Chapter 20 #6
"I want more." He positions himself between my thighs, the head of his cock pressing against my entrance. "I want to feel you come around me. I want to hear you say my name again."
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him closer. "Then stop talking and—"
He pushes inside me in one slow, smooth thrust, and the rest of my sentence dissolves into a moan. He's big—big enough that I feel the stretch, the fullness, the way my body opens to accommodate him—and I gasp at the sensation.
"Oh god—you're so big—fuck—" My nails dig into his shoulders. "You feel so good inside me."
He stills, letting me adjust, his forehead pressed against mine. "Are you okay?"
"I'm better than okay." I roll my hips, experimentally, and we both groan. "Move. Please."
He does. He pulls out slowly, until only the tip remains inside, and then thrusts back in with the same deliberate pace.
Not hard. Not fast. Slow and deep, each stroke hitting that spot inside me that makes my vision go white.
I stare up at him—at the concentration on his face, the way his jaw clenches, the way his eyes stay open and fixed on mine.
"Don't close your eyes," he says. "I want to see you."
"I want to see you too." I reach up and touch his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone. "I want to see all of you."
His rhythm falters for a moment, and something shifts in his expression—a softening, a crack in the armor he wears so well. He turns his head and presses a kiss to my palm, and the gesture is so tender it makes my eyes sting.
"Nova." He says my name like it's the only word he knows. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here."
I don't know if he's reading my mind or if my fear is written on my face, but the words land in the softest part of me.
The part that expects people to leave. The part that calculates exit strategies and prepares for abandonment.
I pull him down and kiss him—deep, open-mouthed, tasting myself on his tongue—and he groans into my mouth.
His pace increases—still not frantic, but more urgent now. Each thrust pushes me further up the bed, and I cling to him, my legs locked around his waist, my hands gripping his shoulders.
The headboard knocks against the wall in a steady rhythm, and I think distantly that we should be quieter, that the kids are down the hall, but then his angle changes and his cock hits that spot inside me and all coherent thought evaporates.
"Yes—right there—fuck, right there—" My voice is getting louder, and I don't care. "Your cock feels so good inside me—so deep—don't stop—"
"I won't stop." His voice is ragged, his breathing harsh. "I'll never stop. You feel so fucking good—so tight—so wet for me—"
His hand finds my clit, his thumb circling in time with his thrusts, and I feel another orgasm building. This one is deeper, more intense, gathering at the base of my spine and radiating outward.
"Romeo—I'm close again—"
"I know." His thumb presses harder, his hips snap faster. "Come for me. Come on my cock."
The words are my undoing. The orgasm rips through me, and I'm screaming his name—half-moan, half-sob, my cunt clenching around him in waves.
He follows me over the edge two thrusts later, his whole body going rigid, his own groan echoing in the quiet room. I feel him come inside me—hot, pulsing, filling me—and the sensation triggers aftershocks that make me tremble.
We lie there in the aftermath, his weight pressing me into the mattress, our breathing harsh and ragged.
The sweat cools on our skin. His heartbeat thuds against my chest, or maybe that's mine—it's impossible to tell where I end and he begins.
The sheets are tangled around us, the pillows knocked to the floor, and I don't remember that happening but it must have.
Then Romeo's elbow hits the headboard with a sharp crack.
"Ow—fuck—"
I snort against his shoulder, the sound completely undignified, and then I'm laughing—really laughing, the kind that shakes your whole body and makes your eyes water. He lifts his head and looks at me with mock offense.
"You're laughing at my pain?"
"Your elbow hit the headboard." I'm wheezing now. "We just had the most incredible sex of my life and your elbow hit the headboard."
"The most incredible sex of your life?" His grin is crooked, adorable. "Not just incredible. The most."
"Don't let it go to your head." I'm still laughing, still shaking, and he's smiling down at me with an expression that makes my heart do something complicated. "You're already insufferable."
"You love it."
I look up at him—at his messy hair and his swollen lips and his ridiculous, beautiful face—and I feel something shift in my chest. Something settling into place. "Yeah," I say softly. "I do."
His smile softens. He rolls off me, pulling me with him until I'm tucked against his side, my head on his chest, my fingers tracing lazy patterns on his skin. The lamp flickers, throwing shadows across the ceiling. The jasmine hangs heavy in the air.
"Hey," he says after a long moment.
"Hey."
"Today was a good day."
I think about everything that led us here—the fighting, the fear, the moments when I was sure this would all fall apart.
I think about the dinner we just had, the kids asleep down the hall, the way Romeo looked at me across the table like I was the only person in the room.
I think about his hands on me, unhurried and reverent, and the way he said my name like a prayer.
"Yeah," I say, and I mean it more than I've ever meant anything. "It was."
His arm tightens around me, and I feel his lips press against the top of my head. I close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat—steady, strong, real. The penthouse holds us in its warmth, and the sound of our breathing fills the room like the last note of a song that hasn't quite ended.
I'm not afraid anymore. For the first time in my life, I'm lying in the arms of someone who chose me—fully, freely, with open eyes—and I'm not calculating the cost. I'm not preparing for him to leave. I'm just here. Present. Whole.
"Romeo?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm glad it's you."
His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. His hand finds my chin, tilts my face up, and he kisses me—soft, lingering, tasting of laughter and love and the particular sweetness of survival.
"I'm glad it's you too," he whispers against my lips. "I'm so glad it's you."
The lamp flickers one last time and goes still, casting us in warm amber light, and the penthouse holds the sound of our heartbeats the way a church holds the last note of a song.
Afterward.
The bedroom is darker. Romeo's breathing has slowed — deep, steady, the cadence of a man who sleeps fully now. His arm is heavy across my waist. His face is pressed into the pillow and his mouth is slightly open and the Patek Philippe ticks against the wrist resting on my hip.
I lie still and I listen to the penthouse.
I know Tomás is sleeping peacefully. The deep, trusting rhythm of a boy who has not had a nightmare in three weeks. The hum of the security system — low, constant, the electronic heartbeat of walls that hold.
And faintly — so faintly I almost miss it — Marisol's music. Through the wall. A song I do not recognize, played at low volume, the tinny melody leaking through plaster and paint.
She listens to music at night now. She does not need it to block out noise or cover the sound of arguments from other apartments or fill the silence left by a mother who took a photograph and left her children.
She listens because she wants to. Because she is thirteen and music is what thirteen-year-olds reach for when the world stops feeling like something to survive and starts feeling like something to live in.
I close my eyes.
Solid ground.
For the first time in my life — the first time in twenty years of cold apartments and counting pennies and sleeping with one ear open and carrying my siblings up staircases that smelled like mildew and other people's grief — the ground beneath me is solid.
I do not know that tomorrow it will crack open.
I do not know that Dante will not come home. That the silence Romeo mentioned once and then dismissed — the ghost going quiet, the scalpel withdrawing into the dark — was a weapon being loaded with a patience that exceeds anything this family has faced.
I do not know that the man sleeping beside me ignored a flag because he wanted one night of peace and the wanting was so fierce and so human and so earned that it blinded him to the shape of what was gathering outside these walls.
Tonight I know only this.
I am loved. My siblings are safe. The man beside me chose me — the only thing he ever reached for because he wanted to, his hand in the daylight, deliberate and unafraid.
Tonight that is enough.
Tonight that is everything.