23. Charly
— ? —
Charly
The scar through his eyebrow makes him look like a bad boy now, and I’m embarrassingly into it, and that’s how I know I’ve lost my mind.
He’s on the couch when I get home from my shift, shirt off because his ribs are still healing and the fabric bugs the bruising, one arm thrown along the back cushions like he owns the place. He does. It’s his house.
I moved out of the guest house and into the main one a few weeks ago, the night he asked me to stop pretending there was any reason left to sleep a hundred feet away from him, and I still catch myself surprised every time I walk in and it’s ours now. Mine and his.
My scrubs are now in his closet. He gave me a portion of it for my clothes. My toiletries are in his shower. My trashy romance paperbacks taking over his very serious bookshelf, and every time I see them lined up next to his art books my chest does a stupid little flip.
“You’re staring,” he says, not even opening his eyes.
“I’m checking you. I’m still a medical professional. It’s my job.”
“Uh huh. Come closer, you won’t see anything from over here, then.”
“Can’t. If I get any closer I’m going to end up making out with my patient, and that’s a serious… violation.”
“I kinda like the sound of that, I think that might make me feel better.” He cracks one eye open and looks at me, slow, and there’s that grin, the one that almost ruined my whole life and somehow turned into the thing I’d run into traffic for.
“I’ve been lying here six hours doing nothing but missing you.
Take pity on a recovering man. Come here. ”
“I should shower first. I worked a double, I smell like a hospital, I’ve got somebody else’s coffee all down my scrubs.”
“Don’t care,” he says. “Come here.”
So I go. I drop my bag and I climb onto the couch and into his lap, careful of his ribs, one knee on either side of him, and his hands settle on my hips like they’ve always belonged there.
“See,” he murmurs. “Was that so hard?”
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet here you are.”
“You only miss me this much because you’ve been stuck in this house all day with nobody to boss around but yourself.”
“Not true. I miss you when you’re in the next room. It’s actually a medical condition. You should look into it, you’re the professional.”
He’s right, and we both know it. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this part, how good it feels to just be his, how easy he makes it.
He’s looking up at me like I’m the only thing in the room worth looking at, his thumbs tracing slow circles against the dip of my waist, and everything else in the world goes soft and far away.
The scar. The shift I just survived. All of it. There’s just him, warm under me, looking at me like that, and the slow pull low in my stomach that he’s always been able to set off without even trying.
“What’s going on in there?” he asks, his thumb brushing the line between my eyebrows. “You get this little crease right here when your head’s running.”
“I’m thinking I got really lucky.”
“Yeah?” His whole face softens. “Say more about that.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late. It’s already there. Keep going.”
Instead of saying more, I lean down and kiss him, slow, my hands sliding into his hair.
He groans against my mouth and the sound rolls straight through my chest. His hands tighten on my hips, fingers digging into my skin as he pulls me flush against him.
Even through two layers of clothes, his cock presses hard against my center.
“Careful,” he breathes against my lips, his voice strained. “Your ribs.”
“My ribs are fine. It’s yours I’m worried about.” I pull back just enough to look into his eyes. “Promise you’ll tell me if it’s too much. I mean it. I didn’t sit in that hospital for a week just to break you on a couch.”
He doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he reaches for the waistband of my scrub pants, peeling them down my legs so slowly it borders on cruel.
His mouth follows the fabric, kissing the inside of my knee, then my thigh, trailing higher and higher until I’m arching off the cushions, breathing in shallow, useless gasps.
“Clarence, please,” I moan.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” He settles between my thighs, his hands spreading me open, exposing how wet I am to the cool air. When his tongue first flicks against my clit, I bite down on a cry, my toes curling.
He licks into me slow and patient, his tongue swirling and pulsing against my center with a steady rhythm until my hips are rolling against his face, my fingers twisting in his hair to pull him closer.
He knows exactly what he’s doing. He builds the tension up, reads every sound I make, and slows down just as I reach the edge, dragging it out until I’m shaking.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I gasp, my head tipping back.
“Doing what?” he asks against my skin, and the vibration of his voice sends a jolt straight through me.
“You know what. Stop teasing.”
“Say please.”
“I will end you,” I hiss, though there’s no real threat in it. Only want.
He laughs, low in his throat, and stops entirely. Right when I’m about to lose my mind, he pulls back and looks up at me with my own hunger mirrored in his eyes and my scent all over his mouth.
“Not yet,” he whispers, his voice gone dark. “I want to be inside you when you come.”
“Then get up here. Now.”
I pull him upward, my legs wrapping around his waist to lock him in. As he pushes into me, a long moan tears out of me, my eyes fluttering shut. He fills me completely, stretching me open in a way that makes me feel consumed.
“God, you’re so tight,” he groans against my neck, his breath scalding. “Such a good girl for me.”
“Yes... please, harder,” I whimper, digging my nails into his shoulders. My hips arch to meet every deep, driving thrust. “I wanna feel you... every inch of you.”
He obeys. His pace picks up, the sound of our skin slapping together filling the room.
I moan his name over and over, the friction building until the tension snaps.
I scream into his shoulder as the orgasm rips through me, and he follows right after, his whole body locking up as he empties himself inside me.
He stays buried inside me for a long moment, his chest heaving against mine, both of us wrecked. His cock still pulses inside my walls, the heat of him leaking out between us, slicking our thighs. My legs stay locked around his waist. My fingers tremble against the nape of his neck.
“You okay?” he rasps, barely smiling as he pulls back to look at me.
“Better than okay.” My voice comes out wrecked. I trace the line of his jaw with my thumb, watching the flush still coloring his skin. “I think you might have actually broken something this time.”
A laugh rumbles through his chest and my core twitches in response. He doesn’t pull away. Instead he shifts, sliding out of me slow, and the sound makes me whimper and arch my back, already craving the fullness again.
He collapses beside me on the couch and pulls me into his side. My head finds his shoulder, the scent of sex and his cologne wrapping around me. His arm tightens, pulling me close, his hand stroking a slow rhythm down my arm.
“I told you I wouldn’t break,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head. “But you... you’re something else.”
A soft sigh leaves me. My eyes close. The quiet of the room feels charged, still buzzing with what just happened. I shift, feeling the slickness between my legs, and can’t help but smile.
“Next time,” I whisper, nipping at his shoulder, “I’m not being so gentle with you.”
His grip tightens. “I’m counting on it.”
I pull him closer with my heels at the backs of his thighs, and he groans and drops his head to my shoulder, and for a while there’s nothing in the world but the two of us, together on our ruined couch in the dark, the rest of it, the fear, the waiting, the whole exhausting habit of bracing, gone quiet for once.
“I love you,” he says, ragged, and it isn’t a line and it isn’t planned, it just falls out of him. “God, I love you, Charly.”
“I love you.” It comes out broken and I don’t care. “I love you so much.”
Neither of us moves for a long time. He’s a warm weight on top of me, his heart slamming against my chest, mine going just as hard, and I run my fingers slow through his hair and stare at the ceiling and let myself be happy without immediately bracing for the bill.
“Hey.” He lifts his head, looking at me. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m right here.”
“You’re not, though. You got quiet.” He brushes his thumb under my eye. “Talk to me.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I’m lying here happy. Like, really happy. And some part of my brain is already going, okay, enjoy it while it lasts, because this is the part where it gets taken away.” It comes out smaller than I mean it to. “I don’t know how to just have a good thing without waiting for it to crumble.”
“You’re allowed to have this. We’re allowed to have it. There’s no more catch.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t. But I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll keep saying it until you stop being scared. Until you feel safe enough to believe me.” He kisses me, slow and unhurried. “Right now the only thing you need to worry about is me doing that again the second my ribs heal.”
A laugh shakes out of me before I can stop it.
“Your ribs are going to ache like shit in the morning.”
“Worth it. Easily.” He props up on his elbow and looks down at me, brushing a strand of hair off my face, and his expression goes serious in a way that makes my chest ache. “I meant it. What I said. It wasn’t just a heat-of-the-moment slip-up. I mean it. All of it.”
“I know.” I reach up and trace the scar through his eyebrow, the one that scared me so badly and somehow turned into the thing I love most on his whole face.
“I meant it too. Which is terrifying, by the way. I want it on the record that loving you is the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve seen some terrifying things at work. ”
“Noted.” He turns his head and kisses my palm. “For what it’s worth, you terrify me too. In a good way. Actually, the best way.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s a little comforting, because you’re the end game.” He kisses my shoulder. “We should move to the bed before my body aches so much we can no longer move.”
“Can you even make it ten feet?”
“Duh. I can make it ten feet. I’m a medical miracle.
Remember? The doctors said so, it’s in my chart.
” He gets up first, wincing, and holds a hand down to me, and I take it, and he pulls me up off the ruined couch and into him.
We stand there a second, tangled together in the dark of my living room, his arms around me and his chin on the top of my head, and I let myself sink into it completely.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I’m not waiting for anything. There’s no other shoe in this room. Just him, and me, and the quiet, and the fact that I get to keep this. I get to keep him.
“What are you smiling about?” he says into my hair.
“I’m smiling about you. About the fact that you ruined our couch and I’m not even a little bit mad about it.”
“That was the best decision I’ve ever made, for the record.” He kisses the top of my head. “Can we please move this to the bed?”
“God, yes, let’s go to bed.”
We stumble down the hall half laughing, holding each other up, and I don’t think about the bad thing even once.