Chapter 14 #2
His brow pulls together. Not confusion, rawer than that, the expression of a man surprised by what he just did.
"Hear what."
"Louisiana." I press my hand harder against the tattoo, against the heartbeat racing under my fingers. "You sound like you did when you were twenty and standing in Odette's kitchen arguing about the roux. You sound like home."
Something breaks behind his eyes. Not dramatically, not all at once, but the way ice cracks on a river, one long fracture running through everything he's held together, and his fisted hands open and his fingers find my hips and the grip isn't gentle.
His fingers dig into my hips, and he picks me up. Just hauls me against his chest like the foot of height between us has finally become inconvenient. My legs wrap around his waist on instinct, my hands grab his shoulders to anchor, and his mouth is on mine before my feet are off the floor.
This isn't the hotel in Louisiana. That kiss was bourbon and wanting and the recklessness of two people who'd decided to pretend tomorrow didn't exist. This kiss is sober and intentional, and it tastes like the truth he just let me touch, like cedar and the salt on his skin and the soft devastation of a man whose walls just came down.
I wrap my arms around his neck and press into him, every inch of me against every inch of him, the silk of my camisole nothing between us, thin enough that the heat of his chest burns through it and the raised edge of his rib scar presses against my stomach. My breath stutters into his mouth.
He walks me to the bed without setting me down.
Three steps, four, and he lowers me onto the white linen, and the loss of his chest against mine makes my whole body register the cold.
I sit up on the edge of the mattress. He stands between my knees and his hands find my waist, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts through the silk while I look up at him.
His eyes are so dark they've lost the green entirely, just black and heat and desperation underneath the composure he's barely holding.
"Lie back." His voice has dropped past English entirely, every vowel soft and rounded, and the drawl isn't slipping anymore because there's nothing left for it to slip from.
"No."
His eyebrows pull together. I reach for the waistband of his sweatpants and hook my fingers into the elastic, and the muscles in his stomach contract under my knuckles.
"I want my mouth on you."
The words come out softer than I planned, a little shaky, and honest in a way that costs me something because I've never said anything like this to anyone.
But the wanting has been building for weeks, for years, since I was sixteen and too young to name what I felt when I watched him cross Odette's kitchen.
I pull at his waistband and look up at him and I'm not performing.
I'm a woman on the edge of his bed asking for what she wants and my hands are trembling and I don't care.
His hand comes up to my jaw. Thumb tracing my bottom lip, slow, the pad of his finger rough against the soft skin. "You don't have to."
"I know I don't have to." I turn my face into his palm and press my lips against the heel of his hand. "I want to. I've been thinking about it for an embarrassing amount of time, and I'd really like to stop thinking and start doing."
The sound he makes is almost a laugh, broken and low, and his thumb drags across my cheekbone and his fingers thread into my hair at the temple. "Mais, Evangeline." Barely a whisper. "You're gonna be the death of me."
I pull his sweatpants down.
He's hard, and the sight of him makes my mouth go dry and my thighs clench simultaneously. I wrap my hand around him and his hips shift forward, and the steadiness he wears like a second skin cracks.
"Slow, chère." His hand tightens in my hair, not pulling, just anchoring. "Use your hand first. Get used to how it feels."
I stroke him once, base to tip, and his exhale shudders out between his teeth. When my thumb drags across the head, his whole body tenses, every lean muscle pulling taut at once.
"Like that." Rougher now, the instruction fraying. "Just like that, and when you're ready, just the tip. Use your tongue first."
I lean forward and press my lips to the head of his cock, and the taste of him is salt and skin and warmth I don't have a name for.
I pull back just enough to drag my tongue across the tip, and his whole body twitches like I've hit a nerve.
I do it again, slower this time, learning the shape, listening for what his breath does when I land it right.
"Like that, chère." Wrecked. His thumb traces the corner of my mouth. "Yeah, just like that."
I open my mouth and take him in, tongue flat against the underside, and the sound he makes above me isn't a word in any language. His fingers tighten in my hair and his other hand grips my shoulder and the tremor in his fingers registers against my bare skin.
I take him deeper, too deep too fast, and my throat fights it and I have to pull back fast, coughing once into my fist before I can recover.
His hand catches my jaw, thumb stroking the corner of my mouth, and his hips jerk forward just once before he stops himself and goes rigid with the effort of holding still.
"Easy." The word splinters between his teeth, more breath than voice. "You don't have to take it all. Slow it down. Just your mouth, chère. Don't worry about the rest."
He trails off. I pull back to the tip and swirl my tongue, and his fingers curl against my scalp.
"Your hands are shaking."
His laugh is a ruined thing, half air, half surrender. "Yeah." His thumb traces the hinge of my jaw, tender and unsteady. "They do that now, apparently."
"They're always steady everywhere else."
"Everywhere else you don't have your mouth on me." His thumb stills on my chin. His voice drops, ragged and low. "And nobody's mouth has ever done this to me, chère. You should know that."
I take him back in, deeper this time, and his head drops forward and his breath comes hot and ragged against my scalp.
When I hollow my cheeks and suck, his hand fists in my hair and his whole body curves over me and the sound that tears out of him is French, rough and guttural and completely involuntary, and the power of that unfurls in my chest. I did that.
My mouth, my tongue, my choice, and the man who has been in control of every single encounter between us is coming apart above me because I decided he would.
"Evie." Ragged, urgent, his hand tightening. "Evie, you gotta stop, I'm gonna..."
I pull back. His cock slips from my mouth, wet and flushed, and I look up at him and his face is wrecked.
Open. Every mask stripped away, the charm and the composure and the clinical distance demolished by the girl he called a mistake sitting on the edge of his bed with swollen lips and his taste on her tongue.
"Come here." He pulls me up by the arms and his mouth finds mine and he kisses me deep and filthy, tasting himself on my tongue, and his hands find the hem of my camisole and drag it up and over my head in one motion.
The cool air hits my bare skin and his hands are on me immediately, palms covering my breasts, thumbs dragging across the peaks while he walks me backward onto the bed.
"I want you inside me." I say it against his mouth because I'm done being careful and done being quiet and done pretending I don't want every single thing he's been giving me in the dark. "I want to watch this time."
The noise he makes against my throat is animal, and his hands drag my underwear down my thighs and I kick them off while he steps out of the sweatpants still tangled at his ankles, and then he's between my legs and the weight of him over me presses me into the silky sheets and I can smell cedar and his skin and my own arousal mixing together in the cool air of his room.
He reaches across me to the nightstand. The drawer slides open without a sound, the way a man opens a drawer he's opened a thousand times. Foil. The brief tear of it, and then his hands, sure on this one thing even though everywhere else they're shaking. He rolls it on without looking down.
He lines himself up. The head of his cock presses against me and I'm so wet that the resistance is nothing, and when he pushes inside I feel every inch, slow and sure, and my back arches off the mattress and I dig my nails into his arms and I watch his face.
His eyes are open. Looking down at me, and his jaw is clenched and his arms are shaking where they brace on either side of my head and I have never in my life seen anything as devastating as Remy LeBlanc trying to hold himself together while he's buried inside me.
"God, Evie." Whispered against my temple, his lips moving against my skin. "You feel, chère, you feel so..."
He pulls back and pushes in again and I gasp, loud in the quiet room, and his mouth finds my throat and his teeth graze my pulse point and I wrap my legs around his hips and pull him deeper.
The rhythm builds between us, unhurried and intense, and every thrust sends heat spiraling through my core and I'm making sounds I've never made before, sounds I didn't know I had in me.
"Right there." I breathe it against his ear and his hips stutter. "Don't stop, right there, please."
"Stay." The word falls out of him like breathing, like he didn't choose it, his mouth against my throat and his hand fisting the sheet beside my head. "Stay right there, chère, just stay."
My body detonates.
The orgasm hits so hard I forget how to breathe. A surge of sensation that crests higher than it should, more than the angle or the friction or the rhythm can account for, and something in my nervous system fires from a place I haven't earned.
Every muscle locks. My fingers dig into his back.
My chest is locked tight and my lungs refuse to fill and I can hear myself cry out, raw and uncontrolled, the pleasure rolling through me in waves that keep building past the point where they should break, my body deciding the orgasm matters more than oxygen and committing to that bargain with both lungs.
My hand finds the ink over his heart on the way down, his father's signature under my palm, the heartbeat hammering through it.
He follows me over the edge, and I watch it happen. His face when he comes is the most honest thing I've ever seen, mouth open, eyes on me, every line of composure erased, and what comes out of his mouth is "Evangeline," low and shattered, all the way home.
His weight settles onto me. His face presses into the curve of my neck and his breathing is ragged against my skin and his heartbeat hammers against my chest, and I hold him there, my arms around his back, my fingers tracing the ridgeline of his shoulder scar, and I breathe.
I press my lips to his temple, where his hair is damp and his skin tastes like salt, and his exhale against my throat loosens something he's been carrying since before I knew him.
"Tripp."
"Hmm." Barely conscious, barely a sound.
"I'm not going back to the guest room."
His arm tightens around my waist. His mouth moves against my neck, and the word that comes out is so quiet I almost miss it, drawled and stripped of everything except the truth.
"Good."
"Your room's cold."
His chest moves against my shoulder with what might be a laugh. "Noticed that, did you?"
"It's objectively cold in here." The warmth radiating from his body where it's pressed against my right side makes the cold feel like a choice rather than a problem. "Do you not believe in thermostats, or is this a whole lifestyle commitment?"
"Lifestyle commitment." His voice is a low rumble against my hair, every vowel loose and round in a way that has nothing to do with San Francisco. "Sleep better cold."
"You don't sleep."
A beat. His thumb shifts against my stomach. "Sleep better cold on the nights I do."
I look at the packed bag by the door. Black, sitting on the hardwood like a piece of furniture.
"How long has that been there."
He doesn't ask what I mean. "Since I moved in."
"When did you move in?"
"Three years ago."
I turn my head on the pillow to look at him. His face is close, closer than I expected, and his jaw is relaxed like I've never seen it during daylight hours.
"You've had a packed bag by your bedroom door for three years."
"Mmhm."
"That's not a bag, Remy. That's a philosophy."
His mouth curves. Just one side, lazy and unguarded. "Might could call it a contingency plan."
Might could. Louisiana grammar, offered without correction, without the micro-flinch I've watched him make a dozen times when the accent slips in front of anyone. He heard himself say it and he didn't fix it and something in my chest blooms.
"Darcy is asleep two rooms away." I whisper it. Not because she'd hear at this point. Because anything louder would feel like breaking something.
"I'm aware."
"If she wakes up and I'm not in the guest room..."
"Then we have a problem that involves a lot of screaming and at least one thrown shoe." His hand presses slightly firmer against my stomach, not pulling me closer but making the contact more certain. "Darcy throws left-handed. In case you need to dodge."
The laugh that escapes me is small and surprised and I press my face into his shoulder to muffle it because the image of Darcy in the hallway at dawn, catching me leaving her brother's bedroom, is simultaneously the funniest and most terrifying thing I can imagine.
Darcy, who doesn't have a quiet setting, who has never in her life processed an emotion at anything below full volume, discovering that her best friend and her brother have been—
What have we been doing?
The buzz comes from the floor by his clothes. Once. Short. The same pattern I watched him silence through his denim at the dinner table the other night, the one he turned off without looking up.
Remy's body goes still against me.