23. Alejandro #2
Five minutes turns into three because Bee beats the clock.
She jogs toward the car with her sandals in one hand and a tote in the other, hair a little wild, sunglasses slipping down her nose, smile so bright it rearranges something in my chest. She opens the door and leans in with a kiss before she sits, like she can’t even wait long enough to buckle. I taste salt and sunshine and her.
“Hi,” she says against my mouth, and then again when she settles, buckling fast. “I needed that.”
“Sister time?”
She nods, tossing the tote into the back. “We walked, we watched the cruise ships, we judged people’s matching outfits, we split a pastelito, and we promised not to talk about men for an hour.” She flicks her eyes to me, teasing. “I made it twenty minutes.”
“Impressive,” I say, grinning. I rest my hand on her thigh as I pull away from the curb, thumb tracing an idle arc just inside the seam of her dress. She warms under my palm like she always does, a small shiver that travels.
I don’t push it. Not yet. But my body’s already writing its own plans.
“You’re in a good mood,” she says after a beat, turning in the seat to study me. “Better than good.”
“Am I?” I ease us into traffic, palm still on her skin because that seems necessary for oxygen.
She hums. “You are. You look… I don’t know. Lighter.”
I bite back the truth. Not because I want to hide anything. Because I want to give it to her right. “Maybe it’s you,” I say. “Maybe it’s July. Maybe it’s both.”
She eyes my profile like she’s collecting evidence. “Mysterious.”
“Handsome,” I correct. “Get it right.”
Her laugh is a relief I didn’t know I needed.
We clear the light and I let my fingers climb a little higher, slow.
Her inhale is immediate and not small. The city slides by—neon splashing over glass, the bay winking between buildings, palm fronds fussing with the sky.
My palm inches up, and her knees part without her thinking about it.
“Ale,” she says, soft warning that isn’t a warning, the corner of her mouth turning up even as her hand covers mine to press me higher.
“Sí, reina?”
“Drive.”
“I am.” My fingers learn her again like I’ve forgotten her and need a refresher course I intend to ace.
The light ahead flips red, and we stop. She’s breathing faster now, her head tipping back against the headrest, mouth parting. I keep my eyes on the road because I’m not an idiot, but I can feel every small move she makes, every tremor, every sound she tries to swallow.
“You’re trouble,” she whispers.
“The good kind,” I say, and when the light shifts, I take the turn that gets us home fastest, because I’m a man, and there are only so many things I can do while driving without pulling over and forgetting we own a house.
The key hits the lock, and when the door shuts behind us with a soft thud, she doesn’t get more than two steps in before I have her back against the wall.
My hands brace beside her head and my mouth is on hers in an instant.
There’s a sound she makes when she lands in my arms after a stretch apart—a small, desperate thing that lights me up.
I chase it. I swallow it. I give it back.
“Clothes,” I manage against her mouth.
She nods, fingers already at my shirt. I get impatient and lift her instead, her legs curving around my waist like they belong there.
We bump the hallway table and laugh into the kiss, then stop laughing because my need for her is rude like that. By the time I lay her on the bed, the need in me is a burn I’m not pretending I can slow.
“Easy or rough?” I ask, voice gone low.
“Sí,” she says, eyes blown, smile wrecked.
“Greedy,” I murmur, adoring that about her as much as anything. My hands slide under the soft cotton shirt she wore for the beach. I should take my time. I don’t. The neckline gives with a rip that makes her gasp, eyes wide, heat sparking across her skin.
“Alé—”
“I'll buy you another,” I promise, mouth already on the new line of skin I’ve uncovered, worship sharp and reverent. “Ten others. But right now, I need you to not be wearing anything.”
Her hands dive into my hair. “You’re impossible.”
“Insatiable,” I correct, and then I stop talking for a minute, because her body deserves both of my hands and my mouth and the focus I usually save for extra time.
I mark a slow path down her throat, tongue teasing, teeth threatening, then soothing. Her back arches as I palm her—firm, deliberate—and she curses, sweet and sinful. The sound goes straight through me.
“Look at me,” I say again, rougher, and her eyes snap to mine. I hold that gaze while I strip the rest of her fast, then work off my belt, my shirt, all of it—everything that interrupts my skin against hers.
The sight of her, open to me, hair a dark river across my sheets, does something animal to me and something holy to me at the same time.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” I tell her, meaning every word. “Perfecta, and mine.”
“Yours,” she whispers, meaning those words with every breath she takes.
I touch her like a language we invented. Slow curl of my fingers. Long stroke of my palm. The kind of pressure I know she needs to let go of the day completely.
“That’s it. More. Give it to me.”
“Alejandro—”
“Say my name,” I coax, even though she’s already saying it like a prayer and a curse. “Let me hear how you tremble for me.”
She shudders hard, the sound she makes breaking open, and I don’t stop. I carry her through it, then back to the edge, then over again, patient and merciless. When she claws at my shoulders and drags me down, I go, because there’s no universe where I don’t.
“You ready for me?” I ask, barely holding the line between control and need.
She drags her mouth along my jaw, finds my ear. “Please.”
I slide into her slow, like the first step into ocean water you’ve been waiting to touch all day, and both of us go still for a second because of how right it is. Her hands clamp at my shoulder blades, and I have to close my eyes or I’ll come apart purely from the way she says my name.
“Don't close your eyes,” she whispers, so I open them, which saves and ruins me simultaneously.
I set a rhythm that steals our air and gives it back. Deep, sure, the kind of pace that says this isn’t about finishing as much as it is about feeling. Every thrust is a vow of love. Every drag a promise of care.
“You take me so well,” I tell her, voice wrecked with love. “Perfect. That’s it.”
Her head tips back, parting her lips, a broken little yes slipping out. I lace our fingers and pin them above her, rocking into her harder, faster, because she asks for it without asking for it —hips lifting, thighs tightening, that sweet, sharp whine tearing through her restraint.
“That’s it, hermosa,” I praise, and the words tumble into her mouth when I kiss her. “So good for me.”
“Don’t stop,” she says, eyes bright and pleading in a way that undoes me.
“Never,” I promise, and I mean it on every level a man can mean anything.
We flip, her on top, my hands sliding to her waist as she rides me with a focus that would win championships in sports.
I watch her take what she wants, watch the flush spread across her chest. I tilt my hips to meet every drop, every grind, and the sounds coming out of both of us don’t belong to quiet people.
“Mi reina,” I groan, and she leans down, teeth catching my lip, smile a little wild.
I roll us again because I need to finish this the way I started—inside her, over her, holding her gaze so she knows exactly what she does to me. My hand slides between us, finding her again, circling where she needs me most, the pressure just right.
She bows under me, the quake starting in her thighs and ripping up until it takes her whole body. The sound she makes when she breaks is my new favorite fact about the world.
I don’t last much longer. I hold on long enough to watch her fall apart and then I follow, pulse detonating, hips driving through it, her name falling from my mouth like a whispered plea. I ease us down slow, resting my forehead on hers.
We don’t move for a while, her cheek settling over my heart. My palm finds the warm line of her spine, holding her close, like I could fuse us together if I could press her against me hard enough. Everything feels right, like a moment meant just for us.
She draws a lazy circle on my chest. “You sure you’re okay?” she asks softly, teasing threaded with concern she can’t hide.
“Muy okay,” I say, and she snorts into my skin. I kiss the top of her head because I can. Because I plan to do it for the rest of my life.
“What’s got you so giddy?” she asks after a minute, lifting her head to study me, eyes already softening at whatever she finds in my face. “And don’t say me.”
“You,” I say, deadpan.
She arches a brow.
“And also… July,” I add. “And ice cream. And the fact that I get you all summer. And maybe the wind. Good wind today.”
She narrows her eyes like she wants to press. But she doesn’t. “You’re killing me,” she says, settling back down.
“I'd never,” I correct, and she laughs so sweetly I have to kiss her again.
Later, when the light outside turns gold and the room starts to glow, we shower slowly and dress in less clothing than counts as dressed.
She steals a shirt from my drawer because she insists mine are softer.
We eat on the terrace—leftover arroz that tastes better in the evening, chilled water with lime, her foot hooked over my calf under the table like she’s anchoring me in place.
She talks about the beach with Andrea—how the cruise horns sounded like party horns and how two kids were building a sandcastle doomed by the tide and didn’t care.
I listen like a man who can’t get enough of the sound of her.
My hand drifts back to her thigh like it has a homing device.
She lets it. Every few seconds, she leans over to steal a kiss she pretends is casual. None of them are.
We clean up without talking about it—she rinses, I dry.
At some point she steals the towel from me and whips it at my hip, then yelps when I catch her around the waist and haul her over my shoulder like she weighs nothing.
She swats my back, laughing too hard to protest, and I think, more than once, that this easy, fierce, ridiculous love might actually be the point of all the noise I’ve ever chased.
Later, when the sky goes indigo and the first stars start to show, we stretch out on the couch.
She rests her head in my lap and flips through movie options with the attention of a scholar studying ancient texts.
I brush my fingers through her hair and pretend to have opinions about genres.
She chooses a terrible action movie with perfect cheekbones and I swear allegiance to it.
Halfway through, she angles up to look at me. “Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“For today. For picking me up. For… us.” She slides her palm along my jaw. “You feel happy.”
“I am,” I tell her, and it’s the least complicated sentence I’ve spoken all day.
She smiles like the moon does… just for her. “Good,” she whispers. “Stay.”
“Always,” I say, and she believes me because I mean it.
When she drifts toward sleep, I watch her, the way her lashes lie against her skin, the way her mouth curves even at rest, like her happiness refuses to leave the room.
My hand drifts to my chest, to the place where her mother’s ring rode home with me hours ago.
I picture both boxes again, side by side in the drawer I keep locked for no reason other than it feels ceremonial—my mother’s, her mother’s. Two circles waiting. Two vows ready.
Soon, I think. Soon I’ll take her hand in the middle of a field built for noise.
Soon, I’ll drop to a knee that’s taken harder hits and let it carry the best one.
Soon, the camera will find us and the city will watch and Andrea will scream and Senor Ayala will sit very still and clear his throat and say nothing and everything.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I tuck a blanket around the woman I’ve loved since I didn’t have the words for loving like this.
I press a kiss to her forehead. She murmurs my name in her sleep, that tiny endearment that feels like mercy, and I swear—to the sky, to the ocean, to every stadium I’ve ever touched—that I will not waste any of this.
“Buenas noches, mi amor,” I whisper.
Her fingers find mine even asleep.
I lace them and hold on.