Chapter 13 Coco #2
The man beside me doesn’t look like my captor in sleep.
His body is heavy and still, breath slow and even, one arm flung loose where it fell sometime in the night.
The tension he carries when he’s awake has eased out of his face, leaving something unguarded behind.
It’s unsettling how much that softens him.
Every touch between us has taken something I meant to keep intact. Not all at once, or dramatically. Just a steady erosion. A hand at my back that lingered a second longer than necessary. The way he watches me when he thinks I’m not looking. The care he doesn’t comment on.
His arm shifts, brushing mine.
The contact is barely there. Skin on skin. Incidental. And still my breath catches like I’ve been caught doing something wrong.
His jaw stays loose, his mouth relaxed, lashes dark against his skin. This is the version of him no one is meant to see.
I should turn away. Put space between us. Remind myself who he is to me.
Instead, I let myself watch the slow rise of his chest. The way his fingers curl slightly, as if even in sleep he’s holding onto something. The warmth of him bleeds into my side, steady and grounding, and for a moment, I don’t want to be careful.
The light shifts, warming, catching along the lines of his skin. I’ve learned enough in our short time together to know how this usually goes. Morning comes. He goes with it.
His eyes open slowly.
For a split second, there’s no armor, only quiet awareness. His unguarded gaze finds mine and locks onto my eyes. It’s like he’s orienting himself to where he is and who he’s with.
“Hey,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
Before I can overthink how we are going to navigate this moment, the two of us waking up together in his bed, he leans in and kisses me.
It’s soft. Unrushed. Nothing like the hunger that drove the other times. No question in it, no edge. Just steady and deliberate contact, like he’s choosing to be here instead of managing the moment.
The intimacy of it unsettles me more than any rough touch ever could.
This is the part I didn’t plan for.
When he pulls back, I laugh softly, nerves threading through the sound. “You’re not leaving.”
One eyebrow lifts. “Was that the expectation?”
“It was,” I admit. “You haven’t exactly lingered before.”
He exhales, a sound halfway between a laugh and something heavier. His hand drifts to my waist, rests there without pulling me closer.
“Maybe I don’t trust myself to stay.”
The pull hits first, followed by the immediate need to shut it down. If we stay here unguarded, I lose the only advantage I still have. So I don’t let it get that far.
“You don’t have to,” I say lightly, even though the words land heavier than I intend. “There’s always coffee. And blowjobs. None of it has to mean anything outside of the moment.”
His mouth curves, slow and reluctant. His thumb presses once at my hip, grounding.
“That last one,” he says, voice low, “you’d have to prove.”
I slide down his body, slow and deliberate, aware of the way his breath changes as soon as I touch him. The control he keeps so tightly doesn’t disappear, but it frays at the edges.
When I take him into my mouth, his groan is unrestrained, raw enough to send heat racing through me.
“Iggyt,” he mutters, one hand threading into my hair, pushing lightly on my head.
I stay with him until his body tightens and gives, until the sound he makes is all instinct and no thought.
And I swallow.
When I come back up, his gaze is heavy, searching. Whatever flickers there is real but unspoken.
“Coffee,” he says quietly, his thumb brushing his come from my lip, “could be dangerous if you make a habit of that.”
I smile. “You seem to like danger. I aim to please.”
He runs his hand through his hair and looks up at the ceiling. Oh, what I would give to know what’s going through his mind.
We settle back together, warmth lingering between us. The edge is gone now, the control restored. That’s when I realize heat alone isn’t enough to keep this from becoming something else.
I want to know more about who Ridge Stone is, to understand what makes him the man that he is.
“So,” I say lightly, “tell me about these famous brothers of yours. You’re the oldest, right?”
“Oldest,” he says. “And the one who gets blamed when things go sideways.”
“My father didn’t believe in options,” he says at last. “Someone had to make sure things didn’t fall apart.”
“And now that someone is you.”
He nods once.
When his father’s name comes up, the shift is immediate. The tension returns, sharp and contained.
“Just over a week ago,” he says.
The weight of it settles between us.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
He accepts it with a nod. Nothing more.
Silence stretches, thick with things neither of us says. Then he turns to me, deliberately changing direction.
“Coco,” he says. “That’s not short for Corinne by accident.”
I tell him the story. The childhood mispronunciation. The name that stuck.
“It fits,” he says. “Coco has teeth.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The quiet hums again, charged and fragile. I break it before it turns dangerous.
“About that coffee,” I murmur, fingers tracing his chest.
His hand closes over mine, stilling it.
“I’ll make it,” he says. “You should shower first.”
He shifts out from under me, already pulling his jeans on, the ease of it practiced. The man I watched sleep and got to know, if only briefly, is gone, replaced by the one who keeps things ordered, controlled, already moving on.
I stay where I am, the warmth of him still lingering against my side, and understand too late that this moment was never meant to last. It was borrowed. Something he allowed himself before putting the armor back on.
And the danger isn’t that he’s keeping me here anymore.
It’s that part of me that doesn’t want to leave.