Chapter 13 The Old Hiding Place #2
I take the tins from the cabinet and carry them to the hall. Leon walks beside me without trying to take them away. We leave them with my bags near the entrance.
On the way back toward the sitting room, I slow beside the old tapestry. I hadn't meant to come this way. The lower corner is turned back slightly, showing the shadowed recess behind it.
Leon stops when I do. Neither of us says anything for a moment.
***
I know every fold of that faded tapestry.
Behind it is the alcove, smelling faintly of dust and rosemary. A narrow bench fits into the stone recess, with a little light reaching it from the corridor. It's where we used to meet, back when we were still pretending we weren't falling in love.
Leon stops at the entrance to the passage and looks at me.
"We don't have to go in," he says. "If you don't want to."
I should say no. I should take my baking tins and my bag of clothes and ask him to drive me back to the farm. I should protect myself from whatever is about to happen.
I take hold of the tapestry and draw it aside. "Just for a minute," I say, and step into the recess. He follows after I make room.
The space is smaller than I remember, or maybe I've just gotten bigger. The stone bench is the same, worn smooth by years of use. Light from the corridor falls past the edge of the tapestry. Nothing has changed here. Nothing except us.
"You used to tell me you weren't nervous," I say. "Your hands were shaking."
"I was twenty-two and trying to kiss you without making an idiot of myself."
"You'd already kissed me by then."
"It didn't help."
I remember. I remember being twenty and so certain that once we could stop hiding, the difficult part would be over. Even after the wedding we kept coming back here, stealing a few minutes whenever the house felt crowded. It took me too long to notice how little of him I had outside those minutes.
I sit down on the stone bench, feeling the coolness through my clothes. Leon sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.
"What we used to be," I repeat. "You mean before I was your wife and started being your secret instead?"
"You were never my secret."
"Wasn't I? Because from where I was standing, it felt like you loved me in private and forgot about me in public. Like I was something to be hidden away."
"That wasn't..." He stops, takes a breath. "That wasn't my intention. But I understand why it felt that way."
We sit in silence for a moment. A cloud passes, dimming the light beyond the tapestry.
"I used to love this place," I say quietly. "When we were sneaking around, before anyone knew about us, this felt like the safest spot in the world. Just you and me and the quiet."
"I remember how safe it felt."
"Could it?" I turn to look at him. "Or would it just be more of the same? You and me hiding from your mother, from the world, from everyone who thinks I don't belong here?"
"I'm trying to change that. You've seen me trying."
"I've seen you working on my parents' farm.
I've seen you selling almonds at the market.
I've even seen you call me your wife in public without flinching.
" I shake my head. "But we're still here, aren't we?
In a hidden alcove, where no one can see us.
That's the pattern, Leon. That's always been the pattern. "
"I meant what I said at the market. I wasn't saying it to get you to come back here."
"It's not that simple."
"I know yesterday didn't settle everything."
"Because you've already had two years to do that, and you didn't. One afternoon of grand gestures doesn't undo the damage."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then he reaches out and takes my hand again, and this time I feel something crack open in my chest.
"I know," he says. "I know I can't fix it in a day.
But I love you, Ysabel. I've always loved you.
Even when I was failing you, even when I was letting my mother run our lives, even when I was too much of a coward to stand up for you in public.
The love was always there, even if I did a terrible job of showing it. "
"I know you love me." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. "That was never the question."
"Then what is the question?"
"Whether love is enough. Whether you can actually be the husband I need, not just the one who loves me in private but the one who claims me in front of everyone."
"I want to be that. I'm trying to be that."
"I know you're trying."
We're closer now, I realize. At some point during this conversation, the space between us has shrunk until I can feel the warmth of him beside me, can smell the familiar scent of his skin.
"Ysabel," he says, and my name in his mouth sounds like a prayer.
I should pull back. I should stand up and walk away and protect what's left of my wounded heart.
But I don't.
There is something I still haven't told him. Something bigger than either of us standing here, and for one sharp second the knowledge catches at me.
But telling Leon about the baby means more than telling my husband I'm pregnant. It means telling a Rosciano there is an heir his family may decide belongs to them as much as it belongs to me.
I'm not ready for that conversation. At least not here, not like this.
What happens between us now has to be because I want him, not because a child has tied us together before I've decided whether I can trust him again.
So instead, I find myself doing a reckless decision.
I touch his cheek and kiss him.
Leon waits a moment before drawing me closer, giving me room to change my mind. What matters is the feeling of his lips on mine, familiar and strange at the same time, as if coming home to a house that's been rearranged while you were away.
His hands come up to cup my face, gentle, asking permission with every touch. I answer by leaning into him, by letting myself want what I've been denying myself since I left.
For a heartbeat it stays almost tender. The shape of his mouth, the warmth of his breath. The ridiculous relief of being touched by him in a place that still smells like dust and rosemary and every secret we ever kept.
Then the careful thing breaks.
I kiss him harder, angry at how much I missed this, angry that my body still knows his shape better than my pride does.
His mouth opens under mine. His tongue slides against mine, slow at first, then deeper when I make a sound I bite off because the corridor is only a tapestry away. He swallows the rest of it and groans quietly into me, and that sound undoes something mean and tender at once.
"Ysabel," he says again, against my mouth.
"Don't talk," I tell him. "Not right now."
He doesn't talk. At least not with words.
His hands leave my face and find my waist, then my back, pulling me flush until there is no honest space left between us on the stone bench.
Making out turns filthy in layers: the wet sound of mouths, the drag of his teeth on my lower lip, my fingers fisting in his shirt and then shoving under it to drag nails over warm skin.
He curses under his breath when I scratch. The strip of corridor light along the tapestry edge flickers as someone far off closes a door.
We both freeze for half a second. Then his mouth is on my jaw, my throat, open and hungry, and I tip my head back like I have no self-preservation left.
"Fuck, Ysabel…"
"I said don't talk." But I am already pulling him closer by the belt, already shifting so my skirt rucks up between us, fabric whispering loud in the recess. "Unless you're going to tell me how much you missed this."
"I missed this." His voice is wrecked velvet against my skin.
Leon kisses the hinge of my jaw, then lower, teeth scraping just shy of a mark that would be stupid to leave. Dominant without forgetting we can be found.
"Missed your mouth, love. Missed the sounds you try not to make. Missed the way you go soft for me when you're furious. Look at you… Still shaking for me in this hole in the wall. Still so perfect."
"I'm not yours in a hole in the wall." The words come out sharp even as I fist his hair and hold him to my throat. "Don't praise me like that fixes anything."
"I'm not fixing anything." He bites softly under my ear, then soothes it with his tongue until the sting turns into heat between my legs. "I'm taking what you're giving me before you remember you hate me. Before you walk out of this tapestry and put the distance back."
I shove at his shoulders and climb into his lap.
Straddling him on the worn stone bench puts my weight on my knees, skirt bunched at my hips, the tapestry rough against my back when I lean.
The bench is cold through the fabric at first; his body is not. I can feel him hard under me already, thick behind his trousers, and I grind down once, deliberate, watching his jaw go tight and his hands lock on my waist without forcing.
"Ysabel…" My name breaks in his mouth.
"Quiet." I free him with impatient hands as buttons fall.
The heat of him springing into my palm makes my breath catch. He is thick, flushed, already leaking. I stroke him once from base to tip and he whines, actual and helpless, forehead dropping to my collarbone like the sound embarrasses him. It goes straight through me.
"That's better."
"Please." Praise tangled with begging, his hips twitching up into my fist. "Let me feel you. Let me… fuck, let me inside. You're soaked. I can feel you through nothing."
"Don't." But I am pushing my underwear aside, guiding him. Sinking down onto him in one slow, aching slide that punches the air from both of us and leaves us shaking in the rosemary dark.
The stretch is familiar and devastating.
Leon fills me deep on the old bench where we used to pretend love would be enough. For a second, the secret rises hard behind my ribs.
Our baby, the heir. The Rosciano name waiting like a trap with soft edges.
But I lock it behind my teeth and kiss him harder instead, because this is want.
Only want. Not a child tying us, not a dynasty.
Him.
I will tell him soon, under different circumstances. I just have to find the courage and timing.