Chapter 25 Santos
TWENTY-FIVE
santos
“Santos?”
The voice was there, recognizable.
I stiffened. It didn’t make sense. The voice was safe. I knew it was.
I just couldn’t move.
Anger surged through me. My muscles clenched, fighting it. Maybe feeding into it. I didn’t know. I still couldn’t move.
Fuck, I had to look a mess.
It was important not to do that. To look strong. Dependable. To be in control. I had to prove that I could take care of him. Of Ever.
That I could take care of myself, too.
“Did you have a nightmare? Are you okay?”
The voice was muffled, small. It still left me without air, fumbling for a way to dismiss his worry that simply didn’t exist.
I couldn’t prove shit when I was sitting on the floor, half-naked and sweaty, with my back against the bed because I couldn’t fathom the idea of sliding under the covers.
Of remembering, because Ever had gone out to celebrate someone’s birthday, and I had declined tagging along so that he could have time alone with his friends.
It had seemed like the not co-dependent thing to do. The healthy thing.
No one wanted a guy who was weak.
The word was engraved deep somewhere in my chest, reverberating around the cavity until it was all I knew.
“Shit,” he whispered. I believed he was getting closer, but I needed to focus on my breathing. On my dry throat. On all the signs that I needed to hide if I wanted to keep him in my life. “Okay, I’m going to get you some water. Okay? You stay there.”
“W-wait.”
The vine around my chest tightened, threatened to snap. I didn’t want him to see me like this, but now that he was in the same room, I couldn’t… He couldn’t leave.
One shaky breath in, and I dared to glance up.
I dared to glance up at a hesitating Ever, fidgeting where he stood, close, but not too close.
He remembered the thing I told him about getting too close to me when I was having a nightmare.
I didn’t have the sort that would have me knocking him down in reflex, but better safe than sorry was my motto when it came to it.
“What do I do?”
“You can…” The words were like grit inside my mouth. “You can come close. If you want.”
Was I freaking him out? I’d be freaking myself out.
Ever just followed the… Had it been an order? Interpreted as such because he was in a submissive headspace more often than not, and I wasn’t always aware of how much he needed?
The question threatened to give me a migraine on top of the way my head hurt already.
It would be tabled for later. When he wasn’t here, sliding between my legs until he could wrap himself around me like a koala.
I hadn’t asked him to do that, but it didn’t surprise me that he had. It was the way we were.
The way I wanted us to be.
That knowledge didn’t stop all the conundrums of thoughts and questions that had kept me away from the bed. Away from any attempt at resting.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” He cupped my face with both hands, watching me with a frown etched between his brows. “Are you okay, though?”
I shook my head.
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t handle his worry, even if it was called for.
“If… Let’s… In a hypothetical scenario… Let’s say you were away for like, a week, and you come back, and I’m running a fever, sick as fuck, but you’re…
you’re very horny, right? Because you always are, and you haven’t had any release all week, and you were really looking forward to being with me.
” I swallowed. It was exposing too much, but it had to be better than having all the questions, the made-up answers and scenarios, ricocheting around my head.
I just needed something, anything, that wasn’t that. “What would you do?”
A muffled curse hadn’t been among the answers I’d come up with when there was nothing to keep me from spiraling.
I held my breath as I watched his eyes glitter, darting around my face in search of something. I couldn’t tell if he found it or not.
“I don’t know, take your temperature and ask if you’ve seen a doctor?
And…find a place that delivered soup because chances are the fridge would be empty, and I’m not that good of a cook, anyway?
” He fidgeted as he spoke. It was something else I tracked, but it was knowledge trapped by the fog that had settled over me.
“Depending on the time, I could ask Eli? They make the best soup. Oh, and Kara’s roommates are ER doctors, so I guess I’d text her, too?
I don’t know. I mean, I know what you’re trying to make me say, but I’m not sick.
If you’re feeling like shit, I’m not going to… What the fuck?”
“Yeah.” I averted my gaze. He was growing agitated, and I got it, but I couldn’t take it.
I couldn’t take the confirmation I hadn’t willed myself to see as a possibility.
“It… I don’t even remember half of it. I couldn’t even…
get it up, you know? I don’t remember what she did.
I think she tried to make me take Viagra?
Maybe she did. I don’t know, I just…remember feeling guilty. ”
His hand trembled, but he ran it through my hair regardless, tracing the side of my face as if he was drawing a mental map of it.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t feel guilty because of what she’d done. I felt guilty because I hadn’t been good enough for her. I’m struggling with that, I think.”
“With what?”
How could I put it into words? It barely made sense to me. I didn’t know how to make someone else understand. I’d barely managed with that therapist, and I didn’t even get into any details. Into anything that could force someone to take action.
“I need to be good enough, for…for someone.” Averting my gaze again, I ignored the shiver that went down my spine. I ignored the million voices in my head, the name-calling, the battering that I couldn’t take any more of. “Please.”
“You…” Ever blinked furiously a few times. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t see it. The hurt. The disappointment. The…whatever I was doing to him. Proving to him. “You’re my fucking hero. You’re…you’re perfect. I love you.”
“But I can’t…”
I couldn’t be everything he wanted. I couldn’t be what he needed. A Dom. Someone who manhandled him 24/7 and told him what a good girl he was and made all decisions.
I still couldn’t figure out how to order from a restaurant without copying what someone else asked for or having him do it for me.
It was…
“It doesn’t matter,” he cut through the spiraling. His voice sounded stronger now, firmer. He cupped my face again, that frown still on his. I couldn’t move a muscle. “Fuck, nothing matters if you’re not okay. Do you get that? You always go first. Always.”
“Fuck.” I couldn’t… There were no other words I could push out. “I’m… I swear I’m working on it, but I…I need you. I need you to not hate me or be disappointed in me for being a fuckup or…”
“I’m not.” He just leaned forward, slow enough that I could stop him if I wanted, but not enough that I’d think he was hesitant. I didn’t tell him that I’d never stop him. It probably would come across as not very healthy. Less so with the turn the conversation has taken. “I could never be that.”
Yeah, and I couldn’t believe those words, not right now, but I didn’t say it out loud, either.
“I’m going…” I needed to say it. I needed to get over the dryness in my throat, the burning need to shed tears I hadn’t shed in way too long.
I just needed to say it, and then it would be okay.
“Carlos’s friend sent me the number of, uh, a therapist?
I texted her to ask for an appointment. I don’t know how long it will be, though. ”
“That’s fine,” he whispered. The small smile that grazed his lips wasn’t enough to replace his frown, but it was something. “It’s all going to be fine.”
“Yeah?”
“I promise.” He kissed me then.
It was apparently all I’d needed. All that broke me, too.
I hated it.
I hated it, and I loved him, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I only knew that he was the only fucking lifeline I’d ever known.
“I love you.”
“I love you,” he whispered again.
He didn’t have to be loud. He just had to be here.
Close. Pressed against my clammy skin with his stupidly soft clothes on and the makeup that had gotten a bit ruined over the course of the night, and I was only noticing now.
Now, as I found a tendril of strength to move us until he was the one sitting against the mattress, and I was on top, covering his body with mine.
As I took the first clear, deep breath I’d taken ever since I found myself playing dodgeball with my erratic thoughts.
With memories that I should’ve just left behind.
“We don’t have to…”
“I know.” I tensed, regardless. “I want to do this. I need to.”
“What do you need?” Ever asked. It wasn’t an outlandish question, but there was something that kept me frozen. Maybe in his tone, or in the smoldering gaze he was regarding me with. “Tell me.”
I swallowed.
The way he held my gaze was new and hot in a way that had nothing to do with the eroticism charging the air.
“I want to…” I needed to close my eyes. Needed a moment of quiet, of stillness, of relieving the pressure that kept building. “I want to make you come. Like when Tony was here.”
Ever arched his spine. It was for show. I knew it was. It didn’t matter. He could deploy all his sub tricks all he wanted, and I’d still know it was him. I’d still know he was safe.
“How?” He licked his lip. More of the arsenal he wasn’t too shy to display now. “How are you going to do that?”
“I…” My hips bucked forward of their own accord.
I should still be reeling from the events of the evening.
From his words. Mine. In a way, I still was.
It was getting tucked in a box somewhere, though, distant.
“I’m going to…I’m going to fuck you first. And then I’m going to finger you, and I’m going to bite and mark you everywhere, and you’re going to… ”
Fuck. It sounded pathetic. Cringe as fuck.
“Good,” Ever’s voice broke through the thoughts again. “Mark me. Fuck me. All of it.”
It wasn’t the words or even the physical ache to do as he asked. It was the determination in his gaze. The sheer honesty in it. It left me no choice.
It also became the closest I’d ever gotten to making love to someone instead of just fucking them, to understanding why that distinction was important. To understanding what it meant when your soulmate stared deep into your eyes and didn’t let go.
“Ever.”
There was no frown anymore. He’d lost it sometime between me kissing him and exploring the expanse of his lean frame with my tongue. There was only the more sated, honest smile on his face as the aftermath of his ruined orgasm crashed through him.
He was beautiful.
Breathtaking.
Somehow, mine.