27. Nova #2
He makes a sound that isn’t a word — broken, raw, scraped out from somewhere he doesn’t normally let people hear — and his hand fists in my hair and he comes in my mouth and I take all of it.
Don’t pull off. Don’t flinch. Throat working around him while he pulses, while his hips buck once, while he keeps making that sound that isn’t a word.
I stay with him through every second.
I let him slip out of my mouth when he’s done.
Wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
Look up.
He’s looking down at me with an expression I have never seen on a man’s face before in my life.
“Hi,” I say.
He can’t speak.
I can see him trying.
He gets his hands under my arms and pulls me up off the floor onto his lap. Hard. Almost rough. Holds me there with my legs straddling his thighs and his arms around my back and his face pressed against my neck and he’s breathing like he ran somewhere.
“Nova.”
“Yeah.”
“Give me a second.”
“Take it.”
I press my forehead to his hair. His hand is flat against the small of my back, holding me to him, and I can feel his heart hammering against my chest.
I did that.
I am sitting in this man’s lap in his living room and I am still here. In my body. No armor, no exit plan, no joke to deflect with.
I have never been so completely in a room in my life.
He gets his breath.
His hands move.
One slides up under my shirt, palm warm against my lower back, the other comes up to my jaw and tilts my face toward his and he kisses me — with his own taste in my mouth, slow, deep, the kind of kiss that is also a thank you and also a promise and also him still not having quite gotten his words back yet.
“My turn,” he says against my mouth.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He lifts me off his lap. Sets me on the couch. Stands up, kicks his jeans the rest of the way off, pulls his shirt over his head. Bare. Scars at the hip from old gear, the line of him I’ve memorized in photographs from before I ever touched him.
He’s looking at me.
“What,” I say.
“Off.”
“What?”
“All of it. Off.”
I pull my shirt over my head. Drop my jeans. Bra. Underwear. I’m naked on his couch in his living room with the Florida night coming through the window and a man who has just had his entire vocabulary destroyed in front of me looking at me like he plans to even the score.
He kneels in front of me.
Both knees on the floor. Hands on my thighs. Looks up.
“Look at me.”
I look.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
“Stay with me,” he says again. Quieter. Like he means it differently the second time.
“I’m here, Jax.”
He spreads my thighs.
Kisses my hip first. Then the inside of my knee. Works his way up — slow, deliberate, the man who has never been in a hurry with me taking his time on purpose — and my hands fist in the couch cushion because I don’t know what else to do with them.
He pauses with his mouth two inches from where I want him.
Looks up at me.
“Tell me,” he says.
“Tell you what.”
“Tell me you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“Say it.”
“I’m here, Jax.”
He gets his mouth on me.
I make a sound I have never made for him before.
He works me — slow first, the flat of his tongue, the press of his mouth, finding the rhythm my body wants and giving it back to me on his own time. One hand on my hip holding me down. The other sliding up, splaying across my stomach, holding me to him.
“Jax —”
“Mhm.”
“That’s — fuck —”
He hums against me and the vibration goes through me like a current.
He slides a finger inside me.
I’m so wet for him. I have been wet for him since the moment he sat down on the couch next to me.
He curls his fingers up and finds the spot and presses and works it and I am gone — gone — my hips coming up off the couch, my hand fisting in his hair, the sounds coming out of me unfiltered, unmanaged, completely his.
“Jax — I’m —”
“I got you.”
“Don’t stop —”
“Wasn’t going to.”
He adds a second finger. Curls them. Closes his mouth around me and sucks.
I come.
I come hard, with his mouth on me and his fingers inside me and his other hand splayed flat against my stomach, holding me. I come saying his name. I come without trying to be quiet because there’s no one here and even if there were I don’t care anymore, I don’t care.
He works me through it. Doesn’t pull off. Doesn’t stop. Slows when I need him to slow, stays when I need him to stay, lets me ride out every wave with his mouth still on me.
When I’m finally too sensitive he eases off. Kisses my inner thigh. The crease of my hip. My stomach.
Sits back on his heels.
Looks up at me.
I look down at him.
His mouth is wet. His hair is wrecked. His eyes are dark.
He looks like a man who just gave me something and isn’t sure I know how much it cost him.
“Come here,” I say.
He climbs up the couch. Lays me back. Kisses me with my own taste in my mouth — and then his is in there too, both of us together, and that’s when I feel him hard against me again, ready for me.
He lines up at my opening.
“You sure.”
“Jax.”
“You sure.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
He thrusts into me.
Slow. All the way. Bottoms out and pauses, his forehead pressing to mine, his breath catching, his whole body going still while we both adjust to him being inside me again.
“There you are,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“There you are,” he mutters.
He starts to move.
Slow. Deep. The kind of sex that isn’t rushed and isn’t a performance — just two people who have figured out their bodies together and are going to take their time
My ankles crossed at the small of his back. His mouth at my throat, his breath warm, his hand sliding down to my hip and pulling me into every thrust.
“Jax.”
“Mhm.”
“Look at me.”
He lifts his head.
His eyes are dark and steady and he is here, fully here, and I am here, fully here, and we are looking at each other with absolutely nothing between us.
No armor. No script. No exit math. No professional veneer.
Chosen.
That’s the word.
This is what happens when both people stop circling and finally land.
“Nova.”
“Yeah.”
“Stay with me.”
“I’m staying.”
“Say it.”
“I’m staying. I’m staying. I’m staying.”
The third time gets him. He makes a sound against my throat and his hips move faster and I roll mine to meet him and we find a rhythm I have not found with anyone else in my life — easy, deep, the kind that builds without anyone steering.
He gets one hand between us. Finds where I need him.
I’m already close.
He knows.
“You feel me?” he says.
“I feel you.”
“You with me?”
“With you.”
“Come for me, Nova.”
He says it quietly. Not as a command. As a statement of where we are.
I come.
I come with him inside me and his thumb against me and his forehead against mine and I am still looking at him when I come and he is still looking at me and his hand is steady at my jaw and my whole body is shaking and I am still here, still here, still here.
He follows me a second later.
Buries his face in my neck. Says my name once, soft, into my skin.
Stays inside me.
Doesn’t move.
His weight on me. My hands on his back. His heart against my ribs.
The Florida night.
The quiet.
The certainty of after.
I don’t reach for my camera.
I don’t reach for my phone.
I lie there with him still inside me, his hand at the back of my head, his breath warm at my throat, and I don’t move to do anything except be here.
He shifts after a minute. Eases out of me. Settles us sideways into the couch cushions, face to face this time, close enough that I have to choose between his eyes and his mouth and keep losing track of which one I’m looking at.
There’s a thought I’d normally have right now. The one where I clock the exits. Where I start the quiet arithmetic of how this ends and when I should be ready for it.
It doesn’t come.
I keep waiting for it. It just — doesn’t come.
He doesn’t say anything.
I don’t either.
There’s nothing to say.
I was here. He was here. Both of us. The whole time.
Neither of us needs to name it.
He pulls me closer.
I let him.
The Florida night comes through the window. Brick walks back in from the hallway — exiled with great dignity and zero acceptance — jumps up, and arranges himself in the moonbeam on the counter like he’s been waiting for everyone to sort themselves out.
“Hi,” I tell him.
He blinks once.
I take a picture of him with my phone, just because — then look at the room. Jax coffee cup on the counter. My camera bag by the door. Brick in the moonbeam looking completely unbothered by everything.
Almost eight months in Canyon Bay.
My record by a long shot.
Still counting.
There it is.
He falls asleep.
The specific evenness of his breathing. His hand gone still in my hair.
The Cup Final. Griffin Novak on the other side of the ice. The text on my phone I still haven’t answered.
The old piece still out there.
And I’m lying here in the quiet after the best night of my life with the truth still between us, untouched and waiting.
Soon.
No.
Before Game 1.
That’s the deadline.
I’m not letting Griffin get there first. I’m not letting it come out in a press scrum or a rival piece or a text from someone who read something online.
He hears it from me.
The Cyclones are going to the Cup Final.
Seven to one against. His folder getting bigger by the day. A city that believed before it had proof.
I want to be there for all of it.
Not watching it. Not writing it.
Just there.
In his house. In his shirt.
Four days.
Then he hears it from me.