Chapter 7 Leone #2
"Tell me to stop," I say against her mouth. "Tell me to stop and I will. I'll sit in the chair, and I'll stay there and I won't—"
She kisses me.
Not soft. Not gentle. She grabs my face with both hands and pulls me down and kisses me like she's been drowning and I'm the first breath of air.
Her mouth is hot and open and demanding, and I lose myself in it.
I lose everything. Every rule, every wall, every promise I made to myself about staying distant and controlled and safe.
Gone. All of it.
I grip her hips and lift her off the ground.
Her legs wrap around my waist, ankles locking at the small of my back, and the sound she makes against my mouth is enough to unravel what's left of my sanity.
I press her harder into the wall, grinding against her, feeling the heat of her through too many layers of fabric.
"Leone." My name comes out broken, gasped between kisses. "Leone, please."
The word please nearly kills me.
I carry her from the wall to the bed. She doesn't let go, doesn't unlock her legs, clings to me with her hands in my hair and her mouth on my neck. I lay her down and she pulls me over her, and my body against hers makes her arch up, her hips rolling against mine.
I pin her wrists above her head with one hand. The other slides down her side, over the curve of her waist, beneath the hem of the shirt. Her skin is hot and smooth and when my fingers find her hip bone she makes a sound that turns my blood to kerosene.
"I'm not gentle," I tell her. My mouth is on her throat, teeth grazing the soft skin below her ear. "I don't know how to be gentle."
"I didn't ask you to be."
I pull back enough to look at her. She's flushed, lips swollen, eyes blown wide. Her wrists flex against my grip, not fighting it. Testing it. Feeling the strength in my hand and deciding she wants it there.
"If we do this," I say, and my voice sounds like gravel, "I won't be able to go back to the chair."
She reaches up, free hand tracing the scar beneath my ear, the line of my jaw, the corner of my mouth. "Then don't."
I kiss her again. Slower this time. Deeper. Tasting her, memorizing her, learning the shape of her mouth and the sounds she makes when I bite her bottom lip. She moans into me and the sound vibrates through my chest and settles somewhere low and primal.
I take my time after that. Not gentle, but deliberate. I pull the shirt over her head and she's bare beneath it, nothing but skin and shadows and the rapid rise and fall of her ribs. I trace the line of her collarbone with my tongue. Her fingers dig into my shoulders hard enough to bruise.
"You're shaking," she whispers.
I am. My hands, my arms, my whole body. Not from cold. Not from fear. From the effort of holding back, of not taking, of remembering that she's a person and not the thing I've been fucking starving for.
"I know," I say.
She takes my face in her hands again. Meets my eyes. "Don't hold back."
It all gives way. Not a crack. Not a fracture. A collapse. Complete and irreversible, like a building coming down, and in the rubble there's nothing left but her.
I stop holding back.
I worship and wreck her. She gives me everything.
Soft sounds that harden into cries. Nails that score lines down my back.
My cock springs free as I undo my pants, not bothering to take them off before pushing into her tight heat.
She’s soaked, dripping as I bottom out. Thrusting into her again and again.
There’s no guide book for this, no rules, nothing but her pussy clenching my cock like she wants to rip it off my body and keep it buried inside her.
She takes it. Every inch, every thrust, every fucking bite I leave on her neck and collar bone.
Her body arching and rolling and meeting mine with a ferocity that matches my own.
We crash into each other like waves against rock, relentless, grinding, breaking apart and reforming.
My balls tighten as she moans. Her legs wrap around me and I reach down and push on her clit, circling it slowly and then faster as her breathing speeds.
When she comes, she says my name. Not a moan. Not a scream. my name, quiet and clear, like she's calling me home.
I follow her over the edge with my face buried in her neck and her heartbeat hammering against my chest, and for the first time in twenty years, my mind goes completely, blissfully silent.
Fucking hell.
We lie tangled in the wreckage of the sheets. Her head rests on my chest, her fingers tracing lazy circles on my stomach. My arm is around her shoulders, holding her against me. I can feel her heartbeat slowing, syncing with mine.
Neither of us speaks for a long time. The room is dark except for the pale glow of the courtyard lights through the window. I stare at the ceiling and wait for the guilt, the regret, the cold rush of discipline reasserting itself.
It doesn't come.
Instead, there's more. Shit I haven't felt since I was young enough to believe the world could be kind. It sits in my chest like a second heartbeat, warm and steady and terrifying in its simplicity.
Peace.
Not safety. Not security. I know better than to confuse the two. But peace. The silence of a mind that has finally, after years of grinding noise, found someone worth being still for.
She shifts against me, her leg sliding over mine, and I tighten my arm around her. She fits against me in a way that feels engineered. Like someone designed her dimensions to fill the exact space I've been hollowing out for twenty years.
"You're not going back to the chair," she murmurs against my skin.
"No."
"Good." She presses a kiss to my chest, right over my heart. "That chair was ugly anyway."
I almost laugh. The sound catches in my throat, foreign and strange, and she tilts her head up to look at me. Her eyes are soft. Satisfied. Dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with weapons or war.
"This changes things," I say.
"I know."
"If Aurelio finds out..."
"I know that too."
"And you're not scared?"
She props herself up on her elbow, looking down at me. Her hair falls around her face, and I reach up to push it back, tucking it behind her ear the way I did in the corridor. The way that started all of this.
"I stopped being scared of you weeks ago," she says. "Now I'm only scared of what happens if someone takes this away."
I pull her down against me, wrapping both arms around her, pressing my mouth to the top of her head.
"No one takes this away," I say. "Not Aurelio. Not the Castillo’s. Not whoever is hiding behind those bank accounts. No one."
She settles against me. Her breathing evens out. Her body goes heavy and warm, melting into mine.
I lie in the dark, holding a woman I swore I'd never let myself want, and listen to the compound breathe around us. Soldiers on patrol. Engines idling in the courtyard. The distant murmur of a world that wants to tear us apart.
Claudio was right. The middle ground was killing me.
But this isn't middle ground. This is a cliff edge, and I've finally stepped off it, and the fall feels nothing like I expected.
It feels like landing.
I tighten my arms around her and close my eyes.