23. Gianna #2
We got my jeans down. His belt. It was awkward in the cab, knees and the console and the steering wheel on his side, and we laughed once, breathless, when my elbow hit the window. Then I was in his lap, straddling him in the passenger seat he’d shoved back as far as it would go, and the laugh died.
He held my hips like I was made of something breakable. Guided me down onto him so slowly I made a sound of protest.
“I know,” he said, voice shaking. “I know. Just… let me. If this truck moves, if someone walks by…” He kissed the corner of my mouth, then my cheek, then my mouth again, like he couldn’t pick one place and stay.
“You feel like every good decision I forgot how to make. I need a second. I need you to tell me if anything’s too much. ”
He was barely moving. Tiny, careful rolls of his hips, so gentle it was almost worse than stopping. The kind of tenderness that made me feel cherished and starved at the same time.
“Orion.”
“Mm.”
“That’s not enough.”
His hands flexed on my hips. Didn’t let me take more. “Gianna.”
“I’m not going to break.” I framed his face, made him see me. “I danced with you for two hours. I can take my husband. Stop being so careful with me.”
“The windows…”
“Are fogged. Nobody’s looking.” I rolled my hips, taking him deeper, and his head thunked back against the seat, a groan tearing out of him. “I have spent months being touched like a patient. I don’t want careful. I want you. The way you used to be when you couldn’t wait to get me home.”
“If I stop being careful I’m going to wreck this seat and every ounce of sense I have left.”
“Then wreck it.” I kissed him, desperate now. “Please. Harder. I need to feel that you still want me like that. Not like I might cry. Like you can’t help it.”
Something in him gave.
His grip changed. Not rough, never that, but sure. He held me down and thrust up into me, deeper, and the sound I made was loud enough that his hand came up to the back of my neck, pulling me into his mouth to swallow it.
“That’s it,” he breathed, then seemed to hear himself and laughed, wrecked. “God, listen to you. I’ve been dying for that sound. Do you know how many nights I lay on my side of the bed thinking about the way you used to say my name when you forgot to be quiet?”
The truck did move. A slow, betraying rock. Neither of us stopped.
He kept talking, praise spilling out of him like he’d been storing it up and it had nowhere else to go.
“You’re so warm. So brave, climbing into my lap in a parking lot like we don’t have a whole life waiting at home.
” A kiss to my throat, open and hungry. “I watched you two-step tonight and thought, that’s my wife.
That’s the girl who used to fall asleep on my porch swing.
I don’t know how I ever let you feel small in a house I built for you. ”
“Orion, more…”
“I’ve got you.” He gave it to me harder, the way I’d asked, the wet sound of it obscene in the quiet cab.
His mouth found my ear. “You’re not fragile.
You’re the strongest person I know. You walked back toward me when you had every reason not to.
Take what you need. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. ”
I did. I used him, hands on his shoulders, and he let me, meeting me with deep, rolling thrusts that made the chassis creak. One of his hands slid between us, finding me, and the dual pressure pulled a sob out of my chest.
“That’s my girl,” he whispered, wrecked and worshipful. “Coming apart for me in a truck like we never learned better. You’re so good. So sweet like this. I could live and die a happy man just from the way you’re holding onto me.”
I came with my face in his neck, shaking, and he followed a few strokes later, groaning my name like it hurt, like it was the only word he remembered.
His arms locked around me. He didn’t let go.
Didn’t even ease me off him. He held me there, still inside me, breathing like he’d run the length of the ranch.
The neon buzzed. Somewhere a truck door slammed, far enough away not to matter.
His hand stroked down my spine, slow, over the scar, over the place he’d been so afraid of.
“You okay?” he asked, voice gone hoarse and young.
“I’m better than okay.” I laughed, shaky, and kissed the underside of his jaw. “You’re going to have to drive home like this didn’t happen.”
“Impossible.” He tipped my chin up and kissed me, softer now, the kind of kiss that belonged on a porch, not in a fogged-up cab. “I’ll try. For Alex. For Maya not asking why we look like we robbed a bank.”
I climbed off him, clumsy, and we put ourselves back together in the dark: jeans, belt, my shirt tugged down, his hair a lost cause. He reached over and wiped a circle in the windshield with his sleeve, then looked at me like he still couldn’t believe I was in his truck.
“Thank you for tonight,” he said. “The dancing. This. Letting me close again.”
“Drive,” I said, because if he kept looking at me like that I was going to crawl back into his lap. “Before I decide Maya can keep him until morning and we stay right here.”
He started the engine. The radio came on low, some old country song we hadn’t danced to yet.
His hand found mine over the console, laced our fingers, and didn’t let go the whole way home.