inch but deep enough to steal the sound out of my throat.
My back arches off the bed, my hands flying to his shoulders as he fills me completely, stretching me around him until all I know is the weight of him, the heat of him, the unbearable intimacy of being taken apart by someone who knows exactly how to break me.
He groans into my neck, one hand still splayed over my stomach like he can’t stop touching me there, like it undoes him.
I clench around him, and his hips jerk.
“Careful,” he says, voice shredded. “Or this is going to be over embarrassingly fast.”
I smile against his mouth, breathless and wicked. “Then you’d better make it count.”
His eyes darken. And then he moves.
At first, it’s measured. Almost gentle. A slow drag out, a deep press back in, like he’s trying to memorize the exact shape of me around him. Like he’s been starving and still can’t bring himself to rush the first taste.
I hate how much it destroys me.
His mouth finds my jaw, my throat, the spot beneath my ear that makes my fingers curl into his skin. Every thrust rolls through me pulling a broken little sound from my mouth before I can stop it.
His hand tightens on my thigh, holding me open as his hips sink into mine again.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, voice rough and low. “That’s what I missed.”
He stills for half a heartbeat, buried deep, his face hovering over mine. His eyes are too dark, too close, too full of everything I don’t know how to survive.
“I missed you,” he says.
I shake my head, because I can’t take that. Not from him. Not while he’s inside me and his body is making promises his mouth should know better than to speak. But he doesn’t let me look away. His fingers slide into my hair, gripping just enough to hold me there.
“I missed this.” His hips rock forward, slow and devastating, and my eyes flutter. “Your mouth. Your skin. The way you try to pretend you don’t need me right before you fall apart.”
I gasp, nails digging into his shoulders.
His mouth brushes mine, not quite a kiss. “I missed the sounds you make.”
He moves again, harder this time, and the sound he wants escapes me before I can swallow it.
A groan tears from his chest.
“There,” he says. “God, I missed that.”
The rhythm changes. The tenderness doesn’t leave, but heat overtakes it, turning every touch sharper, every breath shorter.
He drives into me like restraint is a thing he once had and can no longer remember how to hold.
The bed shifts beneath us. My legs lock around him.
His name breaks on my tongue, and he answers by kissing me so deeply I can barely breathe. It’s messy. Desperate.
Perfect.
His hand finds my stomach again, palm spread wide over the soft curve of me, and this time he doesn’t pause. He keeps it there as he moves, like he needs to feel all of me. Like there isn’t a single part of my body he hasn’t been aching for.
“I thought about you every damn night,” he says against my mouth. “Hated myself for it. Wanted you anyway.”
My chest tightens.
“Don’t,” I whisper, even as my body arches into his.
He kisses the word from me. “I did. In my bed. In the shower. In every empty room where you weren’t.” His voice drops lower, rougher. “I missed the weight of you under me. Missed how you take me. Missed feeling you shake when you come.”
Pleasure flashes hot and bright through me and he feels it. His jaw clenches, his pace faltering for one raw second before he finds it again, deeper and harder.
“That’s it,” he whispers. “Let me have you.”
“I’m right here.”
“No.” His breath shudders. “All of you.”
The words strike somewhere soft and terrible.
I drag him down into a kiss because I can’t answer any other way.
Because if I speak, I might tell him the truth.
That I missed him too. That I missed this so badly it made me furious.
That no one else has ever known how to touch me like I’m both precious and breakable and something worth losing control over.
So I tell him with my body instead.
I pull him closer. Take him deeper. Meet every thrust until his control starts to unravel.
His hand slides under my knee, pushing my leg higher, changing the angle until he hits a place that makes my whole body jolt.
“Oh,” I breathe.
His eyes sharpen. “There?”
I can’t answer.
He does it again.
My head falls back, pleasure gathering low and fast, coiling tight enough to hurt. He watches me like he’s starving for it, like every crack in my composure feeds something feral in him.
“Look at me,” he says.
I try. I really do. But then he rolls his hips just right, and I splinter, my body clamping around him as his name tears out of me.
He curses under his breath, hips grinding deep, holding me through it while I shake beneath him.
“That’s my good girl,” he says. “I missed watching you lose it for me.”
The praise ruins me all over again.
I’m still trembling when he kisses me, slower now, though his body is anything but calm. He’s shaking too. I can feel it in the tension of his arms, in the uneven push of his hips, in the way his mouth keeps finding mine like he can’t bear even an inch of distance.
“I missed you,” he says again.
This time, it’s quieter.
His rhythm turns uneven, desperate, his breath breaking against my cheek. I wrap myself around him and hold on, because there’s nothing else to do. Because he feels too good. Because this hurts in places that have nothing to do with my body.
“Say it,” he rasps.
I know what he wants but I know what it will cost me. So I give him the only truth I can survive.
“I missed this.”
His eyes flash. Then his mouth crashes into mine, and he lets go.
By the time we’re done, I’m breathless and tangled up in him, my head on his chest, his arm heavy around me. Neither of us speaks for a while.
Eventually, his fingers brush lightly over my shoulder. “Still going to sleep in here now that I’m back?”
I smile against his skin. “I’m considering it.”
“Mm.”
“You sound smug.”
“I am smug.”
I tilt my head up. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” he says, closing his hand over mine where it rests against him, “you’re in my bed again.”
I should argue but I don’t because his heartbeat is steady under my ear, and for tonight, that feels too much like peace to ruin.